Infamous Bugs in Police Quest 3

[ArthurWalden]

I recently read through the entirety of the Scummvm bug fix file for SCI games. I noted that for Police Quest 3, some of the most infamous bugs in that game were not mentioned. In particular, I am thinking first of the bug at the slow moving ticket trial where you could have entered the time correctly at the traffic stop but the defense attorney says you entered the wrong time anyway and the judge finds the defendant not guilty. (I know the trial outcome doesn't affect your game score but it's still an upsetting bug to see, particularly since you have to play for so long to know if it will come up.) The second, and even worse, bug is the bad ending bug, where you awakened Marie from her coma during the game, but at the end the game says the Marie is still in a coma anyway. As I recall, both bugs seem to occur randomly, with no warning at all if they will occur.

Again (similar to another thread), is the bug fix file supposed to be comprehensive or are there other bug fixes not listed?
'

[OmerMor]

The bugs ScummVM fixed in Police Quest 3 can be found in several places:

• Script Patches (most of the fixes): https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/blob ... atches.cpp
• Script workarounds: https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/blob ... rounds.cpp
• Scattered in the codebase: https://github.com/search?q=repo%3Ascum ... &type=code
• ScummVM's bug tracker: https://bugs.scummvm.org/query?game=Police+Quest+3
• ScummVM's wiki (not regularly updated): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=SCI/Bugs

In addition, you have a repository of decompiled scripts for SCI games: https://github.com/sluicebox/sci-scripts
You can compare the different versions of the game (there are 6) and you might spot fixes made by Sierra for later versions.

[notbobsmith]

I'm not sure if this has been addressed, but the "bad ending" bug is not random. It is a result of giving Marie another rose when she is in the hospital. I've attached copies of my save games. Both have the "maximum" score of 450. On my "good" playthrough, I only gave Marie one rose. Then I restored to "Day 4 - Hospital" and bought her a second rose. This results in the bad ending. It is really odd since, although you don't get any points, the game mentions giving her a "fresh rose" so it does expect a player to do this. Hopefully this will help someone figure out what is going on.

[Praetorian]

I'm not sure if this has been addressed, but the "bad ending" bug is not random. It is a result of giving Marie another rose when she is in the hospital. I've attached copies of my save games. Both have the "maximum" score of 450. On my "good" playthrough, I only gave Marie one rose. Then I restored to "Day 4 - Hospital" and bought her a second rose. This results in the bad ending. It is really odd since, although you don't get any points, the game mentions giving her a "fresh rose" so it does expect a player to do this. Hopefully this will help someone figure out what is going on.

These saved games seem to come from playing the original standalone game (ie. without ScummVM), and are from 2021. I see the issue (of the bug leading to the bad ending) also discussed here:
https://www.gog.com/forum/police_quest_ ... t_3_ending
and
https://forums.sierrahelp.com/viewtopic ... 0&start=30

Have you tested with a recent ScummVM version?

If it exists in ScummVM I think it's justified to open a ticket on the ScummVM tracker for it. For original engine bugs, it's not always certain that a bug fix can be implemented; I believe it's on a case by case basis and also up to the engine maintainer, but to me this sounds like a bug worth fixing (if possible).

Edit: Looking at the commit history for the SCI engine in the ScummVM repository, it seems that there has been a fix for the buggy bad ending by sluicebox with this commit: https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/comm ... 42a98c658b
The fix is part of ScummVM 2.9.1, which is the latest stable version of ScummVM, so if testing please test with that one or a recent daily development version.

[notbobsmith]

Yes, these are from a playthrough I did a few years ago on DOSBox. I haven't tried it on ScummVM. I wasn't sure if it had been addressed so I thought I would post it here, but it looks like it has. Thanks for posting the link to the bug fix. I was curious as to what was causing it.