Thanks, Draclvr (don't tell me you *really* love Dracula though ). So adding a topic to the Watched List will allow me to get an email notification any time someone answers or comments on my question?

Thanks again for the help.

Hi Zurreen, I have no idea why we had an outage, but I live in a secluded mountain area and I've come to accept it as one of those things.

The patch doesn't provide any description of what it does exactly, apart from it offering game-play improvements, so no way of knowing if it would help or not. It can't hurt to apply the patch anyway, though, as it might be useful for other things.

That was how it was when I first started playing games in 1999 -- big box with not much inside -- the jewel case with CD, and if you were lucky, a manual that was larger than the CD case.
But I bought some older early 1990's games on eBay, and some of those game boxes were chock full of interesting stuff.


I think the patch Marian linked to might help with it, assuming it's a bug.
But you might have to go back to an older save.
Some of the patches for these old games required that you go back to a previous location or even start the whole game over. I don't know if that's the case with this one.

There is a walkthrough here
https://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/250557-the-new-adventures-of-the-time-machine/faqs/19537
which says

I don't know the controls in this game, but if holding down the spacebar pushes the crate, maybe a quick tap has a different effect than holding the spacebar down.

Thanks again, Marian. And sure do envy your mountain location. Always wanted to live in such a place. Yes, might have outages of sorts, but sure is worth it, isn't it? Good for you!

And, why yes I DO love anything Dracula related! Books, games, just creepy stuff in general and have since I was a little girl a VERY long time ago!

Thanks, Jenny!

Thanks also for the walkthrough, but that part is not the problem. It's a box that comes later - when the hero and heroine get on top of the building, the hero cuts the rope tying two boxes, puts a board across two buildings, takes the box across the board, and then moves the box to the two on top of another - that's where the problem begins. :(

And, no, there is only one control both for moving and climbing, and that's the problem. I have played different tricks with the spacebar, without any luck. Even checked to see whether I could change the control setting, but you really don't have much of a choice for anything! The problem really is not the control but finding that one "sweet" hotspot where the hero will stop trying to move the box and just climb on it. :(

I have to tell you though this truly IS a great game, Jenny. I must have played it DOZENS of times, but still keep coming back to it. It's just those 3 boxes that I described that take the fun out of playing - for a while anyway until I overcome the problem, which is really just trying and trying and trying for hours sometimes until the hero accidentally steps on the hotspot. Can't even begin to tell you what a feeling it is when that finally happens! I save immediately, of course - praying that the game won't crash just as I click on ESC to do so, because such crashes also occur. It is an old game, after all.

I saw a YouTube walkthrough of the game though, and the guy seemed to be having NO problems at all. I also noticed a renewed interest in the game, and Googling indicated something about running the game on Win 7. Could you please check to see whether there is a newer version of the game, available legally from a legitimate site?

Thanks.

My brother does too - he loves horror stuff. Just "had" to watch "Annabelle: Creation."

Btw: Tried your suggestion, but when I clicked on the Topic at top, the only choices I got was New Reply, New Topic, Remove Topic from your Watched Topics(!), and Print Topic. So nothing about adding this topic. In fact that Remove option suggests this is already a watched topic. But still get no email notifications for any responses I get... :(

Here's some information from the FAQ (which you can find at the top of the forum page):

Could your ISP or spam filter be block emails from Gameboomers? My ISP spam filter picks stuff up and I have to add the domain to my approved list.

Hi, Marian. Thanks for the FAQs excerpt, but... I don't have a "My Stuff" tab, only "My Place..."

No, no, no. Even if my computer is "not sure" about an email, it sends it to SPAM, and I never empty the SPAM folder without first checking to make sure there is no "legitimate" email there, just for that reason - because sometimes the computer does not determine correctly. I opened the Gameboomers account long ago (2008) but only now starting to use it, and still not too frequently. So it must be my fault somehow.

