Aidis.107
net.games.rogue
utzoo!decvax!duke!unc!mcnc!idis!dan
Sun Apr 11 13:04:32 1982
Robbed by a sign bit!

I have tracked the negative gold feature to its lair.
It really does seem to be a bug.  The size of a pile
of gold is stored in a signed byte between the time
it is created and the time it is picked up.  You can
force zero extension of this byte if you apply the
patch:
       _pick_up+0x47:  movzbl  0x20(r11),-(sp)

This makes the game playable but doesn't really fix the
problem.  I suspect that only the great Shreldalff
can solve this one.


I know a bit about a few other bugs.  The "huh" buffer overflow
problem that was reported a while back has not been fixed yet.
I get around it with the patch:

       _init_names+0xb:  pushl $3

This reduces the maximum scroll name length by one word.


The expanding save file bug that was reported a while back has not
been fixed either.  A game is saved by dumping an encrypted copy of
the program's data segment.  The problem is that the standard I/O
library routines are used.  When the game is restored (by replacing
the running data segment with the dump), it appears as if the I/O
stream and buffer used for dumping are still in use.  Each time the
game is saved, an I/O stream is used up and the core image grows
by one buffer size.

I have developed a rather long and involved patch that fixes this glitch
(and incidentally glosses over an incompatibility between the 4.1 and
4.0 stdio headers).  If there is interest, I can make this patch
(and the others) available as a script and a symbolic patching utility
that interprets the script.

                       Percival Persistent,
                       Guardian of the Executable File

                       (aka Dan Strick, U of Pitt)

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