From a bug report, a long worm with 0 HP
was observed via stethoscope after cutting one or more worms in half many
times, followed by an unspecified crash. Cutting a worm doesn't reduce
its level below 3, but if a worm is drained to level 0 by some other means
and then gets cut in half (and still has at least 2 HP left), cutworm()
would give the new level 0 worm 0d8 (hence 0) for current and max HP.
That could confuse end-of-move monster cleanup, which thinks 0 HP is a
dead monster who has been removed from the map but not yet purged from the
fmon list. Purging it would then leave a stale monster pointer on the map.
cutworm() should have special cased level 0 to use 1d4 for HP, but
instead I've changed it to not produce a cloned worm if the source one is
lower than level 3.
In #H1820, <email deleted> reported that helms
of opposite alignment didn't work for monsters. There's never been
any attempt to implement that, and it wasn't omitted by accident, so
I wouldn't classify it as a bug. But it does seem buggy that temple
priests and minions of <deity> would be willing to put such helms on
and risk changing allegiance to another deity. This lets other types
of monsters still wear helms of opposite alignment as ordinary head
protection, but the explicity aligned creatures won't do so anymore.
use_whip() prompts with getdir(), which doesn't prevent the player
from deliberately pointing off the edge of the map, so the bullwhip bug
was more general than yesterday's fixes entry. Being confused or stunned
could trigger a problem but one could happen without them.
From a bug report, applying a polearm to make a
short-range ranged attack didn't scuff any engraving you were standing on,
unlike ordinary melee and throwing/shooting attacks. Grappling hooks had
the same omission. Fixing it led to several other minor bugs. Attempting
to target an unseen monster's spot with polearm or grapnel would yield some
permutation of "wait, there's something there" but draw the 'I' glyph at
the wrong spot. It used <u.ux+u.dx,u.uy+u.dy> instead of the actual target,
so put the 'I' one step in front of your most recent move (or throw or zap
or whatever last set u.dx and u.dy). Giving ESC when prompted for target
spot failed to use up a turn even when the polearm or grappling hook had
just been auto-wielded for use. Neither use_pole() nor use_grapple() set
`notonhead' for hmon() (called via thitmonst() in their cases; this was
academic since plain physical damage attacks don't actually care about it).
[The bad 'I' placement was a post-3.4.3 bug.]
Applying a bullwhip to attack an adjacent monster didn't have any of
those issues but did have the possibility of targetting off the edge of
the map when standing at that edge while confused or stunned.
Applying a polearm to target an 'I' would yield "nothing happens" if
the unseen monster wasn't there anymore, and it didn't bother to remove
that 'I' from the map. After changing it to do so, the phrasing no longer
made any sense. This led to a slightly bigger change than I intended:
since statues are now shown as gray monsters (does that work for tiles?)
instead of as chunks of stone, they are likely to be intentional targets
sometimes, so polearm attacks now handle them differently from other
non-monster locations. [I hope that other attack forms don't need
similar handling. Melee certainly doesn't, since walking onto the spot
is enough to distinguish statues from monsters. Having the missile pass
right through a statue's location probably suffices for ranged attacks.]
From a bug report.5 years ago? and again today:
mimics appear on the rogue level even though they're lowercase letter
monsters. <Someone> notes that during level generation, mimics pretending to
be closed doors are sometimes substituted for trapped actual doors. That
should be avoided on the rogue level both because its doorways are always
empty (enforced after the fact in extralev.c code rather than in the door
making code) and because mimics aren't uppercase letter monsters (so
should only ever appear there if they've travelled from another level).
Noticed while testing the patch for monster ranged attacks when hero
is hidden. Using #monster while in small mimic form would hide you, as
intended, but the first monster (or last monster?) who hit you hand-to-hand
would be grabbed ("It gets stuck on you."). Unlike large and giant mimics,
small ones lack such a grab attack so when you eventually returned to
normal form, u.ustuck would remain set and you would end up being stuck
to an arbitrary monster instead of releasing it from your grasp.
From a bug report, a hero who had
eaten a mimic corpse and was stuck mimicking gold was hit by an approaching
dragon's breath attack. Make monsters usually fail to notice that you're
lined up for their ranged attack when/if you're hidden from them.
