🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6001@ucla-cs.ARPA> srt@ucla-cs.UUCP writes:
>**** FLAME ON ****
>
>Why the HELL are wraiths in crypts automatically tainted?  One thing I hate
>about Adventure-style games is that they are filled with completely
>arbitrary gotchas (just like this).  Why put this kind of stupid trick into
>hack?  Just to screw a person's game up (once)?
>
>					-- Scott

"The bolt of fire misses.  The bolt of fire bounces.  -- More --"
"The bolt of fire hits Scott"

The wraiths aren't automatically tainted.  As with any corpse they
become tainted if you leave them too long without eating them.

	Don Kneller
UUCP:	...ucbvax!ucsfcgl!kneller
ARPA:	@berkeley.arpa:kneller@ucsf-cgl.arpa

In article <6001@ucla-cs.ARPA> srt@ucla-cs.UUCP writes:
>Why the HELL are wraiths in crypts automatically tainted?  One thing I hate
>about Adventure-style games is that they are filled with completely
>arbitrary gotchas (just like this).  Why put this kind of stupid trick into
>hack?  Just to screw a person's game up (once)?

Why is this silly and arbitrary?

Aren't Wraiths dead things that have been dead for a LONG time?????

What happens to meat that's been dead and left out for a long time????

Doesn't it become rather poisonous?????

-- 
--- David Herron
--- ARPA-> ukma!david@ANL-MCS.ARPA or ukma!david<@ANL-MCS> 
---	   or david%ukma.uucp@anl-mcs.arpa
---        Or even anlams!ukma!david@ucbvax.arpa
--- UUCP-> {ucbvax,unmvax,boulder,oddjob}!anlams!ukma!david
---        {ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax}!cbosgd!ukma!david

	"It's *Super*User* to the rescue!"

In article <1884@ukma.UUCP> david@ukma.UUCP (David Herron, NPR Lover) writes:
>Aren't Wraiths dead things that have been dead for a LONG time?????
>
>What happens to meat that's been dead and left out for a long time????
>
>Doesn't it become rather poisonous?????

Although I agree with David, I do feel that the game is plagued with
some consistency problems and some outright silliness.


For example:

I battle it out with a zombie (a foul smelling undead creature, often
with masses of rotting flesh dangling to and fro while he walks). The
zombie hits!.  After beating on him for a while, I destroy him.  Now
first of all, I would like to know how the zombie is hitting me.  With
his fists?  My plate mail should stop that. With a sword or knife?
Possibly, but I never seem to find any after I kill him. Maybe he just
gets gook on me and it sort of causes me to rot away.

Ok so now this zombie is destroyed, deanimated. I've dismembered him so
much that he can't get up (or burned him, or fried him, etc.). I'm
feeling mighty hungry so I just walk up and start eating him.  Gimme a
break!  Groosss!  And I don't get sick and die!

I'd like to see small creatures bite you instead of hit you.  I'd also like
to see less food consumption in the game.  It's not BC's quest for
food, it's hack, the *adventure* game.  Throw in some interesting
situations (ala Adventure, Enchanter, Zork, etc.) where you combine
things to solve problems.  Make the rooms zaggy, whoever heard of a
dungeon with only square rooms?  Have a facility for reincarnation (or
two), just so that those nasty unexpected traps (you can't swim!) don't
wipe you out for good after you have worked so hard.

Sean


-- 

-  Sean Casey				UUCP:	{cbosgd,anlams,hasmed}!ukma!sean
-  Department of Mathematics		ARPA:	ukma!sean@ANL-MCS.ARPA	
-  University of Kentucky

> Why the HELL are wraiths in crypts automatically tainted?  One thing I hate
> about Adventure-style games is that they are filled with completely
> arbitrary gotchas (just like this).  Why put this kind of stupid trick into
> hack?  Just to screw a person's game up (once)?

This isn't arbitrary, it's completely consistent with this world.  All
corpses older than 50 turns (except lizards) are potentially tainted.
It's unreasonable to expect that a corpse in a morgue died within the
last 50 turns.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (orca!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay)  [ARPA]

In article <544@ucsfcgl.UUCP> kneller@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Don Kneller) writes:
>
>The wraiths aren't automatically tainted.  As with any corpse they
>become tainted if you leave them too long without eating them.
>
>	Don Kneller

Uh, duh.  I know that corpses become tainted after a while.  The point is,
I ate these corpses immediately after killing them, and they were tainted.
So the question is, why?

