SSH server

[Gwarl]

Integrate PosChengband support ASAP!!

On it. Will report back.

[HugoVirtuoso]

On it. Will report back.

Specifically, integrate version 5.0.5 (i.e. the latest version whenever possible), for now. The full source should be available on its main release site. It would be awesome to have spectators check out how we roll

[Gwarl]

Alright this is still proving difficult. Something to do with how older *bands handle directories is making them difficult to run from inside the chroot where dgamelaunch lives.

(On further fiddling this is no longer the problem. The problem now is segfaults)

Also, spectating and recording don't work - yet. But give me time.

[HugoVirtuoso]

PosChengband is certainly one of the most up to date of the variants. This one couldn't really have that much difficulty with directories. But, if it still does then blame Chris.

[Gwarl]

PosChengband is certainly one of the most up to date of the variants. This one couldn't really have that much difficulty with directories. But, if it still does then blame Chris.

I mean it forked from Vanilla rather early and the pattern of how directories are named and command line arguments are handled matches what I've seen in other variants.

I don't exactly know what the problem is, which is why it's still a problem. I suspect I may have to fiddle with the code which will probably be a small fix but I'm not good at C yet.

[Gwarl]

I could probably scrap dgamelaunch and write my own launcher to store people's logins/passwords/saved games/settings with, and I'm sure that would work, but it loses the spectating/recording features; which I haven't been able to make work yet anyway.

I certainly need to start hosting variants one way or another but it's oddly difficult to make any of them run with the launcher.

[Gwarl]

I spent the better part of today working through a theory I had about why the variants keep segfaulting when called from dgamelaunch, but it didn't help, so I'm going to write a new launcher/frontend from scratch.

[Gwarl]

An update on progress:

I tinkered with the terminal spawning library a bit, and am getting to grips with a login system. I want to get all the nuts and bolts working well together, but in the meantime here's a coming soon page straight from the 90s featuring original artwork by yours truly:

http://gwarl.xyz

I'll upload all the javascript to github when it goes live.

[takkaria]

I guess the ideal way to do it would be for Angband to output JSON screen updates on stdout and accept JSON commands from stdin, then you wouldn't have to deal with the contortions of curses, X11 or SDL to get graphics. Sounds like a fun little project...

[Gwarl]

I believe that's the way DCSS webtiles work. For this project I'm personally trying to avoid touching any of angband's code to arive at a solution that works for different variants (although Sil in particular will need some hacking to address the way it handles directories). It's not just that I'm scared of C, honest.

I put together a frontend written in javascript for a roguelike before (a version of which is still hosted here: http://www.gwarl.esy.es/ ) which I have vague intentions of eventually adapting to angband but the next thing on my list after this server is up is the datafile editor I previously started working on.

One thing I think would be important in building a new graphical frontend would be to record the path taken by monsters moving within line of sight, in order to animate the movement. I believe I saw a comment somewhere in the code to the effects of this having once been noted as something to do, but I can't find it now. Very simple sliding animations add a lot of 'life' to the game and I think provide some information to the player reducing overall cognitive load (they are not simply for decoration). I'd point to DoomRL as an example of this being done well. Not to mention it would facilitate the kind of manouvering abilities that are present in Sil, which are IMO among the most tactically interesting I've seen in a roguelike.

Anyway on the subject of the webserver I made decent progress yesterday, hopefully not long now until I can send it live.

[Gwarl]

I guess the ideal way to do it would be for Angband to output JSON screen updates on stdout and accept JSON commands from stdin, then you wouldn't have to deal with the contortions of curses, X11 or SDL to get graphics. Sounds like a fun little project...

Actually I think you could skip over the JSON exchange and do some sort of magic with web assembly where angband sends over memory buffers to be handled by more C compiled for the browser. You could probably compile the code which does html screen dumps to run client side and just pass it the struct it needs to operate. A few lines of javascript to refresh the page.

[gameplay appreciator]

Animation features are like the number one most disabled thing you see in roguelike configurations. I really wouldn't recommend putting a lot of work into adding such a thing to a web interface for angband.

[Gwarl]

There's something funny about savefile directories. They don't seem to be overriden with the -d switch. Which is okay because I can restrict each user to one savefile per game but it's still not what I asked for. I think maybe the default --with-private-dirs and the alternative --with-setgid= are taking precedencce over the command line arguments.

[takkaria]

There's something funny about savefile directories. They don't seem to be overriden with the -d switch. Which is okay because I can restrict each user to one savefile per game but it's still not what I asked for. I think maybe the default --with-private-dirs and the alternative --with-setgid= are taking precedencce over the command line arguments.

You definitely can't change the directory with setgid turned on for security and cheating reasons, but they should definitely work --with-private-dirs. I can't see anywhere in the code that would disallow that either...

[Gwarl]

Webserver is up!

http://gwarl.xyz/

It's probably going down again for maintenance/improvements but the very basic functionality is there. Each user gets their own directory to store pref files, screenshots, file dumps etc (but no way of accessing them from outside the game yet)

I'm going to make a repository out of what I've done so far then take the rest of the evening to play the latest master build.

It was a lot of work but I'm getting the hang of the nodejs environment better now.

If anyone plays it please don't try and break it/find bugs, I'm sure it's fragile and there are many.