Talk:Naming artifacts

Is this just a forgotten relic?

Noting the existance of the oartifact field, I wonder if NetHack still uses the artifact's name for anything. Here's a trick I pulled off SLASH'EM that seems to indicate names are irrelevant:

1. Start SLASH'EM (IIRC worked in 0.0.7E7 a yearish ago, I cannot test ATM since I've misplaced my binaries)
2. ^Wish up an elven dagger and a potion of gain level.
3. Name the elven dagger 'The Great Dagger of Glaurgnaa'
4. Dip the elven dagger into the potion of gain level.

The elven dagger will now be upgraded into a great dagger, keeping its name; thus you now have a 'great dagger named The Great Dagger of Glaurgnaa'. That is the the name and base item of the Necromancer quest artifict. But you didn't create an artifact! You do NOT get level drain resistance, magic resistance, or ENERGY_BOOST invokation.

I also (just now) tested this in vanilla, using a hex editor instead of the upgrade exploit, and the Eye instead of the GDoG. Again, energy did not regenerate with the hand-named amulet, and did regenerate with the wished artifact. ^G summoned quest nemesis did not steal named amulet, but stole wished amulet.

It seems like the artifact naming trick could trivially be fixed by removing the name-restriction code.

--Stefanor 07:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I patched my copy of the NetHack source to try this out: I #ifdef 0'd do_name.c#line313 through do_name.c#line323. I got the opposite results you did; my named Eye of the Aethiopica worked just as well as the real thing (as soon as I dropped it and picked it up after naming it to make sure the extrinsics were set), even in explore mode. Are you sure wished for an amulet of ESP? Perhaps the use of the hex editor screwed NetHack up. --Eidolos 07:46, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It's oartifact, not the name, that makes an artifact an artifact. When the name is set, if the base object and the name match an artifact, oartifact is also set. See artifact.c#line112. IOW, you may have a long sword and its name may be Vorpal Blade, but if oartifact is 0, it ain't Vorpy; and if you're wielding a pancake, and oartifact is set to VORPAL_BLADE, you're going to be chopping heads with that baby.

To get rid of the naming bug this way, you could allow the name to go through, but still apply the naming restriction to setting oartifact. -- Ray Chason 08:41, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Is this actually a bug?

If the DevTeam doesn't think this is a bug, I don't think we should call it one. I can't find it in the bugs list. -- Raxvulpine

I'd be very surprised if this behavior was intentional. Perhaps it's not on the bug list yet because nobody has reported it (because everyone thinks someone else must have reported it (Kitty Genovese, anyone? :/).. as I understand it, this has happened in the past with the loadstone/item duplication bug). Or perhaps they just haven't gotten around to adding it to the bug list (farfetched, perhaps, but possible). I'd say keep it classified as a bug here unless the DevTeam states otherwise (such as with a "Not a bug" bug report as they have for floating eyes not giving a warning). --Eidolos 20:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I emailed the DevTeam about this a while ago and, to my surprise, they replied. I won't copy it out here as I think they consider their emails private, but the gist was that yes, it is a bug, and the reason it's not on the official list is because "it's been fixed in the development code for some time." Perhaps that means the fix predates the current bug list. --Jayt 20:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)