We run an old text game built on an ancient and mysterious codebase.  It occasionally does strange things for reasons that've been lost to the mists of time.

Sometimes it refused to create new characters.  It loathed certain names with a passion, like 'Counterlock', and nothing would explain why.  No error message, nothing at all, just abject silence and a failed system call.  This happened extremely rarely, fortunately, but really bunged the system up good when it did.  We'd have to dig in and delete the offensive objects before the application system could resume normal operation.

When it broke down on Pandamonium, I got mad.  I dove into the source itself and added trace statements through every step of the process.  Finally I stumbled into a function that appeared to be checking for, hmm.....  jerks?  previously banned players, perhaps?  This is what printf revealed:

 

The offending function has been replaced with a stub that always returns zero, and we can at long last name characters 'damn', 'fuck', and 'shit' if we well and truly want to.

Is "." what you meant to say?

 

Anyway, my guess was that your program was the spelling police because "Pandamonium" is not a word.

Use a different browser, you can't see the image in IE6

I think CorUscaNT would fail too ...

 

 sucks if you want to be an assassin

bobday:

 sucks if you want to be an buttbuttin

 

Indeed. 

Judging by the removal of repeated letters (*b*u*t*h*e*a*d*, *c*u*n*y*) it seems that whoever wrote this was expecting the '*' to only match the same letter repeated (so as to match things like daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn), which isn't too much of a WTF if they wern't used to this regex syntax.

The fact that they obviously didn't test very well is the real problem (probably only tested to make sure it would match what they wanted, which it does, but forgot to test that it doesn't match what they don't want it to).

Cuny?

rbowes:

Cuny?

Guess the programmer had something against the City University of New York 

And just think, if you had spelled "pandemonium" correctly you never would have found the bug.

 

Mithious:

Use a different browser, you can't see the image in IE6

 

Not using IE6, but I guess that's yet another wtf in this thread.

Mithious:

Use a different browser, you can't see the image in IE6

 

Well what do you know ...  

Mithious:

Use a different browser, you can't see the image in IE6

I was thinking about it, and the only thing I could think of is that it might have something to do with the encoding. For instance, I forgot that IE6 doesn't recognize the alpha channel correctly. I created a theme for my blog and only tested it in Opera (I know, I know). It looked great to me. However, when my wife viewed it in IE6 (I don't know why she won't use something else), the areas that were supposed to be transparent on the little icons showed up as black. Months later, I have yet to swap them out for GIFs.

Apparently this is it:

elias:

<absolutely nothing of consequence>

umm ... what were you trying to say when you said nothing there? 

I think the problem with the original post is this:

<img src="http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/6797/pandamoniumew6.png" alt="" align="" border="" height="" hspace="" width="" />

Edit: I was posting the image so that it would display in IE.

elias:

I think the problem with the original post is this

Oh yeah. That probably did it. Opera, as well as many other browsers, obviously ignore empty attributes, but IE6 interprets that to equal zero. I guess IE7 learned null != 0 != string.Empty

The missing images problem has already been debugged — see http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/8033/151112.aspx.

AbbydonKrafts:

Oh yeah. That probably did it. Opera, as well as many other browsers, obviously ignore empty attributes, but IE6 interprets that to equal zero. I guess IE7 learned null != 0 != string.Empty

I still can't see it on IE7...

belgariontheking:

rbowes:

Cuny?

Guess the programmer had something against the City University of New York 

 

Probably just looking for this: http://www.definition-of.com/cunny.

Someone probably dodged the C*U*N*T ban with it. 

Guys, "Pandamonium" is probably a pun on "Panda". This certainly wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone use it for that purpose. Let's not jump to conclusions before accusing people of not knowing how to spell.

Maciej:

"Pandamonium" is probably a pun on "Panda"

 

Thanks Dr. Obvious.

Maciej:

Guys, "Pandamonium" is probably a pun on "Panda". This certainly wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone use it for that purpose. Let's not jump to conclusions before accusing people of not knowing how to spell.

 

That word should be spelled A-L-W-A-Y-S. 

cconroy:

And just think, if you had spelled "pandemonium" correctly you never would have found the bug.

MasterPlanSoftware:

Maciej:

"Pandamonium" is probably a pun on "Panda"

 

Thanks for your contribution, Maciej. But remember to use the quote function next time, so we know what you're talking about.

Fixed that for you. 

PSWorx:

Fixed that for you. 

 

Actually no. There was no clarification needed. I knew what he was talking about. Pointing out the obvious is not a contribution.

bstorer:

Maciej:

Guys, "Pandamonium" is probably a pun on "Panda". This certainly wouldn't be the first time I've seen someone use it for that purpose. Let's not jump to conclusions before accusing people of not knowing how to spell.

 

That word should be spelled A-L-W-A-Y-S. 

 

As in, people ALWAYS spell words correctly on the internet?

Seriously, "panda"monium?  Oh, I'm busting a gut over tha