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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwrba!cepu!ucla-cs!srt
From: srt@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.hack
Subject: Re: name files
Message-ID: <4694@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 7-Apr-85 14:37:03 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.4694
Posted: Sun Apr  7 14:37:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 10-Apr-85 03:33:44 EST
References: <315@ttidcb.UUCP>
Reply-To: srt@ucla-cs.UUCP (Scott Turner)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 32
Summary: 

In article <315@ttidcb.UUCP> bellas@ttidcb.UUCP (Pete Bellas) writes:

   I while back I asked if anyone new how to recover a game lost by
   "segmentation fault" while playing.  In addition to the core dump I found a
   complete set of files in the hack directory for each level I had decended
   (user.2, user.3, ...,user.21).  The next time a played as a wizard (which
   was what I was when the fault occured) I found that level 2 was completely
   mapped out when I decended (also completely cleaned out!).  Each level I
   decended after that was the ame story (even dead monsters that I had left
   behind were still there, and caches of gems next to the stairways).  Is
   there a reason for this?  Is it usefull (it's very hard to gain new levels
   with no monsters to fight).  Or am I just suffering from "deja vu'".

When you leave a level, HACK saves the level data in a file called
<your-name>.<level-number>.  If you save the game or exit normally, these
files are removed.  If you die of a segmentation fault, they hang around.
Normally these files are kept in the hack directory, so a user should never
see them, even if you do die of a segmentation fault.  You probably saw
them because your game administrator installed the hack program instead of
the hack shell (which does a "cd" to the appropriate directory).

The next game you play after a crash you will see empty levels (and sometimes
levels wherein all the monsters are frozen).  This isn't particularly useful;
the best thing is to play, quit immediately (this removes all the files) and
then play again.

Incidentally, I've modified my HACK to use the complete pathnames for save
files and level files (and help, data and fortune files) so as to avoid
the need for the hack shell script.  I think this ought to be incorporated
into future versions of hack.

						-- Scott