						-- Scott Turner

> In article <544@ucsfcgl.UUCP> kneller@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Don Kneller) writes:
> >
> >The wraiths aren't automatically tainted.  As with any corpse they
> >become tainted if you leave them too long without eating them.
> >
> >	Don Kneller
> 
> Uh, duh.  I know that corpses become tainted after a while.  The point is,
> I ate these corpses immediately after killing them, and they were tainted.
> So the question is, why?
> 
> 						-- Scott Turner

I think (not sure) that there is some kind of probabilty that this will
happen. I am not sure but i will look into it...
By the way, I have never encountered this problem due to the fact
that i eat the corpse as soon as possible....(like after the kill)

		Ryan

.ex
.s

> >
> >The wraiths aren't automatically tainted.  As with any corpse they
> >become tainted if you leave them too long without eating them.
> >
> 
> Uh, duh.  I know that corpses become tainted after a while.  The point is,
> I ate these corpses immediately after killing them, and they were tainted.
> So the question is, why?
> 
> 						-- Scott Turner

From a glance at the code, there is always one truly dead body in the
morgue to begin with.  Otherwise, how could it be called a morgue?

jeff m

This is actually a reply about zombies. Have you ever seen "Night of
the Living Dead", or "Dawn of the Dead"? If you have, you might
understand how a zombie can kill you, and how you could eat it.

--------------------------------------------

Brian Millham
AT & T Information Systems
Denver, Co.

...!inhp4!drutx!review

In article <1886@ukma.UUCP> sean@ukma.UUCP (Sean Casey) writes:
> 
> Throw in some interesting
> situations (ala Adventure, Enchanter, Zork, etc.) where you combine
> things to solve problems.

Yes, everybody likes to play Adventure & Zork - until they have solved
all problems; then the game has lost all interest.

> Make the rooms zaggy, whoever heard of a dungeon with only square rooms?

I have a variant on Hack called Quest - yes, I'll distribute it sooner
or later - which is far less popular than Hack just because of these
zaggy rooms. It takes longer to search a level and otherwise there are
no remarkable differences. Thus, it pleases the eye for five minutes
and then one returns to hack.

> Have a facility for reincarnation (or
> two), just so that those nasty unexpected traps (you can't swim!) don't
> wipe you out for good after you have worked so hard.

I'll think about that one.

> From: ryan@ucla-cs.UUCP
> 
> By the way, I have never encountered this problem due to the fact
> that i eat the corpse as soon as possible....(like after the kill)

> From: srt@ucla-cs.UUCP
> 
> I ate these corpses immediately after killing them, and they were tainted.

Sorry, Ryan, but that doesn't guarantee anything.  I once ate a fresh
giant rat corpse and it was tainted.  I was not impressed!

As a result of this discussion, I finally got around to checking the
source.  You're supposed to have a guaranteed 50-move grace period
before tainting can occur.  I checked around, and the only thing I
could spot was a *really* obscure "bug" that never happens.

As background, the age of any item is stored as a timestamp (# of moves
played) when it was created.  The "true" age can then be determined by
subtracting this from the current move count.

The tainted meat test looks like
		if (moves > age + 50 + rnd(100)) {
			/* it is tainted */
			...
Well, if "age+50+rnd(100)" overflows the maximum value for long's
but "moves" hasn't overflowed yet (I *told* you it was obscure -
the maximum "window" for this is 149 moves and occurs after about
2147483600 moves!), the test will always return tainted.  If this
really is the bug, it can be fixed by changing the test to
		if (moves - age > 50 + rnd(100)) {
			...
[ This is at the top of eatcorpse() in hack.eat.c, if you actually
plan to fix this ].

The problem is that this is a ridiculous number of required moves,
unless "moves" somehow gets corrupted.  If so, this is one of the
few places that you'd notice, since only count differences are ever
looked at.  Either way, the change can't hurt, and might help.

-- 
Ron Wessels	Computer Systems Research Institute	University of Toronto
UUCP:	{decvax,floyd,ihnp4,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsri!ron
CSNET:	ron@Toronto
ARPA:	ron%Toronto@CSNet-Relay