From a 7.5 year old news posting (with a reply by Kevin Hugo speaking
on behalf of slash'em...): when a monster "nimbly jumps to evade" hero's
kick, it can pass through walls and grid bugs can jump off their grid.
Likewise when a joust or staggering blow knocks a monster back, it could
move grid bugs diagonally. This fixes both cases.
Offhand I can't think of any other non-standard movement situations
which might need similar handling, but it wouldn't surprise me if there
are some. Leashed movement is close but I don't think maybe_mnexto helps.
The documentation for symset also changed Guidebook.tex to use the
hyperref package, which the old DECUS TeX distribution I'm using doesn't
have. I can't remember any discussion about inserting URLs into the
Guidebook and using LaTeX to generate html output. If there was, no
comments to that effect made it into the .tex file or the cvs log text.
So I'm guessing that \usepackage{hyperref} was a work-around for the
font issue (below) and that the latter was a side-effect of converting
from deprecated \documentstyle{} to recommended \documentclass{}.
I tried installing hyperref after tracking it down, but using it
generated complaints about several other packages either being too old
or missing entirely. Coping with them would be too much hassle. I also
tried just commenting it out, but that results in a font warning that I
assume isn't present when it gets used. I managed to cobble together
a fix for that, but since hyperref.sty isn't actually needed by our
Guidebook, it was simpler to revert to the way things were done back in
the old days....
Implement <Someone>'s menu-mode for #name, primarily because it
is the natural place to add [re]naming entries in the discoveries list,
something that was requested in the newsgroup ten or so years ago. The
latter allows changing the type name of something which has previously
been named and is no longer being carried.
This also makes the C command become a synonym for #name or vice
versa; one or the other could now be reassigned to something else.
This is probably on <Someone>'s bug list, but I don't remember where
that lives. I found a copy of an old news message by him which pointed
out that gem probabilities are set for a given dungeon level at the time
it is being created, but they don't get reset when an existing level is
revisited. So giants' inventory creation and any monsters' death drops
generate gems using values from the level most recently made rather than
from their/hero's current location. That can lead to high level gems in
the main dungeon after entering the mines.
While testing something, I noticed that my last remaining discovery
would never be forgotten. The formula
count = ((count * percent) + 50) / 100
always yields 0 with count==1 and percent==25 (the value used for mind
flayer attacks). Not likely to come up in actual play very often....
From a bug report: nymphs could steal
boulders even though they aren't allowed to pick those up. It happened
becuase can_carry() is only called for monkeys (consequently, they don't
have this problem), not for nymphs.
From a bug report: amulet of strangulation
continues to kill hero if he polymorphs into a creature which doesn't
need to breathe or doesn't have a head or even a circulatory system.
Currently, the messages are different when the hero doesn't need to
breathe, but that doesn't seem good enough. This makes strangulation
stop when you polymorph into something which shouldn't be vulnerable and
restart if you poly into something vulnerable while still wearing the
bad amulet.
can_be_strangled() is doing more checks that necessary, in case the
strangulation property ever gets conferred by something other than an
amulet. Its criteria for protection from strangling might need tweaking.
From the newsgroup: Conflict caused tame engulfer to swallow hero.
To try to get out, player hit it (with Magicbane, but that's not relevant
other than to provide an alternate "you hit it" message).
The magic-absorbing blade probes the invisible Audrey!
You get regurgitated!
placing defunct monster onto map?
Program in disorder, &c
[some look_here() feedback]
You kill poor invisible Audrey!
The problem was caused by hmon_hitmon(): it subtracted damage from the
target's hit points, did some bookkeeping and message delivery, then
called killed(). One bit of bookkeeping was to call abuse_pet() and
monflee() when the target is tame, regardless of whether the damage was
fatal. monflee() -> release_hero() -> expels() puts the hero and the
engulfer back onto the map, and that warning was triggered because the
former engulfer had no hit points left.
From a bug report, getting the "you kick at
empty space" result doesn't use any turns but can have side-effects like
waking up monsters and negatively exercising hero's stats. It should take
a turn even though nothing gets kicked.
