Crossfire Mailing List Archive
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Re: CF: animate_weapon() fixes



> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 20:27:08 +0200
> From: Jan Echternach <echter@informatik.uni-rostock.de>
> 
> On Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 02:09:55PM -0500, David Andrew Michael Noelle wrote:
> > Please stop "fixing" animate_weapon without discussing the changes
> > first.
> 
> There shouldn't be any player visible changes except fewer server
> crashes.

That's not the point.  This list is for developers as well as players,
and it's just common courtesy to let the group know beforehand.
Otherwise we'll be duplicating a lot of effort and creating new bugs
with all the conflicts.  Communication is an absolutely essential part
of collaboration.


> They are not done twice, if the fix is correct.  I have removed things
> like
> 
>   golem->stats.Str += weapon->stats.Str;
> 
> All applying and unapplying of items must be handled by
> apply_special().

As I said, that is what I tried the first time I implemented this
function.  It did not work the way I wanted it to, because the apply
functions at that time did lots of things that just weren't
appropriate for this situation.  There were many specific reasons I
chose to write it the way I did, without calling any apply functions.
Maybe your new apply functions handle it better.  I'll have to read
through them after I finish packing, moving, and finding a new job.


> Everything else is broken design, causing endless stream of bugs.

I'll try not to take that personally.  60% of crossfire is written
and/or designed in ways I don't agree with, but it does work, so I
leave it alone.  This project doesn't have an official coding style or
design paradigm, so instances of different styles are not "broken",
just different.

The only bugs I've heard of being generated by this code are the
server crash when it is cast by a monster or left on a map after the
caster exits.  Those are trivially easy to fix without rewriting the
whole spell, and hardly an "endless stream" considering the number of
spellcasting monsters in the game and the likelihood of them having
this particular spell.  Are you seeing other bugs attributed to this
code?  In exactly what way are they due to the fact that an apply
function was not called?


> I knew that you had some private changes to animate_weapon().  You had
> already said that in a previous message.  But animate_weapon() was
> seriously broken, needing a fix ASAP, and you hadn't fixed it one week
> after I uncovered the problem (nor did it look like you would fix it
> soon).

If it was such a serious problem, you could have just set its book
chance to zero, effectively removing it from the game until it was
fixed.  I wasn't aware that a week represented a serious delay in an
unscheduled, open-source collaboration with no deadlines.  If time is
suddenly so critical, those of us who can only contribute a couple
dozen hours per month will just have to quit.  Then the rest of you
can choose an official coding style and rewrite everything.


-- 
            -Dave Noelle,                 dave@Straylight.org
            -the Villa Straylight,  http://www.straylight.org

Quote of the Day:
    "Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than
one man.  How's that again?  I missed something.
    "Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a
million men.  Let's play that over again, too.  Who decides?"
			 - Lazarus Long
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