The intersection of a couple of recent patches: noticed when
updating movement as a grid bug, and accentuated when fixing the attempt
to move down while levitating. If you can't reach the floor due to
levitation, don't show '>' in the list of likely candidate directions for
the prompt when digging. It was always included so that the list could
never be empty, but it's a poor suggestion to the player when levitating.
Use '<' instead in that situation; also a poor suggestion, but silly
rather than unintentional. :-)
This only affects the bracketted part of the "In what direction?"
prompt, not the actual digging (and player can pick any direction whether
it's shown in the prompt or not, so the digging code is already prepared
to handle attempts to dig up as well as down anyway).
From a bug report, being stuck in the
floor or in lava and trying to move downwards while levitating gave "you
are floating high above the floor/lava" which contradicts being stuck.
Now you'll get "you are trapped in the floor/lava" in that situation.
I thought about letting it fall through to the chance to autodig with
wielded pick, but decided to go with just the alternate message. (Being
tethered to a buried iron ball still lets you "float high above the floor",
so this doesn't check for being trapped that way.)
A mimic posing as a statue was displayed as a tengu statue (and
recognizeable as such now that statues are displayed as the corresponding
monster rather than rock-class back tick), but the lookat code described
it as a giant ant statue (since there was no obj->corpsenm available to
indicate the monster type, it defaulted to 0). This adds monst->mextra
field `mcorpsenm' so that mimics have a place to remember what sort of
statue or corpse they are mimicking. And it picks a random monster type
when they take such forms so that the old tengu hack becomes irrelevant.
newmextra() and newoextra() initialized pointers via memset(...,0)
which is not portable; switch to explicit assignments. The wizard mode
code to display memory used for monsters and objects added in amounts
for the miscellaneous things pointed to by monst->mextra and obj->oextra
structs but didn't include memory for those structs themselves; add it.
Simplify monster save/restore slightly; there's no need for extra zeroes
to represent monst->mextra->X sizes when monst->mextra is null.
Update the startup banner for 2009. I should have done this with a
separate patch but I'm taking a shortcut. :-]
From a bug report, attempting to move
diagonally when poly'd into grid bug form doesn't give any useful
feedback in the general case, and in the specific case of using 'u' to
try to move northeast with vi-style keys, it performs #untrap instead.
Diagonal directions were being classified as non-movement when in grid
bug form, so the feedback was usually just "unknown command". But 'u'
is bound to untrap as a a convenience to players who use num_pad-style
movement keys. (Move commands don't actually reach the assigned key
part of command handling, so for forms other than grid bug, !num_pad 'u'
moves NE despite the untrap function given to that key.)
Split the diagonal handling out from movement command recognition.
It now gives "you can't get there from here..." if player tries to move
diagonally as a grid bug. For direction prompts, it now gives "you can't
orient yourself that direction" instead of popping up the command assist
display. (In the prompt string showing likely candidate directions for
digging, diagonal handling for grid bugs is academic because they aren't
strong enough to wield pick-axes.)
From a bug report, a shopkeeper who's been
polymorphed into a limbless creature shouldn't be able to come take your
possessions when you die since you can't pick up items when in that shape.
Rather than add new special case handling for shopkeepers, prevent them
from taking on shapes that render them unable to behave like shopkeepers
so that they can continue to catch thrown pick-axes and assorted other
things that would otherwise need a lot of extra checking introduced.
Ditto for temple priests, vault guards, and quest leaders. Restriction
also applies to wizard mode use of #monpolycontrol, the only place where
players can actually notice this.
It could--perhaps should--restrict them even further, forcing forms
that retain speech capability, but I didn't go that far.
This started out as a one line change. After I saw someone in the
newsgroup mention that Sunsword's light was inferior to that of a lamp,
I decided to make it work better (than in 3.4.3, that is, becoming the
same brightness as a lamp) when blessed and worse when cursed (useless to
hero but still visible if wielded by a monster). But then it needed to
change light radius when its curse/bless state changed, and it needed
message feedback when doing so, and that got kind of complicated. I
wouldn't have bothered if I'd known what I was getting into, but I don't
want to throw it away now that I've done all this work....
