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.
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.
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.
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."
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.)
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.
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".
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 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).
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.
<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.
Make polymorphing or changing alignment perform a touch check (as is
done when catching lycanthropy) on wielded weapon(s) to see whether the
hero can still use them in his new form. Part [2 of 2] will update
retouch_equipment() to check all items in use rather than just weapon(s).
(A comment or two in part 1 already refers to expected behavior of part 2.)
I had intended to put the Hate_silver patch into the branch as well
as the trunk, but hit too much nonmatching context. When switching it to
be trunk only, I neglected to put the fixes entry into the proper file.
From a bug report, trying
to invoke a wielded artifact after changing alignment resulted in "the
<artifact> evades your grasp" but it remained wielded, contradicting the
message. This adjusts the message in touch_artifact() if the object is
already in inventory, and adds retouch_object() to handle cases where
failing to be able to touch ought to force unwearing/unwielding.
From a bug report, applying a stetoscope to
a mimic which was hiding would report that mimic's stats but not bring it
out of hiding, unlike the behavior for other types of hiding monsters.
Part of the final score is doubled for ascension. Some players use
helm of opposite alignment in order to offer and ascend at the first astral
altar they reach. This limits the score doubling to ascending with your
original alignment intact, penalizing (for the subset of players who care
about score) alignment manipulation. Converting to a second alignment and
then using a helm of opposite alignment to switch back and offer to hero's
original deity yields a smaller bonus (one-and-a-half instead of doubling).
Offering to either of the other deities (either via permanent conversion
or temporarily switching via helm or both) gets no score bonus.
Suggested by <email deleted>. The level compiler allows
MESSAGE directives to provide text given upon initial entry to particular
levels. Modify the code that delivers them to support quest pager text
substitution. It could also be tweaked to support deliver-by-popup-window
in addition to deliver-by-pline, but I didn't go that far.
He also suggested revising the message for the Plane of Air, but it
seems ok to me. Instead, I've changed the message for the Astral Plane to
announce that it holds "the High Temple of <your deity>" rather than the
quite lame "the High Temples of the aligned gods".
There's newsgroup discussion about a mind flayer sucking the brains
of a ghost, plus speculation that the fix for C343-121 has already taken
care of it. I agree with them that ghost's brains are too insubstantial
to be hit by brainsuck damage from mind flayers' tentacles. C343-121 is
vague enough to cover this; the corresponding fixes entry was more specific
and is augmented here.
Reported to the beta-testers list by <Someone> last April:
restoring a normal game save file in explore mode let you keep the file,
then after exploring and quitting without saving, you could restore it
again in normal mode and take advantage of whatever information you'd
gained. This makes nethack -X (or playmode:explore) defer the switch to
explore mode when used while restoring a normal mode save file. It now
performs a normal restore (with save file deletion) and then acts as if
the user had given the 'X' command interactively, requiring confirmation
to actually switch into explore mode.
[see cvs log for src/options.c for some additional info]
Relief for the command-line impaired. Allow player to request
explore or wizard mode via run-time config file or NETHACKOPTIONS.
Validation is left to xxxmain() and has been updated for Unix, VMS, and
ports which share pcmain. Mac and Be appear to allow any user to access
wizard mode, and may not need any modification, although they'll continue
to have the old buglet of running with both wizard and discover flags set
if player uses `nethack -X -D'. This may or may not work as-is for the
Qt interface depending upon whether it goes through one of the xxxmain()'s
mentioned above [someone needs to make sure that it doesn't allow Qt on
Unix to bypass the (username == WIZARD_NAME) test when user requests
wizard mode].
From a bug report: when riding,
#jump command and jumping spell didn't check whether steed is able to move.
This makes #jump command, either magic boots or knight's innate ability,
fail if the steed can't move. Spell still succeeds; its magic overrides
steed's immobility. Fix is trunk only since it relies on a function that
isn't in the branch.
Also, tweak hero movement to avoid an extra function call per move
when not riding.
<email deleted> on Monday, January 29, 2007:
>Hero is able to kick a pile of gold (say, 100) and have the entire pile move at
>once in the same direction; very easy to avoid gold on traps. Kicking gold
>should probably scatter the pieces in multiple directions or at least not be
>quite so easy.
Set up to be able to use the m command prefix to request menu mode
for commands other than just pickup. As a side-effect, a hardcoded ','
referencing that command is eliminated. Also, the command handling for
pickup was accepting the other prefix characters (F,g,G,M,numpad 5) as
synonyms for m; this reverts all but 'm' to movement modifiers only (it
may be reasonable to retain M and 5, but this doesn't).
