[Crawl] This one beats every "Stupid Death" I've heard of ..

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....because it seems (?) there isn't anything you can do about it.
Entered the Orcish Mines with a Mummy Necro and 5 scrolls of Teleport,
burned them all (some of them burned by enemy orc wizards actually) to
save my butt by the time I cleared level 3. I know from reading posts
on this forum how risky it is to venture in the Mines without any mean
to relocate or dig your way to the closest stairs, so I decided to
backtrack to the main Dungeon area for the time being.

Back to Mines level 2, looked for the closest stairs up, and
eventually found myself in a tiny cavern in level 1 with only one way
down. Which led to a tiny cavern in level 2 with only one way up.
Argh. So I went up and down for countless times (in the 100's) trying
to break that infernal loop, but no luck. The only piece of equipment
I had that could be helpful was a wand of random effects I emptied in
the hope it could teleport me out or dig a passage thru the rock
(though I don't know if these wands can actually do that).

So Mummy and a few of its undead minions are trapped in these damn
Mines for eternity, yet eternity won't be enough for them to clear a
passage by punching on the walls, so I decided to quit. I had never
managed to get a character so far, and losing it this way seems so
unfair. Until now I've avoided cheating with the game, but because of
experiences like this one that won't be true anymore: I swear I'll
backup my game files every time before entering a new level.

 

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Vidal <jacquesvidal # hotmail.com> bellowed:

> ...because it seems (?) there isn't anything you can do about it.

Don't go there without means to get out?

> Entered the Orcish Mines with a Mummy Necro and 5 scrolls of
> Teleport, burned them all (some of them burned by enemy orc
> wizards actually) to save my butt by the time I cleared level 3. I
> know from reading posts on this forum how risky it is to venture
> in the Mines without any mean to relocate or dig your way to the
> closest stairs, so I decided to backtrack to the main Dungeon area
> for the time being.

So you knew the risk. Don't tell me you've never enountered a stair
that leads to random locations, before. That is exactly the way you
end up in those closed off caves, so on the way out, you need to
take safe, known stairs (but trying them in the first place can land
you in a bad corner).

> Back to Mines level 2, looked for the closest stairs up, and
> eventually found myself in a tiny cavern in level 1 with only one
> way down. Which led to a tiny cavern in level 2 with only one way
> up. Argh.

I've had similar happen, too. My worries were food, but they don't
apply to a mummy. (My character eventually got killed by some iron
troll that had appeared, pretty much a suicide attack in the end.)

> So I went up and down for countless times (in the 100's) trying to
> break that infernal loop, but no luck.

The stairs that led there were the random ones, the stairs in those
caves were fixed. You could just have waited until something
happens, by pressing shift+5(?).

> The only piece of equipment I had that could be helpful was a wand
> of random effects I emptied in the hope it could teleport me out
> or dig a passage thru the rock (though I don't know if these wands
> can actually do that).

I'd decide on one, either zap myself (for teleport, bad because
there are all sorts of effects it can have) or zap the dungeon (for
digging/disintegration effect).

> So Mummy and a few of its undead minions are trapped in these
> damn Mines for eternity, yet eternity won't be enough for them to
> clear a passage by punching on the walls, so I decided to quit.

Why!? You could wait until a monster appeared with the means to
escape. It's a small chance, but at least you weren't in danger of
starving.

There was even the chance of one of those beetles appearing that
chew through the dungeon in your direction.

> I had never managed to get a character so far, and losing it this
> way seems so unfair.

It's not as if the game did this to you without you being able to
prevent it. It's annoying, but at least you can learn from it and
don't do the same mistake again (or at least knowingly take the
risk).

> Until now I've avoided cheating with the game, but because of
> experiences like this one that won't be true anymore: I swear I'll
> backup my game files every time before entering a new level.

I don't understand this. To explore is fine, or if that's the only
way you enjoy the game, but if your goal is beating the game then
whatever you do while cheating will be worth nothing in the end as
you can't win. (After all, other players live with the game's
quirks.)

The lesson here is "Don't do that again." not, "Start cheating
because the game is out to get you."

--
Tina the Charlatan - an Elder of the Rocky Naked Gremlin

 

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Tina_Hall@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote in message news:<MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_2712f385@fidonet.org>...
> Vidal <jacquesvidal # hotmail.com> bellowed:
>
> > ...because it seems (?) there isn't anything you can do about it.
>
> Don't go there without means to get out?

Well, as I said I entered the Mines with every scroll of TP I had
found so far. I was a bit unlucky my 2 last ones were burnt in my pack
in my last fight despite having a ring and a robe of Fire Resistance.
That was the reason I decided to get out of here.

> So you knew the risk. Don't tell me you've never enountered a stair
> that leads to random locations, before.

