Restructure update

[Nick]

Just curious: Is it semi-playable, or is it too buggy/crashy for that ATM? (I don't mind starting new games if there are savefile compat changes or if the game eats a character.)

It's playable as far as we know

The main things against playability are

1. Savefile compatibility is constantly being broken and
2. We're not actually doing a lot of playtesting.

With these and the fact that there are a lot of quite major changes happening (for example, I'm just embarking on removing the object list array and replacing it with grid-based linked lists), there is considerable potential for bugs that we haven't found.

[Nick]

OK, probably the last one of these. Main progress since last update:

• Objects are no longer all indexed in a level-wide list; instead they are kept in linked lists tied to the grid, store, monster or player that holds them
• Most game constants have moved to an edit file
• The Core-UI split is essentially done, so theoretically someone could now write a whole new interface (for whatever device) without touching the game core. This is a Big Deal
• The source has been significantly tidied and documented

Some time fairly soon we should be updating the master branch (which has been frozen since the release of 3.5.0) on Github, and releasing a beta version so we can start squashing the inevitable horde of brand new bugs.

[Derakon]

Rocksome. Great work, everyone! I look forward to banging on the beta.

[Nick]

Probably should have mentioned too - player sexes have been removed and character history is rewritable at birth.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Probably should have mentioned too - player sexes have been removed and character history is rewritable at birth.

I kind of liked the flavor that @ sexes added. Loved the idea of Ronda Rowsey beating on Morgoth and taking him out with an armbar. I play some male, some female, just for the mental image I have of what's going on in the game.

[Nick]

I kind of liked the flavor that @ sexes added. Loved the idea of Ronda Rowsey beating on Morgoth and taking him out with an armbar. I play some male, some female, just for the mental image I have of what's going on in the game.

That's why we made history player-writable - so you can put any such detail you want in there.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

That's why we made history player-writable - so you can put any such detail you want in there.

Ah, got it now. Thanks, Nick.

[PowerWyrm]

Some time fairly soon we should be updating the master branch (which has been frozen since the release of 3.5.0) on Github, and releasing a beta version so we can start squashing the inevitable horde of brand new bugs.

You should have mentioned that this is now done (I mean updating the master branch, not the beta)

For the humble variant maintainer that I am, this is now 35 pages of commits to browse, analyze and (try to) port to my variant. Sounds like it's gonna be fun for the upcoming months...

[Nick]

You should have mentioned that this is now done (I mean updating the master branch, not the beta)

For the humble variant maintainer that I am, this is now 35 pages of commits to browse, analyze and (try to) port to my variant. Sounds like it's gonna be fun for the upcoming months...

Yes, I should have - thanks for doing it for me.

I would (and probably will at some point for FA) take the approach of porting the variant to the new codebase.

[TJS]

Hey up, I just tried to compile the latest code from git with Visual Studio Express 2010 and there are a whole bunch of syntax errors happening in get.h and get.c.

It does compile using MinGW but I can't debug it when it crashes.

Edit: there's also a syntax error in init.c as it doesn't like starting the member names with a dot:

static struct init_module arrays_module = {
.name = "arrays",
.init = init_arrays,
.cleanup = cleanup_arrays
};

[EpicMan]

I think this is due to VS not supporting newer C standards, specifically C99. This article has more info: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...-c-c-standards

The article mentions using the Intel compiler in place of Microsoft's, though I haven't tried that. You can also re-write the sections of code that aren't supported; I think if you change the struct declarations and change any array size definitions to constants you should be 95% done (or at least that was the case before the restructure).

[TJS]

Ah ok thanks for the information, I guess that Angband is not going to normally be compilable on Visual C++.

I might look into using another compiler and IDE, what do other people use when compiling the game?

[Nick]

Hey up, I just tried to compile the latest code from git with Visual Studio Express 2010 and there are a whole bunch of syntax errors happening in get.h and get.c.

It does compile using MinGW but I can't debug it when it crashes.

Edit: there's also a syntax error in init.c as it doesn't like starting the member names with a dot:

static struct init_module arrays_module = {
.name = "arrays",
.init = init_arrays,
.cleanup = cleanup_arrays
};

The get.* issue is easily solved - they're not used, delete them.

The other error may well be a VS problem - I thought that MS had included enough of the C99 standard now, but apparently not.

I believe I have managed to debug in windows using msys, MinGW and gdb, but I may be misremembering.

[AnonymousHero]

The get.* issue is easily solved - they're not used, delete them.

The other error may well be a VS problem - I thought that MS had included enough of the C99 standard now, but apparently not.

I believe I have managed to debug in windows using msys, MinGW and gdb, but I may be misremembering.

Nope, no C99 for you in VS. (Not even stdint.h as I recall!)

They do support(-ish) recent versions of C++, but that's not really relevant here. Of course C++ initializer syntax is incompatible with C99 anyway, so...

[TJS]

The get.* issue is easily solved - they're not used, delete them.

The other error may well be a VS problem - I thought that MS had included enough of the C99 standard now, but apparently not.

I believe I have managed to debug in windows using msys, MinGW and gdb, but I may be misremembering.

Do you think it might be made VS compatible sometime?