Are you using webmail or an email client?
If you are using an email client, your ISP has probably already filtered your email, and the only way you can see what email it may have filtered is by logging into your account with your web browser and using the webmail interface. For AOL that would be https://mail.aol.com/

Tried your patch, Marian - installing it first in the game folder, as you suggested, and then on the one the patch itself suggested, which seemed to be the same one as you'd suggested. But... didn't work! :(

In fact, now when I click on the game's desktop icon, it gives me a message that there is no cd in the drive - even though my game's Play cd is right there, as it has always been - and then, when I cancel the message, the game begins, no doubt because the cd had been there all along! So I guess the patch is not recognizing my game cd...???

Just now - put the game's cd in the other drive, and now clicking on the game's icon takes me directly to the game again. But still no change in the glitch... :(

And, by the way, wanting to show this to you from the beginning. It's from a video walkthrough posted just last year! Following is the link to pertinent clip. Specifically, starting at 11:06. See how the hero (presently in his "boy" form) pushes the box across the buildings over the board, moves it all the way right, and then SO EFFORTLESSLY! climbs on to it?!! I wanted to contact the maker of this video to find out how come he is not having any of the climbing problems I am having, whether he has a patch or a later version of the game, etc. But there is no way to send him a message! I even "subscribed" to his channel - long enough to learn I still can't contact him or send him a message. So I unsubscribed, and wrote my question in a comment (that you can see). But he never answered, and I noticed he didn't answer the other two comments that were posted last year. So I guess he doesn't respond at all. Maybe you guys know of a way of contacting him and maybe he will tell you the answers I can't get from him??? I sure would appreciate it.

Here is the link. I hope this one does not violate any Board rules. But if you have to remove this one too, please be sure to first check out what I am talking about, so you will know exactly what I am not able to do... :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIDYYtAygyk

I have aol. No filters. Only the SPAM folder, which I check to make sure there is no legitimate email before I empty it.

I also put the only two threads I have created so far (Time Machine and, earlier, Belief & Betrayal) on the Watched List. Still no email notifications... :(

I can't find a description of exactly what the patch does or whether it will help your problem, but I did find this archived description of how to install --
http://web.archive.org/web/2004022603491...atch.php3?id=21
and this part suggests you need to start the game over:

I'm not sure what they mean by "incompatible" but it might mean problems aren't fixed unless you start over. They're certainly saying not to use your old saves.


Unfortunately we don't see his hands to see what control he was using. He's probably using a Virtual Machine with Windows 98 installed. Many YouTube uploaders who do Let's Plays of old games from the 1990's use some form of emulation -- DOSBox for DOS games or Windows 3.1 games, VMware or Virtual PC for Windows games.

You said you've played the game before.
Was that in Windows 98?
Do you remember if you used a patch last time you played?
Inferno had quite a few instructions for using it in XP. Here's a link for Inferno's archived webpage:
https://web.archive.org/web/201504010922...chine_Setup.htm
Inferno actually used two patches: "TM120INTCD.zip" and "TimeUSfix.zip"

Deleted

Thank you for the detailed response, Jenny. I really appreciate it. But as I mentioned before, the game is installed on an old XP that is not connected to the Internet. So I have to use my Win 7, which is connected to the Internet, to download the patch. I can't even connect my old XP to the Internet because I had never connected it to the Internet and, therefore, nothing (including the Internet Explorer) was ever updated. And it is only because this XP was never connected to the Internet, and therefore never updated, that it even plays the game! In fact, I have another XP computer that was connected to the Internet, and therefore continuously updated, and it cannot run the game at all.

So you see the problem now. I cannot download the patch on my old XP with the game installed on it. For one thing, the Internet would want me to update everything before it would allow me to visit any site at all. But if I update my computer to be able to get the patch, then the game would no longer play on that computer either! Thus, the above instructions that say I need to find the game directory, etc., are not applicable in my case because the game is not installed on the computer on which I downloaded the patch.