I knew there was some risk, ie starving to death because you can't
find the exit fast enough, but obviously this was irrelevant here ;-).
I sure didn't know you could end up locked like this in any place -
rather I assumed stairs leading to random locations worked that way up
and down. Obviously I was wrong.

> That is exactly the way you
> end up in those closed off caves, so on the way out, you need to
> take safe, known stairs (but trying them in the first place can land
> you in a bad corner).

The stairs I climbed up to the deadend cave was actually (I think) the
one I used to enter the level. I'm used to 'mark' my entry points in a
new level by dropping garbage in recognizable patterns. There's still
a slim chance I took the wrong stairs, though.

> > So I went up and down for countless times (in the 100's) trying to
> > break that infernal loop, but no luck.
>
> The stairs that led there were the random ones, the stairs in those
> caves were fixed.

Yep, that's what I figured out eventually. Pretty nasty :-/

> You could just have waited until something
> happens, by pressing shift+5(?).

That's what I did for about 10 or 15 minutes. How long would it take
for you to lose your nerves in the same situation? A hour? An evening?
Longer?

> > So Mummy and a few of its undead minions are trapped in these
> > damn Mines for eternity, yet eternity won't be enough for them to
> > clear a passage by punching on the walls, so I decided to quit.
>
> Why!? You could wait until a monster appeared with the means to
> escape. It's a small chance, but at least you weren't in danger of
> starving.

Actually I would have preferred to starve here - at least I wouldn't
have wasted so much time waiting for the unexpected ;-)

> There was even the chance of one of those beetles appearing that
> chew through the dungeon in your direction.

Ah, thanks for the tip, that's something new to me. I'm still rather
new to the game and didn't know about these critters.

> > I had never managed to get a character so far, and losing it this
> > way seems so unfair.
>
> It's not as if the game did this to you without you being able to
> prevent it. It's annoying, but at least you can learn from it and
> don't do the same mistake again (or at least knowingly take the
> risk).

Oh, now I sure know about _that_ risk. I still think it's unfair to
drop the player in such inescapable locations (even with scrolls of TP
you could be unlucky and fail to get out of such areas if they're
large enough), while I'm not overly concerned about dying to OOD
monsters.

> > Until now I've avoided cheating with the game, but because of
> > experiences like this one that won't be true anymore: I swear I'll
> > backup my game files every time before entering a new level.
>
> I don't understand this. To explore is fine, or if that's the only
> way you enjoy the game, but if your goal is beating the game then
> whatever you do while cheating will be worth nothing in the end as
> you can't win. (After all, other players live with the game's
> quirks.)

I don't mind about beating the game actually. I just want to see more
of it than always the same few first levels.

> The lesson here is "Don't do that again." not, "Start cheating
> because the game is out to get you."

I see that rather as an insurance vs situations that sometimes happen
and shouldn't even exist - this is IMO, OFC. I can accept being beaten
by a monster, a trap, a deity, magic, poisoning, whatever - just not
by a dumb staircase ;-).

 

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"Jacques Vidal" <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:de07e7b5.0408031044.5cca4af1@posting.google.com...
> Tina_Hall@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote in message
news:<MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_2712f385@fidonet.org>...
>
> > The lesson here is "Don't do that again." not, "Start cheating
> > because the game is out to get you."
>
> I see that rather as an insurance vs situations that sometimes happen
> and shouldn't even exist - this is IMO, OFC. I can accept being beaten
> by a monster, a trap, a deity, magic, poisoning, whatever - just not
> by a dumb staircase ;-).

I'd agree with Tina here...

The only time I would EVER make character backups is in the case where I'm
playing a game version with a known crash bug. The current release of ADOM
crashes whenever you the game thinks about ingots...

I hope you don't find yourself using your saved games when you have a
stupid, or untimely death. It takes a lot of will-power not to restore
that save.

I had a discussion with a co-worker the other day, about why he doesn't like
roguelikes... He complains that he will finally get a good character going,
and die to some over-powered monster, then all his work is lost, and he has
to start over and do it all again. To that, I retort, "Is playing the
game fun for you?" What I'm driving at is that regardless of whether or not
I die, I have fun at every stage of the game. A good RL game wont be the
"same" every time, so each new character is an embarkment on a new and
exciting adventure. I'll agree that there is some of that "shucky-darn"
going on when I lose a good character, but without that possibility of doom,
the game wouldn't be exciting at all for me.

More specifically, in the case of your dilemma, it was completely avoidable.
You might not have known it at the time, but now you do. That's a major
aspect of roguelike gaming: learning from your mistakes. Would the game be
any fun if you could just play perfectly every time, and win without much
thought? Or course not; we all follow the learning curve.

I'd think twice about why you play roguelike games, and whether or not you
really need to backup your characters...

 

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Jacques Vidal <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> barked:
> Tina_Hall@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote
>> Vidal <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> bellowed:

>>> ...because it seems (?) there isn't anything you can do about
>>> it.
>>
>> Don't go there without means to get out?