Make yellow dragon breath destroy iron bars (unless their wall_info
is marked as non-diggable, which I think is currently impossible for bars).
The shop handling is untested; no shop has iron bars for its walls or
includes them as interior obstacles. (The latter would require changes
to shop repair because lost bars will become solid wall if/when rebuilt.)
Thrown potions of acid and spat or thrown splashes of acid venom
don't affect bars--at least so far--because those always pass through
without hitting. Monsters who have a non-ranged attack which does acidic
damage can't use such attacks against iron bars.
Attempting to loot while suffering from confusion and not on top
of a container will drop gold if hero is carrying some, but it behaved
differently for GOLDOBJ config (gold dropped over a hole or down stairs
always stayed on current level) than for !GOLDOBJ (gold had a chance to
fall to lower level) when done at some location other than a throne.
This makes GOLDOBJ use dropx() instead of dropy(), same as !GOLDOBJ.
And with access to a throne it can be used to repeatedly summon
monsters until they're extinct. This makes it check for confusion before
finding containers, but the chest/exchequer code doesn't always kick in
so can't be attempted as many times before confusion expires, throttling
summoning a little. Also, when placing hero's gold into a chest, it now
clears the contents-known flag and relocks the chest.
[See cvs log for src/cmd.c for more complete description.]
This turns clearlocks() into a no-op during the period when the UNIX
port is asking the user to confirm whether to overwrite an existing game.
Also, this removes the duplication of code and function between hangup()
and end_of_input(), and it simplifies the check for whether hangups are
supported by adding new macro HANGUPHANDLING. (I don't think global.h is
the best place to be defining that but I couldn't figure out where else
it would fit, other than repeating for individual xxxconf.h files.) And
adds a couple more done_hup checks to try to cope with situations where
rhack() is being bypassed. Lastly, having readchar() return EOF was
ignored for non-UNIX configs; now everybody gets ESC instead of letting
EOF be seen further inside the core.
Reduce the number of questions issued when applying or looting a
container, and offer the opportunity to put things inside before taking
things out. Instead of "Do you want to take something out? [:ynq]",
followed by "Do you want to put something in? [ynq]", this gives just one
prompt; the result is similar to menustyle:full where you start out by
choosing between out, in, and both. There are now two additional choices:
reversed, for both in the opposite order, and stash, to put a single item
inside. Prompt phrasing is rather clumsy; I wanted to keep it short:
"Do what with <the container>? [:oibrsq or ?]", where picking '?' pops
up a brief help window. Inappropriate choices (like 'o'and 'b' when
container is empty) are suppressed from the prompt but still acceptable as
input; " or ?" is suppressed if the cmdassist option has been toggled off,
but entering '?' still works to get help.
Menu mode wouldn't allow 'b' when inventory was empty, despite the
fact that first taking things out might change that. Now 'b' is a viable
choice if the container isn't empty, and the new 'r' is a vialble choice
when inventory isn't empty even if the container is.
Some miscellaneous changes preparatory to enhancing the container
interface. This also fixes a minor inconsistency in object manipulation:
askchain() wouldn't let you split a stack of welded weapons but getobj()
would, so you couldn't get rid of part of the stack using 'D' or #loot,
but you could with 'd' (and post-3.4.3, with #adjust). Now getobj() will
behave like askchain(); if you have 3 cursed daggers welded to your hand,
you won't be able to drop 1 or 2 of them anymore.
Newsgroup posts mention "boulder forts" from time to time, where the
player surrounds the hero with boulders in order to prevent the majority
of monsters from being able to attack. Since the hero can shoot or throw
or zap over/around/through boulders, monsters ought to be able to do so
too. This makes the test for whether a monster is lined up properly for
its ranged attacks try harder when the original line-of-sight check fails.
If there aren't any terrain obstacles found, it allows a chance to attack
based on the number of locations in the path that contain any boulders.
Giants and any monster carrying a boulder-destroying wand of striking get
to ignore boulders, overriding the random chance.
Thrown boomerangs travelled in a clockwise path, appropriate for
left-handed throwing. But nethack heroes are treated as right-handed by
the weapon wielding and shield wearing code, so make boomerangs travel
counterclockwise instead. Switching is straightforward, in case we ever
implement user-specified or random handedness.
