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May 17, 2008

Professor McLogic Saves the Day ================================================== Project home page: http://www.rpgmaker.net/games/456/

by Gibmaker http://sqentropy.dyndns.org/~sej ejh2o@yahoo.com

CONTENTS==========

Credits [01]What is this game?? [02]Installation [03]Controls [04]Gameplay [05]Known bugs [06]

Notes on the Puzzles [07]

- General Hints [08] - Gunhold City [09] - Mercy Ravine [10] - School of Philosophy [11] - Moon Unit Zappa [12] - Overwatch Hotel [13] - Palace of Steam [14] - Twilight Country [15] - Moooonside! [16] - LAN Party [17] - Windwhip Peak [18]

CREDITS [01]==============

This game was made in RPG Maker 2003.

Selected media credits:

Sprites: Car sprites - by Night-System Heavy Metal Band sprites - by AsakuraHao2004, from http://charas-project.net Professor sprites - by Gibmaker

Music: nineroad.mid - by Ellesworth Hall OddThm.mid - by CBlockDis physics.mid - by Gibmaker Downtown.mid - by Igor Khoroshev Texture.mid - by Igor Khoroshev

Beta testing: ChaoSeven Draakje

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NoblemanNick Nocturna

WHAT IS THIS GAME?? [02]==========================

In PROFESSOR MCLOGIC SAVES THE DAY you play as a world-renouned logic professor. You will travel to many different corners of the world and converse with the inhabitants; but beware, for it's up to you to use your logic skills and determine who speaks the truth and who doesn't!

The logic puzzles in this game are not pre-fabricated but are generated on the spot by an ULTRA-SOPHISTICATED PUZZLE GENERATING ENGINE, programmed by myself, sothe possible situations are almost endless. There are 10 different scenarios, each with its own set of weird rules; and the weirder, the better! Only the finest and most logical minds can hope to make sense of it all!

I apologise in advance for the number of times the word "scenario" appears in this readme. It's a pretty annoying word.

INSTALLATION [03]===================

1) Unload the .rar file to a folder of your choice. (I don't like the Install programs that the editor creates so I've just rarred the whole thing in working order.) Be sure to preserve the file structure of the sub-folders!

2) Run RPG_RT.exe to play. You don't need to have the editor installed.

3) Give me $1,000.

CONTROLS [04]===============

Arrow keys - Move F4 - Toggle window/fullscreen Space / Enter - Talk/Select F12 - Quit to menu at any time Esc / Z - Cancel/Open Menu

GAMEPLAY [05]===============

* STARTING A NEW GAME

When starting a new game, you will first be prompted to choose a face graphic fo

r yourself from 4 veryerudite figures.

The game then asks if you would like to view the "game info". This is simply the credits and generalinformation about the game.

Then you will be taken to the Scenario Menu.

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* SCENARIO MENU

Initially, only the first three scenarios will be available. More advanced scenarios are unlockedafter you complete several of the simpler ones.

Choosing a scenario will give you the following options:

View Info - Read the story and the rules for the current game. - If you've all ready completed the game, your best time for the game is also displayed. - This info can be reviewed from the in-game menu.

Play this Scenario - Play the scenario for realsies. To complete it, you must solve 10 puzzles in one session: - 3 puzzles with 2 characters - 4 puzzles with 3 characters - 3 puzzles with 4 characters - There's no time limit, but you will be timed and arecord is kept of your best time for each game. - There's also no penalty for getting a puzzle wrong;

you can simply keep trying until you solve enough of them. - The timer can be paused by opening the in-game menu.

Practise this Scenario - Another way of playing the scenario, with the following differences: - You can use the exit object to receive hints. - After inputting your solution, you are given an option to review the puzzle after seeing the correct answer. (Thisis not available in regular play.)

- Your play will not be timed, and you will not "complete" the game no matter how many puzzles you solve.

Pressing ESC or Z in the scenario menu quits the game.

* IN-GAME

Once you begin a game, there will be a delay while the program generates a puzzle. (The screenwill say "please wait ...".) This may take several seconds.

