Can't run in my compiled version!

[hyperdex]

Hi all,

I recently grabbed the sources for 3.4.1 from rephial and compiled my own copy of vanilla. I didn't do anything fancy, just a 'configure --no-install' followed by a 'make'. It's great, except it doesn't allow me to run.

I have a lenovo T420 laptop with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. I normally use the arrow keys to move around, but shift-arrow does not work. For that matter, if I use the number keys to move around, shift-number also does not work. In both cases, I get a "Type '?' for help." message.

Actually, shift-up arrow moves me one space down and gives me a 'You have no items you can activate.' message. Shift-down moves me down but gives a directional menu.

Any ideas what might be causing this?

Dave Blackston

[Derakon]

Sounds like your input is getting scrambled somehow, but I've no idea why that would be happening.

In the meantime, the '.' command prompts you for a direction to run in. Not as convenient as shift-direction but it should serve as a workaround.

[hyperdex]

Thanks! I did not know about the '.' command -- I am using it now and it meets my needs. ;-)

Dave

[Magnate]

Thanks! I did not know about the '.' command -- I am using it now and it meets my needs. ;-)

Just to say that there was a major rewrite of the input layer around 3.3.0 which left a few loose ends, so it could well be a casualty of that.

The bad news is that there are no currently active devs working on this kind of stuff, so it's unlikely to change much in 3.5

The good news is that lots of us are working on a ground-up rewrite in Python, which won't have these problems ...

[hyperdex]

The good news is that lots of us are working on a ground-up rewrite in Python, which won't have these problems ...

I noticed that. I'm actually excited to see this as Python is my current language of choice.

Cheers,

Dave

[Magnate]

I noticed that. I'm actually excited to see this as Python is my current language of choice.

You cannot imagine how much I was hoping you'd say that. Derakon's in charge - it all started here. It's currently hosted at http://bitbucket.org/derakon/pyrel and has a basic wiki and a to-do list and so on.

Any time you feel like dispensing some python advice (about half of us are learning the language as we go), do drop by #angband-dev on irc.freenode.net ....

[nppangband]

The good news is that lots of us are working on a ground-up rewrite in Python, which won't have these problems ...

I know several people in the past have started projects like this, but it looks like it is going to happen this time, with the whole group working on it. Sounds like I should start learning a new language. How is it progressing?

[Nick]

I know several people in the past have started projects like this, but it looks like it is going to happen this time, with the whole group working on it. Sounds like I should start learning a new language. How is it progressing?

Et tu, Brute?

[Derakon]

I know several people in the past have started projects like this, but it looks like it is going to happen this time, with the whole group working on it. Sounds like I should start learning a new language. How is it progressing?

Let's see...

Items, creatures, player races and classes, and terrain have all had their frameworks implemented. That means that the way they will work has been spelled out; someone just needs to go in and fill in the gaps (for example, there is no AI right now; monsters just wander at random).

The player can equip items and have them affect his/her stats; likewise monsters have stats. Almost no stats are actually used by the engine at this time, though. The game has a timekeeping system for dictating when different entities get turns (so "speed" is a meaningful stat).

Consumables exist but have not had their effects implemented (except for Potions of Haste). Animations exist but the only one that currently exists is for throwing/shooting things. Containers (chests and quivers) exist. Spellbooks do not.

Item affixes (à la Angband v4) exist, though again most of them don't actually do anything yet. That Zweihander of Flame (3.56x) does just as much damage as a normal Zweihander. For that matter, finesse and prowess bonuses don't do anything either! Combat is, shall we say, somewhat minimalist.

The UI is very bare-bones, though that at least should be practically trivial to improve -- most of the missing stuff is just printing certain of the player's stats.

Magnate is working on item affixes and allocation. Fizzix is working on dungeon generation. mtadd did a lot of work on making the user interface code clean and easy to modify. noz is working on wizard-mode commands which will be helpful in debugging all kinds of things. I'm updating the engine where it still needs work to support future features. Various other people have provided miscellaneous patches or advice. Myshkin is desperately trying to avoid getting sucked in. Sorry if I neglected anyone's contributions.

I'd say we're still at least several months away from anyone reasonably being able to make a playable game out of Pyrel, and further still from making a proper, fully-featured Angband variant. But if for some reason you decide that the next version of NPPAngband should be written in Python, the fastest way to achieve that would be to help develop Pyrel.

[Magnate]

Et tu, Brute?

Thanks Nick for my first belly-laugh of the day. You will be assimilated ... as soon as you've recovered from the trauma of the 3.1.2 conversion (or maybe the 3.2.0 conversion ...)

@Jeff: IMO it's going really well. We've kind of fallen into neatly non-overlapping roles. I'm doing item generation how I always wanted to - it will be able to replicate V's items but will do so much more besides (I wrote a template for loot in an orc lair). Fizzix is doing dungeon generation, which I assume will also be able to approximate to V as well as do a lot more. Noz is doing command and input stuff, especially wizard mode (which is incredibly important for being able to test stuff), and Derakon is holding the entire design in his head and correcting us when we go wrong, adding or changing necessary bits of the engine. There's tons left to do, but some other people who might do some of it. It would be great if you joined us, for a while at least.

Fizzix esimated that at current pace we were about two years away from a passable V implementation. I'm guessing that's a maximum, with a caveat that I'm talking about the gameplay not the UI.

[Derakon]

Fizzix esimated that at current pace we were about two years away from a passable V implementation. I'm guessing that's a maximum, with a caveat that I'm talking about the gameplay not the UI.

It's always difficult to estimate this kind of thing, especially as it depends heavily on how much time the different devs have to contribute to the project. I'm more optimistic than Fizzix. Particularly, once we have creature AI and most of the item/spell/breath effects, we will basically have a playable game. It may not be a good game and it certainly won't be complete, but it'll be playable.

Regarding UI, I get the impression that people are, broadly speaking, happy with Angband's input handling (though there's consensus that a unified-use key would be a good idea), so the main thing that could use work is what and how we show the player. But writing new display modules is practically trivial -- it took me about 15 minutes to write a window that would show a list of everything on the tile under the mouse, for example, and it would take a similar amount of time (orders-of-magnitude wise) to modify the default display to show the player's stats in a meaningful fashion. The design work (deciding what to display) is harder than the implementation work.

[nppangband]

There's tons left to do, but some other people who might do some of it. It would be great if you joined us, for a while at least.

In my dreams, I would. I have a new job with a fair amount of travel involved, so my already glacial pace of coding is now even slower. Had I won that lottery this week, I would have been happy to help out. (1) (2)

(1) Actually, if I ever won the lottery, I would just hire a devteam to do everything, and it would be done in a matter of weeks.

(2) Don't get your hopes up. I don't play the lottery. I like the saying that the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.