Add #vanquished command to show the vanquished monsters list during
play. At present it's only available in wizard mode. Slash'em has it as
a regular mode command, and I found it handy sometimes: when I managed to
kill an unfamiliar monster, I could immediately get an idea of how the game
ranked its difficulty compared to other monsters. But having this command
available might encourage extinctionism. On the other hand, it might stop
some existing extinctionists from cycles of save+copy+restore+quit to view
disclosure data for their current game.
This also makes merging the wizard mode extended commands into other
extended commands be more robust. It will panic instead of going out of
array bounds if someone adds entries to debug_extcmdlist[] without also
expanding extcmdlist[] to make room.
From some notes I made prior to release of 3.4.3, about applying a
carried mirror in the direction of a monster:
invisible player applying mirror toward monster which can't see invisible
should have no effect (monster can't see hero's equipment);
similarly when inside engulfer regardless of whether it can see invisible;
applying mirror at worm tail shouldn't work but does;
applying mirror toward unseen monster that can see invisible (so should be
able to see its own image) doesn't work because bhit() won't target it;
mirror shouldn't work when target is only visible via infravision.
The fourth one is iffy since it assumes that invisible monsters produce
invisible reflections rather than no reflections. The reverse of that is
probably more reasonable but isn't as interesting. The fifth one may be
contradictory; it fails to extend that logic to "infravisible monsters
produce infravisible reflections."
splatter_burning_oil() is called when a lit potion of oil gets
broken, and it can dish out fatal damage to the hero. An earlier fix
to prevent a light-source panic (thrown item is not on any of the object
lists) during bones creation didn't address leaving that lit potion
intact if it was on the floor (which can happen if the breakage is caused
by striking or force bolt rather than its being thrown or kicked). Use
the existing obj->in_use mechanism as a more general fix, after teaching
bones code that it applies to other things besides the hero's inventory.
From the newsgroup: Sunsword is ineffective against shades. It
gets a special bonus of double damage vs undead, but since it's not made
of silver it was only doing 1 point of damage against shades. Make the
bonus-vs-undead attribute override the silver-required criterion. (No
comparable handling for flimsy weapons against thick-skinned critters
this time.)
Reverse the previous patch. It made other artifacts like Fire Brand
also do full damage against shades, which wasn't inteded. Back to the
drawing board....
From the newsgroup: Sunsword is ineffective against shades. It
gets a special bonus of double damage vs undead, but since it's not made
of silver it was only doing 1 point of damage against shades. Make the
bonus-vs-undead attribute override the silver-required criterion. (If
there's ever a whip or other flimsy weapon which gets a bonus against
some type(s) of thick-skinned monster, its attack will override the skin
thickness in similar fashion.)
A change a couple of weeks ago to have player's chosen ammo be auto-
quivered when using the 'f' command while quiver is empty was excluding
objects with quantity 1. That was on the basis that it was in the process
of being thrown so there was no point in putting it into the quiver slot
first. But if it was a boomerang, or Mjollnir under suitable conditions,
there was a chance for it to be available for another throw, so there is
a point to quivering it. Also, player can hit ESC at the direction prompt
and end up not throwing it after all. So, put even quantity 1 items into
the quiver when 'f' command is used with empty quiver.
I found a copy of a news posting from 1996 which suggested that
using a[pply] to break a wand which has 0 charges should have a chance of
wresting out one extra charge, like zapping. That way the player can't
destroy spent wands with impunity, and it makes the two wand actions be
more consistent. Also, it's trivial to implement. :-)
From the newsgroup: attempting to #chat to a gnome elicited "the
gnome grunts" (because gnomes have MS_ORC sound, and MS_ORC is just a
synonym for MS_GRUNT) even when the hero was a gnome. This patch makes
MS_ORC (orcs, gnomes, kobolds, a couple of named demons) or MS_GRUNT
(ogres, ettins, trolls, gargoyles) behave as MS_HUMANOID when the hero
has same race. That by itself wasn't quite enough; hostile MS_HUMANOID
monsters other than fake players wouldn't respond, so this gives those
a generic message (threatening the hero). In a somewhat similar case,
peaceful MS_CUSS monsters wouldn't respond; now they say something too.
