| Holiday Hack Challenge 2023 Report | Cody Travis <cwtravis@gmail.com> |
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To find the 3rd Gamegosling cartridge, you must complete a maze found at Rusty Quay at Steampunk Island. This maze is not very difficult but may require some trial and error.
Once the cartridge is found, play it by clicking your badge, then clicking items, then clicking the cartridge you want to play. This object also requires an emulator and the local rom file to complete, so I did the same as before. I used the developer tools and watched the Network tab to see which files were loaded, and found the vol 3 rom.
The URL to download the ROM file is here:
https://gamegosling.com/vol3-7bNwQKGBFNGQT1/rom/game.gb
To play it, I used the emulator bgb. This emulator, like many others has a memory search function that can be useful in manipulating game values.
In Elf the Dwarf's Gloriously Unfinished Adventure Vol 3, the game is a side scrolling platformer where Elf the Dwarf collects coins along the way. The way coins are managed is a bit strange though. It seems to manage each numbers place individually. When a number place goes past 9, it wraps around back to zero. So if you get a 100-coin and you have 990 coins total, you will end up with 090 coins because the hundreds place wrapped around. Same goes for the other numbers places.
The technique for manipulating your coin values is do a memory search for each place. This is the method for bgb but it will be similar for any emulator with memory search.
What's happening here is that the emulator is searching the game's memory for a particular value. It remembers the memory addresses found in the search. When that value changes you can run another search for the updated value. The number of addresses found should get continually smaller and more specific to the in-game address you want.
When only 1 or 2 addresses are left, you enter them into the cheats window. Enter the address and what value you want the address to be locked at. In our case we want 999 coins, so I set each address to value 9.
Once you have coins locked at 999, then its just a matter of completing the levels. If you find yourself dying, remember that emulators have Save States. These are snapshots of points in the game you can revert to if you need to. So if you die at a certain enemy, create a save state right before you reach that enemy. If you die, then revert to your save state and try again!
When you get to the long jump in the level with Jared, a platform appears when you have 999 coins. Hold down the jump button as you land to jump across that gap safely.
Once you enter the cave with Tom Liston, he will give you the passphrase "morethanmeetstheeye". Then if you talk to the ChatNPT device it will allow you to move the rock and teleport away.
The end screen reveals the flag text you can enter in your badge to complete the challenge:
!tom+elf!
