First post, by thecrankyhermit
This is kind of an information dump. Codename: Iceman seems to have a maximum score of 297 points, and Google gives no clue as to where those 3 missing points are. I might have figured it out, and I'm making this topic in case someone else ever plays this game and tries to Google the same question I did. If anyone has information to contribute, please feel free. Short version of what I know, it's a bug in version 1.023, that's fixed in 1.036, and may or may not be fixed in version 1.033.
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It's been solved, thanks to OmerMor's interpretation of the decompiled scripts. See the rest of the thread for details. In short, version 1.023 is missing 1 point thanks to a bug, and it's fixed in 1.033 (and later). The other 2 are from solving the underwater maze with the shortest possible path, NOT the path that the flares show you. You get 11 points for the optimal path, and only 9 for using the flares' path. But you still need to use the flares to get 8 points.
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The official hintbook has a complete points list. It isn't possible to get every point on the list (e.g. you can either win the bottle from the sailor OR find one lying on the ocean floor, but not both), but the optimal combination of valid actions does lead to a sum of 300 points.
However, two of these actions don't score the same ingame as in the hintbook. Installing the washer on the diver shaft should give you 1 point. It gives you none. Solving the underwater cavern maze should give you 11 points. It gives you nine. This is where the three missing points come from.
And there may be a solution. There's an Amiga version walkthrough on Youtube, and it ends with 300 points. As in the hintbook, installing the washer gives 1 point, and solving the underwater cavern maze gives 11 points.
Looking at version numbers, the most common DOS version is designated Version 1.023. The Amiga version is designated 1.036. There's also a DOS version that's designated 1.033, but it's less common, and I haven't checked it yet (saves don't seem to be cross-version compatible, and right now I don't feel like replaying it from the start).
Incidentally, trying to get a perfect score in this game is the most miserable experience I've ever had in a Sierra game. The "perfect" path is illogical even by Sierra standards; there's an optional dice minigame that you have to win a ridiculous number of times (and if you savescum too much then your opponent quits), in order to win an electronic device that lets you bypass an underwater cavern maze later on. To max out your points, you have to win this device, and then when you get to the scuba section, you DON'T use the device and go through the cave anyway. WTF? And the minigames are tedious; the dice game goes on forever and is all luck based. There are two torpedo duels which are mostly luck based. Following the U.S.S. Coontz and getting a perfect 15 points is tedious and fiddly, and if you didn't do it perfectly it awards you partial points without telling you what you did wrong. And the van chase at the end is nearly unplayable, and Sierra must have know this because they flat out tell you to press F8 to skip the whole section, which I eventually did since I knew at that point I wasn't getting a perfect score anyway with this version.
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