When testing the monster-breath-at-self patch I noticed that trying
to cure green slime by having hero breathe at self didn't work. The code
was calling buzz() with arguments that produced an attack directed against
the hero's location, but there was a chance for it to miss outright and
when it didn't, reflection would block it. This makes breathing at
yourself with `#monster' comparable to zapping a wand or casting a spell
at yourself: it always hits.
I stumbled across a copy of an old newsgroup bug report which
complained that wishing for "Gauntlets of Power" didn't work. I thought
that this was something which had already been fixed, but when I tried it
out, I discovered that you still couldn't wish for that. It was failing
because case-sensitive makesinglar() didn't recognize that "Gauntlets"
needs special handling. After the unwanted transformation, the case-
insensitive object matching would fail to find "gauntlet of power".
Removing case-sensitivity for special cases like "boots" and "gloves"
would have fixed that, but this patch goes further and removes case-
sensitivity entirely for both makesingular and makeplural. Words which
get their endings modified work when the input is upper or mixed case.
Any modified letters retain the case of the original, so the reason for
case-sensitivity--user specified fruits that aren't lower case--is covered.
Some makeplural fixes: the plural for dingo is dingoes (dictionary
says "-es", not "-s") and for roshi is roshi (just guessing here; most of
the Japanese names use same spelling for singular and plural, but we were
producing roshis). Several words which makesingular leaves in plural form
(boots, gloves, &c) are now recognized by makeplural (avoiding gloveses).
It also fixes a bunch of incorrect singularizations of plural monster
names: foxes, *wolves, lynxes, fungi/humunculi/succubi, mumakil, wumpuses,
baluchitheria, Aleaxes, *elves, erinyes, djinn, priestesses, & valkyries.
Some non-monsters that makeplural handles correctly were also not being
singularized right: feet, hooves, lice/mice, algae, children, nemeses.
For an explosion caused by the player while the hero is engulfed,
skip adjacent monsters. Also, don't give "you hear a blast" when an
unseen explosion is caused by a scroll of fire (explosion is always unseen
when hero is engulfed, regardless of explosion's cause). [Offhand I'm
not sure whether something other than the player can trigger an explosion
while the hero is engulfed.] Lastly, round up instead of down when a
monster takes half damage, so that non-zero can't be reduced to zero.
Like their use of lizard corpses to defeat being turned into stone,
let monsters use wands of fire, fire horns, and scrolls of fire to try to
defeat being turned into slime. If the scroll is read while confused, it
won't succeed. Otherwise, monsters who don't resist fire will take some
damage in the process and might end up killing themselves (although with
the testing I've gone I've yet to see that happen--I guess that means
that handling for dying-in-the-process hasn't been adequately tested...).
So far, they don't know how to jump onto adjacent fire traps, nor
will fire breathing monsters breath at themselves. I don't know whether
I'll get around to tackling either of those.
Something that pops up in the newsgroup periodically, with <Someone>
inevitably pointing out the bit of code that the user needs to tweak,
about control of feedback when hero is walking across floor objects.
Implement new option ``pile_limit'' which allows user to set the point
at which the game switches from listing the objects to giving "there are
several/many objects here". Default is 5, same as previous hard-coded
value (1 object gets listed via pline, 2..4 are listed in a corner popup,
5 or more objects yields a pline message instead). Setting pile_limit
to 0 means no limit, so objects will always be listed regardless of pile
size. Setting it to 1 effectively forces no listing since any non-empty
pile size is always at least that big, so can produce "there is an object
here" even though that's no briefer than a pline() to show one object.
From a bug report: moving while blind
and gloveless onto spot containing a cockatrice corpse is fatal if there
are fewer than 5 items there, but harmless when you get the "there are
several/many objects here" result for 5 or more. I thought that this was
something which had already been changed, but it wasn't. Run a touch
check on the whole pile of objects even when no object-by-object feedback
is being given.
