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[Linzguy]

This is really sad: the save function doesn't work right some of the time! I saved at a critical point, and when I restarted, the program ended with a "stack overflow" message. I ran the program again from scratch, and even after restarting my PC. Still got a "stackoverflow" from the save. Arggggggggh! And the save system really sucks to start with. One slot per name? Come on! I really hate it that such a neat game concept has been betrayed by its lack of well thought out programming and debugging. I wish somebody would redo it as a new game - only with more ways to solve each case, and some more lively action.

I'm going to try getting around this by periodically exiting the program to copy the save files to another place. I also see that the best time to do a save is when you get the first paper work for a new case.

I have also discovered that you can get around the annoying and overlong "(1) (2) (3) .... (13)" animation by executing PLOTLOAD.exe instead of FLOOR13.exe. (The "stack overflow" problem is not caused by doing this because it happened while I was using FLOOR13.exe).

Hmmm. I see it may be a long while before anybody reads any of my posts.

[Linzguy]

My continued farting around with this game is a tribute to its neatness in face of all that's wrong with it. ;-)

Save problem: In windows you can run it on Dosbox as one window. Keep another My Computer or Windows Explorer window open at the directory where the game is. There are a maximum of up to five save files named F13_1 to F13_5 They correspond to the five DG name slots you are allowed in the game. If you look inside these files with notepad or a hex editor (and I recommend the latter) you'll see how the files correspond to which DG name was used.

I believe (but am not certain) that you should do saves from the DG's door (I think that not doing that may have been what caused my bad save previously) After you save, your should open a new folder in the Floor13's directory and copy the five saves to this new directory. Just keep doing that and labelling your directories according to how far along in the game you are. This gives you the option of going back to ANY point in your game that you take a save for. Save when you get new paper work in for a mission. Save when the old paper work for a mission goes to the shedder. This should greatly reduce the frustration level of playing this game.

And now for the best part. I believe I have worked out the locations of the key variables in the save files. :-) With a hex editor (specifically
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/free...vi32/xvi32.htm)

I was able to compare various saves and figured out (I believe) where the Garcination counter, poll level number, and the numbers for the resources are located. These are obviously all in the F13_1 to 5 save files. But these files are variable length files, and I have not done hex arithmetic in a very long time. So I am giving you a byte by byte layout of the bottom of the file. Its all in the last 35 bytes or so of the F13_1 to 5 files. (The DG name for the save is at the top of the file.)

Here are the bytes at the end of the file. The numbers are in hexidecimal.
Each open parent and close parent is a byte. .. = I don’t know what it does.

(00) (F6) (FF) (..) (..) (Garcination counter) (..) (..) (..) (poll level) (..) (..) (..) (..) (..) (..) (..) (interogation teams) (..) (Pursuit teams) (..) (surveilance teams) (..) (search teams) (..) (infiltration agents) (..) (disinformation money) (..) (removal teams) (..) (heavy assault) (..) (..) (..)

Using the hex editor, I plugged numbers from 1 to 8 into each of the resource slots. and then restarted the game and saw those numbers on the resource list screen that comes up before getting to the DG’s door. Remember to convert decimal numbers into hexadecimal numbers when you do that. And don’t go overboard. There’s probably a hard coded limit to how many of each team there can be. You probably only want to fiddle with the resource numbers when a bug causes you to lose a resource (like the gentlemen above who lost his pursuit teams).

For poll level, simply plug in the hexdecimal form of the decimal poll level number you want to have, and that is what you’ll get. It’s nice to remain in office no matter what the weather!

Garcination counter. I am less sure of this. I probably need a few more experiments to confirm it. I don’t know if it is a counter, or just a indicator switch that the program
changes depending on what actions you took. I can tell you that I compared the last 35 bytes of four different save files. When I started the game, this byte was zeroes [ or (00), as above.] I have an early save where I was very conservative in my actions, and the byte shows (0B). A save towards the end of a game shows (45). I got a PM warning about killing VIPs when the byte had (4A), and it was (5C) after meeting Mr. Garcia. That seems pretty consistent to me. So I put 0B in the Garcia byte of the save where it was showing 4A and restarted the game, did some heavy assaults, and got only a lower level warning from the PM and didn’t meet Mr. Garcia. But as I said, I may need some more experiments. Hmmm. Talk about a “full employment” policy. It certainly gives you a lot more elbow room to do what needs to be done.

I believe the bytes between the hypothetical Garcia counter and the proven poll level byte are used to store the day and time the game uses, but I have not done any experiments.

I hope this contributes to your enjoyment of the game. And I thank Abandonia for making it available.

[Linzguy]

I have pretty much confirmed the Garcination counter by using it three times without it hurting the game. I hope spilling all these beans doesn't get me hanged under Blackfriar's Bridge. ;-)

[Abi79]

Is there a way to cancel an assassination attempt?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BrutalSquid @ Oct 21 2005, 01:58 AM) [snapback]170456[/snapback]</div>

...
2) Rescuing the royal family member.

