It's possible to choose corruptions by raising and lowering appearance
issueid=2866 04-21-2014 09:12 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Sami: 91
It's possible to choose corruptions by raising and lowering appearance

Turning appearance into useful attribute (http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=2609) has caused a side effect that effectively allows one to choose which corruptions to keep and which ones to swap to less harmful.

How to reproduce:
- Gain a corruption.
- Gain one or more points of appearance (preferably equip +Ap item or unequip -Ap item).
- Wait for next corruption points to be added (stay a couple of turns in corrupting area). Very likely your current corruption has been dropped below the limit and you'll be cleansed.
- Now restore Ap back to the level it was when you first gained the corruption, you'll gain another corruption when you gain a corruption point next time.
Issue Details
Issue Number 2866
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Fixed
Priority 3
Affected Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 21
Fixed Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 22
Milestone (none)
Users able to reproduce bug 0
Users unable to reproduce bug 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




04-21-2014 09:37 PM
Ancient Member
I think there's probably only one fool-proof way to implement this, which is what Sami suggested in that RFE: http://www.adom.de/forums/project.ph...2609#note16567

It makes the most sense (e.g. works w/ existing corruption removal), ensures the decision for +Ap or -Ap is always there (instead of only when you're about to get a corruption), and completely neuters most - if not all - attempts to game the system. I really like it.

04-22-2014 06:41 AM
The Creator
Fixed. Despite my best efforts I totally forgot to use intrinsic appearance and not "modified" appearance. The former seems to be reasonable as it was meant to be a representation of purity and stuff. So starting with p22 appearance altering temporary effects won't affect the number of corruption points required for a corruption level.

04-22-2014 06:55 AM
Ancient Member
I don't like the stated implementation at all. It completely removes some of the reasons I thought Ap determining corruption would be great (do you use AMW? cloak of adornment in lower CoC [if you lack cloak of protection, which happens to me half the time]? Remove a corruption with a huge Ap hit but relatively harmless overall? etc. etc.). It also doesn't fix some of the underlying problems with the implementation (how does corruption removal work?). I strongly believe that sami's solution is the best possible one [and makes the decisions even more important in highly corrupting areas, unlike the current implementation!].

04-22-2014 07:44 AM
Junior Member
Quote Originally Posted by SirTheta
I don't like the stated implementation at all. It completely removes some of the reasons I thought Ap determining corruption would be great (do you use AMW? cloak of adornment in lower CoC [if you lack cloak of protection, which happens to me half the time]? Remove a corruption with a huge Ap hit but relatively harmless overall? etc. etc.). It also doesn't fix some of the underlying problems with the implementation (how does corruption removal work?). I strongly believe that sami's solution is the best possible one [and makes the decisions even more important in highly corrupting areas, unlike the current implementation!].
I'd like to echo this. The notion that something like a cloak of adornment is also a cloak of protection against corruption is a really cool one and one that I'd love to see used.

Additionally, this doesn't solve the issue that changes to your stats will result in knock-on effects. For instance, you could receive a corruption with an Appearance penalty (because we all know there aren't any of those) and this could result in another corruption straight away.

Suppose a character has 16 appearance and hits their 18th corruption. This requires 19080 corruption points. If this carries an appearance penalty of at least -6, then the character's corruption would be reevaluated using the new Ap score, and they are now dead. This seems to me to be an unintuitive and nasty way to die that will make endings that require corruption nearly impossible to achieve because of a significant chance of the character randomly turning into a wmopc the moment they hit extremely corrupted.

EDIT: Wait, I guess that would count as an Appearance modifier, so I guess it's still not that bad. Still, it makes no sense that a highly corrupted character could die to a potion of exchange just because their Ap drops a few points, or that juggling the Ap score with potions of exchange or balance could be used to tailor corruptions.

04-22-2014 08:15 AM
Senior Member
I really do like the dilemma that Sirtheta suggests, considering the effects of different equipment on appearance. Could it be done this way:
Corruption is more potent on those with lower total appearance (not just intrinsic, so wearing the mummy wrapping for example) so that if two characters spent equal time in a corrupting environment the one with lower total appearance would get more corruptions. The reason I like using total appearance is because it would be more dynamic within each game, making decisions about which equipment to wear or which corruptions to remove more important. Whatever corruption points has been gained can only be removed by conventional means, so appearance only affects the accumulation of more corruption.

04-22-2014 08:35 AM
Ancient Member
I was also hoping that items would become more significant. Isn't it perhaps better to make appearance affect how fast you gain corruption points, rather than how much corruption points it takes to have an effect of corruption.

04-22-2014 08:49 AM
Ancient Member
Yes, I also quite agree with SirTheta... I mean, thematically it probably makes more sense to have only intrinsic appearance count... but gameplay-wise, taking items into account should be more interesting because it introduces tradeoffs and decisions.

Quote Originally Posted by Stingray1
I was also hoping that items would become more significant. Isn't it perhaps better to make appearance affect how fast you gain corruption points, rather than how much corruption points it takes to have an effect of corruption.
I think this is the most elegant solution. It makes logical sense (your beauty would determine how fast ChAoS is creeping into you), it sounds simpler than the current implementation (direct relation between corruption points and number of corruptions at all times, so no need to keep several different tallies or recalculate anything), and it could not produce bugs like this one.

04-22-2014 02:13 PM
Ancient Member
Yes, all my posts have been heavily endorsing Sami's suggestion in the original RFE: http://www.adom.de/forums/project.ph...2609#note16567, which contains the idea that Ap determines how many CP you gain :)

I also want to elaborate on this a little:
Quote Originally Posted by SirTheta
[and makes the decisions even more important in highly corrupting areas, unlike the current implementation!].
Right now [p21], Ap only matters near the break points of CP for corruptions - so most of the time, your Ap has no effect. It's good to have when fighting balors or other corrupting creatures, but wandering the dungeon with the AMW isn't going to have much affect. Changing Ap to affect accumulation of CP changes it to an always on sort of thing, which means your decision in somewhat corrupting areas is (a) magnified and (b) is relatively constant, i.e. if you'd want to forego AMW while gallivanting around D:40+, you'd want to forego it the entire time rather than just when you are somewhat near a new corruption.

Perhaps interestingly (at least to me), this also means that C-/L+ alignment could have an effect on the corruption accumulated from background corruption [though perhaps some code needs to be tweaked in that regard - I don't know]. I'd be very interested to see that!

04-22-2014 09:34 PM
The Creator
Ok, I have changed it once more according to Samis proposal. We'll see how this works out.

04-22-2014 10:47 PM
Ancient Member
Yay! :)

04-22-2014 11:04 PM
Ancient Member
Does this mean Appearance modifying equipment will have an impact?

Let me rephrase, will intrinsic or "modified" appearance be used? The latter would be awesome.

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