[b40] freeze/die bug (caused by NPC necromancers?)

[Sirrocco]

The following happened:
- I was playing a Dwarven Cursed climbing through Escape From Reknor, on the default distribution Mac compile. I opted not to curse my gear. I'm on level 2 (with only the default level for going up the stairs, because I'm handing all the exp to Norgan), with gloom up.
- I encounter a rare orc who appears to have necromantic abilities. I go to attack him, along with Norgan.
- He throws up some sort of field of blue speckles. He then summons a skeletal mage. At this point, I can't see Norgan (he's on the other side of a pillar) but we're both whaling on the necromancer.
- The skeletal mage throws up some sort of field of black speckles. Norgan has gotten frozen somehow, but has plenty of life. I also have plenty of life (143/212 or so - I got a few pieces of life-boosting gear)
- I take a swing at the skeletal mage, miss because of some funky magical effect (confusion, maybe?) and before I get another turn it locks up in what looks to be an infinite loop (fan spools up quickly, force quit prevented, cannot do anything other than move the mouse, does not respond to mouse-clicks, etc.)
- It is possible that I am misremembering slightly, in which case I swung, was prevented, took another swing, and it locked up before telling me the results

I hope you find this in some way helpful.

[Sirrocco]

oh - and in case it matters, the blue sparkles were hanging around even after the orcish necromancer died.

[Sirrocco]

I think I've identified what caused the problem. It happened to me again just now, fighting a breeder unique with gloom. It seems like the fade in/out sparklies hit a point where keeping track of them takes more resources than the subsection devoted to taking care of them is allotted, and they then go nuts with processer cycles trying to perform an impossible task. In any case, tossing, say, 10-20 bosses with gloom on the board should duplicate the bug fairly effectively. (mind you, since the result of the bug is "become unresponsive" that may be of limited utility)

[Sirrocco]

...and, oddly, it seems to have happened again to my mindslayer in Daikara, fighting against a frost giant unique who had some sort of yell that filled the air with brown sparklies. It didn't seem like it would have been too much, but it locked it up all the same.