Thanks to reports from the pre-testing test and from actually trying to use the MUD as a player, I’ve taken care of a bunch of things. Here’s the list:
— Fixed “look in object” command.
— Fixes to damage messages. Sometimes they wouldn’t print thanks to a stray ‘\0’ (null) character.
— Kill message now shows properly. Yet again, caused by a stray null character. A remnant from the old C days.
— Improvements to name capitalization in prompts, descriptions, and room entry/exit messages. Some things will still need adjustments, but it’s better.
— Fixed “no help on Grey Elf” during character creation.
— Fixed display of spell schools when using the “spells” command.
— Fixed a nasty bug that would cause a newly-killed player to become unplayable.
— Picking up items should work now. Zone files weren’t synchronized with code (zone files were a version behind in the zone format). That can cause all manner of weirdness, but the fix is simple — run the zone converter to build a new set of zones. In this case, flags that included “takeable” settings were missing.
— Corpse creation should be less broken. Can’t promise it’s perfect, but it’s better. At the very least, I can kill things and loot coins from corpses.
Those are some pretty significant fixes, but I’m still no more than 45% through the things mentioned during the test. Add to that the fact that I found a few other things that need to be looked at. Actually PLAYING a game you’re working on does wonders for figuring out whether it works as intended.