Un^t Sta&us: B@$ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxM39_I*~ Re-try: BAk M3_eIN~ Re-try: BAp MAxHIN~ Re-try: BAD MACHINE Re-try: BAD MACHINE WALKTHROUGH Bad Machine is a fascinating and complicated text adventure, with all sorts of different robots going every which way. Unfortunately, it can be very hard to figure out what you're supposed to do, and the walkthrough that comes with the game only shows a fraction of the game's content. This walkthrough demonstrates how to reach all three "major endings" - the ones that require solving some sort of puzzle to reach. (Getting yourself repaired is technically an ending, but you don't need my help for that!) This walkthrough is in "hint-through" format - before giving the exact solution, I'll give you the clues that point you to the solution and explain how the machines work. This game has many puzzles that rely on timing or waiting for things to happen, so you'll need to work out the exact commands depending on where the machines are when you arrive. Basic tips: - Type "help" at the start and look at the list of special commands. You'll need some of those just to survive the start. - Write down the list of "transmit" commands, as you'll need to use them often. - If you see anything machine-related, such as the name of a machine or a part number, use "index" to learn more about it. - If a machine is busy doing something, watch it and learn its routine. Most puzzles in the game revolve around learning a robot's routine to avoid it or manipulate it. - It's very easy to die or get softlocked in this game without warning. Save early, save often, don't overwrite saves. Survival: - At the start, you can't even move around properly. Moving towards an exit will send you somewhere else, or crash you into a wall. - Notice the "Displace" error message the first time you try moving. - Clearly, your system is a bit broken. Maybe try the "system" command? - Your compass is broken. Type "system compass_disp 0" to reset your compass to normal. - The next immediate threat is the Salvagers. If you stand near them, they'll remove your legs and turn you into scrap. - Also, if they see you in the south side of the reclamation area, they'll alert the Drones. Drones will take you away to be Fixed, which is bad. - Don't hang around the reclamation area at the start of the game. Just fix your compass and move north. - You'll pass a Salvager who's disassembling a Climber-class robot. You can watch it for a few turns, but leave before it moves on to you. - One more important thing you need to do in the System menu: "system aware_level high." This allows you to see system messages from the other robots, which is very useful. Area 17: - There's not too much going on here. The Workers take materials, turn them into Product, and put them in cases. They aren't important, although you can have fun messing with their routine. - Stay away from the drones, they'll take you off to be fixed. - Do not break the Product - that makes you a *Very* Bad Machine. (It's not immediately fatal, but prevents you from getting Ending 3). - As you first explore the area, you'll get low power warnings. You need an Energizer. - Energizers come by fairly often - they come out of the northeast area of the factory and then wander around, asking all the machines they meet if they need a recharge. Just wait until you see one, and move to where it is. - "Transmit feed to energizer" or "transmit 011 to energizer" when you're in the same location to ask for a recharge. - Keep asking it for a recharge until you're fully charged, and the energizer will keel over when it runs out of power. - If your awareness is on High, you'll see an additional message as the energizer dies. Copy-paste that somewhere for later - it has an important clue. - There's another useful thing you can do with the dead energizer. - Use Index to find out what parts an energizer has. Then use index to look up what the parts can do. - The legs don't have any use, but the head has "low-light vision." That sounds useful. - Detach the energizer head, detach your head, attach the energizer head to yourself. Save your game here - this is a good starting point for all the endings. To get to ending 1 and 3, you also have to know how to sneak past the drones guarding the factory: Sneaking past drones: - Look up drones in the index. It mentions a security flaw in their head part (662). - Look up 662 in the index. It apparently has trouble seeing objects with a temperature less than 20. - "system temperature" controls your temperature. Don't go too high or too low, or you'll freeze or cook yourself. You want to be just below 20 degrees. - Use "system temperature 19" to cool yourself down, walk past the drone, then use "system temperature 40" to return to normal before you freeze. - If you do this trick 3 times, you'll die - your system gets a little bit frozen each time. If you use "system temperature 