Hidden/Undocumented Stuff

The Config.ini has following pre-installed entries which can be modified to run the game directly from hard disk:

[Paths]
Movies=movies\
Music=music\
Waves=sounds\
Artfile=panic.art
MovieList=pipavi.lst

; DLL can be left away; the default is 'ANIMDLL.DLL'
Dll=animdll.dll

[Flags]
FullSounds=no

[Movies]
FullScreen=1

[Disk1]
Movies=D:\movies1\
ArtFile=D:\panic1.art
Waves=D:\sounds1\
Drive=D:

[Disk2]
Movies=D:\movies2\
ArtFile=D:\panic2.art
Waves=D:\sounds2\
Drive=D:

[Disk3]
Movies=D:\movies3\
ArtFile=D:\panic3.art
Waves=D:\sounds3\
Drive=D:

Using an hex editor to search strings, I have found at least one undocumenteed parameter.

Type: Boolean. Default: no

This setting is actually documented in the ReadMe file. If you have a fast computer/VM, you can set this value to "yes". If the game is lagging, especially at the Gopher game, then set it back to "no".

Adding the line "ShowErrors=yes" to the [Flags] section in the config.ini file will enable the debug mode.

In the debug mode, each screen has the picture resource name shown in the left top corner of the screen.

At the entrance and the gazebo however, there are 2 more information:

• At the left top, second line: A 5 digit code that gets generated at the beginning of a new game e.g. 4 3 4 2 2 . This is the random hash seed, and it is preserved in the savegames. The random seed influences several things in the game; there are
  • four possible slider puzzles leading to four different clues,
  • four possible pattern puzzles,
  • six variations of a logic puzzle,
  • six variations of a word search puzzle,
  • six locations for the deed to the amusement park and
  • nine possible suspects
• At the right top: Internal date and time of the EXE build. It is hardcoded as "Sep 04 1995, 12:18:03" (at offset 0x545C0)

The debug mode reveals a few internal errors, e.g.: At different places you get error messages like "CCBI.. file not found" error message. However, there seems to be nothing actually missing.

Type: String. Default: (none)

Following entry can be added to the [paths] section:

SaveLogFile=C:\panic\logfil.txt

This option will create a log file, which will be re-created on every start of the game, and this log file will include all movies and images which were loaded. Disassembly of the EXE file showed that no other things are logged.

Type: String. Default: (none)

During start, the game loads the attribute "ART" from the "PATHS" section of the config.ini file. However, the value will not be used anywhere, as seen during the disassembly of the EXE file.

It is probably a leftover from an early state of the development process of the game where graphics were probably stored as single graphic files in a directory, and later in the development process, the graphics were put in an *.ART file (controlled via the attribute name "ArtFile").

Type: Integer. Default: 1

[Movies]
FullScreen=1

If set to 0, the videos will be played in the window mode. Alas, they are not stretched to 640x480 inside the window. It would have been great to play the game in a higher resolution by having PiP either always windowed or always fullscreen, but not mixed.

According to the game's ReadMe file, this setting can also have the value 2 to increase the picture and video quality. However, this didn't work for me. The videos were only half-size and located at the top left corner of the screen.