Nightmare Creatures Password System

This document explains how to generate a Nightmare Creatures password to your specifications. The NC password system keeps track of five different things using eight symbols (Triangle, O, X, Square, Up arrow, Down arrow, Left arrow, and Right arrow). Using these symbols variously in the eight different password-screen slots gives a huge number of possible passwords, almost all of which are illegal.

First you need to decide on the following (it might be good to write these down): Which character you want to play (Ignatius or Nadia), what level you want to start on (1-21), what difficulty level you want to play on (easy or hard), how many lives you want to have (1-31), and what weapon you want to use (1-4).

Next, you will have to do a few simple math problems (groan). Most of these problems will ask you to do some simple operations (all the division is in remainder form), then just take the answer from each of the problems and run it through our handy little password decoder ring below:

0=Triangle 1=O 2=X 3=Square 4=Up 5=Down 6=Left 7=Right

This will convert your useless string of eight numbers into a useful string of eight symbols. Neat, huh?

Slot 1: (No math here)         Ignatius         Nadia
    Levels 1-8                 Triangle          Up
    Levels 9-16                    O            Down
    Levels 17-21                   X            Left
Slot 2: (Level#-1)/8           Enter the remainder
Slot 3: #Lives/4               Drop the remainder
Slot 4: #Lives/4               Multiply the remainder by 2.
                               Add 1 if your weapon is 3 or 4.
Slot 5: (No math here)         Weapon# 1,3       Weapon# 2,4
    Easy difficulty            Triangle             O
    Hard difficulty               Up               Down
Slot 6: (#Lives+Level#-2)/7    Enter the remainder
Slot 7: (Level#+Weapon#-1)/7   Enter the remainder
Slot 8: (#Lives+Weapon#-1)/7   Enter the remainder

Now I know that makes sense to me, but here is an example for the rest of you.

To start a game as Nadia, on level 13, with 21 lives, on easy difficulty, and using the level 3 weapon:

    Slot 1: The symbol for Nadia on level 13 is Down-arrow. That was easy...

    Slot 2: 13-1 is 12, divided by eight is 1 remainder 4. Putting the remainder through the nifty decoder ring, I get Up-arrow.

    Slot 3: 21/4 is 5 remainder 1. I drop the remainder and put 5 through the system. Presto! I get Down-arrow.

    Slot 4: 21/4 is still 5 remainder 1. This time I take the remainder and double it for a grand total of 2. Except now I have to add 1 because we are using weapon# 3. As the chart says, 3=Square.

    Slot 5: Another simple one. Easy difficulty with weapon# 3 is Triangle.

    Slot 6: 21+13-2 equals 32. Dividing by 7 gets me 4 remainder 4. Intuition tells me that 4=Up-arrow.

    Slot 7: 13+3-1 equals 15. Again dividing by that magic number 7, I come up with 2 remainder 1. The not-so-magic number 1 equals O.

    Slot 8: 21+3-1 equals 23. 23/7 equals 3 remainder 2. 2=X.

Thus the code for the aforementioned game is (Drum roll please): Down, Up, Down, Square, Triangle, Up, O, X. Putting this code in to my game I see that It does in fact work. Nadia is going to kick some ass in the London Zoo.

Credits:

Chris Canfield: Codebreaking, Logic, The ability to think in base 7, 8, 2, and 4, and the inability to add 11 and 9 while doing so.

David Ruth: Hours of painful gameplay to gain slight variants on each password.