If You're A Hoopy Frood, Where's Your Towel? Let's Play The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

Put your Let's Plays in here.
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If the fish is bouncing off the satchel, perhaps we need to lessen the impact?

> put towel over satchel

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Ah, but we're already using the towel, remember? If we took it away, the fish would slip down the drain.

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Oh right, brain fart.

> tell Ford to stand in front of satchel

E: Idea (if the above fails as it probably will):

> tell Ford to use babel fish dispenser

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Alas, I can tell you that this doesn't work either, as Ford will be soundly asleep until the thing that happens after either we've solved the puzzle or... Something else. I'm kinda itching to say something, but all I will say is always remember your inventory, and always remember anything contextual.

I'm also very amused that something else hasn't happened yet, except on saves discarded. But it will, sooner or later.

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> i

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Righto!

> i(nventory)

You have:

No tea
A thing your aunt gave you which you don't know what it is
An electronic Sub-Etha signalling device
A loose pile of junk mail
A toothbrush
A flat head screwdriver


Oh, we do still have the thing! Figures, it was a fuck to get rid of. Still, I feel perfectly comfortable telling you that it's completely useless in this situation (Although, on looking up what it actually does during the adventure, it's never actually used, but it can do something, interestingly.)

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> drape/put/place/scatter/disperse pile of junk mail over satchel

(still presuming we need to stop the fish from bouncing off)

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Oggy wrote:
Wed Jul 08, 2020 4:05 pm
> drape/put/place/scatter/disperse pile of junk mail over satchel

(still presuming we need to stop the fish from bouncing off)
Right, we have the final step, because yes, putting the junk mail on the satchel is the final step in this puzzle! Although we'll see whether stopping the bouncing was the goal.

> put junk mail on satchel

Okay, the loose pile of junk mail is now sitting on the satchel.

> push dispenser button

A single Babel Fish shoots out of the slot. It sails across the room and hits the dressing gown. The fish slides down the sleeve of the gown and falls to the floor, landing on the towel. A split-second later, a tiny cleaning robot whizzes across the floor, grabs the fish, and continues its breakneck pace toward a tiny robot panel at the base of the wall. The robot plows into the satchel, sending the Babel Fish through the air in a graceful arc surrounded by a cloud of junk mail. Another robot flies in and begins madly collecting the cluttered plume of mail. The Babel Fish continues its flight, landing with a loud "squish" in your ear.

> push dispenser button

Click.


Why did I push that button again, after we solved it? To show you just how close you came to failing. I was, in retrospect, a little bit nice in saying the thing your aunt gave you doesn't work. Because a single mistake in that entire chain of events means you don't get a Babel Fish. Which makes the next puzzle, both in this room and the next, impossible. And this will basically get you killed. We'll show that off later, but for now... Let's Save.

Suffice to say, none of this happens in other media. There is a brief argument with Ford about how icky the fish looks, and how Arthur's not putting it in his ear, there's a Vogon announcement (I'll have to quote that at some point), and, mid announcement (thankfully repeated), Ford sticks the fish in Arthur's ear, and Arthur understands just how useful the Babel Fish is. Also, y'know, a short Guide segment about it that I also need to quote, because it's great.

But we'll save that, and the dead man walking we just avoided, for later! For now, we still have a thing in this room we want to interact with.

Are you sure we're not already in a dead man walking? Now I last played and solved this in the early 90s, but I seem to remember there's something else you need to do before you leave earth (that won't bite you for a long while)? This game doesn't follow 21st centuary IF best practice...

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Oh, it doesn't, and yes, we are, in fact, on the dead man walking you're referring to. But there are other, smaller dead man walking scenarios, such as not getting the Babel Fish, or not having picked up the junk mail (the two are related, but one happens much earlier), or accepting Ford's towel. Many of them are short Dead Man Walking scenarios, but yes, there is one big one.

And we did trigger it through something we missed.

And yes, this most definitely does not follow 21st century IF best practice.

But what a journey it is, through a noted historical artefact of games history :D

I'm amused at this Rube Goldberg machine like solution. But I'm wondering if Arthur could have simply placed his ear against or near the slot where the babel fish shoots out and pressed the dispenser button?

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> talk to Ford about Vogons

JamieTheD wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:29 am
> look at ships

The fleet consists of terrifying numbers of huge, ugly, yellow ships, all scarred with the results of many such past demolition jobs. Chicago's John Hancock tower, knocked about a bit and painted yellow, is what they each look like. That is, knocked about a bit, painted yellow, and flying.

The vast yellow ships thunder across the sky, spreading waves of terror and panic in their wake. The voice of the Vogon Captain slams across the country, insisting that the planning charts and demolition orders have been available at the local planning office in Alpha Centauri for fifty years and it's too late to start making a fuss about it now.

Throughout the noise, Ford is shouting at you. He removes a small black device from his satchel, but accidentally drops it at your feet.
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" is a wonderful turn of phrase, and I'm disappointed it doesn't seem to be in this game.

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Nemryn wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:05 pm
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" is a wonderful turn of phrase, and I'm disappointed it doesn't seem to be in this game.
Well, it's funny you mention that, because although that line was in all incarnations except, as far as I recall, the movie (y'know, the one we don't talk about), this was written by Douglas Adams, and highlights a very interesting facet of his writing. There's a reason the Guide book series feels so strangely inconsistent, and that's because, as the radio series progressed, he was tinkering. As the books progressed, he was tinkering. He was basically rewriting elements of his universe, cross pollinating from media to media, as interesting things happened or ideas occurred. Indeed, some have tried to argue that this was a reason that the movie was... The way it was.

