CF: corpses and Animate Dead spells (fwd)

[Rick Tanner <leaf@real-time.com>]

This message wasn't added to the archive for some reason, that is why I
sent it again.

- Rick Tanner
leaf@real-time.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 15:53:35 -0400
From: Hwei Sheng TEOH <hsteoh@cs.toronto.edu>
To: crossfire@ifi.uio.no
Subject: CF: corpses and Animate Dead spells

Hi!

I've been experimenting with a new Animate Dead spell, that turns corpses into
zombies, and the like. Right now, I can get it to produce zombies from
anything on the ground called "corpse". But I found that it's extremely
difficult to generalize this spell, because of the way corpses are made.

For example, if on the ground is a "hill giant's corpse", I'd like to have it
produce a hill giant zombie. Or if it's a "goblin's corpse", I'd like to have
it produce an undead goblin. I *could* potentially compile a list of corpses
and their re-animated equivalents (although this could become rather ugly),
but the bigger problem comes when there are monsters that have their own name.

What I really want in that case is to re-create the monster from its archetype
(the name doesn't really matter, since the monster has already died anyway,
and its name -- which probably was associated with special attributes -- isn't
relevent any more). However, corpses as they are currently have no such
information available. (Eg., hill giant's corpses are the same archetype as a
goblin's corpse or a human corpse). If I were to simply check the archetype
name alone, you'd get odd results like a hill giant's corpse turning into a
zombie which is much smaller than a giant!

<aside>
On that note, has anyone else observed that eating a hill giant's corpse
gives almost the same amount of food -- if not less -- than a zombie's corpse?
And that a hill giant's corpse has similar weight to a zombie's corpse?!?!?!
Hmmm, is it because hill giants' body-matter is so light-weight that they can
grow so big? :->
Also, I've always wondered how *any* character, no matter how strong, could
actually carry several hill giants' corpses around?? I mean, how does one drag
3 or 4 giant corpses up a ladder to get out of a dungeon, anyway?
</aside>

Is there any consistent way to get the original archetype of a monster (or NPC
or player, for that matter) from its corpse? Is it too much to change the
monster death code so that it attaches the monster's archetype to any body
parts that may be left? (This *does* sound too much... but I'll ask anyway. :-)
Or perhaps I should just be patient and wait for the new object structure in
0.96.* ...?

I suppose in the meantime I'll just stick with manually listing corpse names
and their corresponding "zombie monsters", and live with the fact that
specially-named monsters' corpses will not work with the spell.


T

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