[Gllug] "Open source has its own problems" - article in Computing

[Nix]

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005, David Damerell moaned:
> On Thursday, 11 Aug 2005, Nix wrote:
>>Answer me this: How the *hell* do you avoid running out of food? I seem
>>to starve in no time flat (unless I hack the code to reduce the rate of
>>energy consumption, but that's cheating).
> 
> Reduce consumption. Rings of hunger and regeneration use a lot; other

I guess you use regen by wearing them only when you must (i.e.,
for brief bursts) and then taking them off...

I'll admit I've never seen the point of rings of hunger except to annoy
people who haven't identified them yet. :)

> rings and amulets use a little (but so little that their utility
> exceeds the penalty). Being Burdened or worse uses quite a bit.

I always avoid being Burdened for exactly that reason.

> Spellcasting as a "not wizard with high Int" uses food. Jumping with

Fascinating. I think I spotted that going through the source once
but it's been so long that I can't remember. (I last played Nethack
to any real degree in 2001... and now I can feel myself getting
sucked back in. Curse you, I have binutils bugs to track down, but
I know I won't be finding them this evening. ;) )

> boots or as a knight uses a lot. The amulet of slow digestion cuts
> consumption enormously but of course you won't have one early on.

Alas.

> Eat as many corpses as possible.

I only tried eating corpses a few times, and they must've been too
old. I should have guessed that a slight variation would have
done something different; this *is* nethack after all :)

>                                  There are two ways a corpse can be
> bad; one is species-associated - some are poisonous, some induce

or lethal (e.g. basilisks: won't they turn your mouth to stone?)

> hallucinations - and one is age, which almost any species can suffer
> from. Unless it's a lizard or lichen, do not eat any corpse that is

I've never seen lichen corpses. (And why are lizards special?!)

> not known to be fresh - this is the "deathly sick" message; in terms
> of species association, learn the bad species.

Indeed. And die a few times. :)

> Prayer. If you only pray to your god when Weak with hunger and aren't
> increasing consumption as above, the risk of angering your god through
> successive prayers is miniscule. If you have any other food resources,
> it is effectively zero.

I've prayed occasionally in these situations, but I tend to forget #pray
exists, and also tend to be too scared of godly anger. If it's reasonably
safe to pray when weak, I'll do that.

> Don't linger on cleared levels, and generally avoid wasting turns that
> accomplish nothing.

Of course.

> I essentially never lose characters to starvation, including secondary
> effects like doing something otherwise foolish in a desperate search
> for food, and I'm not doing anything more clever than what you read
> here.

Oh. Cool.

Scuse me, time to kill some monsters --- I mean, go to work finding that
--as-needed bug on SPARC. Er. Naturally. :)

(If Debian bug #320697 doesn't get solved in the next day or so it'll
be *your* fault. ;))) )

-- 
`I work in computers so, of course, I'm an expert on everything.'
                                                     --- Simon Rumble
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