Game Testing Needed

[Gwarl]

There would be no code in common, angband.live simply provides a frontend to running linux terminal programs which I gather would be basically impossible for this fork.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Just a reminder, some of our own devs, e.g. Sideways aka rodent, are occasionally available on angband.live

[iggy_hunter]

I'm definitely open here but I need to concentrate on the refactor. I also need some developer recruits with new ideas to develop extensions they want. Any ideas there?

[HugoVirtuoso]

Making a web-browser frontend sounds like a fantastic idea. If you do this, it will alleviate the need to worry about the Windows PC requirement. Maybe ask Gwarl via PM or ask on the thread re: his webserver about suggestons? Maybe borrow code?

[Julian]

One can apparently install .NET on Linux, but I have no idea if it’s sufficient for your purposes.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/install/linux

[iggy_hunter]

Portability

I've been thinking about how to make the game/fork portable again. Anyone have ideas. My going thought right now is to convert it into an HTTP server based .NET Core with a browser front end. It would replicate Angband.live.

Suggestions please?

[iggy_hunter]

Issues

If you find any issues, feel free to add them to the GitHub issues.

[iggy_hunter]

Kanban Board

View the current work items here:

https://dev.azure.com/Skars-Technology-and-Consulting/Cthangband

[iggy_hunter]

Visual Studio 2022 Community:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/thank-you-downloading-visual-studio/?sku=Community&channel=Release&version=VS2022&source=VSLandingPage&passive=false&cid=2030

[HugoVirtuoso]

Which Windows-based compilers are best suited for your fork?

[iggy_hunter]

Extensibility

Another idea for extensibility has to do with the monster AI.

I want to be able to modify monsters with coding. Specifically, how they move. I want the game to provide a hook that modules can implement that allows the developer to "code" logic into how they move. The game can provide (and more specifically limit) various details that the module has access to ... based on the stats for the specific monster.

For example, vision ... how far can the monster see. The game will only provide access to the floor space that the monster can see. The programmer cannot override that vision but still has to make a decision for how the monster will move. Are there walls in the way? Can the monster see the player? Does the monster attack other monsters?

All of that will start to allow developers to code AI into monster movement, on a per monster basis.

Hey ... maybe we have monster competitions? Who's monster can kill the other monster first?

[iggy_hunter]

Injectability

For injectability ... I want to be able to do something like the following:

1. Create a new c# project
2. Add reference to the Cthangband libraries
3. Add a hook to the dungeon/level generator to create a "special" level
4. Create an object that specifies a vault that is injected into the level
5. Create an object that specifies the type of monsters that I want in the level (in my case ... I only want 5 Ancient gold dragons)
6. Specifically place a special item at the end of the vault

If I can inject different objects of functionality, things like this will be easy.

[iggy_hunter]

Extensibility

For extensibility ... this is my goal:

I want to be able to:

1. create a new C# class library project,
2. add a reference to the Cthangband libraries (a product of my refactoring),
3. writing some functionality (see below),
4. compile the .DLL,
5. copy the .DLL into a subfolder "extensions/add-ons" of the game
6. run the game
7. see my extensions in action

The various functionality that should be easily extensible should be:
a. add new item
b. add new monster
c. add new store
d. add new vault
e. add new action
f. add new command
g. implement different logic for various hooks

[iggy_hunter]

That's the point for this fork. Dean has done a monster amount of work, converting the game from C++ to C#. He has also made huge strides in converting chunks into objects. Huzzah to Dean for that effort.

My goal is to "modernize" the code. This modernization should give us three things:
1. Extensibility
2. Testability
3. Injectability

I'll post more on those shortly.

[iggy_hunter]

I do not believe there is any support for C#.NET on Linux. At this time, Cthangband is limited to Windows. I know Dean has looked into being able to re-port it back to Linux/Mac ... but we are not there yet.