Forums > Game Forums > Pajama Sam 2: Thunder and Lightning aren't so Frightening > The same version every time I play
Nowhere Girl (8680) on 7/3/2013 7:47 PM · Permalink · Report
As probably everyone who has played Humongous Entertainment adventure games knows, the gameplay is slightly different every time. However, on my computer it's not the case with this game - every time I play all the pieces are in the same places, with the same puzzles to solve in order to get them. I got all those games from the website where SCUMM games are available for download, Emuparadise. What can be wrong and what can I do to "unlock game variation"? Again - it works with all other HE adventure games I have (I don't have all of them because there are some I just found boring, but I have quite a few Putt Putt & Freddi Fish games), but doesn't work in case of this one.
Daniel Saner (3503) on 7/6/2013 2:16 AM · Permalink · Report
It might have something to do with CPU speed. I've experienced something similar in another game, where several game targets should have been distributed randomly among all possible positions on the map for every round. But on a sufficiently fast system, all the targets will always end up on just one of the positions. I suspect the programmers based this on some time-dependent value, but whatever they do to wait for a new number doesn't take long enough on modern CPUs, so they grab the same one again and again.
You could try running some benchmark that occupies your CPU while starting a new game, and see whether you get a different variation. Maybe even decrease the thread priority of the game in task manager.
Nowhere Girl (8680) on 7/26/2013 5:11 PM · Permalink · Report
How should I do it? Maybe a specific program for temporarily slowing down the system will work? (I'd need it anyway for example for a few browser games which were OK on my old computer and have become unplayable on a faster one.) However, I worry how it will affect my computer... laptops tend to overheat and my computer really overheats relatively quickly (though it's usually not the case with ordinary old games in DOSBox or Scumm VM - however, you can take a look at the browser-based puzzle game "Jungle Magic" - the computer shuts itself down if I try to play more than 2-3 levels in a row), so it may be hard to do in practice...
Daniel Saner (3503) on 7/27/2013 1:20 PM · Permalink · Report
That's right, these slowdown tools work by using up CPU capacity, so it would definitely add to any overheating problems you might have. If slowing down the CPU actually works to fix the issue, however, it's possible that you only need to slow it down at the beginning of a new game. Maybe all the variables are determined at the start.
Slowdown tools were a dime a dozen in the DOS days, but not so much anymore, and most of them have never been updated for multi-core (i.e. if you have a quad-core, they will just load 1 of the CPUs, and the programs you want to slow down will still run at full speed on the other 3). The only one I know that works for multi-core processors is CPUKiller. In the free trial, you have to restart the tool after 20 minutes of use.
Are you playing the game using the original executable or on ScummVM? In the latter case it could also just be a bug in the ScummVM interpreter, which reimplements the original engines.
Nowhere Girl (8680) on 7/31/2013 7:26 PM · Permalink · Report
It's the Scumm VM version, without normal executable files.
Daniel Saner (3503) on 8/1/2013 1:44 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Then the problem would be due to the ScummVM interpreter, and slowdown is not likely to have any effect.
I did a quick search on the ScummVM forums and found this, which might explain what you're seeing. It seems that for some Humongous games, it is always the same variation until you complete the game, and only then a new variation is randomly chosen.