implemented "guarded room" concept. this is the new type of the room, which could have "guard team" assigned. if any monster attacks the player in such room, guard team will kill the monster (by moving it to the special "perpetrator" team, so they won't hunt for all monsters on the map . currently it is used for Kharaz Arad entry in GC: four guards there are not for nothing, and they will not tolerate fights. guard team doesn't need a master, and its members need not to be in a room itself, so it is possible to use this to create various rooms with "external guard".

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

with more team system improvements, Attnam should work like this: killing some citizen will not make other citizens hostile (but those surrounding the scene will panic). instead the city guards will start hunting you. killing two city guards will turn temple guards hostile. killing a temple guard will turn lords hostile. killing a lord will turn Petrus hostile. i think it will be more fun this way.

and if you are interested how guards know… all of them will carry The Holy Radio Device (property of Divine TeleCom Inc.). yes, picked up radio can be activated. you'd better don't do that.

while i was asleep, i got the idea. while we don't have sound propagation system (yet, i hope , it is possible to make at least shopkeepers more … "realistic", lol.

i already have the concept of "protective" teams. protective team will turn hostile along with the team it protects. this was done so Kaethos will turn hostile if you attack villagers: Kaethos need its own team for game mechanics reasons (tourists follows the leader of tourist guide team; btw, have you noticed that Kaethos really goes to various map spots, and tourists follow him?), and hardcoding special rules looked wrong.

now, i can introduce a flag which will not turn protective teams hostile along with the main, and use it when we need to make shopkeeper hostile for stealing, for example. this way, if the shopkeeper is in its own team (with guards! , and the player tries to steal something (and failed), only the shopkeeper and the guards will turn hostile. but! if the player will attack them in retallation, then the whole Attnam will run for help due to "protective" relations.

so, you'll be able to steal from the shop, run away (teleport, etc.), and get out of the city. then return, and as long as you'll manage to not reply with offensive actions, the city will not hunt you.

now, as we can have shopkeepers in their own teams, this opens other interesting possibilities. for example, if you return to the city, the shopkeeper instead of immediately attacking may demand you to pay your debt (prolly *5 or something). so if you'll manage to find a wand of teleport, you can… lift that Great Item, run away, sell half of GC to Merka, return, and pay your debt.

looks like interesting small mechanics to me, and not that hard to implement (sound propagation is much, much more compex).

p.s.: and if you don't have enought money… there is still no reason to kill you. the shopkeeper could simply take all your money, all your inventory, and give you filthy tunic and bone dagger instead (not omel bone! . and i can make it even more fun by freezing current danger level. i.e. the danger level could go up, but won't go down, effectively making the game think that you still possess your old gear, and spawn monsters accordingly. ahahaha.

i never did it for almost two decades. hacking the game code is MUCH easier.

implemented in-engine simple "set property tracker" for databases. the database now knows if it got the field from the parent db, and if it was set by the current config. so it is now possible to properly check if required fields (like default strengthes) are missing. i implemented the simple check, will prolly implement better checks later.

"database" is configuration info in invaneese. base config is #0. and the game now tracks which fields were copied, and which were (re)defined. i had to spend some time decifering (again) how all that works.

fun facts:
room scripts traverse the inheritance chain in runtime to find property value. this is done in interesting way, and missing value (up to the base level) could cause a segfault.

other script objects simply copying the basic configuration as a whole instead, so no runtime lookups are done after parsing the scripts. this is faster, but also means that changed database values in runtime won't be automatically propagated to child configurations. not that the game ever does that, but still good to know.

the whole database system is a mess, and hard to follow if you don't already have the mental picture of the actual implementation. but the implementation itself is quite smart.

adding/removing character configuration will make the save invalid. i.e. if you will add a new character config, remove a config, or add/remove a character, old saves will be broken. it can be fixed, but currently i see no reason in doing so. this includes changing "can create golem" material flags, and `UndeadVersions` character property (because those properties are used to create golems, zombies, ghosts and skeletons). character definition order matters too.

speculation: there are prolly 2 or 3 persons on the whole planed who understand how that shit works. i'm not one of them.

thank you! i will prolly check if lanterns are different in CVS later.

(shameless self-promotion) try k8IVAN, it has better UI, some unique features, and many more new crashes!

by the way: was lantern changed in vanilla? the wiki says that "(lanterns) shatter rather easily, being especially vulnerable to explosions", which i have never ever seen. i mean, in my inventory. even Enner is unable to break my lantern. i prolly not going to change this (lanterns are everywhere, so replacing one is not a challenge, just an annoyance), but i'm interested if they are more fragile in vanilla.

p.s.: btw, in current k8I build skeletons have a small chance to drop a crystal skull. just for fun.

also, i need to make the game harder again. i almost stopped dying in UT.

tried scimitar run for the first time in my life. (really!) it turned out to be a good weapon. was killed by Guug, as usual: he doesn't look very special, and always manages to dismember and behead me in several turns, before i have a chance to do anything. the one game i wasn't killed by him was the game where he spawned on Enner level. i found just the dead body and items. then Enner killed me too.

p.s.: now Merka is ready to do anything to protect the customer, even breaking all his for-sale bottles while fighting for my life. that's the dedication!

heh. i never played real D&D, never even read the rules or the monster compendum. NetHack is the new D&D!