Problem was, he had done no more than sketch out general ideas by the time he died, interesting concepts (apparently the swatting creatures who react to thoughts was an idea of his, but, as we note, it was nothing more than an idea, not yet fit into anything.) And, of course, there is a pattern of "Hollywoodising" things that we've seen enough that we can see patterns, and, wouldn'tcha know it, there's the fingerprints of said phenomenon all over it.

But it, and many other turns of phrase are, alas, not in this game, mainly due to the constraints of the time it was developed, and a need to multiplatform the game for other platforms, some with even worse restrictions than were faced on the ol' IBM PC. Them KBs added up... (We would not see the 386 PCs for another year after the game released.)

I also suspect that "Holy shit, Doug, if we write all that, we'd have to make a scroll function" was a factor... :P

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I have an idea about the larger-scale dead man walking scenario we're currently in, I remembered a particular 'event' in the books over breakfast. Am I right in thinking that it won't hit us until we're on the HoG?

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Oggy wrote:
Fri Jul 10, 2020 1:55 pm
I have an idea about the larger-scale dead man walking scenario we're currently in, I remembered a particular 'event' in the books over breakfast. Am I right in thinking that it won't hit us until we're on the HoG?
Weeeelll... You're technically right, it will happen on the Heart of Gold... But it may not be the thing you're looking for. Now, this isn't going to count in terms of triggering it, because I'm relatively certain a vogon's going to come and grab us soon, but...

> I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle

i don't know the word "seem"

i don't know the word "style"

> Ford, is there any tea on this ship?

Ford is sleeping!

> This must be thursday, I never could get the hang of thursdays

I don't know the word "this"

I don't know the word "ays"

>look

Vogon Hold


This is a squalid room filled with grubby mattresses, unwashed cups, and unidentifiable bits of smelly underwear. A door lies to port, and an airlock lies to starboard. Your gown is hanging from a hook and a towel is draped over a drain in the floor.

There is a satchel here, resting in front of the tiny robot panel.
Ford is in the corner, snoring loudly.
In the corner is a glass case with a switch and a keyboard. The glass case contains:
An atomic vector plotter.

> push switch

A recording plays. "To open the case, type in the first word from the second verse of the Captain's current favourite poem. WARNING: An incorrect input will cause the case to explode."

An announcement is coming over the ship's intercom. "This is the Captain. My instruments show that we've picked up a couple of hitchhikers. I hate freeloaders, and when my guards find you I'll have you thrown into space. On second thought, maybe I'll read you some of my poetry first. Repeating..."


Grrr, so many prompts it doesn't recognise, and it hasn't triggered yet! Well, let's keep trying until either it happens or the guards get here. I've accidentally given away something while doing this anyway, so I might as well forge on (and yes, one of the reasons not solving the Babel Fish puzzle is a dead man walking is this case. Although it might trigger a little earlier... I'll have to check when the time comes to show you.

> so that's it, we're all going to die

I don't know the word "so"

> life, don't talk to me about life

I don't know the word "life"[/b]


Clearly. Anyway, yes, this may also doom us to another death down the line due to sheer random chance, but I'll be savescumming for that, because hopefully the RNG isn't command fixed. We'll see. In the meantime, I think... I think...

> wait

Time passes...

It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For example, at the exact moment you said "I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my life" a freak wormhole opened in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried your words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.

The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time. A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'hurgs, resplendent in his black jeweled battle shorts, gazed levelly at the G'gvunt leader squatting opposite him in a cloud of green, sweet smelling steam. As a million sleek and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, the Vl'hurg challenged his vile enemy to take back what it had said about his mother.

The creature stirred in its sickly broiling vapour, and at that very moment, the words "I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my life" drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries. Eventually the error was detected, but over two hundred and fifty thousand worlds, their people and cultures perished in the holocaust.

You have destroyed most of a small galaxy. Please pick your words with greater care.

An announcement is coming over the ship's intercom. "This is the Captain. My instruments show that we've picked up a couple of hitchhikers. I hate freeloaders, and when my guards find you I'll have you thrown into space. On second thought, maybe I'll read you some of my poetry first. Repeating..."

> save


So yes, Hitchhiker's Guide fans will now hopefully realise just how deep the shit we are inadvertently in for missing one... Tiny... Thing. Well, two, but you never saw the other thing, because you never looked at its container.

I also find it very fitting that "I seem to be having this tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" was the one that triggered it, as it could be any command the parser couldn't understand, from the moment we entered the Vogon ship onward. Some players will deliberately wait until they've done certain scenarios later on, for reasons which may or may not become clear. If they aren't clear, I'll just savescum until we get it.

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I know that infamous poem starts with 'Oh freddled gruntbuggly' but I'm just not going to look it up. I guess we'll all have to endure the captain's recitation. :D

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Nemryn wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:05 pm
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" is a wonderful turn of phrase, and I'm disappointed it doesn't seem to be in this game.
It is, in fact, the line I generally use to explain to Hitchhiker's fans why I love Discworld so much. It's a standout line in Adams' writing, and pretty much just Terry Pratchett's normal narrative style.

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Nidoking wrote:
Mon Jul 13, 2020 11:47 pm
Nemryn wrote:
Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:05 pm
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" is a wonderful turn of phrase, and I'm disappointed it doesn't seem to be in this game.
It is, in fact, the line I generally use to explain to Hitchhiker's fans why I love Discworld so much. It's a standout line in Adams' writing, and pretty much just Terry Pratchett's normal narrative style.
I agree, Pratchett took it all much further, and that's before considering how prolific a writer he was.

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> listen to poem ?

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Quackles wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 8:14 am
> listen to poem ?
I'm not quite sure it'll be that easy. If we're even loosely going along with the story, we'll have to stick around for the Vogons to pick us up. And no one ought to be surprised if poetry-appreciation-chairs make an appearance.

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