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Re: CF: Are these bugs?



Mark Wedel wrote:
> 
>  Certainly some gods should be better at it than others.  This could perhaps be
> better dealt with by the attacktypes used in the spell.

    That's what I meant.  I just named specific spells for clarity, since
there aren't very many that use Holy Effect and/or Turn Undead attacktypes. 
I modified my Holy Effect to deal normal (non-slaying) damage to undead,
even if they're not listed in the attack's slaying field, unless the cult
named in the title field lists them as friends.  Without that *5 slaying
factor, Holy Word is pretty weak, but it works.  Actually, it's very weak. 
A level 15 priest would need to cast it 3 or 4 times to take out zombies and
skeletons.  For a priest of Mostrai, with this adjustment, Holy Word becomes
about as effective against skeletons and zombies as it is against hill
giants.  But it's better than nothing, right?


>  But my point was more that just because undead may not be the main enemy of
> some god doesn't mean there should be no power at all against them.  But as
> said, the race and god relation probably needs to be rethought and balanced more
> - for many races, there are some very large gaps in monster toughness which can
> make it difficult to gain wisdom experience.

    Agreed.  From goblins to trolls, even the little ones, is a significant
leap, and you can only kill the same trolls so many times before it's no
longer worth the effort to advance that character.  And that's one of the
better examples.


>  Word of recall was never meant as an escape spell.  It was meant as a 'I am in
> the middle of no place and just completed this adventure and what to get back to
> town'.

    Oh, okay.  As long as it's intentional.  There were some other games,
probably diku muds, where I used to use it for escape.  It generally had
some unpleasant side-effect in those games, though.  A seperate escape
prayer might not be a bad idea, as long as it did something like dropping
all your coins and anything that's not inv-locked before yanking you out of
the dragon's mouth.  Maybe even locked items might have to make a saving
throw to go with you.  Given a choice between losing stuff and losing
experience, I'll leave behind as much as I need to.

    While I was testing my modified Word of Recall, I noticed something in
spell_utils.c that I don't understand.  When certain spells are cast by an
item instead of praying or spellcasting skill, the item's level is not a
factor in the strength of the spell.  Instead of the item's level,
SP_level_strength_adjust uses the player's level in the skill used to apply
the item.  For most, this is zero, since use_magic_item is a neutral skill,
so the power of the effect would not be increased at all, regardless of the
item's level.  For scrolls, however, Intelligence skill is used to calculate
the effect.
    Is it really supposed to work that way?  What then is the difference
between a Rod of Large Fireball (level 0) and a Rod of Large Fireball (level
42)?


>  It would be interesting to have a more true teleport spell where you could
> somehow choose where you want to go ('I want to go to scorn', or 'I want to go
> to that dungeon I was just adventuring in').   I don't see a real easy way of
> doing that unfortunately (the best way would be to keep a list of recently
> visited maps and let the player choose which one to go to)

    How about a teleport spell with a command line option?  If the first
word of the argument is "set", add an invisible exit-type object to the
player with the name set to the rest of the argument and the destination set
to the current location.  If the first word is not "set", look for an exit
in the player's inventory with a name that matches the argument.  Keep a
special exit named "TeleportBack" that is set every time teleport is cast,
so that if the argument is missing or not matched, you appear in the place
you last teleported from.


> >     On a barely related note, I'd love to see a repeat command that would
> > keep doing the specified action n times, or until it is successful or you
> > interrupt it.  Much safer than holding down the 's' key and hoping nothing
> > ugly shows up and eats you before you can stop searching for the trap you've
> > already found.
> 
>  Interruption goes to the above.  I guess you could add a feature such that if
> something unexpected (broad definition and prone to confusion if already in
> battle) happens, flush all pending commands (except for the definition of
> something special, this is easier, as it just requires the server to read all
> pending data and toss it, and doesn't have to worry about local buffering)

    I think that's what I meant when I suggested an interrupt.  Mostly just
wishful thinking, with a sprinkling of curiosity.  I don't have a lot of
experience with client-server apps other than things like HTTP/CGI that
don't worry too much about timing.  


>  But if nothing else, extending the count (which is used to control number of
> items to pickup/drop) to actions makes sense.  you could type 10 north, 5 east,
> etc if you know where you are going and save some typing.  This could be useful
> for some things like searching chests and whatnot.  But to do this, you probably
> want to abort on 'something unexpected' - if you run into a player that is in
> your path, you probably don't want to be starting a fight.

    Exactly what I was suggesting.  I /think/ it would be enough to abort on
detection of anything hostile, success of the repeating action (for
search/disarm) or having your path bloocked (for movement).  It would be
useless for combat, but that's okay.  "Success" should be defined by
per-skill stop conditions, like stopping prayer or meditation when you can't
recharge any more, hiding when you're as hidden as you can get, stealing
when you've taken everything they have, and so on.  Just common sense
reasons that would stop the action from doing anything useful anyway.  I
can't imagine that would take much more than a switch on the skill being
used (assuming movement has already been handled) and checking certain
conditions that have already been coded elsewhere.

-- 
            -Dave Noelle,                 dave@Straylight.org
            -the Villa Straylight,  http://www.straylight.org
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email  ==  http://www.cauce.com

Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.
Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the existence
of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient.  (A
discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope
of this message.)

Quote of the Day:
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