While poking around (read: hacking) Silent Hill 1, I noticed

Have you seen Harry's daughter anywhere? Short, dark hair?

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Xkeeper

While poking around (read: hacking) Silent Hill 1, I noticed

Post by Xkeeper »

... that pits really do kill you:

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As you know, there's no way to actually do this normally. Harry isn't stupid and won't walk into one, and afaik no enemy can knock you in, either.

However, forcing yourself in (note: NOT using walk-through-wall codes) will actually kill Harry at the bottom.




Also, not quite as interesting, but it appears that most maps are on the same plane. For example, when you go through this gate...

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... then go back through it again, you end up here ...

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Note the position (top-center numbers, and the makeshift map in the right with the two lines that aren't even on it). If you use a walk-through-walls code here, you really will end up back in the Silent Hill area. If you walk back through the gate as fast as you can (using L1+R1) before it gets completely dark, Silent Hill will actually be in a half-dark, rainy state.


I plan on checking out some other things, but one other thing of note is that I did the same thing in the Cafe (forced myself out of the map for a while) and ended up back in Silent Hill again, with no monsters or items. I'm beginning to suspect that all of the rooms are actually on one big map, too, so marking off where they are will be fun.
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Post by The Adversary »

In the beta version of the game, Rompers could knock Harry into pits/sewers/water/&c., sending him into an inescapable abyss.
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Post by Xkeeper »

The more you know... I've been trying to get my hands on some prerelease copies so I could investigate some of this (I'm currently trying to find some more information so I can play with the camera and/or if I'm extremely lucky remove the damn fog).


As soon as I find the Z position and manage to lock it so I have full control over his position, it'd be fun to see if I could find other stuff scattered around. The problem is that the walk-through-walls code won't let you fall/rise even if disabled, and if I could fix that, well.


An interesting technical note: The pits aparrently set your Z to 32768. Most roads in Silent Hill have their Z level at 0 (nice even number), while even going onto a curb is about -600.
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Post by The Adversary »

There are numerous unfinished rooms hidden round the town, but nothing particularly exciting. I know most of, if not all, of this sort of thing has been done, so good luck.
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Post by Xkeeper »

Yeah, no kidding. The problem is that none of them are actually documented. Even looking around various sites, the only ones I've ever seen were just some basic things, like the garage extending out into nowhere, a floating trash bag, and the one Midwich classroom off in space, and even those were just 'Found by someone but nobody knows where'.

Recently I came across it again, and while there are a few more screenshots, there's nothing particularly in-depth about it; Valtiel's site (+/- letters) has a whopping one image with a credit to someone, who I then had to spend about 3 hours digging through many (albeit interesting) threads here just to find out what he knew, and I haven't seen anything about other unused rooms outside of Midwich and I've gone through about 90% of the probable threads on this forum.

I also have a wiki I've been building up with info about this kind of thing (cut, unused, or otherwise unfinished data) so having a lot of documentation on it would be really useful, and since it's a game I love, I figured I might as well do it myself.


But if you happen to have any more information, that'd be grand and probably save me some work.
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Post by The Adversary »

All those occurrences have been documented—as far as I know, at least (I, admittedly, was never terribly involved in the unexplorable locations). Unfortunately, ca. 2003-'04, an epidemic swept through the Silent Hill fandom and many once-prevalent and -renowned Web sites shut down, closed their doors and died, and much of their content was lost. I know mine, for example, included an entire section devoted to the unfinished rooms of Silent Hill.
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Post by Xkeeper »

Figures. I don't suppose you have any knowledge that would help out?

I'm trying to get some more stuff done, but the Z position isn't being cooperative.
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Post by Xkeeper »

Double post. Oh well...

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Hey, it's the corpse in snow! Aren't you just adorrrable

If you look closely you might notice the map in the top left, along with a strange purple blob. That purple blob is actually the approximate location on a map (it's not quite scaled right, so it's probably a good bit below where it needs to be). The whole path is in there, too, or at least what's in that particular section.


With my new handy dandy map, I also decided to check out something else:

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Sure enough, it's off the top (by about six pixels). I haven't found anything else via walking around yet, though, unfortunately, and I have no real idea where to look, either. Bleh.
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Post by SilentObserver »

I remember the great forum/site killing wave that you mention, MMY. I had personally spent an awful lot of time going through SH1 and 2 gathering information for someone on various locations, hidden things, memos, messages, so they could have it on their site. I think it was.. cryme? Nurserycryme or whatever? I don't remember, it was a long time ago... I could be wrong about the site name too, all I really remember was that it was for hidden messages (like the "study damnit! poster) and other things found around SH.

But I do not remember anyone doing the Harry into the abyss thing, pretty cool. Since you guys know about unexplored locations, are there any rooms and such that are behind locked doors that were just never used, or never supposed to be seen? There is someone here who has done extensive work on the hidden parts of the game, but I don't know if the pictures are from in closed off rooms or not.

Great job, OP! :)
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Post by Xkeeper »

Nurserycryme was it, yes. It had a lot of images but not really much information on where they came from, like the trash bag in space and some other stuff.

That site was F's, I think?


In any case, the rooms I've seen so far (both on this board and just puttering around) were either very obvious in purpose or just plain unused, untextured and with no objects.
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Post by The Adversary »

NurseryCryme.net was my Web site. However, I didn't operate the Silent Hill section—only its music and all of Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room.
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Post by TleilaxuEyes »

This is really interesting stuff! I hope we can compile more of this "behind the scenes" information.

