Dungeon Master Forum

Hi George,

I have encountered an odd issue in the course of making a dungeon for RTC and after a couple of hours of play testing and debugging I think I have found what is causing the issue but have no idea why so wanted to defer to you.

The issue
Basically, I noticed that just walking round my dungeon with a fully loaded test character (999/255/archmaster stats) that he was taking damage at random intervals no matter where he was. Also, whenever i went to sleep he would wake up sometimes taking damage and sometimes not as if being attacked by a monster (occasionally spinning round).

What i think is causing it / My Workaround
I had created a new monster (cloned dragon) which was placed on a level deep in the dungeon with a slightly modified attack range. I wanted to do this so it would launch fireballs from a long distance away when the player was near but otherwise it had the same stats as the normal dragon. When I deleted this dragon, my player stopped taking random damage. The reason it was perplexing me is that the dragon was managing to attack the party even though they were not on the same level!

I plan to work round the issue using normal dragons, but thought I would report this to you as it seems like its not quite right.

Reference Stuff / Repro steps
Ive replicated the issue in a small dungeon file so you can see first hand. Im using RTC 0.49. To reproduce, simply load this dungeon, and bring the character in the mirror to life and then hit the sleep button. You will either see that you get woken up, or woken up and take damage. You can keep hitting the sleep button as many times as you like and you will keep getting woken up. Use the axe on the door and head down the stairs and kill the dragon, and when you go to sleep, voilla. No random damage.

Download is here :-

RTC and TXT file download.

Hope that is enough info on this weird issue, let me know how you get on with it.

Your problem is that you're using a movement-type attack method that allows the monster to do damage. Movement attacks are fired without a target (they fire EVERY time the given monster moves) and are designed for producing fancy mechanics, you should never allow the monster to do damage with one (because there's no target, there's no check on range-to-target... so it just goes "can I do damage to the party? Yep... do damage"... even if the monster is on a different level and/or out of sight).

Hi Lord_Bones,

Ah I see - I will try removing this from the monster type and see how I get on. Just out of interest, do you know where this movement attack is implemented in DM/CSB/DM2 ? Or where it might be implemented.

A

Ah, right, that will be the problem. Nice catch, Lord_Bones.

By the way, Andyboy, George hasn't touched RTC in three years and isn't actively working on RTC anymore, so if this had been a bug, it's doubtful it would be fixed anyway.

I can't think of anywhere in the original DM/CSB/DM2 where movement attacks are used. Two possible uses for movement attacks could be:
A monster that changes to another monster everytime it moves (using ACTION_SWAP_TILE in the attack method)
A monster that launches a spell whenever it moves (use one the ATTACK_METHOD_FIREBALL methods, as a movement attack, for an example of this)

It's really RTC's version of the monster movement filter from CSBwin, where you can steer or imped a monster's movement if you filter it through some relays/counters

Thanks for all the responses guys, much appreciated. So does George not still lurk around these parts then?

A

He last logged in in January. I asked him via email in May if he'd ever return to RTC, and he said yes, but there's no ETA on that...

ahhh, that's good, it's been 1 1/2 years, hurry up ETA