Reviving Iso-Angband, an isometric view addon for Angband

[Nick]

To avoid loss of code, screenshots and all that again, this time I've registered a project on SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/yanotavar

There isn't anything to show or see yet, since I'm just starting again. Still with the idea of nice and easily readable graphics in mind, but better integrated with Angband than the former display was. I hope I'll have something to show in a few days.

Excellent! A couple of things you might want to take note of:

• The angband variant repository has an IsoAngband page
• The latest code angband code is also on github; I don't know if that makes moving to github a good idea for you or not.

[Hajo]

Last post here was 2 and half a year ago ... it's hard to believe how fast time passes. I've been ill, been busy with other projects, distracted, well and when I finally thought it would be fine to work on Iso-Angband some more, I had to see that the world has changed again. Much.

Angband has gotten a much advanced main-sdl.c now, new and better tile sets, and I'm even no longer sure if isometric display is a good idea. But to get a start, I've downloaded Angband 3.4.1 sources and tried to learn how the new main-sdl.c works. I've manged to compile it, run it, and replace a few routines in the main-sdl.c to see ho a graphical display could be linked to it, and it seems to work all fine now. It's just been very slow progress the past days, because so much is new and I'm slow in reading code, and finding out how everything is supposed to work.

To avoid loss of code, screenshots and all that again, this time I've registered a project on SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/yanotavar

There isn't anything to show or see yet, since I'm just starting again. Still with the idea of nice and easily readable graphics in mind, but better integrated with Angband than the former display was. I hope I'll have something to show in a few days.

PS: Angband 3.4.1 can't read it's own pref-file dumps for objects, since it expects object names in a slightly different format than the one that it writes.

I have no idea if my fix was right, I changed the dump routine to produce the same object name format which the parsing routine uses when it compares object names with the names read from the pref file.

--- a/yanovatar_source/trunk/src/prefs.c
+++ b/yanovatar_source/trunk/src/prefs.c
 
@@ -239,13 +239,16 @@
 	{
 		object_kind *k_ptr = &k_info[i];
 		const char *name = k_ptr->name;
+                char buf_name[1024];
 
 		if (!name) continue;
-		if (name[0] == '&' && name[1] == ' ')
-			name += 2;
-
+		// if (name[0] == '&' && name[1] == ' ')
+		//	name += 2;
+                
+                obj_desc_name_format(buf_name, sizeof buf_name, 0, name, 0, FALSE);
+                
 		file_putf(fff, "K:%s:%s:%d:%d\n", tval_find_name(k_ptr->tval),
-				name, k_ptr->x_attr, k_ptr->x_char);
+				buf_name, k_ptr->x_attr, k_ptr->x_char);
 	}

[Hajo]

Staying in style ...

A while I thought it might be cool to have a full detailed basin thing - so I modeled one and rendered it, just to find out it totally does not fit with the other images. So for the time being I'm back to a very simple outline style standalone basin, which is boring, but consistent with the rest of the graphics.

[Hajo]

I've been experimenting with a few basin design ideas, but I haven't found something yet that I really liked. At the moment I'm a bit ill, and the medicine has side effects that aren't very pleasant either. I'll try to pick up work again once I feel better, hopefully next week.

[andrewdoull]

If the vents are meant to be pipes along the corridors, I might be able to do something, too - this will be for the farther future, though. In these two cases I was mostly uncertain how the things are intended to look.

Think 'air conditioning ducts'. They might be in an open space, in which case you are crawling around them, or they might be in a closed up space in which case you're crawling through them.

For the basins (and other wall-aligned features) I can imagine a few solutions. Important was to know these are meant to be part of the walls and not single, detached, basins.

A detached basin is a fountain, if that helps any. (At least a water filled fountain).

Andrew

[Hajo]

If the vents are meant to be pipes along the corridors, I might be able to do something, too - this will be for the farther future, though. In these two cases I was mostly uncertain how the things are intended to look.

For the basins (and other wall-aligned features) I can imagine a few solutions. Important was to know these are meant to be part of the walls and not single, detached, basins.

Thanks for the clarification, Andrew

[andrewdoull]

I feel a bit uncertain if this is the right way to picture "open vents" and "empty basins". But it looks interesting to me anyways

That's as good as we're going to get, without me having to hack up another '32-way support for vents' code.

I'd assume that the basins are meant to be aligned with the wall, maybe like fountains as part of the wall. Such directional objects are kind of tricky in a block-oriented display though ...

IIRC there is support for 2 way alignment of items against walls (either north-south, or east-west). Use the ATTR_DOOR indicator to get this.

It won't correctly handle facing from the south or west side of walls though.

Andrew

[Hajo]

I feel a bit uncertain if this is the right way to picture "open vents" and "empty basins". But it looks interesting to me anyways

Click for full size.