I wonder why the numbers change so dramatically with minor hight shifts.
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Post by Xkeeper »

MMY wrote:NurseryCryme.net was my Web site. However, I didn't operate the Silent Hill section—only its music and all of Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room.
I only remember it having SH2 before the site was dead. Wasn't that the one that had a bunch of words and only some of them actually went anywhere?

...


Anyway, today's fun trivia: Harry has a maximum of 1600 health. Health drinks restore 640 HP each (40%), making them rather powerful.

Air Screamer attacks do a random damage that's about 75 per hit.


Some status screen stats:

If your HP is below...
1600 (max): Full health; background is green
1360 (85%): Background turns yellow
1040 (65%): Background turns orange
0800 (50%): Pulsing speeds up
0624 (39%): Background turns red
0160 (10%): Pulsing speeds up further

As you can see, a well-timed health drink when you enter orange will actually take you all the way up to full health. I haven't gotten far enough in my test save to have a medkit or ampoule, though.
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Post by AuraTwilight »

This is pure badass.
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Post by nur_ein_tier »

cool about the health info and all that.
Xkeeper wrote:Yeah, no kidding. The problem is that none of them are actually documented. Even looking around various sites, the only ones I've ever seen were just some basic things, like the garage extending out into nowhere, a floating trash bag, and the one Midwich classroom off in space, and even those were just 'Found by someone but nobody knows where'.

Recently I came across it again, and while there are a few more screenshots, there's nothing particularly in-depth about it; Valtiel's site (+/- letters) has a whopping one image with a credit to someone
I also have a video on my site of Harry going to the rooms in Midwich. They aren't that hard to find:

http://alchemillahospital.net/silent-hi ... ts-trivia/

The credit is to someone here who found and made a map of the rooms. I took the images and videos. My hard drive crashed before I uploaded the rest so I forgot about it.

I was meaning to upload more images, but they aren't really all that interesting, since many aren't finished and the walk through walls are a pain because you can't go up and down.

Here's a few more I made today of the room you go to if you just run right through the courtyard and straight:

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Some of the classrooms and places you can go via the walk through walls code/courtyard area:
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Post by Xkeeper »

That would be Goose. I kept that link handy for when I try playing with it.


Some other minor points of interest: Your status indicator sometimes gets lines of static in it as your health lowers, but it seems to be mostly useless for determining your actual health (use the guide I posted earlier).


Some areas tend to "grab" the map cursor, too, I've noticed. For example, if you enter the Cafe but manage to walk yourself back onto the real Silent Hill (open your map and face down, then walk forwards for a minute or ten, maybe) your map will still read that you're in the Cafe, even though you clearly aren't.

Conversely, while walking out-of-bounds behind the school, the cursor disappeared, but pressing X would still zoom the map to the bottom left.

A point of interest: Walking through the introductory alleyway (where the corpse is and such) will place your cursor inside the alley... even though you technically shouldn't even have a map at that point to look at. This might just be because the intro alley's first part (before darkness) is shared both between the intro and the "finding Cheryl again" sequence, though (the cursor liked to vanish on me at random).


Needless to say, I need to find the "current area" RAM value before I can update the map more; each area has its own set of coordinates and origins (the Silent Hill main area with the hospital and such has its entrance's coordinates somewhere around the center area of Old SH). If I can figure out that, I'd be able to mark off where I've been on the map and explore around elsewhere.



Here's an odd one too; if you manage to outrun the camera by too much, the game freezes on you until you get back in range. It's well over 50000 units, though, and I've only managed to do so abusing my "force movement in __-direction" hack.



Edit: Ugh. And I thought the alleyway was out of the way!
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That map is about 120 pixels high, so 32 pixels off the top is about 25% the height of explorable Silent Hill. Needless to say, that's a lot of walking.

Keep in mind that the map's scale isn't entirely accurate, though -- based on how inaccurate it was already it seems that it might be even further off the top :|


Feel free to ask me if you have any questions about my little HUD, too, or if you want to see something else added. I'll try to get it in.



Edit 2: Have some minor camera control. I can make the camera focus right above Harry, but can't control the actual camera itself yet. If nothing else it at least allows me to somewhat see where I am, though.
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Post by Dale »

I really like stuff like this, I fully support what your doing. Is their a way you can look at the coding for the sound effects and BGM? The games sound is so complexly layered theirs probably some anomalies somewhere.
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Post by nur_ein_tier »

Xkeeper wrote:That would be Goose. I kept that link handy for when I try playing with it..
Yeah, that's it. I still have trouble finding a few of those, just tried again.

A couple of unfinished classroom/storage room pics while I'm at it:

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Post by The Adversary »

>Wasn't that the one that had a bunch of words and only some of them actually went anywhere?
Yes. Most of the links went somewhere, though—it was intended to be a puzzle. I had some Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4: The Room information before I closed the Web site, as well.
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Post by Xkeeper »

Yep, figured. I didn't really bother to read most of it (I just turned off styles so everything showed up as plain text), mostly because I was on dial-up and trying to guess which words went somewhere wasn't very efficient when you were in a hurry.


Figures, though. Damn shame that site died, too, since it had a lot of neat information, if a bit unorganized.
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