Then, you will find your professor in an environment with the following features:

- Characters. Your task in every puzzle is to determine some quality of each character as described in the rules. Speaking to a character will first display that character's statements, then give you the option of guessing at the character's class. You can have them repeat their statements

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as much as you like; you can also change your mind about their class as muchas you like before confirming your answer at the exit point.

- Exit object. An element on the map that you use to signal that you are finished solving the puzzle. The form of the exit object reflects the scenario's back story and is different in each one; it is given to you in the scenario info. Once you use the exit object you will be informed whether your solution is correct, and then transported to a new puzzle.

- Global variable Some games use a global variable; in these games there will be an extra object on the map that you interact with to input your guess about the global variable.

Pressing ESC or Z will open the in-game menu.

* IN-GAME MENU

If you're playing a timed game, opening the menu will pause the timer.

Review Scenario - Display the story and rules for the scenario. Game Info - Display the general game info and credits End Game - Quit the game and return to the scenario manu.

* FINISHING A SCENARIO

After solving 10 puzzles in a game, the game is "complete".

The epilogue to the scenario story is displayed, as well as the time it took youto finish.

You will then be prompted to save your game.

When returning to the scenario menu, there may be new scenarios available. If you just finishedall 10 scenarios, you will be taken to the ENDING MOVIE, where your total time for all thescenarios is given, and you get to watch your professor bust a move with littleblue monsters.

If your total time is under 180 MINUTES, you will get to see the SPECIAL ending. Yes, it's special all right.

KNOWN BUGS [06]=================

* DISCLAIMER ABOUT GAME DESIGN: One challenge in this the game which is unfair(and which amounts to a limitation in the RPG Maker engine) is that all the characters' statements are not presented at once in a simple list, which is the mosthandy way to solve logic puzzles. Since this is an RPG Maker game, you have todash around a map and speak to each character individually, try to remember what he or she says, and then mentally associate the character graphic with the character's name, which is a lot of extra and unnecessary mental work in a game abo

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ut logic. You might wish to write down all the statements, but that is incredibly tedious and as the game designer I can't expect anyone to do it.

* The timer display may appear erratic, since RPG Maker 2003 doesn't support a timer that counts upwards. Most notable is the fact that the timer will freeze when you talk to characters, since it's being updated by a parallel process. Beassured that the game is keeping time accurately, it's just the display that's buggy.

NOTES ON THE PUZZLES [07]===========================(read this if you need help)

To understand how to solve these logic puzzles, you might find it helpful to understand how the program creates them.

If you've mucked with the game in the RPGMaker editor, you've probably noticed that the first 1024 switches are "reserved" for puzzle generation. When creatinga puzzle, each of these switches represents one possible combination of character classes. For example, in the School of Philosophy scenario, with only two characters, the possibilities are:

1: Master, Master

2: Master, Student 3: Student, Master 4: Student, Student

The possibilities can also be represented like this:

Character A: Master Student

Character B: Master 1 3 Student 2 4

As you can see, this particular puzzle has only 4 possible combinations and would only use 4 switches, but puzzles with more characters and more classes for eac

h character would use many more. (Although 1024 switches were set aside, the most that are ever used are 256.)

Initially, all the switches are ON.

The program randomly chooses a statement for one of the characters. Then, basedon the rules of the scenario, a number of possibilities are rendered implausable, and the switches for those possibilities are turned OFF. For example:

Character A: "If I am a student, Character B is a master."

A: Master Student

B: Master 1 3 Student 2 X

Notice that possibility 4 (where both characters are students) has been eliminated, because it would be implausable for Character A to make the statement aboveif both characters were students.

(In this example only one possibility was eliminated, but it's typical for statements to eliminate up to half of the remaining possibilities.)

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---------------It's important to understand what "implausability" means in the context of thisprogram. It doesn't mean that a statement is false, since, of course, many of the puzzles in this game are full of false statements. It means that, for a particular combination of character classes, the character would be breaking the rules of the scenario to make that statement.

In fact, the notion of plausibility isn't applied to STATEMENTS, but particularcombinations of character classes. A combination of classes where the statementis true is just as plausable as a combination of classes that renders it false,as long the rules of the scenario are not broken.

