[CF-Devel] issues with random maps

[Preston Crow]

PeterM wrote:
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      Preston wrote:
     
     
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      Traps Bypassed:
     
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      When there is a chest that requires a key to open, it often will have a
     
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      large number of traps.  However, you can ignore them.  I find that if I
     
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      pick up the chest, activate it, and drop the contents, I'm free to pick
     
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      them up, drop the chest, and walk away without ever setting of a single
     
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      trap.  (Of course, I like to disarm them anyway so as to get the
     
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      experience.)
     
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     Arguably, this isn't a problem with random maps but rather
     
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     with the container code.  This could be repaired easily, though,
     
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     if we cease ever requiring a key to open these treasure chests.
     
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     Then I could switch them over to the other type, which spring
     
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     their traps when they're apllied and drop everything onto the floor.
     
     
Personally, I prefer chests that go away instead of acting like regular
containers.  If a code fix is required, would it be simpler to have chests
that use up special keys (like doors) when opened but are otherwise
ordinary chests?

I've also had the traps go off in really weird situations--after I've
emptied the chest and picked up everything, I then dropped everything, and
the traps seemed to get dropped, as well.  It wasn't fun seeing them all go
off in my apartment.  I'm not 100% sure what I did to make that happen.

The current behaviour is rather quirky.

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      Traps on Walls:
     
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      I've seen some maps generated that had traps on most of the walls.  I was
     
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      able to search and disarm them, though running into the walls would not set
     
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      them off.  Either they shouldn't be there, or they should be set off by
     
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      bumping into the wall (which would require some new code, I suspect).
     
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     I've never seen this.  Ever.  Where did you see this?
     
     
I was going through the 50-level undead map.  I think it was a map with
narrow spiral passages.  The passages were separated by more than one
square.  I've only seen it once or twice.

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      Disconnected Maps:
     
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      I discovered this by casting "show invisible" to locate spectres.  I was on
     
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      a map that had two separate areas.  The walls separating them were three
     
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      squares thick at the narrowest point.  (I went into dm mode to see what was
     
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      up.)  There was no way to get over to the other area.  Fortunately, the
     
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      stairs down were in the same area as the stairs up, so it didn't really
     
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      mess anything up that time.
     
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     What crossfire version and what type of layout was it?  I've gone
     
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     to some trouble to ensure that ALL maps are fully connected:  i.e.,
     
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     you can get anywhere in the map from anywhere in the map.
     
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     I ran hundreds of test cases to see if this actually worked out.
     
     
I'm pretty sure on this one, and it was with the current CVS code on
Tuesday night.  I don't remember the exact layout; the walls were
black/grey.  The playable area was roughly circular, perhaps 10 squares in
diameter with walls making it into passages.  If I see it again, I'll save
the file for you.

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      Impossible to Reach Area Due to Keys:
     
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      I found one map where one walled-off area was accessible only by using
     
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      strange keys to open the walls around a chest.  Unfortunately, the keys in
     
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      question were all in that walled-off area, so I couldn't reach them.  I
     
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      suppose there's a chance that one was in an icecube, but I don't think so.
     
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     Here I think you simply failed to look hard enough for keys.  When I
     
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     put in any keyed door, I make *two* keys for it:  one on either side
     
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     of the door.  When a monster cannot be found in which to put the key,
     
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     it is dropped onto the ground, which is why you saw a pile of keys
     
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     inside.
     
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     It's not possible for a key to be in an icecube.  The only things that
     
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     can harm keys are alchemy or the matching doors.
     
     
Next time I'll melt all my icecubes and make sure.


Would it be possible to save all the parameters and random number seed as
comments in the map file so that it would be possible to reconstruct the
original map?  Then if there were an issue with keys, you could go back and
see exactly where they were (or weren't).  In theory, we could then just
email a few lines and easily reconstruct the maps in discussion.

--PC