Sunsword now gives a light radius of 3 when blessed (same as a lit
lamp), radius of 2 when uncursed (same as a lit candle and as it has been
providing since added in 3.4.0), and a radius of 1 when cursed (nearly
but not completely useless, as mentioned above). Also, it now "shines"
rather than "glows" since we usually use the latter for temporary effects.
Allow potions thrown straight down while hero is mounted to target
steed instead of always hitting the floor. There's already a fixes35.0
entry for potions hitting worn saddle instead of the creature wearing it,
but that only happened when thrown at a nearby saddled monster, not when
the hero was stuck mounted on a steed with cursed saddle.
Eight separate "the <obj> glows <color>" messages were too many...
(four for dipping an item in holy/unholy water, four more for throwing
either of those potions at a saddled monster). Replace the repetitive
code, leaving just two such messages. Setting of bknown flag for the
dipped object is the only intentional change here. That used to be done
unconditionally but now requires that the hero see the glow color.
From the newsgroup:
As you read the scroll, it disappears.
The scroll erupts in a tower of flame!
Your spellbook of force bolt catches fire and burns!
[...]
Your potion of paralysis boils and explodes!
Something seems to be holding you.
Do you want your possessions idenified?
This character survived the burning and boiling objects then succumbed
to the initial flame explosion.
A fatal explosion calls done() without any explanation. Or rather,
it dated to the time where it would immediately follow "the scroll erupts
in flame" (or "you are caught in <some kind of> explosion") without the
chance for intervening messages. Then when item destruction was moved
sooner (for bones file purposes), message sequencing was left dangling.
This patch adds a new "it was fatal" message in front of done().
From the newsgroup: hero's steed can become untame if killed while
it is wearing an amulet of life saving, leaving the hero still mounted
and resulting in repeated "placing steed onto map?" warnings when the
steed tries to move. Force the hero to be thrown off the mount in that
situation.
From a bug report, the feedback
you get when a monster summons insects or snakes is the same when blind
as when you can see. A comment in the code stated as much, but fixing
it is relatively straightforward. (Or not; there are actually a lot of
cases to be handled; this covers enough of them, I hope.)
Suggested by <Someone> <email deleted>, fainting from lack
of food while wielding a cockatrice corpse should fall on that corpse
and be fatal, like triggering a pit or moving down stairs while too
heavily encumbered. I put the fixes entry in the new features section
even though it probably qualifies as a bug.
From a bug report, getting "your
clumsy kick does no damage" when attempting to kick the location of a
concealed mimic or hidden monster didn't bring the target out of hiding.
Mentioned by <email deleted> in his report about
sound anomalies, it was possible for a sleeping hero to "gladly start
removing armor" when attacked by a nymph or succubus. The code
explicitly wakes up the hero if he has fainted from lack of food because
"can't charm without waking you" (according to the existing comment),
but it didn't handle other forms of sleep and paralysis. You could get
|You fall asleep.
|The wood nymph charms you. You gladly start removing your armor.
|The combat awakens you.
Now in the same situation you'll get
|You fall asleep.
|You wake up.
|The wood nymph charms you. You gladly start removing your armor.
From a bug report, the text change applied
when you try to give an artifact's name to am item of that artifact's type
would choose a letter from 'a' through 'y' when replacing the randomly
selected target letter. Rather than fixing the off by one bug which
prevented 'z' from being chosen, this switches to the existing routine
used for mangling engravings. (Unfortunately the fix is not as simple as
first expected, because wipeout_text() doesn't guarantee to change text
which has spaces in it and all the quest artifact names have those.)
From a bug report, pets able to eat
acidic and poisonous corpses (black naga was the case cited) would eat
green slime corpses without turning into green slime, unlike the hero.
This prevents such monsters from eating green slime unless they're
starving, implements transformation into green slime for the case where
it does get eaten, and prevents non-pet gelatinous cubes from devouring
such corpses. meatobj() is reorganized to hopefully become clearer, and
it removes the assumption that the object eater is a g.cube in case we
ever adopt slash'em's "tasmanian devil" monster.
