Dungeon Master Forum

it happened only once : 2 screamers on 2 different floor tiles moving on the same tile, at the same position on the tile, at the same time = 1 double screamer ! then i moved away and they got separated.

damn, i should have saved the game

Perhaps it became that other little known species, the shouter?

or maybe it just echoes?

or maybe it just echoes?

or maybe it just... errrmmm

rofl @ that very bad joke

Not only screamers ...

Take a look on this :

yup, that room always freaked me out in DM, as the teleporters were arranged in such a way that things queued

So a) going into that room there seemed to be two starting random distributions (i think dependiong if the creature on the left or right tried the teleporters first) and also creatures would appear when you though all were dead - like a surprising scorpion or giggler

Of course, with RTC they will just appear ontop of each other - double scorpion damage - painful!

Actually, this could be an interesting way of creating a double-actions creature. Just clone an invisible version of one creature typ,e and trap it with another
Double damage scorpions, giggler vexirks, etc

And why is it that the scorpion looks better than the skeletons? Why didn't anyone take the time to work on the skeleton graphics?

...maybe it just echoes.

I suspect that the skeletons were one of the first creatures Andy Jaros worked on. You can see that the creatures get better as the game progresses, and it's possible he designed them in the order they appeared in the game. He told me that his skills definitely improved as he worked on the graphics, plus the scorpions use an extra colour and most of the '2 extra colour' monsters do generally look better. Also, bear in mind that it's tricky to get subtlety into something like bones using only a few colours...

This behaviour is caused when a monster teleports onto a tile that is already occupied by another monster.

RTC tries to cope with this by moving the monster to an adjacent sub-tile if this is possible (for example a monster teleporting into the SW corner of a tile which already contains a monster, will instead be teleported to the SE corner). If this can't be done (e.g. one of the monsters takes up the whole tile, or all 4 sub-tiles have already got monsters in them) then RTC attempts to put the teleporting monster on a tile adjacent to the destination tile (i.e. directly north, south, east or west of the destination) assuming it doesn't contain a wall, other monsters completely blocking it, or any "active" contents that could upset dungeon mechanics or puzzles (e.g. teleporters, triggers, pits etc).

If all of the above fails, then RTC just plonks the teleporting monster onto the originally specified destination tile and waits for the monsters to move normally and sort themselves out again.

This means that it is possible to get two monsters on a tile, which looks a bit bad but (under the circumstances) is probably the best option. If anyone else has any better ideas, please let me know!

could said monster simply be held in limbo until there is space for it to appear ?

Could do, but that's risky. Consider the (admitedly pathalogical) case where a monster who is carrying the firestaff is teleporting onto a square occupied by lord chaos but can't move to an adjacent tile. You'd then be stuck and unable to complete the game.

OK - it's a daft example, but I'm sure there are others where it's a bit more likely!

I beleive it was how DM handled these cases though...the creature was held in limbo in a memory stack until the tile became cleared and the creature could be re-introduced as a monster object (like delayed generation of monsters)

yes, i think it came to me from reading some of the winCSB threads, maybe Paul could cast FUL on this.

then again, i like that certain creatures can do this - for example worms ontop of worms, etc : )