> Well, as I said I entered the Mines with every scroll of TP I had
> found so far.

Three scrolls of teleportation isn't much.

> I was a bit unlucky my 2 last ones were burnt in my pack in my
> last fight despite having a ring and a robe of Fire Resistance.

Why 'despite'? Those don't protect your inventory. You'd need an
amulet of conservation or a cloak of preservation for that.

>> So you knew the risk. Don't tell me you've never enountered a
>> stair that leads to random locations, before.

> I knew there was some risk, ie starving to death because you
> can't find the exit fast enough, but obviously this was
> irrelevant here ;-).

You still could have waited...

> I sure didn't know you could end up locked like this in any place
> - rather I assumed stairs leading to random locations worked that
> way up and down. Obviously I was wrong.

You never observed random stairs leading to a stair that has a fixed
different connection?

>> That is exactly the way you end up in those closed off caves, so
>> on the way out, you need to take safe, known stairs (but trying
>> them in the first place can land you in a bad corner).

> The stairs I climbed up to the deadend cave was actually (I
> think) the one I used to enter the level.

That's not a given, the downstairs could have been leading to a
random stair.

>> You could just have waited until something happens, by pressing
>> shift+5(?).

> That's what I did for about 10 or 15 minutes. How long would it
> take for you to lose your nerves in the same situation? A hour?
> An evening? Longer?

I don't know. I'd have gone kamikaze on a monster when I got
impatient, though.

>> It's not as if the game did this to you without you being able
>> to prevent it. It's annoying, but at least you can learn from it
>> and don't do the same mistake again (or at least knowingly take
>> the risk).

> Oh, now I sure know about _that_ risk. I still think it's unfair
> to drop the player in such inescapable locations (even with
> scrolls of TP you could be unlucky and fail to get out of such
> areas if they're large enough),

Taking a few scrolls as your 'sure way to escape' is a bad idea,
anyway. You need something that can be used more often and won't be
destroyed (like a ring, or at least a well-charged wand).

Alternately. you could have walked every spot in those caves in hope
for a teleportation trap.

> while I'm not overly concerned about dying to OOD monsters.

Which is even more unfair and more common.

>> I don't understand this. To explore is fine, or if that's the
>> only way you enjoy the game, but if your goal is beating the
>> game then whatever you do while cheating will be worth nothing
>> in the end as you can't win. (After all, other players live with
>> the game's quirks.)

> I don't mind about beating the game actually. I just want to see
> more of it than always the same few first levels.

That's what those monsters prevent usually, not this bug.

>> The lesson here is "Don't do that again." not, "Start cheating
>> because the game is out to get you."

> I see that rather as an insurance vs situations that sometimes
> happen and shouldn't even exist

No. Having the stairs disappear when you save is something that
shouldn't exist (they were there before, after all, and even that
was just a lesson of "Don't go there again until this is fixed.").
Here, it's the way it is at present.

> - this is IMO, OFC. I can accept being beaten by a monster, a
> trap, a deity, magic, poisoning, whatever - just not by a dumb
> staircase ;-).

I understand your point, but it's how the game behaves at the
moment. The colours of the stairs are just buggy (the random ones
should be brown, the fixed ones gray) at present. Knowing that, you
can act accordingly, instead of resorting to cheating. Where would
we be if every bug was met that way? Nothing wrong with backups
against outright crashes (if the game is eaten, which hasn't
happened here before).

The possibility of ending up in a separate cave is there (maybe you
even took stairs that were properly coloured brown).

What's OFC?

--
Tina the Sensei - the Favourite Plaything of the Reprobate Noisy Geography

 

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"Gibbering Poster" <a@a.com> wrote in message news:<IZTPc.6088$AY5.612@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>...
> "Jacques Vidal" <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> I'd agree with Tina here...
>
> The only time I would EVER make character backups is in the case where I'm
> playing a game version with a known crash bug. The current release of ADOM
> crashes whenever you the game thinks about ingots...
>
> I hope you don't find yourself using your saved games when you have a
> stupid, or untimely death. It takes a lot of will-power not to restore
> that save.

Actually I didn't make a single backup yet. I preferred to d/l the
source code, and I plan to add picks in the game, as well as a 'dig'
command to use them. ;-)

Anyway I find this "you shouldn't do that" uncompromising attitude a
bit hard to understand, although many diehard roguelike players seem
to share it. There are many single player RPG with save features on
the market, which are basically just roguelike games with enhanced
graphics. Does it mean all these games afre tainted because of these
features? After all, you're not harming anyone (but yourself,
arguably) when using backups in Crawl.

> More specifically, in the case of your dilemma, it was completely avoidable.

It sure was, but that's not my point. I stand to my opinion that Crawl
shouldn't put you in a situation where your only options are:

(1) hit shift-5, possibly for hours, in the hope a monster will spawn
close to you, and it'll either kill you or drop a something of
Teleport or Digging if you kill it.

