Well I'm not working on CLIVAN until the world economy has crashed irrecoverably, united states and europe are nuking each other and I'm nuking the girl next door.

Personally I'd recommend playing IVAN 0.50 for best stability. Plus it's probably the most challenging version, and most of the known bugs are well documented.

BDR: I tried sending you a message. It indeed resulted in a 404. Thought I'd just help by verifying that the action indeed resluted in an 404.

Edit: There is also a large ascii sad-face on the error page.

As far as I can see, the only bit where DAMAGE_TYPES (that is BLUNT, SLASH and PIERCE) is checked is inside character::AddWeaponHitMessage(...) which is in char.cpp.

There is some useful code in that function that distinguishes between the three damage types. That code could be copy-pasted to the right place so that the damage type associated with the attack is minimised in the event that the character is wearing the appropriate armor.
Beyond this I see nothing in the game's present code that actually imparts a distinguishable bonus (or disadvantage) according to damage type, making chao's suggestion above a truly novel feature.

Ah I see now. I still don't have a good picture of the fight mechanics myself. I'd need a thorough source-dive before being able to see where things would fit together.

I think all the attribute penalties are sitting in bodypart.cpp, while the function takehit{} lives inside char.cpp and that'd be a starting point. I think critical strikes are determined whenever a general Enemy->TakeHit( function is called. A strike is critical if !(RAND() % Master->GetCriticalModifier()) is true. GetCriticalModifier() returns the CriticalModifier for the char, and intrestingly the only two characters in the game with a CriticalModifier other than 20 are Ivan and the Imperialist (each have 4).

So you'd check if a hit was critical by using if(Critical) then { reduce damage } somewhere inside character::TakeHit in char.cpp

A really interesting suggestion. Could it also reduce maximum damage from critical strikes?

So if we had the armorer skill in game, the player would start off with AR 10

Just for example, AR 20 could:
- reduce minimum damage by (AR - 10) / 10 = 1 pt,
- reduce max damage from critical strike by (2*(AR - 10)) / 10 = 2 pts
- affect the dexterity and agility penalties in a similar way

I don't know what realistic equations would look like, they'd probably need to account for the type of material of the armour. Would you be interested in implementing this only for armour that is ironalloy? Or across all material possibilities?

Then there would need to be some sort of training mechanism...

Sounds great. I wonder if we can set up some sort of formalised badge system for people who have peer-reviewed wins in IVAN 0.50 and IVAN CVS?

Yep, Tweraif has to be free (that is kill Decos) and the player must not be hostile to NEW_ATTNAM_TEAM;
So I guess when you fireballed the native beauties then you made yourself hostile. Precarious victory conditions.

How did your guy go down in the frog-pit?

That's true. It's definitely a non-urgent thing. There's probably better ways to spend precious programming time.

I found I could use the 'doUse' function with both arms disabled fighting a wolf in the gloomy caves. Seeing as it is a kind of dexterity action maybe the player should need at least one useable arm as a condition to perform this action.