Trunk only because it's using the trunk version of corpse_xname().
From a bug report, mimics
which were exposed at the time the hero leaves a level remain unhidden
upon return no matter how long the hero is away. It was actually expected
behavior since the old level is stuck in stasis and hiders only hide when
it's their turn to move, but it was noticeably odd. This makes unhidden
hiders attempt to hide when hero returns to a previous level or enters a
bones level. I reorganized the monster handling in getlev() because the
relevant part was taking place before floor objects got restored, so
hidesunder() monsters had nothing to hide under at the time.
From a bug report: rogue's backstab bonus
(extra damage when foe is fleeing) doesn't apply when dual-wielding but
does apply to thrown weapons--unless both conditions apply. Having it
apply to throwing is too powerful. Elbereth makes it trivial to get
monsters to flee and a rogue with expert dagger skill can throw up to 4
of those at a time, so a level 30 rogue could get rnd(30) bonus 4 times
in a single attack. This makes the backstab bonus only applicable to
melee and polearm attacks.
There was a suggestion in the newsgroup that if you use the 'f'
command when your quiver is empty, that whatever missile you supply to the
"what do you want to throw?" prompt be automatically put into the quiver.
This implements that, and separates most of the common code from dothrow()
and dofire() into a separate routine. A post-3.4.3 change to dothrow() to
require hands for throwing wasn't propagated to dofire(). With the common
routine, they're much less likely to get out of sync like that.
This is going into the branch as well as the trunk because the hands
checking mismatch was added there too.
Reported--more or less--by <email deleted>:
chargeable rings don't show up as likely candidates in the "what do you
want to charge?" prompt. They're supposed to be there once the type has
been discovered but it was using the wrong field so basing that on whether
the player had assigned a name to the type instead. (Picking a chargeable
ring's letter even though it wasn't listed did work correctly though.)
Noticed while looking at something else: zapping a wand of opening
or spell of knock downwards while riding causes your steed's saddle to
fall off, which in turn causes the hero to fall and take some damage.
If that damage was fatal, the saddle would be left worn in bones data.
This reorganizes mdrop_obj() to defer until last the part that ultimately
makes the hero fall off, and changes bhitm() to call that instead of
handling saddle removal inline, also gives new saddle-off feedback there.
Reported in Dec'04 by <email deleted>, the
monster spell "summon nasties" could mistakenly give a message of "a
monster appears" instead of "monsters appear" when more that one monster
gets summoned. Some of the candidate monsters for nasty() can produce a
group from makemon(), as can ones for msummon() which nasty() sometimes
calls in Gehennom. Compare the number of monsters before and after the
creation attempt(s) instead of assuming makemon() creates one at a time.
I don't know whether other routines face the same mis-count issue,
but I suspect there may be several.
Reported in Dec'04 by <email deleted>,
salamanders are capable of using items and of eating green slime corpses
without being transformed into slime, but would not pick up nor eat such
corpses to recover from being turned into stone. Now they will. Also,
monsters who are able to open tins (mainly via carrying a dagger or knife)
will pick up tins of lizard and of acidic monsters in order to use those
to be cured from stoning. The latter is already covered by this new
feature entry in fixes35.0 which previously applied only to nymphs:
"some monsters can eat tins in addition to corpses to cure some ailments".
Reported in Dec'04 by <email deleted>, an
unpoly'd hero or a hero poly'd into monster form which lacks a kick
attack both get bonus from rings of increase damage when kicking, but
a hero poly'd into monster form which has a kick attack did not.
My last fix from the Dec'04 report sent by <email deleted>. Many of its remaining observations/complaints are
about things which aren't bugs. This implements the suggestion that
doppelgangers should take on humanoid form, although it doesn't take away
the 1/7 chance for pick_nasty() and it can still fall back to arbitrary
shapes when it doesn't pick a humanoid within 5 tries. This also allows
doppelgangers to take on the shape of the various quest guardian monsters
[mostly the quest leaders' attendants, although there is at least one
extra foe (ninja)]. It excludes the quest guardian for the player's own
role, and I don't think there are any cases where it can yield unexpected
quest guardian behavior.
