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The science of Monkey Island: can grog dissolve a metal mug that fast?

141 points by zdw ago | 46 comments

buildsjets |next [-]

If the grog contained enough mercury, it would dissolve the pewter mug. Mercury also eats thru solid aluminum pretty quickly.

adrian_b |root |parent [-]

True, but mercury does not dissolve the iron of the lock. For that, the sulfuric acid is necessary.

If grog would contain both mercury and acid, they would not mix, but there will be a mercury layer at the bottom and the acid solution would stay at the top. So the mercury could dissolve the bottom of the mug, while pouring some acid from the top could dissolve the iron lock.

The fact that iron is among the few metals which are not dissolved by mercury had been widely used in the past, when the use of mercury was less restricted. For example, ignitrons and mercury arc rectifiers, which were used in high power converters before the invention of thyristors, contained a pool of liquid mercury, so for them iron vessels were preferred instead of fragile glass vessels, like those used in smaller vacuum tubes.

In the Roman and Greek Antiquity, the most important use of mercury was for the dissolution of gold and silver, which was used for their purification and in the fabrication of jewelry.

kridsdale1 |root |parent [-]

And if it was destroyed it would be in Anti-Money!

herodoturtle |next |previous [-]

> we use the apparent rate of mug deterioration to estimate the proton supply required by a simplified corrosion model

Damn I love HN.

ButlerianJihad |root |parent [-]

There's more out there in nerd-land https://what-if.xkcd.com/

The running gag for "what if" is that the Earth is destroyed and everybody dies along with the solar system in a cataclysmic disaster, in even the simplest of proposed scenarios

herodoturtle |root |parent [-]

That site is awesome, thank you!

shermantanktop |next |previous [-]

There should be a name for this phenomenon: geeking out about an overly literal interpretation of how a technical topic is presented, made by an artist/creator a long time ago who likely didn't intend to satisfy such a literal understanding.

It's like retconning... retgeeking?

Lucasoato |next |previous [-]

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, what color is the tree?

biofox |root |parent [-]

Uhh... How appropriate... you fight like a cow.

korijn |root |parent |next [-]

I am rubber, you are glue!

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organsnyder |root |parent |previous [-]

I'm shaking! I'm shaking!

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el_pollo_diablo |next |previous [-]

¡He dejado en libertad los prisioneros y ahora vengo por ti!

KellyCriterion |next |previous [-]

In MI1, the only annoying part was that "wood forest path" thingy in the beginning (when being in the village), and later on the world wasnt pretty anymore when being on Le Chucks Island

roschdal |next |previous [-]

Monkey Island is the best adventure game.

baw-bag |root |parent |next [-]

I agree! My friend and I have the fondest memories of that game in particular since we played it for months on the Amiga 500 at the time. Meathook was my hero. We both have this inner memory of 4k photorealistic graphics which doesn't match the reality of the 90s game.

kridsdale1 |root |parent [-]

Well when you talk to people (like, to inquire about LOOM), it does give a detailed full screen illustration of their face.

RajT88 |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I hadn't replayed it all the way through as an adult, not from start to finish.

So I sat down, had a couple beers and played it all the way from the beginning.

It's exquisite, but short. A lot of care went into that journey though.

marginalia_nu |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I think this was true, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't say The Drifter has taken the crown. It raises the narrative bar so much it's just mind boggling you can even tell a story with that much momentum and tension in an adventure game.

Overall we've been eating very well the last few years when it comes to new adventure games. In most of the 2010s new adventure games tended to not really be very good, but the stuff we've seen the last few years from the likes of Wadjet Eye and Grundislav are absolutely on par if not better than the highlights of the '90s.

linkgoron |root |parent [-]

The Drifter is a great narrative, but the puzzles are just OK.

Wadjet Eye developed and published games have quite a few great games. Blackwell series is awesome (I would've wanted a different ending for the series, but the games are great), Resonance, Unavowed, Primordia, Gemini Rue and Technobabylon are all great as well.

Kathy Rain is also good (haven't played the second one).

I doubt, though, that any are better than Curse of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango (which is arguably held back by its 3d graphics and controls) or The Longest Journey.

bzzzt |root |parent [-]

I don't know if you can call any point&click game objectively 'good': they all suffer from the problem of the player getting occasionally stuck after missing a hint or failing to make a deduction. Besides, they are heavily story-based which makes liking them a matter of personal taste.

VorpalWay |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Yes the first 3 games are really good. But I also have a soft spot for Myst. Maybe it is nostalgia, but I really enjoyed replaying it from the original CD of the Mac release a few years ago (using my original iBook, which is slightly later vintage than the game of course).

aleph_minus_one |root |parent [-]

> But I also have a soft spot for Myst.

Riven is even better. :-)

VorpalWay |root |parent [-]

Ah, that is interesting. I found it a bit too confusing puzzle-wise. But I only played it years later, so I don't have the nostalgia. Which suggests that nostalgia probably is a big part of why I still enjoy Myst.

lawn |root |parent |next |previous [-]

Grim Fandango is arguably in the running for the title too.

