GABYSOFT

I read the forum thru the other day, and I recall seeing some discussion on Special Rooms not coughing appropriate items... in returning to the forum, I cannot find this thread anywhere. So I am posting a new thread.

John,

You seem to hava a bug somewhere in this routine and I have now seen two seperate variants.

When I hit SR 2, my first item was a gem of kominasom. I thought, huh? That was cheesey and moved on.
When I hit SR 3, I got a set of special plate mail. (that worked right.)
When I hit SR 4, I got a Rod of Kings and I said huh???? I went on to hit SR 4 a great many times, and I finally got a "Real Item" on the 6th or 7th iteration. It almost seems like you may have some item duplication between tables going on. IE "XXX Cloak" appears on both SR 1 table and SR 2 table. So when I pull the cloak from SR 1, I get crap from SR 2 cause I already have an item from the table.

That is the first error. I read that you were supposed to score a "real" item on your first go thru on each level, and that is not happening.

The second error was truely tragic. Hit SR on 5, it was an epic battle that resulted in one of my chars getting stoned but ultimately, I survived. After killing the last monster, the chest icon appeared, but the usual text about opening the trap did not. I could highlight various characters, but could not access any of their menus. I wanted to send a comment, but could not access that function as well. So to be clear, the app was running, there was no crash, but I was stuck in between the combat mode and the open box mode. (oh, on IOS if that matters.)

John,

As a player, breaking into a new level and spending some time SR'ing it only to find an item you get randomly on lvl 1, is pretty much the ultimate anti-climax. It is a major kill-joy and for me at least, sucks the life right out of the game. As an old time player, SR'ing "IS" the game. So to get nothing for it...

If you want to fix this, just make the special items distinct to each level. And If you don't have enough make a couple more that aren't really all that great. Like a ring pro +1 that you U for a small bonus to AC/ THAC0 / or Dex. or wahatever. I would imagine that you could make 6 or 7 distinct rings items alone to fill in gaps on lvls 1-3. Other ideas are staff's usable by non spell chuckers, gems that have a much better burn rate.

The other bug is a doosey. Can you add a debug routine that kicks in whenever the game is active and the device does a hard boot., and then tell people to do a hard boot after they experience this bug without shutting down the game? that way you can get some crash data.

As far as the SR goes, okay. I guess I can buy that. It suprises me that I am the only one bothered, but if the Gen X ers are using items to find the special, instead of running the level, then I certainly can understand that.

I will adjust my thinking to the new and improved ways.

I have repeated the "box icon can't access any menus bug" again. Again on lvl 5 SR (sigh)

The party was different this time, different races, classes etc.

The common denominator is that I am eliminating a fairly large group of monsters with a spell (in this case 8 monsters with ice storm) at the same time that high dex chars (36 and 38) are set to auto fight.

This appears to be the only commonality I have found to almost every crash and lock up error I have found.

Two days ago (after getting sick of the game crashing on me almost every 5 minutes) I turned off auto fight
and just started running levels 2 and 3. No errors. No crashes. I find it a bit tedious to play without the auto fight, but I will test this theory out on 4 (where I am having huge crash issues) and see what happens.

John,

Is it possible that certain items are showwing up on the Special and Regular item tables at the same time? IE I am fairly certain that I found a "Staff of Rest" from a regular box (non SR) and yet it offers me 0 gold for it in the store, like it was an SR item. Since I have never used said item, it remains in my inventory and therefore cannot be found by me again.

If a regular (non SR) box rolls up that item from the table, could this be what is crashing the game on me for post combat? I am not talking about the missing treasure bug, but the post combat crash in regular rooms.

You asked me once what I am doing that might be causing the crashes, and well this thought occurs to me, I haven't used a single special item yet, so they all remain in my inventory. This is probably contrary to what most people do ... so I thought you might want to know.

John,

I am not positive about the staff/rest. At my age, I am not positive about much of anything anymore.

I was just trying to brainstorm what was different about me than other users to explain why I get repeated crashes and others seem not to.

Really, how old are you?

I played oubliette for the first time during a high school field trip to the University of Illinois in January of 1978. I enrolled at the University of Illinois in August of 1979. I got my first author signon on CERL PLATO in November of the same year ... You'll have to do the math from there.

I believe he is talking about spell level 6, which for priests happens at very low levels. Obviously for mage spells it takes longer (especially if you are using sages or rangers) but I see his point to a degree. Having said that my party includes a bunch of level 50-odd rangers so I clearly found it rewarding to keep going :)

I believe there's a formula that lets you calculate someone's age if you know the current date and their date of birth. I was absent the day they taught that. Anyway, I'm given to understand that it uses some extremely high level math involving integral calculus or long division or something; so I wouldn't be able to use the formula even if someone were to write it out for me.

To make matters worse, you didn't provide the basic information needed to apply the formula. For instance, you failed to tell me today's date. Instead, you leave me (tense change intentional) with clues which I must use to solve a mystery just to reach the point where the advanced math will stump me.

I have a feeling that in the end, your age will turn out to equal something like, "Colonel Mustard And Vinegar in the glove box with an abacus." Anywho, I have a friend who's a math genius and I'll try to get him interested in the problem. For now, though, I'll simply take note of the fact that you graduated from high school in 1978 or '79 and compare that to my own graduation date of 1962, a comparison that makes me certain that my right to "not be positive about much of anything anymore" outranks yours.

No, wait. "Certain" and"positive" mean just about the same thing, don't they? So maybe I'm not that definite about out ranking you after all. Hmm...

Ok then, wise guy, if that's the way you want to play it, then take this!:

Whatever your age was back then in 1979, if you were mature enough to enroll in a university, you shouldn't have still been fooling around with Playdoh.

So there!