Repacking the chest

[Bit]

Testing my clone, I just spotted a thing that I'm not sure about if it is original, or if I got a very early bug there.
It's about repacking the chest when picking some items (that change skillstats).
Usually the chest contents stays as it is while you pick and put items there until it's opened again or the screen changes - then the queue is sorted again.
As it seems, when picking special items - like the rabbit's foot - it sorts immediately.
I cannot remember this effect from playing in old times.
Can that be confirmed - or am I wrong?
Has anyone a savegame to test it with CSBwin?
(CSBwin doesn't like my savegames because of 'duplicated' problems. I'm not that far that I could handle this).
Thanks in advance.

[Jan]

You are saying that the items were rearranged immediately after you had put the rabbit's foot inside? Strange.

I've tested it in CSBwin version 10.0 (both in DM and CSB) and I didn't notice anything strange. I placed three items randomly in the chest and then put the rabbit's foot inside - and nothing happened. Then I closed the chest and opened it again and the items were sorted - everything works as usually.

[zoom]

maybe this has something to do with throwing items around, and picking them from the belt in a certain order.
I guess your feeling is right that there is something wrong.
.. after some thought it might not be the worst thing to have all screamer slices in a chest sorted to the back row and so on.
Saves you some rearrangement of items yourself.. but I guess this re-sorting of items is not very user friendly?

[Bit]

@zoom: I don't mind if that makes sense or not, I just want to find out if it's original or not.

@jan: it's not the moment when you put the item into the chest, but when you take it out. Please try it, when the rabbit's foot is one of the first items with other items behind. The moment you pick it, the rest gets sorted immediately, (the way that all empty places are filled). So, if i.e. the rabbit's foot is in first position and any other item in the last, and no other item inside, and you pick the rabbit's foot, the last item jumps immediately to position 1.
I haven't tested it, if it makes a differences if the character that does it is the 'handowner' or not.
If it's the handowner, the skillvalue doesn't change if the item is in the hand, the item wouldn't count as 'dropped' then.

[Jan]

Huh. I probably don't understand. I've tried doing practically everything with the rabbit's foot in the chest, with many combinations of taking it out and putting it back when various other items in my inventory, but nothing happened - it still works as it should. Please, could you describe what you do (step-by-step) and what's happening on the screen, so that I can imitate it precisely in CSBwin? Ideally, you could put a video of that on Youtube.

if i.e. the rabbit's foot is in first position and any other item in the last, and no other item inside, and you pick the rabbit's foot, the last item jumps immediately to position 1.

Definitely not in my version of CSBwin. Nothing seems to change "immediately" - I always have to pick the chest from the hand and then put it back to get the items replaced (i.e. to keep their order but "queue" to the left side).

[Bit]

Thanks Jan, that's how I think it was all the time. Then I have to find the reason for that behaviour.
I already have a candidate.
It's just: in my very old version that is absolutely close to the disassemby, it happened too.

And always when I'm thinking that was the last bug, there's a new one. Now the stone golem will not drop his club. All other monsters that carry anything do so... grrrrrrr.

EDIT:
I think you cannot make this out with CSBwin - it *is* original and for DM only.
In CSB they fixed that.

[ofens]

I remember reading about this in a magazine back in the day (er, 1989-ish?) and then trying it out.
And the rabbit's foot had something to do with it...

I think the concensus at the time was that it was a bug. There were a few similar bugs relating to putting items in the chest.
One of these glitches caused the chest (when full, and including a rabbit's foot) to empty of everything except for the rabbit's foot, yet you retained the weight of the items (but could never see them again!).

[Jan]

Oh, cool, I've never heard of that, Ofens. This was in the Atari version, right? If yes, then it should be included in the CSBwin version, shouldn't it?

[Paul Stevens]

In the Atari code, the chest was a
bit of a special case that had to be
packed / unpacked at various points
in the code. If you unpacked it twice
without packing it, things would go
wrong. If you packed it twice without
unpacking then other things could go
wrong.

Much of the code was spaghetti and
it was sometimes hard to determine
what had taken place previously. I think
I fixed one or two of these chest-packing
problems. No guarantee that I got them
all, however.

[zoom]

It seems this is a neverending story