(2) hit shift-q shift-y. AKA seppuku.

Both options look plain stupid to me. I see that as a design flaw in
the game. I agree you might not agree, but that doesn't say anything
about me being wrong - we're on pure opinion grounds here.

> I'd think twice about why you play roguelike games,

Heh. I've played the original Rogue for months years ago, when there
weren't any other roguelikes yet. Then I briefly played (don't
remember if it was Angband or Moria) when it first came out. I fully
enjoyed the experience, and I don't remember the thought of doing
backups ever occuring to me. Now, after a gap of several years, I
decided to try Crawl a few weeks ago, and I think it's plain fun. So
what sould I ever ask myself that sort of question?

> and whether or not you
> really need to backup your characters...

You replied to this yourself: as a protection vs game bugs. As far as
I'm concerned, game flaws fall into the same category.

 

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Tina_Hall@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote in message news:<MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_271b0024@fidonet.org>...
> Jacques Vidal <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> barked:
>
> Three scrolls of teleportation isn't much.

As I said, I had 5 of them when entering Orcish Mines #3. Used 3, the
2 last ones were burnt in my last fight here, and that was the only
reason why I decided to leave the place.

> > I was a bit unlucky my 2 last ones were burnt in my pack in my
> > last fight despite having a ring and a robe of Fire Resistance.
>
> Why 'despite'? Those don't protect your inventory. You'd need an
> amulet of conservation or a cloak of preservation for that.

Good to know, thanks for the info. I think I've read somewhere that
fire resistance was good for your scrolls, and cold protection was
good for your potions, but can't remember where. Maybe that was
relevant to another game.

> You still could have waited...

I saw that as pointless. Hitting shift-5 repeatedly for 10 minutes is
like waiting 60000 turns for something to happen, and nothing
happened, so I assumed the probs for that 'something' was fairly low
in that area and wouldn't increase significantly if I had shift-5'ed
for an hour or even 2.

> You never observed random stairs leading to a stair that has a fixed
> different connection?

As I said I'm still new to Crawl (less than 2 weeks), and I didn't
ever think about checking this. Although even if I had known this, it
wouldn't have changed anything, and is not really to the point:
whatever the reason, you should never find yourself in a situation
where shift-q shift-5 is teh only option.

> >> You could just have waited until something happens, by pressing
> >> shift+5(?).
>
> > That's what I did for about 10 or 15 minutes. How long would it
> > take for you to lose your nerves in the same situation? A hour?
> > An evening? Longer?
>
> I don't know. I'd have gone kamikaze on a monster when I got
> impatient, though.

And what if the only monsters around you are your own minions? ;-)

> Taking a few scrolls as your 'sure way to escape' is a bad idea,
> anyway. You need something that can be used more often and won't be
> destroyed (like a ring, or at least a well-charged wand).

Unfortunately these items aren't as readily available :-/. I've yet to
see my first ring of Teleport and my first wand of Digging.

> Alternately. you could have walked every spot in those caves in hope
> for a teleportation trap.

Both caves were very small, about 10x10 each, and I stepped on every
spot here. I guess the smallish area was the reason why I didn't see a
single monster spawning there - I assume their spawning location is
randomly chosen in the level?

> > while I'm not overly concerned about dying to OOD monsters.
>
> Which is even more unfair and more common.

I don't see that as more unfair: dying to a big critter is natural in
the game's context, while dying to shift-q shift-y is not. At least
OOD monsters leave you a chance, and you won't get the impression
you're wasting your time fighting them ;-) - like the (close to) 2
hours I spent trying to find an issue to the trap my Mummy was in.
_THAT_ is what I call really unfair.

BTW, the only monsters I've met so far that (I think) would qualify as
OOD were 2 Ogres (big 'O'), and I'm proud to say I defeated them both
- with 2 different level 2 characters, mainly because of speed: a
Spriggan Enchanter (quick feet), and a Deep Elf Air Elementalist
(Swiftness spell). I'm not sure if a Troll in the first level of the
Orcish Mines qualifies as such? This one killed me, anyway.

> >> I don't understand this. To explore is fine, or if that's the
> >> only way you enjoy the game, but if your goal is beating the
> >> game then whatever you do while cheating will be worth nothing
> >> in the end as you can't win. (After all, other players live with
> >> the game's quirks.)
>
> > I don't mind about beating the game actually. I just want to see
> > more of it than always the same few first levels.
>
> That's what those monsters prevent usually, not this bug.

So you admit it's a bug? ;-)

> No. Having the stairs disappear when you save is something that
> shouldn't exist (they were there before, after all, and even that
> was just a lesson of "Don't go there again until this is fixed.").
> Here, it's the way it is at present.

