Reviving Iso-Angband, an isometric view addon for Angband

[andrewdoull]

And I am drooling over the prospect of being able to add this to NPP. You say this was only a couple hours of coding?

I had suggested to Hajo that FAAngband was another option, because the FAAngband wilderness areas are beautiful, and Nick is also working on AngbandBase which seemed a good fit for some isometric loving.

I don't have the time at the moment to help Hajo out too much - I'm in the middle of a big patch and don't have much free time at the best of times.

Also Unangband already has an isometric graphics mode... (not that it works).

But I couldn't persuade him otherwise..

[Edit: that's not to say I don't totally appreciate the effort and the result]

Andrew

[Hajo]

I'm slowly working my way to new areas. Added very simple bushes and trees for the east road. I'll detail the images later, at the moment it's still a mix of learning how UnAngband terrain display works, to actually draw the images and also fix quirks and buglets in the iso-view integration.

Click for full size.

No image for cows (Q) yet.

[Hajo]

I've improvised some weeds/vegetables, a dirt tile, water and overall tried to cleanup the code a bit.

Click for full size.

Town level works now fairly clean and I think it should be easier from now, that the basics are in place.

[Hajo]

Yes, for this screenshot I think it's been 5 or 6 hours, including two or so hours just to get UnAngband compiled with my stone-age compiler.

The biggest problem was that the new Angband code can do much more color tricks and I had to learn how this works. Also the "center view on player" option did not quite work as the iso view would have liked. But there are still too many interdependencies that could/should be cleaned up.

Andrew answered my Email and suggested I should look into NPPAngband. At the moment it is really difficult for me to make a choice among the variants, and I seriously can only work on one at a time - but there should be a huge overlap in the needed graphics.

Maybe it's too early right now to try integration with other variants yet, but if you do, I'll try to help. I should clean up my code better though before, and also comment it better.

[nppangband]

And I am drooling over the prospect of being able to add this to NPP. You say this was only a couple hours of coding?

[nppangband]

I've been experimenting with UnAngband 0.6.4a a bit, and after some hours of patching I've got the iso view working with it. Most of what this preview shows are replacement images. I have no sand, grass, water or any of the other UnAngbandish terrain features yet. And there are a lot of unassigned images (all the $ and the other character things).

Click for full size.

But I think it looks very promising - I mean there is huge potential here with all the details that UnAngband offers, and I'd like to work more on it. I have emailed Andrew, but haven't received an answer yet. I hope he will be alright with what I'm doing.

Looks amazing. I think UN has 500 terrain types and 1000+ monsters, but this would be a big achievement for Angband.

[buzzkill]

There was a time I considered working on a 32x32 tileset for Un, but the sheer number of terrain types and monsters (as well as my chronic non-finishing of projects) scared me off. Good luck with this. ISO-Un sounds (and looks) cool.

[Hajo]

I've been experimenting with UnAngband 0.6.4a a bit, and after some hours of patching I've got the iso view working with it. Most of what this preview shows are replacement images. I have no sand, grass, water or any of the other UnAngbandish terrain features yet. And there are a lot of unassigned images (all the $ and the other character things).

Click for full size.

But I think it looks very promising - I mean there is huge potential here with all the details that UnAngband offers, and I'd like to work more on it. I have emailed Andrew, but haven't received an answer yet. I hope he will be alright with what I'm doing.

[Hajo]

I'm currently trying to integrate my code with a newer Angband version. There really has changed a lot since 2.9.3. But I hope it will be worth the effort.

[Hajo]

First version of quartz veins, and slightly touched up magma veins.

Click for full size.

[Hajo]

Thanks I'll try to make quartz veins next, also touch up the existing walls a bit.

[buzzkill]

Looking good. Looking very good.

[Hajo]

I've finished one of the vein types, I'd call this a magma vein. I must work more on the graphical details, just so far there were a whole lot small quirks in the code as well which I had to work out, so there wasn't so much time to take care of the graphics yet.

Vein display works now with the 9 part walls, also treasures hidden in the veins. The orange spot should be good for gold diggers.

Click for full size.

For testing I dug out one magma vein grid, compared to the former screenshot. In the left wall of the room.

Edit: These things already worked in the former versions. They are just new for the still unreleased 9 part walls.

[Hajo]

And, BTW, I've got what I hope will be an acceptable iso wall solution for the main Angband code, if you ever want to go down the path of having the old isometric wall designs you started with.

I have been trying to revive the 9 part wall code. It turned out to be one of the things that integrate less smoothly though, but at least it seems to work again. Needs further cleaning up though.

Click for full size.

I also got the floor and wall lighting code going again (room light overrides torch light, this is Angband default). This preview is quite rough, and in one place the walls have a problems still, but I think I can improve this some more. Also needs magma and quartz type walls for completeness. And I must get the door frames being shaded, too.

[Hajo]

I was just suggesting the DG tiles as a shortcut to completion because you seemed to imply that creating tiles was becoming a burden... and I know how that feels.

Andrew Doull suggested to support them too. I think it should be fairly easy. Would take a bit of time to re-arrange the images, and to write a pref file for them. But there is no real problem there but to invest the time.

Back on topic.

Often I like to paint. Some days I paint out of boredom. I like painting more than programming, although skill wise it's the other way round, I'm a better programmer than a painter, I think. But while programming can be pretty frustrating at times, painting usually is pain-free.

I'd say painting the tiles is an important part of this project for me. It is the part where I can express my ideas about how I think it should look like.

Edit: I just noticed the word "completion". I have replacements for all missing graphical tiles. The project is fully playable already. What happens is only a transition towards a complete set of tiles in the style I want them to be.