GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 107846
super-safe moves, no moves, no teleport - lost score
Last modified: 2006-01-25 19:12:48 UTC
when playing with suport-safe moves and safe teleport, it is possible (it happened for me on level 67) that there will be no safe place to teleport and no possible moves. in this situation, gnobots2 reports that "there are no places to teleport to" on "t" and beeps on any other key. the game is over and should be reported as such to the user and the score should go to the top score list. nevertheless, the only way out is "Ctrl-N" (new game) and this kills this game without recording the score. There are 2 separate problems here: 1. Ctrl-N (new game) should record the current score in the top score list. 2. when there are no legal moves, the game should be declared to be over.
Yup I can confirm this. However, I don't agree that CTRL-N should save the score, as it is very much like forefeiting the game, and so shouldn't give you a score.
quit in nethack does give you a score. why Ctrl-N in gnobots doesn't?!
IMHO, CTRL-N should be considered a forefeit move. In soccer, if you forefeit the match, you don't get to retain any points you've scored up to that point, and I believe the same is true in most - if not all - other sports. However, this is my opinion, and may be different to that of other people. It is certainly different to that of the developer of Nethack, which is why you get to keep your score when quitting prematurly in that game.
OK, you are the BOSS. just make sure that - the user is never _forced_ to hit C-n, i.e., if that is the only option, then the game is ended automatically. - the menu entry for C-n (new game) clearly states that the score will be forfeited, because that is not the behavior the users came to expect from other games. thanks!
..just to clear one thing up - all of these comments are just my opinion, and may differ greatly from the programmer of Gnobots.
For the record, as the nearest thing to a boss that gnome-games currently has, I haven't made up my mind what to do about this (which is why it wasn't fixed in 2.4.0). All the other games work on the principle that New Game is a sign that the player wants to abandon the current one. Ideally, I would like to set up the game so that there is always a move available, but I think that isn't actually possible without limiting the robot density to something that is usually too low. The other option is to test for this condition and add a dialog that says, sorry: game over. Does anyone know what the BSD version does ? I should also point out that the major difference between nethack and gnobots is that you shouldn't spend hours playing a single game of gnobots, although by level 67 you probably have.
at any rate, one should not lose his score because the game is over. since this kind of game ending would probably be quite rare you might consider adding something unusual, e.g., automatic starting over while preserving the score, i.e., you will get to the level 1 but your initial score will be whatever you accrued by the level 67 (instead of 0). this will avoid the C-n issue altogether.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 105536 ***
Shit, did something stupid there. This is not a dup of 105536.
We could just save the score whenever and however a game ends, Ctrl-n or not. I don't love this idea, but that's what gnometris does.
One possible solution might be to eliminate safe moves but add some visual feedback that tells you what the bad moves are (like hilighting the squares in red) thus allowing you to 'commit suicide'. I don't think this will solve all the issues, but it will simplify the interface considerably (I would like the game panel of the preferences to only have two or three entries: easy, medium, hard). I really must fix this bug soon though.
> One possible solution might be to eliminate safe moves this is no good for poor typists. please do not do this! I stick with my suggestions: either Ctrl-N records the score, or, better yet, when there are no legal moves, automatically declare endgame and record the score, or, still better, when there are no legal moves, re-start the game at level 1 with the starting score as accumulated, as suggested in Comment #7.
Since the game is supposed to be about getting mauled by robots, I'm in favor of eliminating safe moves, especially now that the game comes with mouse support.
> the game is supposed to be about getting mauled by robots the game is about _NOT_ getting mauled by robots. safe moves is a nice feature, eliminating it is no good. not everyone wants to use the mouse. remember, that one of the points of robots is that "hjkl" keys do the same thing as in VI, so one is using this game be become a better VI user :-)
I have just made sure that New Game records the score. The result should appear in CVS later tonight. I haven't come to a good conclusion about how best to avoid having no place to go (nor about the fate of safe moves in general), so this bug stays open.
My two cents (new here, but love the game) I don't see the fact there are no safe moves as a bug. Killing robots with only your wits is a dangerous job, and you can't always live. Also, this happens fairly often, I would say - perhaps one in three times that I get up into the levels about 60. It hasn't been a problem for me, and I agree that New Game should NOT record a high score - that is the expected behavior for me in almost all games. If I want a score, I commit "suicide" by making a non-safe teleport. To solve this for everyone, I have a suggestion. How about modifying the dialog box that comes up when there are no safe moves? It would still say "no safe moves", but the change would be to offer two options: (Button 1) New Game - Does not record your game in high score list (Button 2) End Game - Ends game and records your score on the high score list Hope you folks like the idea - I think it addresses all the comments in this bug except those of people who want there to always be a safe move.
Is this an obsolete bug? We don't need to eliminate super-safe moves if we (apparently?) can't disable teleport anymore. :)
Ben's comment and my memory suggests that Random teleport was always an option, but that the reporters just wanted to record their score when all the non-safe moves were gone. Sorry if that's the case...
This is still a bug Richard - your second comment is the correct case. It is also one of those bugs that has always got shoved down my list of priorities - mostly because I'm no longer familiar with the gnobots code. One day I will fix it.
*** Bug 327482 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This bug has been fixed in CVS and should appear in gnome-games 2.14. I used the solution of ending the game when there are no more safe teleports and no safe moves in super-safe-moves mode. In any other game mode the suicide option is the obvious one. I haven't thoroughly tested the code yet either. I'm not a good enough player. Its only taken three years for me to fix this :(.
so, is the score now recorded?
The score should be recorded. If I've done everything correctly it will fall into the same end-of-game code as you get when a robot catches you.