For example, a situation that forces a character who, according to the rules, should only speak truthfully (i.e. Faeries in the Gunhold City scenario) to make afalse statement would be implausable. Similarly, if a character who cannot speak truthfully (i.e. Vampires) is forced to make a true statement, that situationis also implausable.---------------

The program chooses another statement:

Character A: "If I am a student, Character B is a master." Character B: "If Character A and I are the same rank, I am a student."

A: Master Student

B: Master X 3 Student 2 X

Possibility 1 has been eliminated, since Character B would be breaking the rulesin making this statement if both characters were masters.

Finally:

Character A: "If I am a student, Character B is a master." "If Character B and I differ in rank, I am a student." Character B: "If Character A and I are the same rank, I am a student."

A: Master Student

B: Master X 3 Student X X

Character A has been given a second statement, which eliminates possibility 2.The program detects that only one possibility remains, and the puzzle is complete. The remaining possibility (Character A is a student and Character B is a master) is the solution to the puzzle.

(You might find it interesting to note that the program does not start by assigning a solution and then creating statements to lead to that solution; statements

are chosen randomly, and the solution results from whatever possibility is leftover at the end.)

There are two "checks" in place during puzzle generation:

1) If a statement is redundant (ie, it eliminates no possibilities that have not all ready been eliminated) then the program discards it and chooses another statement.

2) If a statement eliminates ALL remaining possibilities, rendering a puzzle un

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solvable, the entire puzzle is discarded and the program starts over. This canhappen HUNDREDS of times before a solvable puzzle is found, which is why there'ssometimes a long delay during puzzle generation. (Obviously, in a more powerful programming environment the program would be able to "undo" statements and find a solvable puzzle more efficiently.)

Essentially, you as the player will go through the same process when solving thepuzzles, albeit in a more organic way. When you first start a puzzle, any combination of character classes is possible; as you work through the statements andeliminate possibilities you will eventually pare down the possibilities to onesolution, just like the puzzle generator does.

----------------------NOTE on the order of the scenarios in the program: It's implied that later scenarios are harder than earlier ones by the fact that the earlier scenarios have to be completed first to "unlock" them. The order of the scenarios represents how difficult I THOUGHT they would be, not how difficult they actually turned outto be. (The second last scenario, for example, is ridiculously simple.)

To bypass having to solve all the scenarios in order, use the following trick:Start a new game, and as soon as the character selection screen appears, press RIGHT four times, then LEFT five times. A new character will become available, and if you choose him all the scenarios will be unlocked from the start.

And yes, this trick is buried here in the program notes to reward people who take the time to read it. :)----------------------

GENERAL HINTS [08]====================

Logic puzzles can be daunting at a glance; finding a place to start is usually harder than finishing.

- Every puzzle has ONLY ONE solution. If you discover one solution that works,you don't have to waste time verifying that it is the ONLY solution, since it is

.

- Most puzzles are too complicated to solve at a glance. The key is to make a guess about one character's behaviour and carefully work out what the consequences of that guess are; if it turns out to be inadmissable, revise your guess. When practising, you can use the exit object to reveal the class of one or more characters as a starting point.

- Characters speaking about themselves are good starting points, since there arefewer variables to complicate the way the statement must be interpreted.

- Begin by assuming that every character speaks in the simplest way possible; ie, they are all of a truth-telling class. Work through the consequences of their

statements until you find an inconsistency.

- None of the characters' statements can be taken at face value because you haveto suspect them of being untrue. However, some statements (mostly statements about a character's self) imply a logical consequence that is just as intuitive at the content of the statement itself. (I call these "shortcuts"; a list of shortcuts is included for the scenarios that have them.)

The following are hints for each scenario; a familiarity with the basic rules of

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the scenario, as outlined in-game, is assumed.

GUNHOLD CITY [09]===================

If you like doing things in order, this will be the first scenario you play, soit makes a good introduction to general principles of this game.

Assume that the very first character you talk to is a Faerie, and take all his or her statements as truth until proven otherwise. It's more intuitive to beginthis way and you are less likely to make a mistake.

Some general principles of logic can help you to close in on characters' identities quickly. For example, a character saying "I am a vampire," is like the classic logical conundrum of saying "I always lie." In Gunhold City, however, there's a simple solution: the character is Mortal. Only Mortals are capable of saying, "I am a Vampire," so whenever you encounter this statement, you automatically know the character's true identity. (This is one of the "shortcuts" for thisscenario.)

