Amanita Design forum

I know this has been posted many, many times...

I've tried EVERY tip possible to get the bird to fall off the wire. I followed all the advice here and in other game forums. Nothing is working.

I'm on an Acer AspireOne netbook with Windows XP, and using a touchpad.

I guess everybody's out of tips, but I really don't want to give up on this game. I was enjoying it until now. Now I've wasted hours of my life solving what should be a fairly simply puzzle. I'm so frustrated that I'm about to pull my hair out.

Is there ANY way to skip past this step? It's clearly a glitch; the developers certainly didn't intend for it to be this challenging.

I'm really ticked off at myself and the devs, since I spent $20 on a game that I can't continue to play. They never indicated that there was an incompatibility for netbooks or touchpads.

Please don't panic BunnyCat.   :)
A solution to your problem will be posted here on the forum by the end of this week.

Okay, great. I'll take a break from my glowing rectangle so I don't go bonkers. :D

Cool.  Yeah, so what I had in mind was that I would start the game fresh and then play through to that point - where you have to joggle the bird to snap the wire - and then I intended to save the ".sol" file (which contains the saves) and I would upload that here on the forum.

I'll then include all the "how to" and "there you go" instructions so that you can substitute the upped .sol for your own and then carry on the game from there.

There've been so many complaints about this up to now that it's well worth my making the effort.  So let's see what happens next.   ;D

I suggest you to save the game in windowed, 80% mode to avoid resolution issues :)
If you run the game with that .sol file it should open in the same video mode as far as I know...

Thank you so much, ABoretz. That would be a huge help. You'll have to explain where I need to put the .sol file when you upload it-- I'm a teeny bit computer-illiterate.

JST, I can't figure out how to play it in windowed mode on an AspireOne.

BunnyCat, my suggestion was for ABoretz not for you :)

Playing on netbook usually means other video limitations, not solved yet as far as I know.
See this thread about it:  http://machinarium.net/forum/index.php/topic,1015.0.html .

(BTW you will find that at least another AspireOne user can run the game in windowed mode)

Okay, so a new category, Shared Machinarium .sol Files (http://machinarium.net/forum/index.php/board,13.0.html), has been added where people can post their saved games files for folks like BunnyCat to substitute for their own to get past puzzles that they get stuck on.

Next up some sort of FAQ needs to be written up.  Anyone who wants to can take a crack at that, and if there are several contributors we can always stitch together the best ideas into a single master.  The FAQ should definitely include jst65's description (http://machinarium.net/forum/index.php/topic,1015.msg4904.html#msg4904) about how to save in 80% windowed mode for use on monitors with minimum resolutions, etc. and it should also get the input of MAC and Linux users about their experiences replacing their .sol files - or if that's even possible (Lamkin?  Nicosmos?  Anybody??)

The .sol files are pretty small, like 33K, so they can just be added as attachments if posters don't have some file hosting access.  Or the FAQ can even include some good file hosting site suggestions.

Hey, I definitely think this project will make a lot of people happy.   :D

Thank you so much! Were you planning to upload a shared .sol file, or will I need to wait for somebody else to volunteer?

I really appreciate your help.

I'll volunteer. ;o)
Here's a link to download the file:
http://b6.s3.p.quickshareit.com/files/machinarium08eeb.zip

Hopefully, you already know where to place the file. Let us know if you don't.

And I figured I'd stick the file here first so BunnyCat would be sure to see it. I'll also make a separate topic in the "Shared Machinarium .sol Files" category.

I would be willing to write a how-to for the Mac users who are trying to replace their .sol file. (I already did in another thread, actually.) =op
I'm running OS X 10.4.11, but I doubt the instructions would be any different for Tiger as opposed to Leopard or Snow Leopard...I could be wrong, though. ;o)

Lamkin, thank you soooo much! I'm really grateful.

I can't seem to find where I should place the .sol file. I've looked in all the program files at C:/Program Files/Machinarium, but I don't see any .sol files that I can replace. I'll keep looking. I'm probably overlooking the obvious.

Meh? I can't find the .sol files anywhere. They're not where they're supposed to be (according to the posts here and on other sites).

When I do a search for .sol files, the only one that comes up is the one I just downloaded.

Hi BunnyCat.  You're almost there (and I can't wait to hear how this works out for you, you're our test case :-)

Go to your desktop, hit F3 (brings up search).  In "More Advanced Options" select "Search hidden files and subfolders".
That ought to do it.

YAAAAAAAY!!!!!!

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

It worked!

Thanks, guys!

So you substituted the machinarium.sol that Lamkin made and it worked?  (Lamkin is running Machinarium on a MAC, so this would mean that the .sol files are cross-platform!)

Cool!    8)

Edit:  Confirmed!  I just loaded Lamkin's .sol on my WinXP version of Machinarium and it works.  BTW, nice job saving in 80% mode, Lamkin, just what BunnyCat needed to run on her netbook.  Well done, dude!

Yeah, before uploading the file I was going to post and ask whether or not the files were cross-platform or platform-independent....but I figured that they had to be; I couldn't see why they wouldn't be, in other words.

And I, um, wish I could say that my saving in 80% mode was intentional. My computer's maximum resolution is 1024 x 768, so I can't run the game in 100% mode, plus it simply hadn't occurred to me that a netbook user wouldn't be able to use a file that was saved in 100% mode, and it also hadn't occurred to me that that information would be saved in the .sol file—though it makes perfect sense that it would be as it's essentially a preferences file; whether or not the game is running at full screen as opposed to in a window is also saved.
But, having said all that, I'm very glad it worked out. =op

So I would strongly suggest that all other shared .sol files be saved in 80% mode in order to guarantee that nobody runs into the "Hey, how am I supposed to use this on my netbook?" problem. ;o) Or maybe people could upload two separate files?

You guys rock. Thanks so much for your help.

I'm really happy that this got worked out, given the number of people who seem to have this problem (hence the number of forum views on "bird won't fall", etc.)

More netbook-using fans for Amanita. :D