Purble Place

Purble Place
Developer: Oberon Games Publisher: Microsoft Platform: Windows Released internationally: January 30, 2007 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has hidden bonus content. This game has a notes page

Purble Place is one of the new games (or, rather, a collection of games) included with Windows Vista and 7. The collection is intended for very young children and it shows.

To do: See if more of the options work in the Vista version. This was tested with the Windows 7 version. There's much more to document. A good place to start would be to use Resource Hacker on the game executable and DLLs. Add sub-page for "Media Center Purble Place", a full-screen version of the game embedded into the game's executable which although is technically used as it can be launched from Windows Media Center, it is not documented in any Help menus, and it also contains a whole bunch of unused content the normal game doesn't. Multiple prototypes of this game exist in various Windows Longhorn/Vista Beta builds, collect all of them and create a Prototypes sub-page.

Debug Menus

As with most other games shipped with Vista and 7, it has an internal g_debugEnabled variable. However, the debug menus aren't seen until entering one of the mini-games.

Purble Shop

The only part of the menu that appears to work is "Toggle Curtain", allowing the player to see behind the curtain. The rest appear to have been for the figure the player has to guess for, but they don't appear to be functional. The options consist of trying to pick the graphics currently available.

Comfy Cakes

The only option that appears to work is "Win Game", which does indeed let the player win. "Reload Variables" doesn't appear to do anything on the surface, while "Time Attack Mode" might be a scrapped game mode.

Purble Pairs

This menu is comparatively intact, with 60% of the options working. The options included in this menu are:

• Sneak Peak - Lets the player look at all the tiles, but only if none of them have been flipped.
• Force Win - As you'd expect, the player automatically wins the game.
• Mixer - Mimics the sundae dessert "power-down"; the tiles are moved all across the playfield.
• Force Lose - As it says, the player automatically loses, but would only work on Intermediate and Advanced since in Beginner, you cannot lose.
• Time - Doesn't work, might be intended for controlling the timer.

Internal Minigame Title

Internally, Purble Pairs is just called "Concentration", Purble Shop also has an internal name, "Build-A-Purble".

XInput Support

An interesting feature that isn't documented anywhere (Help Menu-wise) is XInput (gamepad) support – if the game detects an Xbox 360 controller plugged into a USB port, the P1 corner on the controller will light up, signifying the controller can be used. Possibly undocumented because Microsoft thought people were too used to the traditional controls, and little kids wouldn't be using a controller. It's a neat little feature, nonetheless.

Controls

Button	Effect
Left analog stick/D-Pad/Shoulder Buttons/Triggers	Moves the cursor. Oddly, they can also be used to navigate the menu bar.
B/Back	Varies.
A/X	Selects whatever the cursor is on.
Y/Start	Opens the Game Menu.

Unused Graphics

Beginning with Windows Vista build 5308 when the textures are changed to the final version, early red eye textures were strangely buried under UI/BuildAPurble/Features/Icons.

Unused green mouth and yellow nose graphics also exist, but inside /UI/BuildAPurble/Features. However, one of the green mouth graphics goes completely unused in all builds of the game.

Media Center Purble Place

A full-screen version of the game is embedded into the game's executable, which although is technically used as it can be launched from Windows Media Center, it is not documented in any Help menus. It also contains a whole bunch of unused content the normal game doesn't. purbleplace.exe.mui (Or whatever it is) contains dedicated dialogs, tips, scripts, etc., but there's also unused fullscreen dialog boxes of these.

Leftover Texture Pack Dialog

Located inside the MUI files for the game, there's a leftover dialog for changing the texture packs. The card games and Chess Titans allows the player to change the textures. But as Purble Place doesn't have texture packs, this dialog is unused.

  CONTROL "OK", 1, BUTTON, BS_DEFPUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP | WS_TABSTOP, 236, 278, 72, 14 
  CONTROL "Cancel", 2, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 310, 278, 72, 14 
  CONTROL "Select Card Deck", 5002, STATIC, SS_LEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 7, 7, 234, 8 
  CONTROL "", 5000, "SysListView32", LVS_ICON | LVS_SINGLESEL | LVS_SHOWSELALWAYS | LVS_SHAREIMAGELISTS | LVS_ALIGNLEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_BORDER | WS_GROUP | WS_TABSTOP, 7, 17, 380, 108 
  CONTROL "Select Background", 5003, STATIC, SS_LEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP, 7, 135, 234, 8 
  CONTROL "", 5001, "SysListView32", LVS_ICON | LVS_SINGLESEL | LVS_SHOWSELALWAYS | LVS_SHAREIMAGELISTS | LVS_ALIGNLEFT | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_BORDER | WS_GROUP | WS_TABSTOP, 7, 145, 380, 101 
  CONTROL "&Randomly choose deck and background", 5004, BUTTON, BS_AUTOCHECKBOX | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_GROUP | WS_TABSTOP, 7, 253, 233, 10