GAMEPLAY
How can I use tunnels?
How do I use the candle?
How do I use the saw?
How do I use the pick-axe?
How do I use the shovel?
To use a tunnel, you must first use the
right tool to open the tunnel exit. For tunnel exits located on wood
floors, use the saw, for exits on pavement, use the pick-axe, and for
exits on grass, use the shovel. The tool will be consumed in the process
To enter an open tunnel, you must use a candle (which is consumed as well).
To open a tunnel exit, from within a tunnel, you need to use the
shovel, regardless of the type of ground that exit sits on. If the exit
is already open, just pressing action will do.
What is required for a successful escape?
How do I use the papers?
To successfully escape from the castle,
you will need to be in possession of German papers (those are different
from passes, which are only used with guards). If you don't have these
papers, you will be returned to the Castle
How do I use stooge?
You can set stooge with prisoners, as
means of alert for guards. Once a stooge is set (STOOGE should appear in
the status bar), the focus will go back to the prisoner who set the
stooge if a guard comes close by.
This can be used to warn a prisoner visiting a restricted area that a
guard is on his way. To set a stooge, make sure your prisoner is idle
and press the "Stooge" key.
How can I open doors?
How do I use Keys/Lock-picks?
Locked doors need to be opened with the relevant tool:
- "Low Security doors" require the use of a a lock-pick
- "Grade One Security doors" require a security key one
- "Grade Two Security doors" require a security key two
Any key used is immediately consumed
How do I use stones?
Stones are used to slow down guards
that have entered a running pursuit. If guards are running after you,
using a stone will make them revert to a walking pursuit, thus giving you a
chance to escape.
To use a stone, make sure it is selected in your inventory and press the action key
What is the fatigue bar used for?
How do I use sleep?
Walking, running and especially
crawling increase your fatigue. The fatigue level is also increased
with every game hour that pass.
Once the fatigue bar reaches its max level, you will no longer be able to run.
To reduce fatigue, you must return to your quarters to sleep. Once in your starting room, press the "Sleep" key to go to bed.
Note that you can only sleep in your own bed.
How can I use uniforms?
If you find a guard's uniform, you can
change into it to try to fool the guards. To use a uniform, simply
select it in your inventory and press the action key.
Note however that guards are suspiscious by nature and will ask for a pass if they don't recognize your face.
How do I use a pass?
The pass is used, when you are wearing
a German uniform, and are intercepted by a guard. Unless you can
provide a pass then, you will be sent to prison. A pass is immediately
consumed.
In the enhanced version of the game, guards do remember when they have
seen a pass, and will not ask you again. A guard that has previously
seen your pass will be identified with a small pass icon.
How do I use the rifle?
Just like in the original game, the
rifle is not used for anything in this game. Our reverse engineering of the original game uncovered no use for the rifle whatsoever. One can only speculate
what the developers had meant the rifle to be used for when they designed the game.
Are there other any items available in the game?
If you cheated, are really lucky, or somehow found a bug, you might also find a stethoscope or a prisoner's uniform in the game.
The prisoner's uniform allows you to change back into prisoner's clothes (duh), which is pretty much useless.
The stethoscope was not used in the original game.
Are there any cheat modes?
Well, who knows...
What does turning "Enhancements" on do in the options menu?
The Enhancement menu adds a set of feature that I felt were missing from the original game:
The first enhancement, which is also called "opt_enhanced_guards" in config.xml, make the guards in the immediate vicinity remember when they've seen a pass from a prisoner in uniform, and thus get fooled by that prisoner if they see him again. It will also make their behaviour a bit more human after they caught with a prisoner.
The second enhancement ("opt_enhanced_tunnels" in config.xml) restricts the field of vision when moving in tunnels, which makes tunnel handling a bit more challenging.
Enhancements can only be turned on if "Original Mode" is not active.
GAME ISSUES
Why are there picture/black corners onscreen?
This version of the game was ported primarily for the PSP (which is also why the base resolution of the game
is 480x272), so we tried to use as much screen real estate as possible.
However, the original game was not designed for widescreen, and as
such, some "tiles" would be missing around the screen corners, when moving on
the exterior map. As this would have had a detrimental effect on the
aesthetics of the game, we chose to hide them using
"picture corners".