Monsters with digestion attacks who swallow green slime monsters
are turned into green slime, but ones who swallow hero poly'd into green
slime are not. This doesn't address that.
When dragon scales or dragon scale mail becomes embedded in poly'd
hero's skin, the '[' command would report "you are not wearing any armor"
but the '*' command showed "a set of <color> dragon scales (embedded in
your skin)". The '[' feedback is more accurate but the '*' feedback is
probably more useful. This changes '[' to be more specific when lack of
worn armor is accompanied by embedded dragon scales/scale mail.
I put the fixes entry in the new features section since the old
behavior wasn't a bug.
From a bug report, polymorph of self due to
breaking a wand also polymorphed various items that were dropped in the
process, unlike the case of zapping polymorph at monsters which excludes
dropped items from being poly'd. This polymorphs the pile at the hero's
feet before polymorphing the hero. I first tried to handle it using
obj->bypass like with monsters, but that didn't work. Post-3.4.3, the
bypass handling is also used for polyself (by retouch_equipment()) and
it was getting reset at an inconvenient time.
He also complained that he failed to get "you feel shuddering
vibrations" when some polymorphed objects got destroyed. That message
is issued by weffects() which do_break_wand() doesn't call. It ought to
be fixed, but this patch doesn't address it.
Lastly, add code to prevent objects guarded against polymorph via
obj->bypass from getting used up when creating polypile golems.
Inventory formatting for a single slime mold object would be strange
if the user entered a plural word or phrase for fruit name. Forcing the
user-specified value to be singular as it's being set up as current fruit
avoids that. [Something like <Someone>'s "bunch of grapes" is unaffected;
it's already singular and correctly handled as such by makesingular().]
This may have a side-effect of limiting the creativity of some players
who try to trick others via bones files gimickery, but I think the extra
consistency in object naming during ordinary play is worth it.
According to the cvs log info, this issue was actually mentioned in
a patch I made ("fix M203...") in October, 2005. I have no recollection
of that at all....
From a bug report:
The following steps do not yield the expected fruit:
1) start nethack in explore mode (with a wand of wishing)
2) change fruit name to "tomato"
3) save/restore
4) change fruit name back to "slime mold"
5) save/restore
6) wish for a fruit; you get a tomato
7) check options; fruit name is set to "slime mold"
If you specified a fruit name that already existed in the list,
fruitadd() always set current_fruit to the fruit with
the highest fid encountered in the list to that point, instead
of the fid of the matching entry.
From the newsgroup: if no co-aligned artifacts are available when
attempting to give the first divine gift for an offered corpse, nothing
would be given. Since the gift counter stayed at 0, subsequent attempts
to select one would still treat it as first gift and always fail again.
The first divine gift from offering corpses must match the hero's
alignment; after that, nonaligned artifacts (Frost Brand, Giant Slayer, &c)
are added to the pool of choices for further divine gifts. It's pretty
easy for a chaotic character to use up the co-aligned artifacts before
getting any divine gift. There aren't many chaotic ones and some are
inelgible due to being race-specific items. Wishing for Stormbringer--or
loading a bones file which contains it--and creating Sting and Orcrist
via naming will do the trick for an elven hero.
This patch expands the pool of candidates to include nonaligned
artifacts during first gift selection if no co-aligned ones are available.
From a bug report, wearing
(or removing) an amulet of restful sleep was overriding permanent
sleepiness which had been obtained previously via eating another amulet.
The setting of timeout clobbered the non-timeout bits for that intrinsic.
This also adds the timeout counter for sleepiness to enlightenment
feedback in wizard mode. Unrelated: rephrase enlightenment feedback for
adornment to more accurately describe what that does.
From a bug report, archeologists were
inadvertently starting out at basic skill level in sling because of their
carried touchstone, which is flagged as being sling ammo.
Reported recently by <Someone>: probing feedback while engulfed
shouldn't claim that the monster is not carrying anything when the hero
is inside of it. The simple case where it's not carrying anything else
was a trivial one line change; handling inventory plus hero was trickier
and I wouldn't have bothered if I'd realized what it was going to take.
