[Crawl] Stealth:28 - Eh?

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Following situation:

"You have 18776 experience left."

Plus a manual of Stealth and:

"+ Level 26 Stealth"

'26 (3)' to be specific.

Now this happens:

"This is a manual of Stealth!
Read it?
You read about stealth."

<insert me wondering why it dumps all the experience into it, I'd
been expecting it only using a part because not all would be needed,
and now thought the surplus experience went nowhwere>

"Your Stealth skill increases!
Your Stealth skill increases!"

<insert me going: Eh?>

"The book crumbles into dust."

(Was about time, I'd been reading it since it was at level 9,
because Necromancy hit max and the other choices were Armour and
Crossbows. Not that running/yelling after monsters that are
wandering around aimlessly in the opposite direction because they
don't notice you is much fun.)

Anyway, checking I find:

"+ Level 28 Stealth"

Eh? (Still.)

With no brackets, but not the usual '*' instead of the '+', either.

Will there be any problems because of this?

Apart from my title being gone that I worked so hard for, and fit
this character so well, 'Siacach the Slayer' is now a stupid
'Siacach the Imperceptible'. That's annoying enough that I'm tempted
to just kick the entire game in the bucket.

--
Tina the Devastator - a High Priest of the Resigned Napping Gibbet

 

[Loonie]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Tina Hall .-- .-. --- - . ---...

> Anyway, checking I find:
>
> "+ Level 28 Stealth"
>
> Eh? (Still.)
>
> With no brackets, but not the usual '*' instead of the '+', either.
>
> Will there be any problems because of this?

I guess your character will be impossibly stealthy.


> Apart from my title being gone that I worked so hard for, and fit
> this character so well, 'Siacach the Slayer' is now a stupid
> 'Siacach the Imperceptible'. That's annoying enough that I'm tempted
> to just kick the entire game in the bucket.

LOL, that's what happens when you munchkin too much. Anyway that's a rare
title IMHO, much more interesting than Slayer.

--
Loonie
---------------------------------------
Respondit Pilatus quod scripsi scripsi.
http://www.crawl.webpark.pl

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

bork bork bork Tina Hall bork 7:21:00 AM bork 11/23/2004 bork bork:

A blast from the past! This bug report always intrigued me, but I never felt
competent to say anything about it, until now. Well, I still don't, but I
feel I can try.

> Following situation:
>
> "You have 18776 experience left."
>
> Plus a manual of Stealth and:
>
> "+ Level 26 Stealth"
>
> '26 (3)' to be specific.
>
> Now this happens:
>
> "This is a manual of Stealth!
> Read it?
> You read about stealth."
>
> <insert me wondering why it dumps all the experience into it, I'd
> been expecting it only using a part because not all would be needed,
> and now thought the surplus experience went nowhwere>
>
> "Your Stealth skill increases!
> Your Stealth skill increases!"
>
> <insert me going: Eh?>
>
> "The book crumbles into dust."
>
> (Was about time, I'd been reading it since it was at level 9,
> because Necromancy hit max and the other choices were Armour and
> Crossbows. Not that running/yelling after monsters that are
> wandering around aimlessly in the opposite direction because they
> don't notice you is much fun.)
>
> Anyway, checking I find:
>
> "+ Level 28 Stealth"
>
> Eh? (Still.)
>
> With no brackets, but not the usual '*' instead of the '+', either.
>
> Will there be any problems because of this?
>
> Apart from my title being gone that I worked so hard for, and fit
> this character so well, 'Siacach the Slayer' is now a stupid
> 'Siacach the Imperceptible'. That's annoying enough that I'm tempted
> to just kick the entire game in the bucket.

The little function for reading manuals revolves around this:

exercise( you.inv[sc_read_2].plus, 500 );

....and exercise() looks like this:

void exercise(char exsk, int deg) // where exsk is the skill to be exercised,
and deg is the degree of exercise [ewp]
{
if (you.exp_available > 0 && you.skills[exsk] < 27)
{
while (deg > 0)
{
if (!you.practise_skill[exsk] && !one_chance_in(4))
break; // turned-off skills unpracticed 75% of the time [ewp]

exercise2( exsk );
deg--;
}
}

return;
} // end exercise()

Exercise2, in turn, is, well, huge (it's what makes all those tweaks for
opposing schools, cross-training, etc., and then it raises your skill and
grants you a new skill level if you've achieved it), and not worth going into
in detail here, other than to say that there are nothing in it tests to
prevent a skill from reaching level 28... thus it seems the *only* thing
stopping you from reaching level 28+ in a school is that line at the
beginning of Exercise(). If you get enough levels out of the exercise to take
you past level 27 in a skill, then voila, your skill is level 28 (or
whatever... *shudder*)

(Excercise is the only thing that calls Excercise2, incidentally. And,
unsurprisingly, the only thing that increments you.skills[foo], outside of
some stuff in newgame.cc, is Exercise2.)

Normally, deg is less than 10; occasionally it's in the mid-teens or even
20+. For a manual, it's 500. (Thus the effect that a manual can apply a huge
chunk of free XP in one go.) I didn't have time to analyze the numbers
involved in exercise2 (it's pretty complicated for a stupid guy like me), but
it seems like the only thing keeping this bug from appearing during "normal"
training is the fact that normal trainings are, like I say, orders of
magnitude smaller -- deg always reaches 0 between the time level 27 is
reached and the training stops.

To a simpleton like me, it would seem the fix would be to remove

if (you.exp_available > 0 && you.skills[exsk] < 27)

from the top of the function and express the same check within the while
loop, but I have no idea what that would do to game speed (I play on modern
machines anyway, but, say, Tina Hall... were Tina Hall to still be
around...). I also have no idea what the chances are that anyone else will
ever, encounter this bug in practice again, let alone be bothered by it...
let alone stop playing Crawl in part because of it.

Erik

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.misc (More info?)

Erik Piper wrote:
> bork bork bork Tina Hall bork 7:21:00 AM bork 11/23/2004 bork bork:
>
> [A blast from the past!]
>
> [...]
> I also have no idea what the chances are that anyone else will ever,
> encounter this bug in practice again, let alone be bothered by it...

IIRC she (Tina) was going for some private goal (a certain title), which
was screwed up by this bug.

> let alone stop playing Crawl in part because of it.

Very extrem reaction, indeed. Though I know it wasn't that bug alone.
Other bugs were involved, too and some personal problems with one of the
posters here (don't recall who it was, but who cares?).

Rubinstein