Argh! Remove curse randart activation!

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Just found a Mace of Disruption randart on dl50. Not a really great one, but better than the extra attacks ego @ had been carrying. But, the randart activation is for "remove ordinary curse". What's up with that?! I guess even though remove curse has been commented out, it can still generate on randarts. Can we call that a bug?

[Derakon]

Yeah, that sounds like a bug to me. The effect hasn't been commented out because that could break savefile compatibility (if a character is carried over from a version of the game that still had Scrolls of Remove Curse, for example), but it should be removed from the randart generator.. There's a lot of effects that only exist in the code in modern versions.

[MattB]

I got a helm recently that activated to increase Charisma at the expense of another stat. Was tempted to find out what happened when I activated it, but didn't dare!

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Derakon

The effect hasn't been commented out because that could break savefile compatibility

What are the reasons to keep savefile compatibility:

1) Monster memory
2) Upgrading before finishing with the current char.
3) ....nothing.

Point 1 could be avoided by separating monster memory from the char.
Point 2 could be avoided by documentation. Maybe with online comment "this savefile is not compatible with this version of the game" if someone tries to upgrade mid-game.

Of course minor upgrades should keep compatibility, but not major ones like 3.4 -> 3.5.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

What are the reasons to keep savefile compatibility:

1) Monster memory
2) Upgrading before finishing with the current char.
3) ....nothing.

Point 1 could be avoided by separating monster memory from the char.
Point 2 could be avoided by documentation. Maybe with online comment "this savefile is not compatible with this version of the game" if someone tries to upgrade mid-game.

Of course minor upgrades should keep compatibility, but not major ones like 3.4 -> 3.5.

There has been an attempt to keep savefile compatibility across versions for a while. The first major version release after the restructure will break compatibility; it will also have a way to retain 3.5 monster memory, and in such a way that monster memory is never a problem again.

Future releases after that - we'll have to see