Rogue, Angband, Nethack/slash'em And The Variants

[ZDevil]

Yet another update:
Trying further with the sources now I got Angband 3.0.6 compiled with sound support (using SDL-mixer)! The game has a very different feel now.  
I've just raised a number of issues and my concern about the sound files here FYI:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.r...7ce9c750cd26d07

[ZDevil]

I discovered that Angband (3.0.6 only) can actually run with 8x13 font and wide tiles!

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The next batch (in 1 or 2 days): Angband 3.0.6 (repackaged), Hellband 0.8.4, Xangband 1.1.1, Frazband 0.4.1, and perhaps Zangband 2.7.4c (all system window modules, including tk/tcl ).

[ZDevil]

One more: Unangband 0.60WIP2 (work in progress), which has been in continuous development. It has added lots of great elements to Angband.

http://developer.berlios.de/projects/unangband/

"Unnamed Angband adds over 100 class/style combinations to Angband, 130 new spells, 60 new spell books and spell related objects, over 500 new monsters, 196 features, 230 room descriptions and slightly modifies combat and monster spell casting."
 
I'm talking with the developer to fix the tile assignment. It seems the current source doesn't load 16x16 tileset correct and needs tile reassignment. The developer has written a very nice in game tile assigner where I can do the adjustment. Will report here on progress.  

[ZDevil]

Further experiments with different display settings in Angband.

The latest code (3.0.6) is nice because the tile size has been made independent of the font size in the X11 version.

Notes:
1) There are four tilesets for Angband: the original 8x8, the modified (elongated) 8x13, Adam Bolt's 16x16, and David Gervais' 32x32 bitmap tiles.

2) The width and the height of the tilesets on the display are manipulated by the setting file ~/.angband/Angband/x11-setting.prf  (for X11 mode only)

3) The -b (bigtile) option is used to double the width of the tiles. This is very useful when the font is an elongated one, such as 8x13 or 8x16. So the graphics get a well-balanced look.  (But please correct me if I am wrong here  )  Good for Zaurus.

4) There is also a -s option for "smooth rescaling".

An example of ~/.angband/Angband/x11-settings.prf:

Code: [Select]

# Angband X11 settings

# Term 0
COLS_0=80
ROW_0=24
FONT_0=-*-*-bold-r-normal-*-13-*-*-*-*-80-iso8859-1
TILE_WIDTH_0=8
TILE_HEIGHT_0=16
An example of running Angband:

Code: [Select]

angband -g -mx11 -- -g -b (bigtile)
Which means: request graphical tiles + request sound + X11 mode + David Gervais' tiles (g) [or  Adam Bolt's (a) or the original (o)] + bigtile    

This comparison uses the 8x13 font with the bigtile option, the best basic setting on Z, AFAIK.

Okay, here we go ...

(1) 8x8 tileset, width=8, height=16, bigtile

(2) 8x8 tileset, width=8, height=16, bigtile, smooth rescaling

(3) 16x16 tileset, width=8, height=16, bigtile

(4) 16x16 tileset, width=8, height=16, bigtile, smooth rescaling

(5) 32x32 tileset, width=8, height=16, bigtile

(6) 32x32 tileset, width=8, height=16, bigtile, smooth rescaling

(7) 32x32 tileset, width=16, height=32, bigtile

( 32x32 tileset, width=16, height=32, bigtile, smooth rescaling

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Beauty is in the eye of the player ...  

[ZDevil]

** A short note on playing Angband (applicable to many *band variants) **

I. Help
Angband and the variants all contain very detail ingame documentation. Seek help with your "?".

II. Display
Part of the coolness of the game is you can choose many different modes of display to suit the taste of both graphics snobs and ascii purists.

For instance, my port of 3.0.6 sets the default to the X11 display using David Gervais' 32x32 bitmap tiles with the bigtile option.  (See "New Package Announcement" post #204 in the pdaXrom forum)

Surely you can switch to the smaller Adam Bolt's 16x16 tiles and the original 8x8 tiles by editing the exec= line in /usr/local/share/applications/angband.desktop:

Code: [Select]

angband -g -v -mx11 -- -n0 -b -g -c   ## "-g" = David Gervais' 32x32 tiles ##
angband -g -v -mx11 -- -n0 -b -a -c   ## "-a" = Adam Bolt's 16x16 tiles
angband -g -v -mx11 -- -n0 -b -o -c    ## "-o" = the original 8x8 tiles ##
Other suboptions: "-b" = bigtile (double the tile width), "-s" = smooth rescaling (effects vary depending on the tileset used).

Or simply do this in the commandline. For instance, one tradeoff of using the bigtile ("-b") option on Zaurus (dunno the reason) is the loss of the currently equipped item list between "AU" and "STR(ength)".  I suspect this has to do with the relationship of tile and font display in the game.   The screenshots below show the -mgcu (GNU Curses module) displays, which doesn't care about bigtiles at all, and using different graphical tilesets without the bigtile option:

angband -mgcu (no color, no graphics):        

angband -mgcu (no color, w/ graphics):        

angband -mgcu (color, no graphics):

angband -g -mgcu (color & graphics):

angband -g -mx11 -- -o (original tileset)

angband -g -mx11 -- -a (Adam Bolt's tileset)

angband -g -mx11 -- -g (David Gervais' tileset)

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You may also want to see other options by "angband -h" in the terminal.


III. Fonts
The default font is now set to linux8x16 which is preinstalled in pdaXrom. Of course you can play with other choices by choosing from theose stored in /usr/local/share/games/angband/lib/xtra/fonts , or from the list given by xlsfonts in the commandline (I learned this from Zangband), or pickup a proper font from xfontsel .



IV. Sounds
Install the sound package to get the sound effects. They are fun!
It's quite straightforward to manage sound assignments: Just open up /usr/local/share/games/angband/lib/xtra/sound/sound.cfg and match the events with the .wav sound files in the same directory ...
Do not remove the "-v" and "-c" options if you want the sound support.

[ZDevil]

Just came across this excellent article about the whole history of roguelikes with focus on the authors of the games. A must read for RL fans!  

http://www.loonygames.com/content/1.28/feat/

Code: [Select]

... Koeneke was completely out of the loop concerning his game, only learning of its immense popularity when he got an ISP account in ‘95. He was astonished to discover a number of Moria newsgroups. After picking his jaw up off of the terminal, he typed the following post:

[Subject: Angband]
>>This game sounds a lot like the one I wrote years ago called Moria ...
>Any relationship?
>Robert Koeneke
>Creator of original Moria

He subsequently received a lot of email.

[Antikx]

I don't see it in there, but I have an orig, boxed copy of Rogue for the Tandy Color Computer. It's an oldie but a goodie.

[ZDevil]

As a new comer to this genre, I would go for a graphical version if available. Eye candies and deep gameplay don't contradict each other.  

I'm looking at this fresh roguelike game. Looks promising but heavy as well (the svn source is 116M!) See if this is portable to Z ...

http://roze.mine.nu/~roze/tactical_rogue/

[ZDevil]

Tried to build tactical_rogue. Result: segfaults  

But then something good coming up!  

7DRL Challenge 2007: Date is Chosen! More options

So that means there would be more RLs ports for Z (i build for pdaX) as long as they are opensource ...

And now I am also lookin at Larn, a classic RL oldie. Still learning the licence terms  before going ahead ...