Furthermore, you know that the Mortal's statement of "I am a vampire" is false,so his or her adjacent statements will contain true information.

FYI, the program actually identifies FOUR different classes in this scenario, since Mortals whose first statements are true are seen as distinct from Mortals whose first statements are false. The player does not need to make this distinction when solving the puzzle.

Shortcuts:"I am a vampire." ==> The character is Mortal."I am not a faerie." ==> The character is Mortal.

MERCY RAVINE [10]===================

Each animal has two qualities (male/female, clean/rabid) that combine to createfour distinct classes. For each state of either quality (male, female, clean, rabid) there is both a truth-telling version and a lie-telling version, corresponding to one of the other states. For example, a FEMALE can either lie or tell the truth, depending on whether she is clean or rabid. A CLEAN animal can also either lie or tell the truth, depending on whether it is male or female. Thus, if you know one quality of the animal and you determine the veracity of its statements, you can use that information to determine the other quality.

As usual, begin by assuming that each animal is a clean male (who tells the truth), and also use the shortcuts below.

Yes, I'm aware that "gender" is the wrong word to use in the write-up for this s

cenario. "Gender" refers to social constructions and corresponds to the qualities of "masculine" and "feminine." "Sex" is the proper term, referring to biology and corresponding to the qualities "male" and "female". But I wasn't about tohave a puzzle about animals where the word "sex" appears on screen a hundred times. Refer to scenario #7.

Shortcuts:"I am male." ==> The character is clean."I am female." ==> The character is rabid."I am clean." ==> The character is male.

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"I am rabid." ==> The character is female.

SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY [11]===========================

This can be quite possibly the easiest scenario in the world, since every statement is true. This is the only scenario where statements aren't interpreted differently based on who says them; you don't have to worry about mentally invertingtheir meaning.

If the conditions of the "if" clause are met, then the content of the "then" clause MUST be true. A possible stumbling block is that if the "if" clause is NOTtrue, the "then" clause is meaningless; it can be true or false. However, the ONLY way a "then" clause can be false is for the "if" clause to also be false. Ifyou think that a particular "then" clause MUST be false, make sure the conditions of the "if" clause are NOT met. (This is called the "contrapositive" of a statement.)

It's not so important to understand what the "converse" of a statement is for this scenario, but it is NOT the same thing as the contrapositive. The contrapositive of a statement is logically equivalent to the statement; the converse is not.

Statement: If A, then B.Converse: If B, then A.Contrapositive: If NOT B, then NOT A. (equivalent to statement)

A simple way to deal with this complication is to simply skip any statements with an "if" clause that you know to be untrue.

There are no shortcuts for this scenario, since no statement is significantly more intuitive than any other. However, every statement eliminates ONE of the four possible combinations of classes between the speaker and the subject of his statements. (Master-Master, Master-Student, Student-Master, Student-Student)

MOON UNIT ZAPPA [12]======================

This is the first of two scenarios that use a global variable (whether the localfield is positive or negative). The global variable is like an extra characterin the puzzle who makes no statements.

Like in every scenario with self-statements, it's easiest to start solving witha character that makes statements about itself. Characters will sometimes makea statement about the global variable (the magnetic field). These count as self-statements; see the shortcuts below. You'll notice that you can basically swapout the charge of the field and the charge of the speaker's self to come up with a reliable conclusion. The shortcuts for this scenario are so mind-bogglingly

helpful that it's almost unnecessary to give any other advice.

If you know whether a robot is lying or telling the truth, but you don't know its charge yet or the charge of the magnetic field, be sure to resolve one as soonas possible, because it will point you to the other.

Shortcuts:"I am positive." ==> "The field in this area is positive.""I am negative." ==> "The field in this area is negative.

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""The field in this area is positive." ==> "I am positive.""The field in this area is negative." ==> "I am negative."

"X is charged the same as the field." ==> "X is charged the same as me.""X is charged opposite to the field." ==> "X is charged opposite to me.""X is charged the same as me." ==> "X is charged the same as the field.""X is charged opposite to me." ==> "X is charged opposite to the field."

