halle1@houxz.UUCP (J.HALLE) (06/27/84)
In Superrogue 7.0, I have come across two interesting bugs, one that is aggravating and requires strange strategy, one that is potentially useful for superscores in a won game. 1) If the last line overflows, i.e. the last character is in column 80 so the <CR/LF> is in 81, the file dumps, the terminal freezes, and the game is lost forever. This happens whenever you become hungry and your experience points end in column 72. I have lost about a dozen or more excellent games this way. The unusual strategy is to refuse to get maximum strength. Just stay at 18. This allows you to have 10,000 times more points before worrying as opposed to 18/100. Even keeping to 18/9x is better. The extra capacity from the top level is nice, but it doesn't affect fighting ability enough and does not seem to have much effect on how soon you get hungry again. (Also, negative armor class should be avoided for the sane reason.) Once you are at overflow risk, you need to eat fairly frequently unless you have a slow digestion, and of course you always are planning to eat about ten steps after the file dumps. 2) I am playing a game where I got up to experience level 19. I proceeded to drink two raise level potions. The first naturally put me to level 20. The second put me to level 1, with 1 experience point! Everything else was OK, my hit points were increased, just the experience was strange. (This was as a result of the raise level. Merely increasing your experience points to 5242880 [10*2^19] does not do this. In fact, you get no additional hit points there.) I met up with a purple worm, stepped on him, saw my level go to 11, and my hit points go up by about 60-70.