One of the three suspects is linked to the kidnapper. I can't remember exactly how to id them, but I think that by tailing/surveillance you can narrow it down (should be the one that visit King's Cross or some other suspicious place). This person should be abducted and tortured until they reveal the kidnapper. Then ransack the kidnappers place and you've done it.

If you want to be safe (and havn't drawn much attention to yourself), then just abduct all three suspects. As soon as they tell you their organisation, you can either interrogate them more or cross them off the list.
[/b]

Another way to solve this problem is infiltration to organisation that want to kidnap. If you iniltrate many agents, you recieve information about who is the member of this organisation. He was "known government supporter". :-) I like this way more. Not harm for not guilty (for suspects).

Infiltration is enough fun (and may be bug) thing. My comments about it.
If you infiltrate to organisation its more chances to smear this organisation (IMHO).
If you infiltrate many agendas you can convert organisation to neutral and then to pro-covernment. Now, may be bug: If organisation doing that they planned - its not down rating of PM or even UP it (if convert to pro-government).

How to infiltrate. I prefer to do it in 2-3 attemptions. If you have not many agents its less chanses, so I like to have many agendas in reserve. For this you can sell they to job to very secret :-) organisation before recieve expand departament. After recieve - cancel infiltration mission. And now you have many agendas for really hard to infiltrate organisation. If it is cheat, I think it is cheat a part of game (you cheating PM) :-)

Sorry, for my English. Its not my native language.

[xx409xx]

All of the Thoth missions are harder than the others, but some are near impossible. Protecting the Church of the Subgenius is perhaps the most difficult due to inherent time constraint. I can never get it right although i know what needs to be done...

1) i ransack the church leader and both contacts, (the man with the will, and the 3rd man associated with the donation) and this yields the contract letter from the don.

2) ive tried alternately abducting and removing the workman, the man who it is implied will perform the "hit" on the donor. It seems that when they work, i am able to abduct or assassinate him too late, from the paperwork it seems that even if i am able to remove him using the immediate timeframe, i am able to do on the same day that the murder takes place, but the murder seems to have happened already. I dont know where im losing or wasting time here, if that is indeed the case.

3) ive heard of a solution that involves first saving the game state, then going forward and seeing at what time the workman arrives, (which is always a few minutes before the donor returns home) restoring the game back to when the initial report comes out about the church and issuing a heavy assault on his house at the appropriate time and date when only the hitman is in the residence. I always get the same result; the paper the next day has a report where "the police are suspicious about a military type strike against 'mr. so and so's house, but luckily he was not at home", and i can only interperate this as failure as a few days later his murder is in the papers even though given the paperwork, i should have killed the hitman when i reduced the house to debris with him inside. It is my guess that the game randomly chooses a time when the hitman arrives, even when you restore a saved state, to rule out the possibility of people taking avantage of the save and restore functions.

I would like to maybe work with a few people to revise the current walkthough that exists for this game, as it is laking on a few points, such as the difference between similar senarios, such as the KGB paperwork leak, and a think tank leak about selling certain parks off. Some of the hints for the Thoth missions are a bit off if i am right, i can never quite pull off the assassin's bullet senario, or the Pod people, although it seems i follow the procedure to the letter. (in each case with the pod people it is obvious who i need to eliminate, an sometime i do eliminate them by either abduction or removal, yet never get the repsonse from the grandmaster telling me ive done his bidding. how annoying.....) let me know if anyone else is interested.

And as a final aside: I would like to point out the following games because if you like floor 13 you will most undoubtedly like them as well: 1) KGB by Virgin interactive, a point and click adventure with a soviet perspective. well written and dealing with similar themes, and 2) Conflict: middle east political simulator, which from what i can see predates floor 13, but has an identical menu interface. You pretty much lead Israel to victory over the entire region. great game, with the same noir-ish feel and sense of humor. thanks.

Jeeze people, seriously, those screenshots need spoiler warnings!! Maybe you can go back and edit the posts or something, or a mod. . . I didnt really *ruin* the game for me, but dang, now I wont get that surprise. .

[gaztop]

I had problems at first, but after looking at the format a few times realised the game is not as predictable as I thought.
So, I began to think like the game and earned myself a 30 point lead before my wife pulled the plug on me!!!!!

[wintermute]

Unfortunately, there is a serious bug in this version of the game. I run it on dosbox 0.72, in case that matters. Sometimes out of the blue parts of the profile of one suspect are overwritten with junk data. His function internal ID code is affected by this too and as the ID seemingly has only one digit, there is a good chance that two suspects with identical ID are active and the game carries out orders on the wrong target, the one with the messed up profile. Moreover, if that happens, the suspect management collapses afterwards and deletes all known suspects from the list. BAM. 20th century commercial programming.

Does anyone know if this version of the game is identical with the one at Home of the underdogs and other sites?

[The Fifth Horseman]

Can check, with a little time.