Skills hack

["Brian Thomas" <thomas@astro.psu.edu>]

	   Hi all, 

         I have noticed that some classes of characters are
        often played more than others.  WHy? My best guess- as
        the game stands now there is little difference between
        the 'non-magican' characters excepting the stat limits
        they have. A thief, for example, is
        just a fast, intellegent, weak, unhealthy fighter.
        Often, players will opt for the more powerfull classes
        of characters like the barbarian, (viking, or warrior)
	which have stats limits most favorable for fighters.

        It should'nt be this way (IMHO). There should be greater
        playability and desirability in the other classes. One route
        to this goal is through giving appropriate skills to
        some classes to distinguish them. 

	     I have made a small attempt to do this based on
        the orginal skill code for 'stealing' written by
        njw@sarc.city.ac.uk. This is a more generalized code,
        which (hopefully) allow expansion of the number of
        skills (if desired). The code is available in the
	compressed tarfile skills.tar.gz on ftp.astro.psu.edu
	(anonymous ftp). Instructions for applying this 
	patch are included. 

        I have the following skills impletmented:

        - stealing      -can take items from others
                          (uses the preexisting code from
                           njw@sarc.city.ac.uk)
        - hiding        -limited invis. Movement can 'unhide'
                         you, attacking definitely will.
        - lockpicking   -can open normal doors w/o key

        The following classes of characters now may have
        skills:
 
                Thief -stealing; lockpicking or hiding
                Ninja -hiding
                Elf   -hiding
                Swashbuckler -stealing or lockpicking

        You utilize the skills w/ 2 new commands:
                - 'skills'  == this lists your availble skills
                - 'use_skill' == changes your current skill

        All skills are preformed as a 'ranged-attack'
        (ie <SHIFT>-direction).

           Hopefully, players of CF will now find more
        use for the 'alternative' and 'challenging' classes
        of the ninja, elf, thief, and swashbuckler :).

	Please let 


me know about any BUGs and such associated w/ this 
	patch (I have tested it for a week, but Who knows
	what might pop up later?? :)

				b.t.
				(thomas@nomad.astro.psu.edu)