amw@ulysses.UUCP (Andrew Wild) (04/03/85)
[Go on, throw me a tripe ration]
I thought some people out there might be interesting in the changes
we have implimented (and some we're still considering) on our
version of hack:
1. Environment variable 'SEX' which is checked for Male/Female.
If not present then 'person' is used ...
This is because I watched somebody here being seduced by a
Nymph and I said "But you're female !". The first act was to
prevent Nymphs from seducing female players. Then a male
player said that this wasn't fair; if we were going to do
this we'd have to give male players extra strength ... you
can see where the discussion was headed.
Furthermore, one of the male players wasn't sure that he
liked the idea of being seduced any more than the females.
So, exit Nymph. Enter Ninja, with identical stats to the
Centaur. Exit Centaur, enter Con-artist (we decided this was
an acceptable spelling). The Con-artist tricks characters out
of items rather than resorting to violence.
Naturally, people of undecided SEX choke on 'their' food,
rather than 'his' or 'her' food. This requires that a players
sex is in the score file (otherwise you end up using the
SEX of the users, not the dead player !). And all sorts of
other little messages in similiar vein.
2. Escaping with amulet code (easy ... remember to update score
file !)
3. Storing uids instead of names in the score file, thus limiting
players to one entry per class each. It doesn't stop me pretending
to be somebody else though !
4. New character type: A Ghostbuster. We've recently got very tired
of meeting learner players ghosts all over levels 2-4, so we're
going to add a new character and a magic weapon. The trouble is,
I can't remember what the things should be called (help !). Apart
from this piece of scientific mastery, the Ghostbuster has
almost no other equipment (we were thinking of what we could do
to the dog while we were at it ...). Because of the imbalance
caused by having ghost-destroying devices deliberately left lying
around, dead Ghostbusters leave no trail.
I don't care, I *like* the idea of being a ghostbuster !
5. A couple of silly bugs. All reported on net.games.hack.
... As you can tell, we've hacked a little. This does not seem to have
detracted from our enjoyment of the game. My co-hack-hacker and I
have not pawed for long hours over listings trying to see how we
can get ahead. I know my co-hack-hacker reads and furtively stores
all the clues from net.games.hack; I don't (more fool me).
Before I go home to bed, I thought I'd say how embarrashing it
is to be killed by a scroll of genocide... I was only trying to
make robbing shops easier ! And to have it on the scoreboard as
well ... By the way, I regard it as a bug that you can't genocide
demons or trappers. Shape-changers too I imagine. Oh dear, perhaps
I won't be going home so early tonight ....
Anybody got any *interesting* monster ideas (like the Tax-man) ?
--
Andrew.
Net : {ucbvax, vax135}!ulysses!amw [Netsite "homer", Murray Hill, NJ]
Work: (201) 582 5810 [My very own phone !]
Home: (201) [Who needs one anyway ?]
Mail: 605 Goodmans Crossing, Clark, New Jersey, 07066, USA.aeb@mcvax.UUCP (Andries Brouwer) (04/04/85)
In article <10034@ulysses.UUCP> amw@ulysses.UUCP (Andrew Wild) writes: > 4. New character type: A Ghostbuster. We've recently got very tired > of meeting learner players ghosts all over levels 2-4. If you want to be a Ghostburster, find the ghosts (as any character) and do one of the following: 1. Kill them. 2. Escape. 3. Quit. 4. Die on another level. The ghost(s) you found will be gone, but of course in case 4. you may have added another ghost. Note that in some hack versions ghosts will follow you up- or down-stairs.
srt@ucla-cs.UUCP (04/05/85)
In article <10034@ulysses.UUCP> amw@ulysses.UUCP (Andrew Wild) writes: > > Anybody got any *interesting* monster ideas (like the Tax-man) ? > (1) Boring beetles. Allow beetles to walk through rock, leaving corridor/doors behind them. Easy to implement. (2) Spiders. Change 's' into spiders that leave webs behind. Anything caught in a web is slowed (80%) or entangled (20%) for 1-3 turns. After that the web is destroyed. Somewhat :-) harder to implement. -- Scott