Bug - Not A Bug monsters with (male) and (female) versions

fredg1

Member
For monsters having male/female variants, Mafia only accepts $monster[<monster> (male)] or $monster[<monster> (female], but since KoL keeps the difference between those two purely aesthetic, there are instances in which this causes problems.

The only one I actually know of (and is relevant for me) is faxes, as the description of the photocopied monster then contains an unknown monster, for Mafia. This is obviously worst with faxbots and the faxbot() function.
Maybe genie wishes have that problem, too??

Mafia should be able to at least try to associate ungendered monsters to their gendered variants.

The one i've been having problems with is the Factory Overseer, but it should also apply to clingy pirate and factory worker, as well as the obligatory plethora of other qualifying monsters i'm forgetting.
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
Mafia is supposed to arbitrarily decide on one of several monsters when given an ambiguous description? If you're faxing/fighting with a genie, then there's a decent chance you care which of the two monsters you get, and an error seems better than getting the wrong one. It's also easy enough to work with, once you know what's going on.

This seems like Not A Bug, but perhaps it is Won't Fix if it is actually a bug somehow.
 

fredg1

Member
> ash return faxbot($monster[factory overseer]);

Bad monster value: "factory overseer" ()
Returned: void

> ash return faxbot($monster[factory overseer (male)]);

Returned: false

(should note that I knew it would fail, otherwise, if you're testing if you can fax something, use can_faxbot() instead, which won't actually try to get the fax if it returns true)
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
I understand that. I just disagree that it's a bug. Blame KoL for making monsters with identical names, but don't expect it to change there either.
 

lostcalpolydude

Developer
Staff member
Code:
cli_execute( "faxbot factory overseer" )
I'm curious why one would ever want to fax that monster though. Maybe for factoids because you don't own that IotM, but that isn't going to happen when requesting an ambiguous monster name anyway.
 
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