The stairs disappear when you save??? What does that mean exactly?

FYI, I haven't done (and therefore restored) a single backup yet, so I
have no idea about what may happen when you do this.

> > - this is IMO, OFC. I can accept being beaten by a monster, a
> > trap, a deity, magic, poisoning, whatever - just not by a dumb
> > staircase ;-).
>
> I understand your point, but it's how the game behaves at the
> moment. The colours of the stairs are just buggy (the random ones
> should be brown, the fixed ones gray) at present. Knowing that, you
> can act accordingly, instead of resorting to cheating. Where would
> we be if every bug was met that way? Nothing wrong with backups
> against outright crashes (if the game is eaten, which hasn't
> happened here before).

I didn't know about that color thing. Still a lot to learn! ;-)

Does Crawl crashes often BTW? So far it seemed very robust to me.

> The possibility of ending up in a separate cave is there (maybe you
> even took stairs that were properly coloured brown).
>
> What's OFC?

'Of course'. I thought this was a well know Usenet acronym.

 

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"Jacques Vidal" <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:de07e7b5.0408040914.4a69fe0c@posting.google.com...

> It sure was, but that's not my point. I stand to my opinion that Crawl
> shouldn't put you in a situation where your only options are:
>
> (1) hit shift-5, possibly for hours, in the hope a monster will spawn
> close to you, and it'll either kill you or drop a something of
> Teleport or Digging if you kill it.
>
> (2) hit shift-q shift-y. AKA seppuku.
>
> Both options look plain stupid to me. I see that as a design flaw in
> the game. I agree you might not agree, but that doesn't say anything
> about me being wrong - we're on pure opinion grounds here.

The game didn't put you in that position, though. Or, at least, it didn't
put you in that position any more than it puts you in positions where
you're standing next to a troll and you only have 5 hp left, or something.
You put yourself in that position.

I'm completely ambivalent about the savescumming question; if you like the
game more that way, knock yourself out. But calling something a "design
flaw" because you screwed up is kind of an insult to the designers.

--
Jeremey

 

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On 4 Aug 2004 11:12:07 -0700, jacquesvidal@hotmail.com (Jacques Vidal)
wrote:

>Tina_Hall@kruemel.org (Tina Hall) wrote in message news:<MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_271b0024@fidonet.org>...
>> Jacques Vidal <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> barked:
>> I don't know. I'd have gone kamikaze on a monster when I got
>> impatient, though.
>
>And what if the only monsters around you are your own minions? ;-)

Get rid of them. Seriously, if you had a bunch they may have prevented
monsters from generating in your area. I've had monsters get generated
by "coming up the stairs" I've been resting on, but if you have the
area filled with your buddies, there won't be room.

>Unfortunately these items aren't as readily available :-/. I've yet to
>see my first ring of Teleport and my first wand of Digging.

Neither is terribly uncommon.

>> > while I'm not overly concerned about dying to OOD monsters.
>>
>> Which is even more unfair and more common.
>
>I don't see that as more unfair: dying to a big critter is natural in
>the game's context, while dying to shift-q shift-y is not. At least
>OOD monsters leave you a chance

Not always. When I arrived in the dungeon to find myself in LOS of a
yaktaur with no cover within several paces of me, my chances of
survival were vastly worse than those of a mummy caught in the Mines.
Even just a pack of gnolls at the start of the game is a death
sentence for most starting characters.

>BTW, the only monsters I've met so far that (I think) would qualify as
>OOD were 2 Ogres (big 'O'), and I'm proud to say I defeated them both

Ogres can kill you, but they really aren't that bad unless you start
treating them casually. A tribe of gnolls is generally more dangerous,
or a group of orcs with a priest and wizard. Caring a means of
poisoning and ogres are relatively easy early experience unless you
get unlucky enough to discover its presence by being tapped on the
head with its big club.

>Does Crawl crashes often BTW? So far it seemed very robust to me.

I've never had Crawl crash while running. Froze my machine during
startup with other stuff running a few times, but that never lost me a
character.

>> The possibility of ending up in a separate cave is there (maybe you
>> even took stairs that were properly coloured brown).
>>
>> What's OFC?
>
>'Of course'. I thought this was a well know Usenet acronym.

That's not an acronym. It's not even an initialism. The initialism
would be OC.

Richard Daniel Henry
danhenry@inreach.com

 

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"Tina Hall" <Tina_Hall@kruemel.org> wrote in message
news:MSGID_2=3A240=2F2199.13=40fidonet_271b0412@fidonet.org...
> Gibbering Poster <a@a.com> buzzed:
> > I'll agree that there is some of that "shucky-darn" going on when
> > I lose a good character, but without that possibility of doom, the
> > game wouldn't be exciting at all for me.
>
> "AOL."

What does AOL mean other than America On-line? If that's what it stands
for, what does it have to do with my statement?

