Dungeon Master Forum

I noticed counters doesn't care about the position bit in the message they receive. Am I right? Is it the way it should be? It means for a counter facing north, any "close" message on its tile will do the same, regardless of aiming north, east, south or west.

That is the way it is. The AND/OR and the COUNTER are handled in
the same code. Obviously the AND/OR must be activated for any
position/direction. The COUNTER just came along for the free ride,
I suppose. We could easily add a global flag that would allow you
to distinguish positions/directions in new work. We certainly cannot
change it for old work. Is it important to you? Have you run out of
space to put COUNTERS?

P.S. It does check position/direction for text and for
actuator types 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, and 15.

No changes needed, just checking. I wanted to be sure I got it right.

I have another problem, though. Monsters can carry pads. But they don't get activated until released.
(I tried to bypass this with a cloned pad, in vain. In fact, if I send an object on the cloned pad even by normal means like a teleporter, the pad doesn't react anyway).

I'll try a little more and I'll probably end up sending you the dungeon.dat

I remember this problem from a while ago - using cloning etc i got a still slightly buggy version of it, but it involved having teleporter systems so that it teleported away a dropped object dropped on death from the cloned tile for a blink of an eye, that switched of the return teeporter then returned it.
That was also necessary since a live teleporter was free in the dungeon!

Surely this is what DSAs were made for if it's a specific monster. Some form of 'if monster ID xx no longer exists, generate effect'

Wait, or have i misunderstood and you want the pad to activate before a monster drops it?

bah, just found the dungeon, and i swear it worked before i tweaked something - possibly the timing on the teleporters so it appeared that the object dropped hadn't moved

http://www.dmjump.net/dungeon__droptest.dat

pick up eliza, teleport, grab the torch, go downstairs - the wooden door will open when the screamer is dead - or it used to!
The monster teleport chain is bottom right on the second level

I tried the teleporters too, to no avail. Funny, we did exactly the same device to force the object to activate the pad.

Yes, I want the pad to activate before a monster drops it, but I think it's exactly the same problem.
I'll see if I find a solution in the DSA...

The DSA worked fine. Though I spent many hours understanding how and why.

Paul, it seems that the size of a death cloud depends on the size of the creature; could you make it the biggest for "draw as size 4" creatures?

A big death cloud for size 4 creatures? Sounds reasonable.

Version 9.8 is on the front steps waiting for delivery. As soon as it
is gone I will look into the death cloud business.

I spent many hours understanding how and why.

Study, study, study. You are becoming the DSA expert and probably
know things I have forgotten. Do not be afraid to report things that
don't seem to be right. Otherwise you are likely to fall into the trap
of utilizing bugs in your designs. You know that I am not friendly
to requests to perpetuate bugs (like clones or monsters that are invisible
because of coding errors).

**THINGS SHOULD WORK BY DESIGN, NOT ACCIDENT**