Moreover, as I think I explained to Marian earlier, my download was not like the way she described hers when she downloaded the patch to help me, or as it is described in your message. There were no zipped files. Rather I immediately got a window showing me the files to be extracted, and there were several files at that. So I never got a chance to download a zipped package. The download itself extracted everything on to my computer. Definitely unlike even my own past experiences, but that was how it happened.

Another curious thing is that in the gray box where you have (I think copied and pasted) the description/instructions for the patch installation, note that it mentions "25 file(s) unzipped successfully." But the patch I downloaded from Marian's link had only 18 files. Are you looking at the instructions for the same patch Marian found?

Finally, re: your Qs about my playing the game before - yes, I have played it several times before. On this same original-version-of-XP. I think I may have set the compatibility mode (remember: XP's had a special compatibility wizard for changing such modes) to Win 95 or 98. As I mentioned though, this is the only XP (never touched by the Internet or its updates) that allows me to play this game. I had another XP that was connected to the Internet and regularly updated, but it could not play this game. Its processor "died," so I had to get another computer and it was an XP Professional. But that too is connected to the Internet, updated, and therefore won't play the Time Machine, no matter what I do with the compatibility mode. But it's the same problem every I play this game: the climbing glitch on certain boxes. I have to do it over and over and over, ad nauseam, until I finally/accidentally find that hotspot that would make the character climb. Only I came across that video walkthrough, and I realized that there must be either a version of the game, or a patch, that allowed this gamer to play the game so smoothly. And that is what I am hoping all you nice folks will help me find: either a version or a patch that would allow me to play the game I really love so much, without all the frustration engendered by these climbing glitches.

So there you have it - the whole picture now. Please, consider especially the facts that (1)I can download the patch on a computer that neither has the game installed nor will allow it to run; (2) I did not get any zipped messages in my download experience with Marian's patch; and (3) there are only 18 files in the patch I got, not 25.

Please, tell me what to do now. Thanks.

You don't need to connect the XP computer to the Internet. Just transfer the patch from the Windows 7 computer to the XP computer using a USB thumb drive. I thought you'd already done this.


Whether it offers to unzip or just downloads the zipped file depends on how your web browser is set up, and sometimes on how the website you're downloading from is set up. Don't get confused by minor variation. If you want the file as a zip, sometimes you can right-click the link and choose "Save Target As..."


Unzipping to 18 files instead of 25 is not a concern. The Cryo patch worked by overwriting files while the patch from patches-scrolls.de has a Setup.exe which may work by altering some of the existing files in the game folder instead of replacing them. Both patches should patch to version 1.20.

The most relevant part of what I quoted from the web archive of Cryo's tech support site from year 2002 is this:

That would apply both to Cryo's original version of the patch and the patch from patches-scrolls.de because they both patch to version 1.20.


As far as I can tell, you need to start the game over for the patch to take effect.
That's assuming the patch fixes your problem. Apparently the game had several glitches.
If you watch that YouTube video, you see a few of them.

Thanks for the detailed (and so organized!) response, Jenny. And I hope you know how much I really appreciate your patience and perseverance. I really love this game so much and, let's just say life is not that great right now. So I really kind of "need" this game, which is why I am being so - persistent? - in trying to solve the problem, because I can't proceed further in the game until I get over that silly box! Really the last of the hurdles I always have in this game... :(

And I really have come so far, sure would hate to start over. As I mentioned before, it's always three boxes that give me the most trouble - and this was the last one... With my time constraints, I don't even remember how long it took me to get to this point. What if I play the game over and can't even get on the first of the three boxes at that time?! In other words, what if the patch never fixes the problem...