 

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Gibbering Poster <a@a.com> roared:
> "Tina Hall" <Tina_Hall@kruemel.org> wrote
>> Gibbering Poster <a@a.com> buzzed:

>>> I'll agree that there is some of that "shucky-darn" going on
>>> when I lose a good character, but without that possibility of
>>> doom, the game wouldn't be exciting at all for me.
>>
>> "AOL."

> What does AOL mean other than America On-line? If that's what it
> stands for, what does it have to do with my statement?

It has to do with AOL, and means "Me too!" (as in 'I agree.'), due
to the habit of AOL users (among others, but afaik they have a
higher percentage of clueless posters) quoting entire posts without
snipping anything and only adding a "Me too!".

--
Tina the Digger - the Favourite Plaything of the Rejecting National Greek

 

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> Gibbering Poster <a@a.com> roared:
> > "Tina Hall" <Tina_Hall@kruemel.org> wrote
> > What does AOL mean other than America On-line? If that's what it
> > stands for, what does it have to do with my statement?
>
> It has to do with AOL, and means "Me too!" (as in 'I agree.'), due
> to the habit of AOL users (among others, but afaik they have a
> higher percentage of clueless posters) quoting entire posts without
> snipping anything and only adding a "Me too!".
>

Wow that's 2 non-crawl-related things I've learned from Tina now..

1) what AOL means
2) ^W deletes whole words in VI insert mode...

 

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Gibbering Poster wrote:
>
>> Gibbering Poster <a@a.com> roared:
>> > "Tina Hall" <Tina_Hall@kruemel.org> wrote
>> > What does AOL mean other than America On-line? If that's what it
>> > stands for, what does it have to do with my statement?
>>
>> It has to do with AOL, and means "Me too!" (as in 'I agree.'), due
>> to the habit of AOL users (among others, but afaik they have a
>> higher percentage of clueless posters) quoting entire posts without
>> snipping anything and only adding a "Me too!".
>>
>
> Wow that's 2 non-crawl-related things I've learned from Tina now..
>
> 1) what AOL means
> 2) ^W deletes whole words in VI insert mode...

A simple single "Wow" (with fullquoting of course) would have been more
on topic here. ;-)

 

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Gibbering Poster <a@a.a> shouted:

[...]
> Wow that's 2 non-crawl-related things I've learned from Tina
> now..

Nice (if not entirely my mission, so I'm somewhat confused how this
could happen, as in "Who? Me? Can't be."). <g>

> 2) ^W deletes whole words in VI insert mode...

Wow. <puzzled> How did you learn that from me? I don't know anything
about this VI.

I just use the combination of ^ and W to _express_ a deleting of a
word that's actually meant to stay where it is... (That it's
actually carried out in some editors and that is why it's used to
express such is something I learned on Usenet. The other is ^H for
one character; backspace, but I'm actually familiar with that for
some reason, I think I've actually seen it displayed of carried out
at the keystroke, on occasion.)

--
Tina the Evocator - a High Priest of the Rampant Naughty Grime

 

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"Jeremey Wilson" <noaddressgiven@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<sq9Qc.3452$uC7.276@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>...
> "Jacques Vidal" <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:de07e7b5.0408040914.4a69fe0c@posting.google.com...
>
> The game didn't put you in that position, though. Or, at least, it didn't
> put you in that position any more than it puts you in positions where
> you're standing next to a troll and you only have 5 hp left, or something.
> You put yourself in that position.

If you like to word it that way. "You put yourself un that position,
because the game allows for it" and "the game put yourself in that
position" are 2 different ways to say the same thing, at least to me.
Basically you're just saying that shift-q shift-y is as good a way to
end your character's carreer than biting the dust because of a nasty
critter, and I just don't agree. I see Crawl as a serie of puzzles I
have to solve, and I know some of them are nigh to impossible to solve
- like when, as you say, you meet a Troll when you're only 5 hp away
from your grave. Still you can opt to read that scroll, or zap that
unID'ed wand, or use whatever is in your backpack. In the situation I
described there's no puzzle to solve - just accept seppuku or hit
shift-5 for another hour. That's completely different.

> But calling something a "design
> flaw" because you screwed up

Not because I screwed up - because the possibility exists. Gee, that's
Usenet - I guess I'm irremediably flagged as "the guy who whines
because he just screwed up" now. I admit I had to screw up to learn
about this feature, but I would have reacted just the same if it had
happened to someone else.

> is kind of an insult to the designers.

That's not intended anyway. I've been a programmer and software
designer for aboutr 20 years, I know many others like me, and I don't
know a single one (at least among the ones who truly like their jobs)
who wouldn't be thankful to anyone pointing potential flaws in their
programs to them. Apart from that, kudos to Crawl's designers and
programmers - because I think the game is great. That doesn't mean
100% perfect, and that doesn't mean one should ignore the worst part
of it - even if it's <1%.

