BobR@cup.portal.com (10/05/88)
Several people had reported problems with the version of Umoria which had been posted to the net. I'm wondering how widespread the problem may, or if these are isolated instances where the file may have been damaged in spite of the error checking of ARC... I've had the same problem of the game locking up within the first 5-10 moves on the town level, about 75% of the time. The cursor stops flashing, and the system is completely dead, requiring a total re-boot and re-load of the game. As annoying as that is, the problem is compounded by the fact that Moria erases your "saved" game file, which means you have to make a .BAKup of the save file every time you play, in case the machine dies *after* deletin the file..! This is on a 1Meg machine with *nothing* else in memory.. If this is just an isolated case, I may try redownloading the files and trying again... BobR
ins_bjjb@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Jared J Brennan) (10/06/88)
In article <9732@cup.portal.com> BobR@cup.portal.com writes: >Several people had reported problems with the version of Umoria which had >been posted to the net. > >I'm wondering how widespread the problem may, or if these are isolated >instances where the file may have been damaged in spite of the error checking >of ARC... > >[description of his problem deleted because it hasn't happened to me] > >If this is just an isolated case, I may try redownloading the files and trying >again... > >BobR 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!). -- Jared J. Brennan BITNET: INS_BJJB@JHUNIX ARPA: ins_bjjb%jhunix@hopkins.ARPA UUCP: allegra!hopkins!jhunix!ins_bjjb "Help me, Spock!"
saj@chinet.UUCP (Stephen Jacobs) (10/07/88)
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.