CF 0.95.6: Character lost at sea, odd behavior following recovery

[Frank McKenney <frank_mckenney@mindspring.com>]

While waiting for client 0.95.6 to appear, I fired up a copy of the most
current client I could gind (0.95.4), generated a character with the
utterly forgettable name of 'Test', and worked him up to Level 7.

I saw some odd things with this combination ('drop n items' not working,
'arrows of mystery' (;-) appearing in my inventory, and so forth), but I
figured I'd ignore them until I had a chance to run 0.95.6.  As hoped,
all these went away as soon as I compiled client 0.95.6, started it up ,
and logged good ol' 'Test' in.

Things continued well as I discovered the new Stronghold, went on a
Quest for the Head of the Head of the Goblins, and was Officially
Knighted...  I even went to a dinner given in my honor!  (;-)

Then I decided to visit the Ruins of Euthville, just NE from Scorn, and 
see if the Ye Olde Magic Shoppe had anything interesting... anything I 
could afford, anyway (;-). Found a nice set of lockpicks, paid for them 
as I lef the shop, and headed out the East Gateway toward the road.

Trouble is, I didn't get there.

Not to the road. Not the countryside surrounding the Ruins. Not even 
stuck in the Ruins. Instead, I found myself floating on water, with my 
character's icon midway down the left side of the 'map' window. Water to
the east, water to the south, water to the north... the whole map window
was filled with water!

Unfortunately, I didn't have a 'word of recall' scroll or any other way 
to return to Scorn, short of dying. That might have been a better 
choice, to simply take my lumps and keep going, but instead I killed the
client, restarted it, and found poor 'Test' still hovering over a vast 
blueness. I then issued a Crossfire 'quit, shut down the client and 
server, restarted both, and re-created 'Test' as a 'new' character.

As it turned out, my Permanent Apartment deed was still in effect, so I 
stopped off to pick up some food and cash. That's when I noticed that 
the oddities I had seen with the 95.4 client were back (I did not see
these when I first started up client 0.95.6):

  - If I have (say) 5 food, 'drop 1 food yields "Nothing to drop". I 
    have to drop all the food with the mouse, then 'get 4 food.

  - 'Inventory:' items are no longer pluralized... until I drop them. 
    Once an item moves ot the 'You see:'  window, it gets pluralized.
    If I pick it up again, the plural vanishes. E.g.,

    "20 gold coin" -> "20 gold coins" -> "20 gold coin"

  - When picking up items, the 'You see:' window will frequently reset 
    itself to display the top item on the stack rather than the items 
    surrounding the on(s) I picked up.

  - The client dumps some new messages to stdout/stderr (I can't tell 
    which, since I'm capturing both):

    Playing on server type  Crossfire Server

    Couldn't open /dev/dsp: No such device
    Could not find match for a sacred text of turn undead
    Could not find match for a holy symbol
    Wont send command search - window oversized 186 175
    Wont send command search - window oversized 189 178
    ---etc---etc---etc---
    Wont send command search - window oversized 236 225
    Wont send command search - window oversized 236 225
    Wont send command search - window oversized 236 225
 2x Got update_item command for item we don't have (5794)
 2x Got update_item command for item we don't have (5908)
 2x Got update_item command for item we don't have (5908)
 2x Got update_item command for item we don't have (5794)
    Wont send command search - window oversized 46 35
    ---more-of-the-same---
    Could not find match for a Enchant Armour
    ---more 'window oversized' ---
    Could not find match for a egg
    Could not find match for a egg
    Could not find match for a egg
    Could not find match for a egg
    Could not find match for a Enchant Armour
    ---and more and more---

These problems are all present if I create a fresh never-run-under-
client-0.95.4. It looks like _something_ has gotten royally
scr*wed up, but I have no idea where to start looking. Do any of
these oddities sound familiar to anyone?

Since this is a 'testbed' installation, I can, if necessary, kill all of
the installed runtime stuff and re-do 'make install' for the client and 
server. Before I do that, I'd like to know if I can provide any useful 
information to anyone.

            (Are we having fun yet?  (;-))



Frank McKenney, McKenney Associates
Richmond, Virginia / (804) 320-4887
E-mail: frank_mckenney@mindspring.com