Subject: UNIX Moria

From: Buckaroo Banzai <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 87 17:18:12 CDT

Hokay - the files are in place.  The source file is pretty massive; I
had to segment it into three pieces in order to fit it through our
gateway machine.  Just cat the segments together before unsharing.
It's not compressed or anything.

The best thing to do is copy all the shar files to the directory you
want to install in, then unshar moria.shar first.  There's a README
that explains how to compile and install.  The wizard passwords are a
little hidden (just enough so that someone with the strings program
can't find them easily).  They are DeadlyBalrog and MoriaDungeon.
Capitals count, no carriage return needed.

--Alan

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From: Buckaroo Banzai <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 87 13:35:12 CDT

> >You also seem to have the problem that's been plaguing me - monsters
> >aren't always visible when they ought to be, especially in dark rooms
> >and corridors.  I think there's something wrong in draw_block().
> >Drat!  I was hoping you'd solved that one.
> I have never noticed this.  Could you be a little more specific?
> How can I reproduce this?

Go to any dark room (preferrably with a human character so infravision
doesn't mess things up) and wander around.  Sometimes you'll be right
next to a monster but be unable to see it.  It also happens in
corridors, if you bump into a monster unexpectedly.  You get messages
like "You hit it," when you should get messages with the monster's
name.

I've tracked the problem down to the 'ml' field in the monster record.
Y'see, draw_block() redraws the area around the player, but doesn't
always set that field when it should.  I'd like to find a VMS version
to play with and see if it works, but I haven't been able to get the
VMS code I have to run, and I don't know the wizard passwords for it
either :-(

Re: passwords.  Nope.  I just went back and tried again - ^p and ^P
don't ask for the password.  I've compiled it on my Sun3 - have you
tried it on that machine yet?

> >The rogue-command interface is really kludgey - I'm going to hold off
> >installing that in my code for a while.
> Yeah, sort of, but it IS nice if you don't have a numeric keypad.

I guess.  it didn't take me long to adjust, but then I don't play
rogue/hack much anymore.  I'm thinking of including a patch to handle
the Sun's keypad (which generates weird escape-strings).

> The signals are some of the most important code.  I never would have
> gotten any serious playtesters if they lost games due to bugs.
> I had some people fighting the Balrog even with buggy versions of the
> game, because they did not have to start all over again every time the
> program crashed.  (anecdotal evidence: my first game of xconq was lost
> due to a floating point exception, I immediately added signal handlers
> to save games before core dumping, this proved useful during my second game :-)

I guess.  I was too embarrassed to let other people use the code while
it crashed like that.  For myself, I just used wizard mode and dbx to
regenerate games that got blown away by bugs.  Want to ship me your
diffs to xconq?  I'm getting tired of having it core dump on me all
the time.

I will try putting my files on ucbarpa and let you know when they're
there.

--Alan