[net.games.rogue] Nymph/Saved Game bug

kalash@ucbcad.UUCP (08/12/84)

1

paul@wjvax.UUCP (Paul Summers) (08/15/84)

Well, after openning my big mouth and saying that I've never
been hit by the saved game or Nymph bug, I just got nailed by 
both.  

ATTENTION:  Authors of Rogue.  This is not a flame, just speculation
as to the cause of these problems.

I believe that these two problems are related.

Scenario:  Rogue 5.3

	I had just been hit by a Nymph while standing in the door
	of a treasure room.  She stole a scroll of identify R/W/S,
	OF WHICH I HAD 2.  I believe that this fact is important.

	I knew at that point that I was doomed.  I checked my 
	inventory, and everything seemed to be in order, including
	the missing scroll, which was indeed gone.  I polished of
	the rest of the nasties in the treasure room, waiting for
	the hammer to fall.  Not knowing what to expect, I was rather
	suprised to see the game save itself.

	Since I am an avid reader of net.games.rogue, I was somewhat
	relieved to notice that there was a % in the treasure room 
	with me.  I restored the game and started moving towards the
	stairs, when the game saved itself again, as expected.  However,
	I discovered that if I moved quickly (i. e. run or type the
	direction keys rapidly) I could move several turns before
	the game saved itself again.  I managed to get down the stairs,
	which seemed to end the save game problem, also as expected.

	Now the interesting part:  I checked my pack, and found
	that my pack was now almost empty.  Indeed, the only things
	that showed on my invetory were the things that I started the 
	game with, and things I had had for a long time already.  Everything
	that I had picked up on the level which caused all the trouble
	was gone.  I remebered that I had a wand of light in my pack,
	and that its inventory label was 'p'.  So I tried lighting a 
	dark room with it.  I explicitly tried zapping to the left
	with 'p'.  Invalid item.  I zapped to the left, and typed
	'*' for list, and got a null inventory, and the prompt to 
	type space bar to continue.  Interesting.  I typed another
	invalid item (some food, I think), and then did an inventory.

	I had picked up a few items on this new level, and they 
	appeared to be in my pack.  The items that had survived the
	Nymph/Save assault also remained.  The strange thing was the
	large blank space between the two groups of items.  The 
	Inventory command apparently thought that the 'missing' items
	were still there, even though I couldn't access them.

Question:  Does Rogue save recently discovered items in dynamically
	allocated memory?  Would these items not be saved if the
	the Save command were to be entered improperly, as it was
	in my case?  If there is some kind of database structure
	in Rogue to keep track of the pack contents, possibly some
	sort of static pointers into a dynamic linked list, it might
	be possible for the integrity of the structure to be corrupted
	in this fashion.  Perhaps Check Points are taken when dungeon
	levels are crossed.  
	
	This all seems reasonable to me, but it is, of course, speculation,
	since I do not posess the source to Rogue.

AUTHORS of ROGUE:  Since few (if any) people on the net have tried
	addressing you directly, I present you with these observations
	and ask that you be merciful to me if I have overstepped 
	the bounds of propriety by speculating on this subject.
	I know that there are many Rogue enthusiast out here in 
	net-land who would appreciate reply on this topic.

Thanks in advance.  May all your rings of Adornment be +2 or better.

		Paul Summers (Gimli, Son of Gloin)
		...ios!wjvax!paul