90", you'll defrost yourself slightly, allowing you to cool yourself down 1 more time. You can only defrost yourself once, for some reason. - In short, you can only sneak past a drone 3 times in the entire game. Choose wisely. - This only works on drones in SCAN_MODE, and only if they're alone. If the drones are hunting you down, they'll be in CONTAIN_MODE and you can't hide. If there's two of them in the same area, you can't hide. Ending 1: Escape - With low-light vision, you can go into the dark hole in Area 17 (W main) - The next room is guarded by a drone. You need to sneak past it to get farther. - There are a lot of places past the drone, so don't be afraid to die a few times to be sure you've seen everything. - To the south of the drone there's a constructor. The constructor makes walls. A transport brings it parts and replacement torch arms, and then takes away the finished walls. - The transport recognizes finished walls by the sticker. If you put the sticker on something else, it'll take that instead. - To the west there's a driller. It places magnets on the floor, drills with a laser, then collects the magnets and moves on to the next location. If you steal a magnet, it will get mad and sic the drones on you (but only once it notices it's missing, so you have some time to use it). -- If you wait around too long, the driller will eventually finish all its drilling jobs and leave. It will leave the magnets in the room to the north of the drone. - There's also a lifter. It takes the walls from the transporter and puts them into place. - If you look at the index for the lifter, you'll see a note about its "simple light-tracking [reflective] system." - The lifter will lift anything that has a sticker on it. If you're holding a sticker, it will lift you and bash you into the wall, so don't do that. - We want to give it something big and heavy to bash into the walls. - Go to the constructor and put a sticker on the metal bar. The transporter will take it and bring it to the lifter, and the lifter will start smashing the walls with it. - It's smashing the wrong wall. You need to mess with its sense of direction. - When it picked up the bar, a slot opened up in its torso - do you have something that will fit in there? - Take one of the magnets from the driller and put it in the slot. - The lifter will start smashing the south wall. Eventually, the hole will be big enough for you to go through. - Go south to leave the factory. ** Outside it is very bright, and very quiet. ** For the other endings, you'll have to go deeper into the factory. Upgrading your legs. - There's one exit to Area 17 that's not being watched by drones - the metal strip that the Climbers use in the northwest. - Unfortunately, you need a Climber's legs to climb up it. - Didn't you see one being disassembled at the start of the game? - Go back there. Be careful not to get seen by the Salvagers. They follow a simple pattern - leave their cubby, search the reclamation sector, and return. Just stay out of their way and use the "undo" command if you get seen by accident. - From the entrance, go south, south, west, to Reclamation Sector (3). There's a stack of parts there. Examine them. - You need the Climber legs. There are five of them (274, 275, 276, 278, 279). You'll have to make two trips to carry them all. Don't linger too long or the Salvagers will catch you. -- There are other parts in the stacks, but nothing useful for puzzles. - Leave the area, then detach your legs and attach the climber legs, one at a time. You need all five. - There's another useful leg in the Reclamation Sector. This one's a little more hidden. - Look at the bodies in Reclamation Sector (2). One of them is a transporter. - Examine the transporter, and it will mention the torso is accessible. - Open the torso, and a constructor arm (794) will fall out. Take it with you - it's useful for Ending 3. Climber catwalks: - With all 5 climber legs, you can go to Area 17 (NW) and go up. - The catwalks have a few branches that lead to dead ends or to drones, but the main path is linear, so just follow it to the end. - If it warns you that you'll fall off when you go a certain direction, don't go that way. - There's a metal sphere before one section of catwalk. It has an antenna on it, so maybe you could transmit something to it? - "Transmit query to sphere." It will start sending you Yes or No messages. It will also inform you that it's a "Controller." - If you try "index controller", you'll learn that its job is to ensure only one climber is on the high-speed path at a time. - If it tells you No, don't go onto the high-speed path - you'll crash into another climber and die. Just wait for it to say Yes. - Explore the catwalks without falling off or walking into drones. Eventually you'll reach a downwards path that leads to Area 6. Save your game here - you can get both endings 2 and 3 from here. Ending 2: The Queen - Go west from