This also allows specifying monster class (via description or letter)
when #monpolycontrol asks for type of monster to give to a polymorphing/
shapechanging monster.
One of the complaints included in the Dec'04 report from <email deleted> was that spell of charm monster doesn't give
any feedback. This makes that spell, and scroll of taming, always give a
message. And the scroll will become discovered if a visible or sensed
monster gets converted from hostile or peaceful to tame, or from hostile
to peaceful.
Scroll of taming/spell of charm monster didn't hit steed when hero
is mounted; now it does. I don't know whether that matters though. You
can saddle a non-tame monster, but you can't ride one even in wizard mode.
However, I'm not sure whether a tame steed you're already riding can
become untame, let alone if it can do so without throwing you. If latter
is possible then re-taming while still mounted has now become feasible.
Another item from the Dec'04 report sent in by <email deleted>. When prompted for a type of monster to polymorph
into, giving a monster class description like "dog or other canine" (or
single letter like 'd'), triggered "I've never heard of such monsters".
Instead of adjusting the message, this chooses a member from the class.
I put this into the fixes file as a new feature.
<email deleted> reported a long list
of inconsistencies and suggestions. This attempts to address the ones
about werecritters and vampires.
> Polymorphed player does not get werecreature changes. (intentional?)
> Player in were form does not turn into werehuman form, ever. (Previous
> bugged behavior was that player turned into a plain human)
> Player afflicted with a were cannot polymorph into werecreature or
> werehuman form.
The first guess is right; being polymorphed blocks lycanthropy state
changes. The second is not a bug either; hero is either a <werecritter>
when in beast form or a <role> when in human form, never human werecritter
monster. The last one feels more like a bug though; it happened because
all lycanthrope monster entries are marked NOPOLY. This patch extends
an earlier post-3.4.3 change to allow player with polymorph control to
explicitly specify werecritter when in role form or human werecritter when
in beast form to toggle shape. It also allows closely related monsters
to toggle from role to beast (ie, "giant rat" yields wererat).
> Vampire or Werecreature changing form may change sex.
Now the three semi-controlled changes--becoming a dragon due to armor,
toggling were form, and vampire into various critters--are prevented from
having the 10% chance of sex change kick in. For monsters, lycanthropy
didn't apply (sex never toggles) and vampire shifting is now covered but
turning into a dragon due to scales/mail remains susceptible to sex change.
Also, post-3.4.3 code made polymorphing into a vampire enable the
#monster command but neglected to tell the player.
Reported two months ago by <email deleted>,
having a water elemental become trapped in a bear trap seems pretty
strange. Fixed by marking water elementals as M1_UNSOLID (like air and
fire elementals), which has a side-effect of making them immune to webs
as well. Tweaked some unused digging code which checks unsolid(), added
unsolid() to the types allowed to bar through iron bars, and brought the
check for whether a monster is willing to enter a bear trap location up
to date. That code also needed an update to reflect the change made to
anti-magic traps last year. Lastly, there was another report which
suggested that being hit by a bear trap should dish out some damage
(along with a suggestion that wand of opening should work to escape such
traps, which has already been done). This makes bear trap do 2d4 damage
(on entry, not when trying to pull out after becoming stuck).
Back in <email deleted> complained
that randomly generated giants in Sokoban would drop boulders when killed,
interfering with the puzzle solution. He suggested that giants either
be disallowed or be generated without inventory in that dungeon branch.
This doesn't go that far; it just rejects giants on the first pass during
random monster selection, making them much less likely to appear there
but still allowing them if giant is chosen two times in a row. (Existing
boulders aren't an issue here; giants can't pick them up in Sokoban.)
Back port the trunk fix that prevents stone-to-flesh on self when
wielding a figurine from leaving stale worn object pointer and eventually
triggering a panic or crash. Branch only except for fixes34.4 update.