OVERWATCH HOTEL [13]======================

The basic premise of this scenario is a slight modification of the Mercy Ravinescenario: two qualities (honest/corrupt, liberal/conservative) combine to createfour possible classes for each character (honest liberal, corrupt liberal, honest conservative, corrupt conservative). Unlike in Mercy Ravine, only one of these qualities (honest/corrupt) determines whether a character speaks truthfully,and things are shaken up a bit by the fact that the characters will only directly refer to the liberal/conservative quality.

The real monkey wrench in this scenario, though, is a new kind of statement: "I

f asked, X would say ..." These statements are challenging because you must juggle a lot of information in your head at once. X might or might not say the words being put in his mouth, based on the veracity of the words AND the honesty ofX. Then, you have to evaluate the veracity of the attribution of these words against the honesty of the speaker himself. These statements should not be addressed until you have at least a little bit of certain information about the speaker or character X.

Of course, these statements come up as randomly as any other, and if you just can't stand them, one way to cheat is to keep blazing through puzzles until you find one without any of these statements.

If you are faced with an "X would say ..." statement, check to see if X actually

DOES make that exact statement (or its opposite) and if so you'll know at oncewhether the speaker is honest or corrupt.

There are no shortcuts for this scenario, but it is a bit liberating to know that any particular character can lie or tell the truth independently of his political party. If any character's statements don't shape up, you can try dismissingthat character as a liar.

PALACE OF STEAM [14]======================

If you haven't figured it out, this puzzle uses a rock-paper-scissors analogy.

Speakers will lie about other characters who correspond to the element that thespeaker's own element would defeat in a rock-paper-scissors game.

If a character says "X is a rock cutter," the speaker himself cannot be a papermiller, since it's impossible for a paper miller to make this statement. (If Xreally IS a rock cutter, a paper miller would lie and say he's something else.)Similarly, a rock cutter cannot identify a scissors grinder, and a scissors grinder cannot indentify a paper miller.

The implications of changing one of your guesses can have a domino effect in ter

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ms of forcing you to revise your guesses about other characters. Be sure to check all the characters carefully after a change.

Shortcuts:"X would always lie about me." ==> "X is not in the same guild as me.""X would never lie about me." ==> "X is in the same guild as me.""X is not in my guild." ==> "X is in the guild that lies about me."

TWILIGHT COUNTRY [15]=======================

This is possibly the most unusual scenario in the game. Every character alwaysspouts at least three or four statements, so it seems as though you're being bombarded with information. In fact, typically, you can completely ignore all thecharacters except for one, who gives you the entire solution. The trick is to figure out which one it is.

When the program is determining the plausibility of statements (see the generalprogram notes above for a description of "plausibility" in this game) charactersin the NEW or FULL phases are permitted to make any statement at all. It's entirely up to chance whether any of these statements wind up being true or false;thus they are useless for solving the puzzle.

The only restriction enforced is that AT LEAST ONE character must be in the CRESCENT or GIBBOUS phase, and thus his statements are constrained by truthfulness.I didn't specify that ONLY one character be truthful in each puzzle, although most of the time that winds up being the case.

Usually, an unreliable character will betray himself by making a number of statements that contradict each other, either directly or by implication. Most unreliable characters can thus be pegged the first time you talk to them, but assumethat they are in a reliable phase until you make this connection. (Be sure to understand the "timeline" in the scenario info. The "first quarter" is not a character class, but it represents the midpoint of the timeline.) You will probably be left with only one character who speaks the truth, and you can work out from his statements which of the two unreliable phases each of the others is in.

A HINT: Since the one character who speaks truthfully has to address ALL of theothers, if any character does not have a statement about EVERY other character,he is probably unreliable.

MOOOONSIDE! [16]==================

The biggest challenge in this scenario is that each statement refers to anotherstatement, instead of a character, and by this point in the game you're probablyused to thinking in terms of character classes. Also, the veractiy of any statement can't be verified until you consider the statement it refers to, which its

elf can't be verified until you consider the statement IT refers to, and so on,until you wind up with enormous chains of implication between every character inthe puzzle.

