Gyah! Game crashed!

[ElectricalFire]

I'm on my longest run ever--level 17 priest (I know.. newb..) I was heading up to the surface after killing the Snake from Beyond and the game randomly crashed! Now ADOM won't start up. Is there anything I can do, or is my character gone from this bug?

EDIT:

In the future I'll probably just back up my character once in awhile. But to be honest, that feels too much like save-scumming to me. I like to have one continuous char!

Looking through the folder I see nothing in the savedg and tmpdat folders, I'm going to assume he died. Poor guy, it was going so well too!

So I want to change the focus of this post a bit, rather than just whining...

Do you guys suffer any instability in this game? This isn't the first time I have lost a character, although this is the first time I lost a higher level char.

Is the fact that I'm using the windows version of ADOM?

[gut]

Winbeta 4 is what I use. It is the most stable version
for me. I have heard other players advise using
adom sage, for increased stability.

[Grey]

To allow ADOM to start up again delete the adom.prc file in the data folder. It should run fine again after that.

Personally I find that ADOM Sage runs best for me, though I mostly use it for its general features than stability reasons. I've only had one serious crash I can remember (mostly because it was horribly memorable). I don't like backing up saves either. If I ever had to restore from one it would feel like cheating (I'm not saying it is, just that it would feel that way for me).

[warheart]

Well, I'm using winbeta 4 and can't really remember my last crash, it just doesn't happen for me. I do make backup files because my hard drive is fucked up and quite often it gets stuck, so I have to reset comp and would lose most characters that way (although this hasn't happened in a while either while playing adom, so I don't ever use the backups).

[Silfir]

I use the DOS version under Windows XP, and it very rarely crashes.

[Vladimir]

There are some stability-improving patches on this page:

http://folk.ntnu.no/houeland/adom/

[Nezur]

Only the ingot bug fixing patch has been approved of by Thomas.

[theotherhiveking]

At last! Game no longer crashing when choosing the skilled talent.

[Grey]

Who wants the skilled talent anyway? Like Nezur said, using that patch technically makes any victory you achieve through it unofficial. TB has explicitly stated that only Vladimir's ingot bug fixing patch is legitimate to use.

[Kato]

GAH! First time I have EVER had Adom crash on me :( And that character was looking so good for an archer too :( Guess I'll have to reroll later today.

[ewolf]

I just now had my game crash with a level 17 barbarian going up from the CoC, and I think this character had potential to go very far. It crashed on the really spacey level where monsters spawn quickly.

I was using dos version 1.1.1

[misterfay]

I like to play a gnomish elementalist. I crash the game a lot when I go into a level that has ants. I eat a lot of food so I'm bloated, lock myself into a room and search that room with the w s function bringing up the 'you hear grinding noises' message many times. After doing this for a while, I come out of the room to find large parts of the level eaten away by the ants and tons of gems available.

I think when the level is eaten away so much, the game becomes unstable because about 25% of the time I use this tactic the game crashes.

By the way this is my first post, I've been playing ADOM for two years, but haven't gotten very far. Level 24 gnomish elementalist was the highest I've had. The animated forest kicks my butt everytime no matter how careful I am.

By the way is this 'mining' technique considered 'scumming' what is 'scumming'?

[gut]

> By the way is this 'mining' technique considered 'scumming' what is 'scumming'?

It's pretty much any tactic that yields (big) benefits,
from a repetitive task. Things are considered more
scummy, if the rewards are bigger, or the repetitive
task is boring, or takes longer.

Using the ants, as miners, is not very scummy, because
the rewards aren't amazing, it doesn't take too long,
and it's only a bit dull. Stairhopping in the ID, now
that's scumming : )

[vogonpoet]

Nah, stairhopping is just confused tourism.

Pickpocketing 000s of gremlins, thats scumming.

[Timpak]

The things I consider scummy are the following:

Stairjumping in id (I do this from time to time)
Casino gold (I do this to from time to time)
Dragon doubling gold (never done this)
Gremlin pickpocket (never done this, I've done just orginary pickpocketing though to get detect traps from yergius)
Gremlin bombs (never done this either)
Pacifying levels for herb farming (I have done this, I do think locking doors to a room with herbs to farm is not scummy)
Wish engine (Including archmage, never done any of them though)
Using ring of weakness/sickness to increase stat more (I do the sickness thing)
Restocking the gift shop (only done this few times not intentionally)
Doing d50 by the doortrick (never done this)

Probably more things I can't think of right now. Piety overflow and such are pure bug abuseing so I consider that plain cheating.

[Grey]

Starvation scumming for stats also. Corruption scumming too possibly, or any other form of temporarily reducing stats (moloch armour for instance).

Dragon gold doubling should be listed as a bug too, in my opinion.

Putting millions of gold (from whatever source) into Garth gives ridiculous results as well.

Don't see what's so bad with restocking the gift shop - you don't get that much useful from it, and it's not easy without SoA. You could argue that SoA itself is a scummy spell...

Constant book-casting throughout the game? Gets you a stupid amount of Mana by the end if you really do it all the time.

[Timpak]

Yeah dragon doubling gold might be listed as bug also. I have never ever trained with Garth so I don't know what effects that gives.

But most things that are scummy are when you use effects in the game in a way that gives your character loads of positive effects. For example, SoA are made to make your character superstrong carryingwise. Gremlins multiplying in water is not meant to masskill or pickpocket to gain rare and valuable items in a safe way. Same with the casino, I think it's meant for a stop where the player can gamble some in order to buy many of the valuables in it. Restocking the casino is a way of getting rare and valuable items really safe and easily.

[gut]

I wouldn't consider it scummy, to lower stats via corruption.
That comes with a real downside, using up corruption
resistance.

[ewolf]

I lost another human barbarian (level 23) while picking up an iron wand that was one of several objects lying on the same spot. Is there a way to determine when the game crashes on item pickup (a certain pattern), does it just randomly crash for you guys?

By the way, im using the 1.1.1 dos version with dosbox.