I can't save the game! / Save and Load are disabled
This
is because you enabled the original game mode in the options. The original
game did not have a save/load feature, and therefore those features,
along with any other enhancements, are disabled when "original mode" is
on. To disable "original mode", and re-enable game saves, go to the
options menu. Of course, when you do that, you'll probably also find out if you're a chicken...
I get an "Integrity check failure" when starting the game
This means that the data files you are using differ in content from the ones expected by the game, which can happen if:
- Your files are corrupted => download the binaries again
-
You manually changed the data files => if you want to mod the game,
you should start by recompiling the source and remove the MD5 checks.
(PSP) Whoa, I never realized the remanence on the PSP was so bad! /
The game smears a lot & doesn't look too good on older PSPs
Indeed. Please address your complaints to "Hey Sony, it sure took you a while to put a decent screen on the PSP, 1-7-1 Konan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-0075, Japan"
More
seriously though, the original game was developed for screens (CRT)
that, unlike LCD, were a lot more responsive and allowed greater
freedom in the choice of palette & contrast. Not much can be done
here, apart changing all the palettes. Gotta give props to the actual
PSP game artists, who have had to put up with the kind of creativity
restriction introduced by Sony when they tried to make a quick buck by
using such a poor response time LCD on the PSPs 1000 & 2000...
(Windows) I get a "winXAudio2Init: failed to init XAudio2 engine" / "Could not initialize audio" error message
The
Windows version uses the latest DirectX audio engine. Please make sure
you have the latest DirectX runtime installed (which can be downloaded
from here).
(Windows) The game doesn't run / runs too slow on my Windows platform!
- If
you're using an embedded GPU (eg. Intel motherboard GPU), chances are
the graphics extensions required to play the game (like 16 bit little
endian GRAB textures) will not be present, and you will get a white
screen
- Check that your monitor refresh rate is at least 50Hz.
If you run the game with a 24Hz refresh rate for instance (eg, on an
HTPC), the game speed will be bound by that frequency, no matter how
fast your CPU/GPU are.
- If you are using HQ2X for graphics
smoothing on Windows (with a GPU cards that supports OpenGL 2.0), the
GPU shader filter might increase your CPU usage => disable GFX
smoothing.
- Try to update to the latest DirectX. Tests
showed that there can be a drastic improvement in speed between using
DirectX 9 and DirectX 10
Our
tests show that the game should be playable at full speed on a P4 2.0
GHz Windows XP platform, with a decent nVidia or ATI graphics card
and DirectX 10.
Note that you can use the '#' key on windows to display the game's current FPS.
DATA FILES
Why didn't you provide the data files in the first release?
For potential legal reasons. However, since potential copyright holders have not manifested themselves, I will now consider the original game and data as
Abandonware and provide the required data files along with the binaries.
Where can I obtain alternate data files?
I am not aware of any alternate data files for the game. However, if you want to replace the files provided with the current binaries, a search for ADF (Amiga Disk File) images of
Escape From Colditz
in
any search engine should direct you to original disk dumps.
You can then extract the data files listed on the home page from the ADF image. You can use the Windows version of the
unadf executables (preferably staticunadf.exe) from the binw32.zip archive at
http://lclevy.free.fr/adflib/adflib.html
To extract the files:
- Extract the files from binw32.zip to a temporary directory
- Extract the .adf file from, the compressed ADF image you downloaded to another temporary directory.
- Create
a new directory (this is required because unadf does not create a
subdirectory when extracting the files). Or you can use the directory
where you extracted "Colditz Escape"
- Copy the
"staticunadf.exe" executable as well as the .adf file (eg: "Escape from
Colditz (1990)(Digital Magic)(M4)[cr SKR][FIXED GALAHAD].adf") to the
directory above.
- From a command prompt, navigate to the directory where you have theses 2 files and run the command:
staticunadf yourfile.adf (eg: staticunadf Escape from Colditz (1990)(Digital Magic)(M4)[cr SKR][FIXED GALAHAD].adf)
- You should now have access to the required data files.
I can't seem to have COLDITZ-LOADER in the files I extracted! How can I make the game work?
Most
of the ADF versions found on the internet don't come with the
COLDITZ-LOADER file, but instead with SKR_COLD, which is the compressed
version of COLDITZ-LOADER.
The game engine is smart enough to detect this, and automatically uncompress and create COLDITZ-LOADER if SKR_COLD is found.
Thus you only need to provide either SKR_COLD (compressed version) or COLDITZ_LOADER (uncompressed version) to run the game initially.