To approach this puzzle you should think of each statement as a unique object that can be either true or false. Once you have determined the veracity of several statements, the pattern in their veractiy will suggest one of the three classes for the character. (Faeries, Vampires, Mortals) Of course, the game doesn'tprovide a way to track this information since, as usual, the only thing you caninput is a class for each character, so you may wish to bust out paper for this

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one.

As in Gunhold City, the game does not require you to distinguish between true-false Mortals and false-true Mortals in your solution, but in this scenario you will find it crucial to keep track of that information, since other characters will refer to specific statements of your Mortals, and it's frustrating to have forgotten which of them are true and which aren't.

Shortcuts:"My next/previous statement is false." ==> The speaker is Mortal."My next/previous statement is true." ==> The speaker is not Mortal."Statement X is as true as this one." ==> Statement X is true."Statement X differs from this one in truthfulness." ==> Statement X is false.

LAN Party [17]================

This scenario gets a giant disclaimer, as it's not nearly challenging enough tobe the second-last in the game.

Originally, I intended to use Starcraft as the video game in story (rather thanWorld of Warcraft), resulting in THREE factions (Terrans, Zerg, Protoss) which w

ould possibly have caused this scenario to live up to its position as second-hardest. But then, the number of possible character-class combinations for a 4-character puzzle would have been 648. (No other scenario goes above 256.) Why isthis a problem? Well, if you've been poking around in the code for this game you've probably seen the Common Events "Count Array" and "Seek Remaining Switch".That's the problem.

Of course, I would certainly have thanked myself later for making the effort tojust go through the tedium of implementing 648 switches into those events. I didn't. So: two factions it is.

This scenario is basically Moon Unit Zappa again, with the added complication that there are now 4 global states instead of 2. (The honesty of the two factions

' statements can be truth-truth, truth-lies, lies-truth, or lies-lies.) Begin by assuming that everybody tells the truth and work from there, and remember thatcharacters' statements about the factions in general, like in Moon Unit Zappa,count as self-statements.

Characters in this scenario also make statements like, "X and I are both membersof ..." Remember that the statement is false if either one or both of the characters is not in the specified faction.

There is one noteworthy thing about this scenario, which is how efficiently thestatements seem to cut through all the different variables. This is the only scenario in which I've encountered a puzzle with less statements than characters,resulting in one character saying nothing at all:

Character A: "C and I are both members of the Horde." Character B: "D and I are both members of the Alliance." Character C: "The Alliance lies." Character D: ...

Yes, from those three statements it's possible to determine the faction of all four characters, as well as whether each faction lies. FASCINATING.

Shortcuts:

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"The Alliance lies." ==> The speaker is in the Horde, and the two factions differ in truthfulness."The Horde lies." ==> The speaker is in the Alliance, and the two factions differ in truthfulness.

Windwhip Peak [18]====================

This scenario occupies the #10 position because of the ordeal of wrapping one'smind around around the whole statement-converse thing. Also, none of the statements are particularly intuitive, and you'll notice there are no shortcuts for this scenario. Nevertheless, it's one of the more straightforward scenarios in the game, because (as in School of Philosophy) there are no outright liars. The challenge is more in deciphering each individual statement than in putting them all together.

This scenario requires you to dig up all that stuff about statements and converses. Here it is again:

Statement: If A, then B.Converse: If B, then A.

When a dragon is LIGHT, consider the implications of the literal statement, and

ignore the converse. When a dragon is DARK, you consider the Converse and ignore the statement. For UBIQUITOUS dragons, both the statement AND the converse must be considered.

In a way, Ubiquitous dragons are the easiest to work with: either both the 'if'and 'then' clauses are true or both are false. You might start this puzzle by assuming a dragon is Ubiquitous; or you can assume it is Light, if you find thateasier.

Dark dragons are definitely the hardest to work with, because you have to carefully convert the meaning of the statement, but here's one time-saving trick: skipany statements with a "then" clause that you know to be untrue, i.e. "... thenI am not a Dark dragon." This is just like the way you would skip a Light drago

n's statement if it had an "if" clause that was untrue, i.e. "If I am not a Light dragon ..."

PS. In a scenario where you have to consider the converse meanings of statements, it was perhaps unfair to phrase statements like, "If X is light, so am I." "So am I" means in this case "I am light."

--------------------------END OF THE README.NOW PLAY THE GAME.--------------------------