Apparently this game has had a v1.1 patch. Back when I created this topic, I speedran and played on
v1.0 v1.1, apparently.
The patch notes:
Al-Qadim "The Genie's Curse"
version 1.1
Patch
The following major bug fixes for the game are as follows:
1. In the town, when the Caliph is rescued, the hero could get stuck on
the lady in green if the qadi walked too fast. The Qad's speed is now
regulated, and the hero will not get stuck.
2. Some users experienced a crash during copy protection. The game will
not crash when copy protection is called for.
3. The game would hang when potions have been drunk. This and bug two
occured due to a sound file being opened, but not closed. This
problem is now fixed.
4. When fighting water elementals on the ship, during and after the fight,
the hero could leave the ship via the row boat. This caused various
problems. The hero can no longer leave the ship until combat is over
and the captain has been spoken to.
I will probably investigate this at some point.
"This caused various problems" sounds interesting. :)
Also characters walking faster in 1.0 sounds interesting, but I think this is restricted to the game doing automated walking for you.
EDIT:
I investigated bug number 4. I haven't been able to leave the ship during or after a fight with water elementals. But I found that you can go under deck and come back on deck, which adds the trigger to the boat that asks if you want to row to shore.
You can only go under deck -after- the fight, since that's the point where the invisible wall disappears on the stairs so you can go under deck. The invisible wall is always there in the other fights (pirates and zombies, and -during- the water elemental fight). Not sure why the notes say you could go to shore during the fight as well.
If you sail from city A to city B and do this bug, it will make you go to city B. When you go back and talk to the captain, he will say the deck is clear and it finishes sailing where it left off, but will still only sail to city B again.
If you do this while sailing to Bandar (capital city),
and walk at least until the first fountain, when talking to the captain again you will dematerialize and rematerialize for seemingly no reason. When going under deck or using the boat, the ship trip resumes but you cannot ever talk to the captain again since it will just dematerialize and rematerialize you again. This only happens if you walk up far enough in Bandar, for some reason... Something weird going on in the game's memory...
I tested from a savegame and from a new game in v1.1 and the bug is possible to do.
I don't have access to v1.0 at the moment, so I can't test/compare.
More little bugs I found:
1) When leaving your hometown Zaratan to clear your family name, despite the guards holding you off from entering the town again, you can actually make it in by walking at the right side of the entrance. Everyone else will still be there including your genie. You can walk through some people, and most of them will say the same text "go look in the western part of the desert for survivors" (the text that they would say when the Caliph was still missing). You can also walk up to the Qadi's empty desk and talk to nobody. Nothing more to this for now...
2) When fighting water elementals -> kill the last one and save the game right before the game tells "congrats, everyone is killed". Now the loading zone for going below deck may be missing and you may or may not be able to talk to the captain. Basicly, saving/loading at bad timing may screw up objects/triggers. But this is the only case I found where this happens.
I reloaded a save and hit "yes" and could proceed normally from then on..
If anyone knows what's the deal with this, please let me know.
Now that I think about it, the dude on the beach walked up into the city instead of staying still. Not sure why.
(My time ended up being 1 hour 30mins 10sec or so, btw. Just about 3 minutes off my personal best from a two years ago.)