The bird has a solution you’ll have used elsewhere. The others I don’t know about.
Have you discovered the comb? I’ve discovered 28 objects with a monetary value. There’s either gotta be more, some of the puzzles must have different solutions, or there has to be more bugs we don’t know about, because the gap between where you are and the top score is really big, more than just shuffling some low scoring objects could give. (I’ve been trying a few things today and am approximately at the same score as you are.)
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I had not, but I have now! Since it takes two turns to get, I’m not sure it’s worth it. I also had not seen the watch. That’s 160 in four turns and using the bullet, instead of visiting the galley which takes six turns, uses the bullet, and nets us 300. I don’t think we can use those two turns saved to make 140 somewhere else?
I’ve moved this to a new topic so we can stop worrying about spoilers.
I agree with you that neither are worth it, though for the comb it’s more that is lost as soon as there’s water on the floor, which makes it infeasible to obtain in time.
My high score is now up to $1774. It’s the same as yours with one extra treasure. And I don’t think I can squeeze any more in - one turn of delay and the captain takes the sack off me.
How do we feel about decompiling it to look for missed objects?
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Ah, it’s possible to grab the locket?
I’m fine with decompiling, if you know how to do it! As far as I’m concerned, we’re probably missing either a puzzle, or more probably a bug, and getting some pointers in the right direction would be useful.
I used glulx-strings, and couldn’t see anything that we don’t already know about. So a bug we don’t know about seems likely.
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I’m not sure how much of it has been changed since then, but in the source of the French translation of the game, there is a long (a bit too long to be copied and pasted here, I think) author’s comment about bugs and high scores. It’s written in English and rather early on, it starts with “AC: ON THE ISSUE OF TYPOS”.
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I’ve found a couple bugs, but they don’t seem exploitable:
- From the page @filiaa shared, you can “climb rigging” anywhere above deck to go to the Top.
- You can wind or open the watch without holding it.
There’s one message from glulx-strings which I don’t think I’ve seen: “The seagull squawks one last time and flies away.”
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So in those notes to the French translation, Ryan is talking about someone who exploited a bug that he then fixed, namely, a bug where you could enter the hold after it was already flooded. And this is clearly Marshall Quander, whose ‘original release’ high score is $1719, and whose ‘bug fixed’ high score is $1533. But we can beat even the higher of those scores using the boat bug. And the current $1865 high score is from much later, presumably using the version we are still playing now.
I suppose you could use it to go there from the bowsprit location at the end of the game, when you have a few turns left? But then you probably can’t get back, so I see no way it helps.
Do we have the English source, or only the French? (I do read French, I could try to find bugs that way… if they haven’t been fixed!)
Ah, I’ve found a non-bug worth $20! Will have to test it tomorrow to check if there’s time to do it.
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I think there’s a second bug referenced in the French translation notes?
Yeah, that might be the bug where you can carry around the lifeboat, which Dannii and I are already using… or some other bug, which we don’t know about!
Ryan does release annotated source code of his games on one of his Patreon tiers, but there’s no back catalog, and I haven’t been a member long enough to know if it has been released there.
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Is it attacking the sextant? We should be able to do that on the bowsprit, I think, so it should fit.
EDIT: I checked the source, we know of all the treasures at least.
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140117 is almost identical to 131003, only a few bytes are different. 210127 seems to have quite a few differences.
The current high score was probably on 140117. Perhaps some bugs were fixed between it and 210127?
Ah, 210127 was compiled on 6M62, the others on 6G60. Any old Inform 7 bugs we could exploit? 
In 210127 the locket doesn’t get swept away. Seems more buggy than 140117!
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Yes this is possible, for a score of $1794.
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If you or anyone else is a member of his Patreon, here’s the source release: https://www.patreon.com/posts/captain-source-15614712
(I’m strongly considering joining just for a month to get this!)
I also still haven’t tried decompiling it yet.
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I’ve found membership rewarding enough to remain subscribed to Ryan’s Patreon for multiple years, at this point. (Though I haven’t participated in the Verdeterre score maximization pursuit because it felt like I would be competing with an unfair advantage.)
Stephen Jablon has improved on his June 2020 score of $1779! Noticing a discrepancy between versions, specifically that the online version is disgustingly broken, he has managed a score of $1911 in the online version and $1799 in the non-disgusting downloadable version.
By careful analysis I have deduced that Robert Eggleston’s July 2020 score of $1856 does not use the disgusting online version, but does use a trick which Jablon apparently remains unaware of, so it may be that the true maximum score—even in the non-disgusting, legitimate version—has yet to be discovered.
It always bums me out when people talk about decompiling my games. I can provide the source code (for which of these many versions? I have no idea) if people are well and truly done having fun with the game as it was meant to be played.
Note that the highscore updates probably belong in your original topic: Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder High Score Update (July 2020)
It would be ideal if you knew the release number for each score (if someone provides a transcript?) but otherwise we may be able to make a reasonable guess. The first three releases are pretty similar, it’s really 210127 that has substantial differences. Obviously anything older than 2021 can’t be on that version.
Personally if you’d rather we not go to the extent of decompiling then I’m happy to comply. But I don’t think that the current need to rely on glitches is really playing the game as it was meant to be played either… Sugarlawn is much bigger, but I think CVP is close to a solved game, with the exception of unknown glitches.
Would you feel like giving any hints instead of us decompiling it/digging into source code? I think there’s probably gotta be an alternate solution to either the bird or the cabinet, or maybe the strong box. Or is counting somehow useful?? Everything else is just worth too little to make up the difference.
I did not intentionally incorporate any alternate solutions for the bird or the cabinet or the strongbox, and as far as I know no unintentional alternate solutions have arisen. Counting should not be useful (but gosh it’s a fun verb). The strategies critical to Eggleston’s and Jablon’s runs include:
- Using >INVENTORY repeatedly while waiting for the Captain to pull out the music box so the water doesn’t rise during that time
- Picking up the rowboat
- Hitting the sextant to increase its value by $20
- Probably other stuff I can’t remember right now
Eggleston’s big advantage over Jablon is something he did on the very first turn: OPEN BOOK. You have to open the book to reveal the steel bracelet inside. This also happens to put the book and bracelet in your inventory without having to TAKE BOOK first.
Eggleston has provided me with his transcript, which bears the serial number 140117.
1856Script.txt (20.8 KB)
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