the entrance to Area 6, and you'll find a path south. - Go south to find a Thinker. - The thinker is studying a device. If you wait around for a while, the Thinker will say that it's called an "eastMover," and it needs a power supply from a fixer. It also warns you that the user isn't shielded from its effect. - The thinker periodically walks around the table. When it does, move north so it doesn't see you. - The thinker will pick up an item from the table, study it, then put it down. If there are other items on the table, one will get knocked off. - You can't grab the device while it's on the table, or you'll get spotted. You need to knock it off the table. - Putting the device down will knock off whatever you want it to study, so you need two items. - Put two objects for it to study on the table (if you didn't bring one, detach a leg and use that), so it can study one and knock the other off. When it finishes its next loop, it should knock the device to the floor. Grab it and run. - Like the thinker said, the only way to activate the device is in the Fixer's room. - You should know how to get fixed by now. - Go to a drone and let it capture you. - Look around the fixer's lab. The two items you're interested in are the battery and the hatch. - The battery is on the "examination supporter" (table). - Once the fixer unfreezes you, attach the battery to the device and activate it. - One turn later, the fixer will go east, giving you a chance to escape. - Open the hatch and enter it. (The parser doesn't accept "enter hatch," but "in" or "enter gap" will work). - You arrive in the Queen's chamber. No matter what you do, the drones will grab you, but she calls them off. (Unless you've been a Very Bad Machine.) - Good end? EastMover problems: - The eastMover might not affect you when it activates, but sometimes it does. (I think it doesn't affect you if it's in your torso, but I'm not sure). - If you're holding it in your hands, you'll get overloaded with commands and die. - If you drop it on the floor, you'll be forced to move east, and lose your chance to escape - You can't stop yourself from moving, but maybe you could move a different direction... - The solution is a command you've used before. - Use "system compass_disp 2" to break your compass, so you don't leave the room when the fixer does. - Then just open the hatch and escape, as before. ** And later on, Queen #002 flies skyward. ** Ending 3: The generator Part 1: Get a working cutting torch - You'll need a working cutting torch to reach this ending. You won't discover this fact until the very end of the route. - Go to where the Constructor is (see Ending 1). It uses the same leg type. - See how the Transporter sometimes brings it a replacement torch (leg 794)? - Do the same thing - give it the 794 you found and it will detach the one it's currently using. - This part is buggy - the constructor gives you a new torch, but doesn't take the one you're holding, so you end up with two identical items. If you try to attach it the parser will be like "which do you mean, the leg 794 or the leg 794?" and you can't distinguish the two. - To fix this, put the new one in your torso, then detach the leg that's holding the old one, which will make you drop it. Now you can walk away with just the new torch. - To make sure you got the right torch, save your game and turn it on. - The command is "activate leg 794" - Reload your save once you know that it worked - it's a single use item and runs out of fuel quickly. - Once you have a working torch, go to the climber catwalks and go to Area 6. Part 2: The laser grid. - If you go east from Area 6, there's a laser barrier with a hemisphere next to it. - The hemisphere is a Monitor. When you try to go past, it sends you a challenge and you have to give the correct response, or it'll raise the alarm. - The challenge is random every time, so you need to find the rule to get the correct response. - Remember when the Energizer died? That gibberish had a couple of challenge-response pairs in it. - The rule is a bitwise operation - which bits change between the challenge and the response? - Flip the first two and the last two bits (change 1 to 0 and vice versa). Leave the middle four unchanged. (E.g., 11011010 becomes 00011001 Transmit the result to the Monitor. - Past the lasers is a drone. You need to sneak past it (see ending 1). - Past the drone is a generator. The generator has a locked panel. - You can't unlock the panel, but you can cut it open. - "Activate leg 794", then "burn panel" to cut it. - Inside the panel, there are two circuits, labeled "power" and "restraint." - Breaking the "power" circuit will result in the machines shutting down, but a drone will enter and kill you. - Breaking the "restraint" circuit will result in the machines overloading and the factory exploding. - Either way, you're dead, but you took the factory down with you! ** [This unit has terminated] **