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From: boyce@daemen.uucp (DWB)
Newsgroups: net.games.rogue
Subject: Re: bugs in rogue 5.3 with 4.2 BSD unix
Message-ID: <169@daemen.uucp>
Date: Wed, 12-Mar-86 14:35:34 EST
Article-I.D.: daemen.169
Posted: Wed Mar 12 14:35:34 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Mar-86 10:52:41 EST
References: <284@zuring.UUCP>
Organization: Daemen College, Buffalo, NY
Lines: 35
Summary: The problem might be simple to fix...

In article <284@zuring.UUCP>, dik@zuring.uucp (Dik T. Winter) writes:
> Very regularly a game of mine bombs.  This occurs in general when I am
> carryint a lot.  In that case when a request is made for an item and
> I answer '*' the game is saved (but not really restorable because the
> restored game has the same symptoms).  I suspect the inventory data
> base is corrupted.  I have corroborating evidence for this from transcripted
> games.  In one case an inventory listing has gotten bogus (mentioning 3
> brown potions on separate lines; one indicated by i); the other two
> indicated by ().).  In another case a Nymph stole 2 potions of restore
> strength, but my inventory listed afterwards still 2 of those left
> (while I had 3 originally).
> I have heard that the problem is still more pronounced with 5.4 rogue
> under 4.3 BSD unix (a vax next door, but I have not used it).
> 

When we received "Advanced Rogue Version 2.0", (rogue from Bell Labs)
it too had a problems like that. (i.e. fighting a monster in a maze
(not dungeon) was the surest way to bomb the game.) The remedy to that
was very simple, it has to do with a global varible called `version[]'
in vers.c. It is used by the "save" functions as the "lowest" memory
address for the write to the file. This will only work if it linked first
in the final compilation (i.e. cc -O vers.o .....  -o srogue). When I
first got it wasn't like this, but since I had worked on adding a save
routine to midway (by uc berkeley) I changed it, recompiled it and
haven't had a problem since.

Since the source to 5.{3,4} is not distributed I would suggest you
switch to a rogue clone like hack or any other. Nothing is more frustrating
than `attempting to' play a game with buggy code.

-- 
Doug Boyce   Daemen College, Buffalo NY
UUCP : decvax!sunybcs!daemen!boyce  or  ihnp4!kitty!daemen!boyce
ARPA : boyce%buffalo@csnet-relay.arpa
"Of course the Nielsen ratings are accurate... We proved it in a taste test!"