But it's done now; trivial case
The purple worm is not carrying anything besides you.
and harder case
The purple worm's possessions:
Weapons
a - an uncursed dagger
Swallowed Creature
> - human archeologist called wizard
From a bug report: in the irregularly
shaped temple on the C quest home level (the room where the leader is
located), the lit south wall contained a dark spot where a secret door
is located. It stayed blank until you got right next to it rather than
just until you got to a good angle facing it. (Magic mapping hides the
problem by showing that spot as a wall instead of leaving it as unseen;
you have to walk or teleport to that room in order to see the problem.)
The code that lights walls and doors which border lit rooms neglected
temporary walls produced by secret doors.
Implement something <Someone> suggested a long time ago: eating a
disenchanter corpse has a chance to remove an intrinsic. Uses the same
routine as nighttime gremlin attacks, which chooses an intrinsic randomly
and attempts to remove it, so has no effect if it chooses one the hero
lacks. This can be used to remove "aggravate monster" but is much more
likely to target something the player wants to keep. [By the way, a lot
of potential candidates are missing: sleep, shock, and disintegration
resistance and teleport control come immediately to mind.]
Also, it has been bugging me that you can get both strength and
fire/cold/shock resistance from the same fire/frost/storm giant corpse.
The code prevents mind flayer corpses from conferring both intelligence
and telepathy, so strength handling was inconsistent (even though it
predated mind flayers...). This causes strength boosting to be treated
as an extra candidate when selecting an intrinsic to confer, so you'll
either get strength or resistance (which might be a no-op) but not both
from those giants. And it special cases the other giants to have the
same 50% chance for boosting strength, even though the alternative in
their case is to do nothing instead of trying to confer something else.
Lastly, it now gives a message when you succeed in gaining strength.
From a bug report,
the message when dipping one stack of potions into another triggers an
explosion says "BOOM" yet nearby sleeping monsters remained undisturbed.
From a bug report: an exposed eel in an isolated
pool--swamp rooms sometimes produce those--would never re-hide no matter
how long you left its vicinity. Re-hiding is part of post-move handling
and an eel with no adjacent water to move into would never reach that bit
of code since it didn't move anywhere. The code used to re-hide monsters
when you return to a previous level was ignoring eels altogether. Give
unhidden eels a chance to hide earlier during monster movement and also
when the hero returns to their level.
Also a really minor bit to slow down hit point loss of eels out of
water. I don't think anybody reverse genocides krakens to get experience
any more since they don't provide a big bonus when they're out of water,
so this change won't have much of an affect.
Three years ago <email deleted> reported that
stepping off the end of inventory via typing space to go to the next menu
page wasted his identify scroll. He suggested that some people might do
that because they don't know how to back up in a multi-page menu. I
pointed out the Guidebook section that describes < and ^ to go back one
page or back to start and left things at that. However, traditional mode
reprompts if you step through all of inventory without choosing something,
so this changes identify-via-menu to do likewise. You can dismiss the
menu with ESC to really avoid choosing anything.
This also makes identification of N items when you're carrying N or
fewer unID'd things behave the same as identify all: identify everything
without any prompting.
I'm not a contender to win any spelling bees. (Mimicker does't
seem to even be a real word; I'm not sure if it ought to end in "or"
instead of "er". But changing it to "mime" would be too weird.)
Augment killer reason when slain by a shapechanged creature:
"killed by a foo" becomes "killed by a chameleon immitating a foo" or
"killed by a vampire in foo form" or "killed by the Wizard of Yendor
disguised as a foo" (after double-trouble, when the clone starts out
mimicking something).
I put the fixes entry in the new features section.
I was testing something with #monpolycontrol enabled and got a
series of "Change it into what kind of monster? [type the name]" prompts
when I went to a new level. It was asking about monsters that were being
created (in this case, multiple vampires for top level of Vlad's Tower)
and naturally I couldn't see them since the level wasn't finished yet.
This switches to noit_mon_nam() to at least be informed about the type
of creature you're being asked to specify a shape for, and adds the map
coordinates so that it doesn't appear to be reprompting for the same
monster over and over when multiple similar ones are being created.
In the process I discovered that #monpolycontrol would let you give
any type of monster for the shape of vampires. Unlike chameleons, they
don't change into arbitrary shapes so that was inappropriate. [And
trying to test the fix for this is what led to the previous ^G patch.]
