AHAHAHA!!! What a bug!
Thatâs very interesting, I wonder what the code for room items and inventory items was on scumm at the time
The old article mentioned above also explains why there isnât much to do with Meathook, beside the parrot scene:
Before you can recruit one character named Meathook, he demands that you prove your bravery. You had to accomplish three things. But it slowed down the flow of the game too much, so we cut out two of them. For our story, one was enough.
2 Likes
I donât know but itâs fairly clear whatâs happening within the code for that bug to exist. They programmed the game so that when the player uses the magnetic compass on the key, the key sprite disappears from the room and a key item gets added into the playerâs inventory, but they didnât consider that the player may try using the magnetic compass on the key within their inventory. When the player does so, the gameâs code is treating that action as though the player is using the magnetic compass on the key within the room, so a duplicate key is added to the playerâs inventory.
So the code would be something along the lines of âITEM COMPASS use on ITEM KEY = ADD ITEM KEY to INVENTORYâ, which is code that would work for both the key in LeChuckâs cabin and the key within the playerâs inventory.
While Iâm just guessing that Guybrush the kid lived in XIX century, Iâm quite sure Guybrush the pirate lived straddling XVII and XVIII century, since it is certain that he died in 1710.
If youâre not certain of this fact, it means YOU ARE A PIRATE, if you know what I mean wink-wink-nudge-nudge
Yeah, but what I meant is that Iâm quite sure the TWP and Delores engine treated inventory items and room items as separate entities, so that wouldnât happen.
Probably this distinction wasnât there in scumm and there was a name overlap that made it happen
A sanity check for maximum number of an item could have solved it. For grog mugs and bananas it had to be larger than 1. 
I was waiting for somebody to get what I was meaning⌠but maybe you are all pirates.
This is what I meant
2 Likes
I did get it but I pretended not to.
Thatâs the oldest excuse in the book.
But that is a tragedy!
I demand to know what the puzzles were.
There is only one kind of items in SCUMM. Every item originates from a certain room, and the itemâs state tell, whether itâs present in that room or not. An inventory item is basically a pointer to a roomâs item. Any interaction with an item executes the same script, whether it is in a room or in an inventory. That is the reason, you get the same âlook atâ comment before and after you pick up an item for the vast majority of them. Something rarely observed in non SCUMM games.
In this particular key cloning situation, the original scripts only checked if Guybrush is in the room where the key originally hangs, hence the bug only worked in LeChuckâs room and nowhere else. Now it also checks, if the key is already in the inventory.
A similar blooper as the ghost key cloning can be observed in Monkey 2 on Dinky Island. You can fill the glass with water from the ocean without picking it up first. Also there, the script was just not checking, whether the glass is already in Guybrushâs inventory, but the other way around. While the compass/key assumed the key not to be in the inventory, the glass assumes to be in the inventory.
In the Ultimate Talkie Edition, he automatically picks up the glass when trying this, just like you automatically pick up the front door key in Maniac Mansion when trying to use it while it still sits on the ground.
6 Likes
You didnât! You even missed two rooms thenâŚ
By the way: it looks like Herman Toothrot in the cell 
Or we didnât have time to read it yet 
Didnât he die 15 years later on Barbados, by the way?
Thanks, thatâs very interesting.
It has some upsides - the fact that an object in the room and in the inventory is the same makes sense on a semantic point of view, and you spare some code for pickable objects, but ultimately I see more downsides.
Because nobody has brought it up yet, I want to praise the Ultimate Talkieâs removal of the porthole defoggers bug. In all official versions, Stan will make you pay for the porthole defoggers whether you have them or not.
So for us official version players, the best deal we can get is either: (1) 5000 pieces of eight with all the extras, or (2) 3000 pieces of eight with porthole defoggers and one other extra of your choice (I pick the elevator made of burgundy wine cask wood).
Talkie version users can bargain him down to âTWO THOUSAND LOUSY PIECES OF EIGHTâ which amazingly has Stanâs recorded voice in the special edition despite being impossible to attain!
5 Likes
Presumably I simply thought it to be exactly what heâd do and not a bug.
Mhhm. I simply thought the solution was taking out all the extras and bargaining a while starting from the bottom. so you only need a few seconds to make him accept 5000 which is exactly the amopunt of your credit. It is so perfect it seemed to me made on purpose and I didnât bother to look for cheaper results.
/EDIT
now that you mention it⌠I remember he said something like the velour sail covers would have prevented a mutiny. So, when the crew mutinied just after sailing away, I had the confirmation you HAD to reject any extra, since itâs part of a joke and needed for the plot. But now, Iâm wondering what would happen if I succeed in keeping that particular piece of junk
4 Likes
Pretty sure, all of this junk is false advertisement. If you have a mutiny anyway, you may try to get a refund at Stanâs. Good luck at that. 
2 Likes
I assume that, by now, the code of MI1 has been extensively read and studied by fans and developers.
For those who did it: does it contain many leftovers from puzzles that didnât make the cut? Was their disabled code still there?
I have already read the article written by the Video Game History Foundation, but I wondered if there is even more to discover.
Another thing that surprises me is that, back then, disk space was a precious resource and I donât understand how it is possible that the code contains even unused images.
Most of the time, cut content were commented out in the source code. There are some oversights or bugs, though, which led to unused content. At Smirkâs, the dummies are actual objects with name and hotspot, despite you never get a chance to click on them.
The storekeeper and the Fettucini Brothers each have one line not played due to a bug, which is fixed in the Ultimate Talkie.
Some more was found in Monkey 2. When talking the antique dealer into buying the spit plaque the dialog script checks for another option, but it can not be triggered, since Guybrush doesnât have the question for that. Also Captain Dread has a couple of lines (all voiced) prevented due to script bugs, which are all fixed in the Ultimate Talkie beta.
And there is the raft room. It has several unused scripts, which can not be used due to cut content. That is the room briefly seen before Guybrush lands on Dinky Island, but there is no raft in it, just Ocean.
Oversights, I guess. Like the candle animation phases at Stanâs kiosk. I wrote a script to make them animate like the graphics were obviously supposed to.
And too bad, no one told them floppy disks actually could handle more sectors than the DOS format command used. All you needed was a third party formatter. DD cold fit 10 instead of 9 sectors, 3,5" HD cold fit 21 instead of 18 sectors, and 5,25" HD could fit 18 instead of 15 sectors per track. The latter cold conveniently be used to copy standard 1.44 MB floppies to 5,25 HD floppy disks.
8 Likes