And yes, I had downloaded the patch on this computer and transferred it to the old one. As it turned out, it did not have a USB port(!) Old computer, you know. So I transferred the files (which I had put in my own-made folder) on a cd and then on my old computer's desktop. I then clicked on the setup.exe file in the patch files, and was given a destination of Time Machine Patch! That didn't seem right. So I used browse to go to the game folder in the Program Files. When I pressed Enter though, the path was still specified as Time Machine Patch. So I deleted the "Patch" from the path specified, and the computer said there was no such folder (even though that's the game folder, and it's under Cryo Entertainment in the Program Files of the C:\ drive!) I noticed this just now as I tried to reinstall the patch, as I was waiting for your response...

Also, remembered what you'd mentioned - compatibility. So, just to be sure, used the old XP's Program Compatibility Wizard to change the setting to 98/ME. For the program I wanted the compatibility to apply to, I put in CD ROM, because that's where my game CD is, of course. But the computer said there was no CD in the drive! So then I browsed and tried to apply the compatibility to the Time Machine desktop icon - which was probably silly, right? But I guess it's really starting to get to me...

Oh, curious thing... I tried again to download the patch Marian had recommended, just in case I had not done it right the first time. But now I get the message: "the page you requestet (typo in message itself) is not found"! What happened?!! Can you guys please check to figure it out?

O-kay... I got tired so I uninstalled the game, saves and all... Cleaned out the computer to make sure no "shadows" remained, from the game as well as the different ways I'd tried to install that patch. Hopefully, I got rid of it all, to give me a "fresh start." Reinstalled the game. Then followed Marian's suggestion and put all the patch files in the game folder. Was surprised a little because this time there was no "Replace [this or that]?" message at all. Clicked on the setup.exe, had to rewrite the path a little (it still had "Time Machine Patch 120" as destination!) - just as Jenny, I think, had explained. The game runs at least (thank God!), but it will be quite a while before I get to the boxes and can see whether the patch actually helps with the climbing problem...

Meanwhile, I am still curious as to what happened to that patch Marian had recommended... As I mentioned in my earlier message, I tried to download the patch again - just in case I had done something wrong the first time - and got that strange message with the typo: "The requestet (typo in message itself) page could not be found." Can anyone figure out what happened? I mean, where did the patch go? If so, please do be sure to let me know.

Once again, thanks for all your help, you wonderful guys. And do wish me luck. Hope so much it works, and that all this (including having to start over!) will be worth it.

I don't know where. I'm getting that too -- "requestet" with a T on the end. The link worked yesterday.
Maybe they are working on their server.

You can still download Time Machine patches from their archived site

http://www.patches-scrolls.com/dl.php?file=timeusfix.zip
http://www.patches-scrolls.com/dl.php?file=time120.zip

Good luck with the patched game. Hopefully it will work.

Thanks, Jenny. As for the archived site, did you check to see whether the Time Machine patches are still there? Whether they work either?

I can't tell you if the patches themselves work because I don't have the game and I have no way of testing. But I did download them and they appear to be the same patches as at the newer patches-scrolls site.

Apparently the "timeusfix.zip" patch is for the Dreamcatcher version of the game, and fixes problems with the game not recognizing the legitimate CD. So that's kind of rare -- a NoCD released by the publishers of the game themselves.

No, the answer you gave is the one I was asking for - whether these patches in the archives can be *downloaded* or are those links not working either. We will not know whether the patch Marian recommended will help fix my particular problem, of course, until I reach that point in the game again - and that will be quite some time since I'd done so much already.

Could you please give me a link to those Archived Time Machine patches though, like Marian did? Or would that be the same link that doesn't seem to be working anymore? I ask because I'd actually tried to navigate through their patches scrolls, but I never found what you seem to have found, perhaps because I am not familiar with this site.

Once again, thanks so much, Jenny. You're a true sport!

Oh, just tried your two links, Jenny, and in each I got the same page with the same message: "This page is no longer being updated! Please update your bookmarks and visit www.patches-scrolls.de from now on." I then clicked on the link they had given and it took me to a general page. Could not locate the Time Machine patches at all. What's going on here? :(