 

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R. Dan Henry <danhenry@inreach.com> wrote in message news:<bil2h09k4r4ujlg70lq26426am9eb9olik@4ax.com>...
> On 4 Aug 2004 11:12:07 -0700, jacquesvidal@hotmail.com (Jacques Vidal)
> wrote:
>
> >And what if the only monsters around you are your own minions? ;-)
>
> Get rid of them. Seriously, if you had a bunch they may have prevented
> monsters from generating in your area. I've had monsters get generated
> by "coming up the stairs" I've been resting on, but if you have the
> area filled with your buddies, there won't be room.

Damn! Ir seems so logical, and I didn't even think about it! I'm so
ashamed I'm starting to consider the fate of my Mummy as fully
deserved! ;-)

> >'Of course'. I thought this was a well know Usenet acronym.
>
> That's not an acronym. It's not even an initialism. The initialism
> would be OC.

Technically you're right - OFC ;-) - but common usage has a strong
momentum, and common usage lists that as an acronym.

 

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> Compare to a common RPG, say Ultima 7. Ever the same plot, the items
> and characters are always in the same place. U7 has replay value
> (simply because it's fun to run around in that world), but the first
> I do is run for the flying carpet and gather all the party members I
> want (so they all get the same amount of experience), then start on

looooooooooooo

dont tell me u still play this game.

are u stuck in time (g) ????

hehe so i shouldn't bother about having seen lotr nearby a 100 times (g)

 

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"Andreas Huck" <blaaaaaaaa@t-online.de> wrote in message
news:cetemr$83j$02$1@news.t-online.com...
> > Compare to a common RPG, say Ultima 7. Ever the same plot, the items
> > and characters are always in the same place. U7 has replay value
> > (simply because it's fun to run around in that world), but the first
> > I do is run for the flying carpet and gather all the party members I
> > want (so they all get the same amount of experience), then start on
>
> looooooooooooo
>
> dont tell me u still play this game.
>
> are u stuck in time (g) ????
>
> hehe so i shouldn't bother about having seen lotr nearby a 100 times (g)
>

God ... that game (u7) was sooooooooo much fun until I got to the part where
you have to give the horn (or play it or something) to Iolo's wife, and it
never worked. It was a bug in the game, and I waited and waited and waited
for a patch which never came, and eventually uninstalled the game.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think it's U7p2 ... Serpent isle?
Great game which was blown by a lousy bug...

 

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Andreas Huck wrote:

[Ultima 7]

> looooooooooooo
>
> dont tell me u still play this game.
>
> are u stuck in time (g) ????

Is there anything better around yet? Another game where TDTTOE and that
has a few hundred NPCs and side quests?

Lars

 

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--
www.tshq.de ---- German Ressource for Tholian Strategies
"Lars Kecke" <kecke@physik.uni-freiburg.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:411245AE.5090001@physik.uni-freiburg.de...
> Andreas Huck wrote:
>
> [Ultima 7]
>
> > looooooooooooo
> >
> > dont tell me u still play this game.
> >
> > are u stuck in time (g) ????
>
> Is there anything better around yet? Another game where TDTTOE and that
> has a few hundred NPCs and side quests?
>
> Lars
>

dont remember the 'hundreds of sidequests' nor 'hundreds npc's'
only the hundreds of bugs and lousy coded style voodoo-memory-mismanager

and: There are. Point.

But: this totally depends upon point of view and i will not enter ANY
religious discussions here....

i still remember this 'shaking food out of cows' thing as one of those 'have
to laugh tears off'
while discovering it....

 

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"Andreas Huck" <blaaaaaaaa@t-online.de> wrote in news:cetemr$83j$02$1@news.t-
online.com:

>> Compare to a common RPG, say Ultima 7. Ever the same plot, the items
>> and characters are always in the same place. U7 has replay value
>> (simply because it's fun to run around in that world), but the first
>> I do is run for the flying carpet and gather all the party members I
>> want (so they all get the same amount of experience), then start on
>
> looooooooooooo
>
> dont tell me u still play this game.
>
> are u stuck in time (g) ????
>
> hehe so i shouldn't bother about having seen lotr nearby a 100 times (g)
>
Thats a very dangerous psychical missbehaviour. It's nearly as dangerous as
looking around half hour at a movie with a ghost girl that is pissed on her
previous companions that they are happy and rich becose she died. Not to
mention that naked girls in the bath... and so on.

Be carefull in few days you could start do dressup as a Gimli, and wave
around with an axe.
And I could find a crazy girl with a red hairs (and red eyes).
^_^


--
Kizutsuite 'ta ano hi kara

 

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Jacques Vidal wrote:
> "Jeremey Wilson" <noaddressgiven@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<sq9Qc.3452$uC7.276@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com>...
>> "Jacques Vidal" <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:de07e7b5.0408040914.4a69fe0c@posting.google.com...
>>
>> But calling something a "design flaw" because you screwed up
>
> Not because I screwed up - because the possibility exists.