Back in <email deleted> in #U1216
suggested that statues of stone golems which are hit by stone-to-flesh
spell should leave flesh golem corpses instead of meatballs. But they
should actually have revived as flesh golems. Stone-to-flesh revival of
golem statues and golem figurines didn't work as intended because golems
other than flesh or leather were considered to be vegan/vegatarian, which
caused them to produce meat rather than living monsters. Also, S-to-F of
a leather golem statue worked as intended and created a flesh golem, but
S-to-F of a leather golem firugine created a leather golem out of stone
object. This fixes it so that any type of golem statue or golem figurine
revives as a flesh golem.
Two other bugs noticed and fixed: (1) S-to-F cast on self while a
figurine of a non-veggy monster was "worn" in one of the three weapon
slots triggered an "extract_nobj: object lost" panic similar to several
similar cases which were recently fixed (that was 3.4.3; for development
code, it gave "obfree: deleting worn obj" warning instead). (2) S-to-F
activating a shop-owned figurine didn't charge for it.
Back in Nov'04, <Someone> pointed out that even with only 5%
chance for dropping a horn upon the death of a unicorn which has been
revived from corpse, it's still possible to produce a nearly unlimited
number of them for polypile fodder. This bumps the chance for a horn up
to 50%, but flags the horn as coming from a revived corpse and makes such
horns be treated by polymoprh as if they're non-magic (which practically
guarantees that they'll poly into mundane tools instead of magic ones).
From a bug report, walk_path() was
favoring orthogonal steps at beginning of the path and diagonal ones at
end, when intermixing diagonal and orthoganal produced a more accurate
representation of the real path. Only mattered for long distance jumps
3x2 or 3x1 steps away; hurtling always moves in a straight line and short
(2x1 knight) jumps aren't affected by the patch supplied with the report.
Reported last August by <email deleted>: the code
that decided whether hero poly'd into a pudding would be split when being
hit by an iron weapon always reduced damage by u.uac if armor class is
negative, whereas the normal amount is -rnd(-u.uac). So player pudding
with good armor always got maximum reduction. Probably had little actual
effect on game play; puddings can't wear armor so would need to be using
rings and/or spell of protection and/or have eaten rings of protection
while in some previous metallivoric form in order to get good enough AC
for this to matter.
From a bug report, kicking unpaid
food in a shop at a tameable monster resulting in taming the monster
without charging for the used-up food. This forces kicked objects that
are owned by shops to be put on the shop bill and flagged as unpaid, which
is normally reserved for carried items but makes kicked ones behave like
thrown ones. (If they land inside the shop without breaking, they're
removed from the bill.) So kicking food to make a pet now results in the
item being moved from the shop's unpaid bill to its used-up bill, same as
for thrown food. Although the latter kept billing consistent, it lacked
shop billing feedback; this fixes that too.
Wielding a bow while kicking arrows gave a shooting bonus. Also,
From a bug report: applying a
polearm to hit at range never caused a pudding to split because the attack
gets treated as throwing. Likewise, confuse monster effect (hands glowing
red) didn't kick in for applied polearms.
From the newsgroup: player chatted with leader and was ejected for
not being high enough level, then when he came back later there was no
leader to be found, but there was a polymorph trap on quest home level.
This makes quest leaders and nemesis be aware of all trap types--rather
than just having leaders be aware of magic portals--so they'll be able to
avoid polymorph traps. It also makes chatting with a polymorphed leader
work as long as the new form is able to speak (use same criteria as with
poly'd shopkeepers: can't be in a form that's limited to animal sounds).
<email deleted> reported back on 8/31/06 that elven weapons were not
affected when he poked a fire elemental with them. This is true, but
moreover, there was no code to have passive fire to affect attackers.
Now erode_obj() supports all the same damage types as rust_dmg(), and added
the connecting code to allow passive fire attacks do something.
There probably should be macros for the damage types used by rust_dmg
and erode_obj, and possibly these functions should be combined, but they
are slightly different and dealing with that requires more thought.