Three years ago <Someone> reported that even though exercise of
attributes other than wisdom is suppressed while the hero is polymorphed,
attribute gains or losses due to pre-existing exercise can still take
place in that situation. Since it's an entirely different set of attrs
which will be replaced upon rehumanizing, there's not much point. (The
same is actually true for wisdom, but I didn't change how exercise works
for it.) Adopt his one-liner fix: old exercise won't cause attribute
changes while polymorphed; it will silently fade as it does when its
magnitude is insufficient to trigger a change.
While checking that out, I noticed that exerchk() was using `/= 2'
to fade out old exercise/abuse. That will produce platform-dependent
results for negative values (ie, for the abuse case) since C's integer
division doesn't specify whether to truncate towards zero or towards
negative infinity. In particular, -1 / 2 could yield -1 rather than 0
as the code expected. (Its impact on play was negligible though.)
This reduces the code for displaying the messages which accompany
attribute gain/loss. A few were repharsed in order to simplify that.
Picking up and putting on a +1 ring of protection while blind
resulted in having a "+1 ring (on {left|right} hand)" in inventory and
having ring of protection show up in the discoveries list. The problem
is the same as the one for wands which has been previously addressed
(but not 100% fixed...): when using an item whose effect is observable,
the item's type became discovered based upon that observation even if the
item itself had never been seen.
The code for removing ring of protection lacked its break statement
and fell into the case for removing ring of protection from shapechangers,
but didn't cause any noticeable problem.
I did some research, and technically, a jellyfish does indeed have no head
(and, technically, no brain, just a "nerve net"). The part on top is a
"bell" used for buoyancy, not a head.
From a bug report, putting on a helm of opposite
alignment wipes out divine protection (regardless of which god originally
bestored it) but leaves piety level towards the old god in place for the
new one. Reset alignment record to 0 when changing alignment type. Yes,
that means that the helm can now be used to clear a negative alignment,
which I think is in keeping with having subtle positive uses for bad items.
Permanent alignment change did try to tweak alignment record, but
I'm not sure that it worked as intended. Lawfuls changing away from law
got a bonus for their new alignment, neutrals retained their old record,
and chaotics changing away from chaos took a penalty to their record, all
without regard to what the new alignment became. The magnitude of the
bonus or penalty was half the record limit (which gradually increases with
turn count) so could be very big, but I don't think it made much sense.
Reset alignment record to 0 for permanent conversion same as for temporary
conversion. It's simpler and reflects the fact that you haven't yet done
anything to bolster or weaken your new alignment.
Replace the old ^X output with integrated enlightenment feedback.
Expands enlightenment output into four sections: Background and
Characteristics in addtion to previous Status and Attributes. Final
disclosure and ^X in wizard or explore modes show all four; potion/wand
of enlightenment and throne insight show the last two to give traditional
enlightenment, near enough; and ^X in normal mode shows the first three,
encompassing the 3.4.x ^X display in streamlined form plus providing
details about bottom line information.
I think I'm done with enlightenment for the time being, except for
the desire to move it (plus associated conduct feedback) to end.c or
perhaps its own file. It has grown very long and doesn't particularly
fit in cmd.c; I don't think it ever belonged there at all unless wizard
mode ^X predates potion of enlightenment.
During some recent newsgroup discussion, <Someone> posted an entry from
his personal bug list: energy draining damage from ordinary attacks is
implemented even though there are no monsters with that capability and it
was not implemented for engulf attacks even though energy vortices have
the capability. This implements energy drain engulf attacks against the
hero and also both modes of energy drain attacks for monsters and poly'd
hero against spellcasting monsters. Since monsters don't have energy,
they lose access to their special abilities (their spells, that is) for a
few turns, same as a post-3.4.3 change done for anti-magic traps.
From the newsgroup: when a monster throws a potion at the hero and
it hits a long worm's tail, you'd get "The bottle|flask|&c crashes on the
long worm's _head_ and breaks into shards." The relevant code changes
"head" to "body" when appropriate, but monster throwing wasn't setting up
`notonhead' so that alteration only kicked in for player throwing.