As I understand the whole discussion (and particularly Tina's comments),
whether you screwed up or whether it's a design flaw depends on whether
you intentionally took a 'brown' stair rather than a common stair which
just 'acted' like a brown stair. The latter case I clearly would call a
design flaw. And in the first case - well, as a beginner to crawl I'm
not in the position to blame you for 'screwing up', since I even didn't
know about the risks before reading your post. ;-)

BTW, Crawl is not the only roguelike where things like this can happen:
I had a very similar incident in ADoM (teleport trap -> royal treasury,
no digging tools or source of teleport) from where I only escaped thanks
to an insanely amount of godly luck (more details would be going way too
far here). Under normal circumstances I would have starved to death...
In this case it clearly was no design flaw: it just *can* happen!

Better luck next time,
Rubinstein

 

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Jacques Vidal <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> barked:
> "Jeremey Wilson" <noaddressgiven@yahoo.com> wrote

>> But calling something a "design flaw" because you screwed up

> Not because I screwed up - because the possibility exists. Gee,
> that's Usenet - I guess I'm irremediably flagged as "the guy who
> whines because he just screwed up" now.

No. I can sympathise with your position. You had a bad situation
and didn't know any other way out but waiting an eternity or
quitting. You could have asked here for advice before quitting, but
as likely as not, you'd not have gotten all the 'know it better'
stuff you get chucked in your direction now.

There's one value, now you know more. So you can keep the advice,
and use it next time.

> I admit I had to screw up to learn about this feature, but I would
> have reacted just the same if it had happened to someone else.

Of course. Initially one gets angry at the game eating such a nice
character. I might have reacted the same way on some days. (Ok,
maybe I've reacted that way too often in the past so by now I might
first ask 'What could I have done differently?'. Getting out of the
outraged position is much harder when everyone tells you your
outrage is unfounded, rather than wondering whether it is by
yourself.)

--
Tina the Scorcher - a Priest of the Razing Negative Gale
(You just have to love the RNG for coming up with these sigs. Or
maybe it's like with horoscopes, they're so vague, they could fit
anything, or only accidentally fit on occasion. Doubt it, though.)

 

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justen <NOSPAM@nospam.net> wrote in message news:<4112a60e@usenet01.boi.hp.com>...
> Jacques Vidal <jacquesvidal@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> My requirement -- 0. My rule of thumb in the mines is to not read a
> teleport scroll unless I have an indestructible means of escaping. This
> would be a teleport item, mutation, or spell, means of digging, etc.

Thanks for sharing!

> Try a bit of role-playing. You are a mummy. You are trapped for
> eternity in a little cave, with no internet access, and kobold
> zombies for intellectual stimulation. You got there because of your
> own stupidity. What do you do?

Hehe. That's exactly what I thought first when I realized there was no
way out - "At least I've found a resting place where robbers won't
come to plunder my sarcophagus, or they'll be trapped there forever
too - that'll be my own version of the 'Curse of the Mummy'" ;-)

From a purely gaming perspective, it's still a rather boring situation
to face, though.

> I don't think your guaranteed to find a way it. At least not for
> a way out of the Abyss. You just wander around until a gateway is
> randomly generated. Sometimes it can take what seems like forever.
> I've had a couple characters suicide after being stuck in the
> abyss so long, it was getting boring.

I must have been unusually lucky then. I've been sent to the Abyss
only twice, and in both case I located an exit almost immediately
(about 2 or 3 screens away). Although one of them was heavily guarded
and I died 2 tiles away from it

> Having a low-level character cast into the Abyss is one of the
> more common ways you are put into an unsurvivable siutation.

At least it's not a boring situation ;-)

> In 12 years on usenet, I don't recall seeing OFC used for "of course."
> Which groups used it in this manner?

Hmm, apparently it's not as common as I thought. The first newsgroup I
attended on a regular basis (besides the French ones) was the Stars!
newsgroup (rec.games.computers.stars), and here it was used a lot. As
you can see yourself here:
http://www.starsfaq.com/articles/sru/art94.htm

 

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Rubinstein <picommander@t-online.de> wrote in message news:<ceu53v$pek$03$1@news.t-online.com>...
> Jacques Vidal wrote:
>
> as a beginner to crawl I'm
> not in the position to blame you for 'screwing up', since I even didn't
> know about the risks before reading your post. ;-)

Hah! So my Mummy didn't die pointlessly, since you learned something
too! Now my sorrow is fully gone thanks to this revelation - thanks
for that! ;-)

Well, 'sorrow' is too strong a word to describe how I feeled anyway. I
was truly astonished to realize there wasn't a way out of these caves,
after I had searched 'the' way out for 2 hours, but that's about it
;-).