I'd assume that the basins are meant to be aligned with the wall, maybe like fountains as part of the wall. Such directional objects are kind of tricky in a block-oriented display though ...

[Hajo]

Iso-Unangband WIP 6 is now available.

No code changes this time, just new images and more configuration entries for existing images. Focus is still the early game, and slowly, very slowly, the project becomes more complete there.

Download

=> http://www.funkelwerk.de/data/iso-an...4-iso-wip6.zip (5.3 MB)

Images and sources are included. A windows executable is supplied, with two start scripts "start_large.bat" and "start_small.bat", as known from the former Iso-Angband releases.

Changes since WIP 5

- Added new image templates to expand tile set further.
- Curved blades config.
- Whip config.
- Ball-and-Chain config.
- Mace type weapons config.
- Spear/Pike/Javelin config.
- Shovel config.
- Pickaxe config.
- Boots config.
- Cap/helm config.
- Leather armor config.
- Metal armor config.
- Complete centipede and crawler config.
- Complete worm mass config.
- Chicken image and config.

[Hajo]

Iso-Unangband WIP 5 is now available.

No big changes this time, mostly image and configuration updates. I decided to change the configuration back to straight stairs in this release, since the spiral stairs did not fit very well with the other tiles. Maybe later after some rework they'll fit better.

I like the new spell effects - similar to the former ones, but with a bigger "bang" factor

Download

=> http://www.funkelwerk.de/data/iso-an...4-iso-wip5.zip (5.3 MB)

Images and sources are included. A windows executable is supplied, and two start scripts "start_large.bat" and "start_small.bat", as known from the former Iso-Angband releases.

Changes since WIP 4

- Cow image and config.
- Goat image and config.
- Emphasized spell effects images.
- Insect swarm image update.
- Faerie light image and config.
- Goblin image and config (leaving out the more special goblins).
- Ant image and config.
- Shrieker mushroom patch image and config.
- Mushroom patch config.
- Torch and lantern config.
- Dagger type weapon config.
- Sword type weapon config.

- Changed code to base display on p_ptr->wx/wy instead of px/py. I hope this will improve some of the problems with the (l)ook function, and maybe also some other display problems.
- Centered display better on player.

[Hajo]

Move by mouse is already in Unangband which is why I suggested it. The problem I had with isometric graphics figuring out how to convert clicking on the isometric display converts to an x,y grid coordinate.

Mathematically, the projection functions are reversible.

The lazy solution is to keep track of tile coordinates while drawing them, and later use this information to map mouse clicks to tiles.

The "store tile coordinates" approach has the benefit that it works with all sorts of projection functions - so if you use several projections and let the player choose one out of them, you do not need to implement reverse functions for all of them, but can use the same lookup table of screen-to-tile mappings for all.

[andrewdoull]

I feel a bit uncertain about move-by-mouse. This works best with some pathfinding, so that the PC can walk around obstacles if the player clicks a spot behind the obstacle, and at some point it will raise the question for animated PCs.

Move by mouse is already in Unangband which is why I suggested it. The problem I had with isometric graphics figuring out how to convert clicking on the isometric display converts to an x,y grid coordinate.

Andrew

[Hajo]

I feel a bit uncertain about move-by-mouse. This works best with some pathfinding, so that the PC can walk around obstacles if the player clicks a spot behind the obstacle, and at some point it will raise the question for animated PCs.

Both pathfinding for PC and animations are doable, but particularly animations are quite some extra work.

Key input has a definite "distinct" characteristic. One key press = one tile moved. The key press raises different expectations in the player than dragging the mouse (distinct vs. continuous action), which are better fulfilled by the current display and code. So for the moment I'd like to keep that.

I'm somewhat positive that there can be a solution for a rotated key input map. I'll see if I can do something about it in one of the next releases.

Some new images for the next release:

Lesser vortex/whirlwind, Faerie light, Insect swarm, Goat, Goblin

Maybe goblins should be taller than goats?

Besides the other things, I have been working on spiral staircases to replace the old ones:

I feel a bit uncertain about the stairs, they were created differently than the other graphics and do not fit the style as much as they should. But maybe it's ok to keep them. I'd rather assume that over the course of time the other tiles slowly get more detailed, too.

[andrewdoull]

This is looking really good! Andrew, now you are going to need an option to rotate the movement keys so that they work right in iso mode :-) (and only half kidding)

Mouse movement is the way to go.

Just needs a lookup function to translate screen coordinates back to tiles for isometric mode.

Andrew

[Hajo]

This is looking really good!

Thanks, I'm glad to hear

The key bindings might be tricky, but I'm sure sooner or later there will be a solution found.

... and off to add more images