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Re: Strangeness with with weapon enchantments



>        My roommate has come across some unexpected (by my
>understanding of what the game is supposed to do) behavior and I was
>wondering if someone could clue me in.  (For reference, I am running
>0.92.0 with Brian's exp9 skills patches.)  This has to do with
>enchanting weapons.  It started when he tried to enchant a weapon with
>his mage.  First, he had his weapon as the first item in his inventory
>and tried to use a 'Prepare Weapon' scroll (with the appropriate
>sacrifice of diamonds) and it told him that the first item in his
>inventory wasn't a weapon (despite the fact that it was listed first
>and we checked to verify that the inventory display was set to display
>all items, not just magical, applied, etc.)  He found that he was only
>able to get it to work when he used the rotate keys to until it
>specifically said that the weapon was at the top of his inventory.
>(I'm not positive about this part, but I think even then he couldn't
>get it to work with his mage, but he created a barbarian character for
>whom it did work.)  My guess is that this may have something to do
>with the fact that (according to Brian's docs) skills are listed as
>invisible objects in the inventory (at the top?) and were somehow
>interfering (any comments, Brian?).

Well, it could potentially be more than just skills - there can be several
invisible objects at the top of a players inventory. (things like spell
effects.).  I have modified the code so that it will skip over invisible
objects.  In theory, the code could just skip over until it finds the first
acceptable item, but that might not be desirable (could cause some
mistakes..)

>        Also, I thought already magical weapons were not supposed to
>be able to be further enchanted (I've even looked briefly at this
>portion of the source a while back to figure out just which magical
>items couldn't be enchanted).  In particular, weapons with magical
>bonuses (e.g. sword+2).  Yet he was able to use a Prepare Weapon
>scroll on a sword +4 which he'd found (and he's successfully put extra
>improvements into it).

 This has changed if you use NEW_IMPROVE_WEAPON (which I believe is the
default).  This allows you to enchant weapons with actual +'s (ie, sword
+3), but not allow you to enchant weapons that grant protections,
immunities, regeneration, etc (this is pretty much reversed with the old
system - note that the new system changed a lot more than just that.)

 The idea being that before, you pick up a darkblade or other very nice
artifact, find a rust monster (or cancellation spell) to make it +0, and
then you prepare it (and the weapon might already be granting you strength,
immunities, etc.)  My idea is that being able to enchant a weapon with such
immunities makes for a much more powerful weapon than one that is already
+4.  IT is sort of tradeoff - you cuold make it so the weapon can not be
magical it all, but allowign magic weapons does make it such that you still
want to find a good weapon, just to decrease the number of enchantments.

  And the last thing is related: my
>understanding is when you enchant a weapon, it is given your name
>(e.g. "Gorf's holy mace +10" (this is a real example :)) and cannot be
>used by any other character.  But my roommate's character was able to
>wield a sword enchanted by another character.  Am I correct in
>thinking that something is wrong?

This is an interesting bug/feature (I just tried it out).  IF the only thing
that has been done to the weapon is to prepare it, other characters can
still wield it.  Once it has actually been enchanted, then other characters
can not use it.

 I decided to change this, just to be a little more consistent (once it has
been prepared, it can not be used by anyone.)  Not that it makes that much
of a difference.

>
>        And one more thing (which should probably be in a separate
>message): there is a bug in the handling of some map transitions which
>causes a charater to end up in the "ocean" (an all-water map) when
>going from one world map to another.  I think it is repeatable, so I
>could try to gather some more specific information if someone would
>like to fix this.
>

 IF you could track it down, it would be great (as far as I know, there are
no water only maps, but you could be far enough out that all you see is
you are actually on.)

 First, however, check and make sure that PROCESS_WHILE_LOADING has not been
selected in the config.h file - that is one of the bugs that happens.

>-Michael
>
>

--Mark