Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!rutgers!att!chinet!saj
From: saj@chinet.UUCP (Stephen Jacobs)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Umoria lockup
Summary: Some bugs, some features
Message-ID: <6746@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 7 Oct 88 14:57:58 GMT
References: <9732@cup.portal.com> <7168@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
Organization: Chinet - Chicago Public Access UNIX
Lines: 87

In article <7168@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>, ins_bjjb@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Jared J Brennan) writes:
(in response to a report of a umoria lockup)

>    Well, I don't know if it's an isolated case or not, but I've not had that
> problem.  Everything (well, almost everything; bug report below) works fine
> with my copy.  I do suggest you try to get another copy.  If you have more
> problems, send me mail and I'll give you my address so you can send me an
> SASE w/disk.
> 
>    The problem you have MAY be because you're running it from the desktop.
> I've tried starting it up from the desktop, which works, but I've never gone any
> further than that, because I don't know the VMS commands.  I've run Moria from
> Gulam, the Do-It! shell, and NeoDesk without problems.
> 
> Bugs:
> 
>    Wand of Wonder will send out every one of these at once:
>       Clone monster
>       Teleport Away
>       (Cloud effects)
>     These occur in the order above, and only take one charge.  You don't
>     know how annoying this can be.
> 
>    Shop contents change when a saved game is restored (may be a feature, but
>     I doubt it).
> 
>    The shell escape function doesn't exactly do a shell escape.  You can't
>     return to the shell you called Moria from.  You can, however, call a
>     paging program, a disk formatter, ANOTHER shell, or whatever.
> 
>    Scroll of Teleport Level causes a lockup.
> 
>    Mages can reenter shops immediately after they've been thrown out (this
>     is supposedly a feature; with high charisma, you should be able to do
>     this sort of thing, but with mages charisma doesn't seem to matter).
> 
>    Potions of Restore Life Levels don't seem to give you back all of the
>     lost experience.  This may be a feature (but PC-Moria 4.83 doesn't
>     do this!).

Some of these are bugs and some of them are features.  My excuse for the bugs
is that they're in things I never use;  I'll try to do something helpful.

Shop contents are supposed to change when a saved game is restored; this is
a very popular FEATURE.  The use is that if you need a restore this-or-that
potion and they're out of stock, you can save and restore.  Shop contents
should change more in proportion to the number of days between when the system
thinks the game was saved and when it thinks it is now (This suggests a 
possible source of trouble: if the game thinks now is before the save time,
because the system clock wasn't set...I haven't checked this, but I will).

The shell escape behavior is simply due to my ignorance.  I had an example
of how to execute a program and return to the parent; I followed it.  I did
try some fancier things, but they didn't work.  I'd LOVE to get examples
(email please, I'm going to be away for a while, and postings may expire) of
how to do better things.

The behavior of restore life levels potions is in response to the famous
'grape jelly trick', of draining nearly all your experience, then restoring
it to maximize the benefit of any stats which have been raised.  It is 
definitely a feature, and is new to 4.87.

Today I have US mailed a disk of arced, uue -500  moria sources to martin@
lakesys, along with a slightly fixed version of moria (the executable) and
the ST curses package, which is fairly widely available, but not on the
lakesys list.  I have no idea what will happen as a result.  The fixes are
that upper case option letters are accepted, and that messages are displayed
while a character is resting.  As I said, slight.

If you run an archive which can be consulted either through a mailserver
(like netlib@lakesys) or by allowing essentially unrestricted public access
(like killer), and if you want any source or executable of umoria for the
ST from me, I will gladly US mail it at my expense.  Anyone else (including
those who run ftp-only archives) can get the same service by sending me a
DSDD disk, a mailer and postage.  I am intentionally not publishing my
mailing address, because I like to chat first.  Please email me at chinet.
chinet is chinet.chi.il.us (I think), and is known to many systems including
killer, ulysses, ddsw1 and nucsrl.

I have been asked for a version of ST moria which will run in a door on a
bbs.  I'm trying, but success is not guaranteed.  If anyone gets one to
work, please let me know.

Thanks to CrackerJack, who sent me a picture postcard as per the request in
the moria distribution.  The first.