VorpalWay |root |parent [-]

Those tank controls are not great, and going to 3D made the graphics noticeably worse. It would have been a better game had it stayed 2D but with the same story. A lot of early 3D has aged poorly.

WorldMaker |root |parent [-]

The Remaster added modern controls and even a point-and-click mode. Worth revisiting.

KellyCriterion |root |parent |next |previous [-]

I would also add Kings Quest V (and only V!),also Ultima 7, and some others in that ballpark :-)

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JMKH42 |root |parent |previous [-]

After first playing Ultima 7 in middle school in the 1990s, I finally finished the whole game a few months back, and was astounded by how good it is. I would love to see a modern take on it with expanded crafting mechanics. the way crafting works is amazingly fun and immersive, there is just a very limited amount of it. the same for the way NPCs actually live out their lives and work. better than most (all?) modern games.

KellyCriterion |root |parent [-]

Id say the genre got out of traction, so there is no real "U7 feeling" anymore

g-b-r |root |parent |next |previous [-]

If you mean point and click game, I liked Sam & Max hit the road more

marginalia_nu |root |parent [-]

Adventure games are games that are spiritual ancestors to the game Colossal Cave Adventure (often just called Adventure), which includes most point and clicks, but also the likes of Zork and Myst.

It's very often misused though, I think from people confusing the label as referring to games being about an adventure, rather than being like the game Adventure.

g-b-r |root |parent [-]

I never heard that the Adventure term came from Colossal Cave Adventure, really ? It's true that it is/was the other term commonly used for this kind of games, anyhow.

Myst was better categorized as a puzzle game, you wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for games similar to Monkey Island

marginalia_nu |root |parent [-]

It's a well established term, and puzzle games like Myst are generally considered a subgrenre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game

g-b-r |root |parent |next [-]

Oh, you're Marginalia's developer, congratulations :)

marginalia_nu |root |parent [-]

Thanks, I guess :P

g-b-r |root |parent |previous [-]

On the magazines I used to read Adventure was a synonymous of Point and Click.

I definitely don't trust Wikipedia on these kind of things, anyhow it could be that the terms were different in different countries or just different magazines

adamrezich |root |parent |previous [-]

I hope Ron Gilbert has more stories he wants to tell that aren't meta-reflections on adventure games as a form.

Thimbleweed Park was fine—not what I was hoping for, but fine. When I saw Return to Monkey Island was more of that—while I appreciate taking that tack as a way to sort of give closure to the second game and also the rest of the series, sort of—I decided it wasn't for me.

Now a second Thimbleweed Park has been announced, and I expect it to be more of the same sort of thing, which is kind of a bummer? Deconstruction is fun, but it's better when it leads to reconstruction thereafter. I would love to see Gilbert tackle a genuine adventure game again, without all of (or at least, with less of) the navel-gazing postmodernism—just to prove the genre and creator both still have the capacity for genuinely good works that stand on their own. Am I the only one?

WorldMaker |root |parent |next [-]

I thought Return to Monkey Island did a very good job with it, and it was indeed exactly what MI2 was trying to say and what MI1 even foreshadowed, just refined with the time away from the project. It answered "What was Ron trying to say in the MI3 he wanted to write?" and it ended up doing it without diminishing Curse, Tales, or even Escape, and somewhat including them in the fun. (More Curse and Tales than Escape, it certainly ignored/retconned Escape events, but Escape's appeal has always been smaller.)

linkgoron |root |parent |previous [-]

Thimbleweed Park was a fine game with a very disappointing ending, as was RTMI sadly. I was also fine with Return's more "streamlined" game approach, but I would've liked the games to have a real storyline with a real ending instead of some kind of meta story where the journey is more important or whatever. I just lose interest almost immediately... I wanted to play Thimbleweed Park's free "mini-game" that he released during Covid, but just couldn't make myself play it due to the ending of Thimbleweed Park.

Sadly, I had a somewhat similar disappointing experience with Dreamfall: Chapters (although it was a worse game than Gilbert's games), as The Longest Journey is, IMO, one of the best adventure games ever. I played it as the episodes were released, and wanted to get back to it as they improved many things post-completion, but the could never force myself to do it.

There are still adventure games that are great that are released today by other people though.

marginalia_nu |root |parent [-]

Yeah it's a real pity what happened to TLJ. Both the first game and Dreamfall were fantastic in different ways. Though Chapters... yeah, could not get into that one at all.

RajT88 |next |previous [-]

Here and I thought I was a weird nerd, but TIL there is a Pewter society.

js8 |next |previous [-]

Clearly, it only works in-game because SCUMM, the mysterious ingredient, is installed alongside the game. :-)

RajT88 |next |previous [-]

(click)

snvzz |next |previous [-]

This is what the so-called Frontier is all about.

These models sure are put to good use.

z3ratul163071 |previous [-]

wat