Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!samsung!umich!sharkey!tygra!dave
From: dave@tygra.UUCP (David Conrad)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Snarf Bugs Me
Message-ID: <1991Feb17.044600.2296@tygra.UUCP>
Date: 17 Feb 91 04:46:00 GMT
Organization: CAT-TALK Conferencing System, Detroit, MI
Lines: 60


   Well, I'm deleting Snarf, there are just too many bugs in this game
for me to actually pay cold cash for it.  I hope this bug report finds
its way back to Everett Kaser.  I'll also be posting two more levels
I and a friend designed, for those of you with the patience to put up
with the bugs.

   The game has crashed twice with the following error messages:

SYSERR: invalid LASTDIR 256 CLASS 5 INSTANCE 2
SYSERR: unknown x=259 MOVETYPE 259 CLASS 5 INSTANCE 7

Nice cryptic error messages, those.  The first time, I had to reboot.
The second, I was able, eventually, to exit the game by banging on ESC
over and over again as fast as I could.  The game would run for about
a tenth of a second each time, then return to the error message.  While
it was `playing' it would accept keystrokes, and I finally was able to
press ESC twice in succession fast enough that the first suppressed the
error message and the second terminated the game.  Quite a test of my
dexterity!

   The other bugs have been more subtle.  When designing levels, the
saved level will get corrupted.  The `hero's' starting position would be
randomly changed, and some items on the level would get rearranged in
inexplicable fashion (e.g. a key would be somewhere other than where I
had put it).  Once, some crowns from *a different level* appeared on
another level I was designing.

   I should explain that this did not happen in the level editor.  At
that point the level would appear as I intended.  Then save it and play
it, and it's different!  Go back and edit it, still wrong.  So, fix it,
save it, play it and Hey! Presto!  Fubarred again.

   (An aside - the editor will let you place two items in the same place,
e.g. a ring inside a wall.  Oops.  Also, you don't go to the location set
as the destination of a teleporter, but one space beyond in whatever
direction you were moving when you entered the teleporter.)

   The solution to the bizarre behaviour of the editor has been to start
editing another level (i.e. if the trouble was with seven, work on nine)
and make a copy of the level which is causing difficulties.  By copy, I
do not mean to copy the file, but to start over, creating a level which
is in all ways like the other one.  To get it exactly right, of course,
you must look back and forth repeatedly between the old and new levels.

   It in fact helped my level `The Transporter Room' to redesign it from
scratch once I had the idea of what I wanted worked out better with an
(unintentional) draft, but in general it is very annoying to have to start
over or painstakingly copy after having spent many minutes designing a
level.

   So, Everett, if you want my money, you'll have to do better!
--
David R. Conrad                 | The floating point exception hits.--More--
tygra!dave@sharkey.cc.umich.edu | You die...--More--
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