wedgwood@ucbvax.ARPA (John Wedgwood) (05/06/85)
I wa in the middle of a game of srogue, at about level 34 or so, when, in the middle of lighting up a room, the game died. The last message displayed was "can't find monster in show file." or something like that. I have been unable to restart the game (the game saved itself before dying). Any ideas as to what may have happened here? Is it worth playing this version of the game again?? Will it happen again?? Thanks in advance for any comments, John Wedgwood
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong [DCS]) (05/06/85)
In article <6788@ucbvax.ARPA> wedgwood@ucbvax.ARPA (John Wedgwood) writes: >I was in the middle of a game of srogue, at about level 34 or so, >when, in the middle of lighting up a room, the game died. >The last message displayed was "can't find monster in show file." >or something like that. >I have been unable to restart the game (the game saved itself before >dying). >Any ideas as to what may have happened here? >Is it worth playing this version of the game again?? >Will it happen again?? >Thanks in advance for any comments, >John Wedgwood our version doesn't save when that message is printed. instead, we get a segmentation fault. some versions of srogue save themselves on any signal. your's apparently saved itself due to a segmentation fault or something trying to using a null pointer. many versions of 3.6 save on any excuse. rogue tends to make a lot of assumptions about pointers being valid. there is no real way to safely restart the game and continue. luckily, this is a fairly rare event, happening only twice in all the time we have had srogue. Herb Chong... I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble.... UUCP: {decvax|utzoo|ihnp4|allegra|clyde}!watmath!water!watdcsu!herbie CSNET: herbie%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet ARPA: herbie%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa NETNORTH, BITNET, EARN: herbie@watdcs, herbie@watdcsu
shp@crystal.UUCP (05/07/85)
> I wa in the middle of a game of srogue, at about level 34 or so, > when, in the middle of lighting up a room, the game died. > > The last message displayed was "can't find monster in show file." > or something like that. > Probably "can't find monster in show" (the historic message). > I have been unable to restart the game (the game saved itself before > dying). > > Any ideas as to what may have happened here? A bug. Sorry to be so flip, but that's about all I can tell. It happens to the best of software; srogue is no exception. In this case, it tried to index a monster in its tables, and discovered that it didn't exist. My guess is that due to unusual level topology, it attempted to interpret uninitialized floorspace as a monster, and lost. > Is it worth playing this version of the game again?? Of course. By the way, if you want revenge on pitfiends, which will happily blow you away when you get that far, cheat. (remember .rog_defs!) > Will it happen again?? On a guess? Yes. Maybe not to you (how much do you play?), but someone, somewhere is DOOMED......[:-)] > Thanks in advance for any comments, > John Wedgwood =shp