Unofficial Sil rewrite

[Infinitum]

That's exciting news! Looking forward to checking it out.

[HugoVirtuoso]

Yes, it has been a big task; so big that I really had to focus all my energy on it or see the time blow out completely. Hopefully it wasn't a complete waste of time

I guarantee you 100% it won't be when I check this out!

[Nick]

Was a bit worried when nobody had seen any activity from you on a.l, but I guess all your time has been going into Sil-N.

Yes, it has been a big task; so big that I really had to focus all my energy on it or see the time blow out completely. Hopefully it wasn't a complete waste of time

[MITZE]

Go Nick go.

Was a bit worried when nobody had seen any activity from you on a.l, but I guess all your time has been going into Sil-N.

[Nick]

I guess I'm hoping to be starting to try compiling in earnest this month (there have been a couple of laughable attempts), and hoping to get something actually out for criticism next month.

Surprisingly, I may have made a correct prediction.

The game (I feel I can call it that now) now compiles cleanly, parses all the data files without errors, and can get through the birth process (although this is still a bit buggy). It then fails to generate a dungeon level and crashes.

My intention is to:

1. Iron out the bugs in the birth process;
2. Get dungeon generation working (probably fully, or at least far enough that there are some rooms, objects and monsters and the player gets placed);
3. Check that all the information commands ('~" knowledge, character screen, smithing screen (gulp), etc) work;
4. Play a character long enough to die, and check the death process.

When all that seems to be basically functional, I'll actually push the source code to Github. I'm still hopeful that that's this month.

[Nick]

Are you going to generate the same save file as the baseline Sil 1.3? It occurred to me that testing might be made easier by swapping save files between the two versions.

I was planning to use the latest savefile code, but you make a good point. I'll think about that.

Am I wrong in assuming that building the new Sil will be the same as the current Vanilla system? Last I heard you were building Windows Vanilla executables on Linux using a cross compiler.

Yes, one of the things I'm aiming for is being able to autobuild on Github. And yes, that does use cross-compiling on Linux - peopledo build on Windows, though.

[Bill Peterson]

Any post by you on this thread is welcome, and I don't think you should be concerned about delay on your part. We're not expecting any new features, just an improved codebase. I'm hoping that the new code might entice someone to maintain and improve the game. Personally, I'm going to use it to take one more dive into trying to understand *band programming.

Are you going to generate the same save file as the baseline Sil 1.3? It occurred to me that testing might be made easier by swapping save files between the two versions.

Am I wrong in assuming that building the new Sil will be the same as the current Vanilla system? Last I heard you were building Windows Vanilla executables on Linux using a cross compiler.

[Nick]

Tolkien's birthday update

Given that Sil releases have historically been on this day, it's kind of a pity that (twelve months into my six month project) I'm not done yet.

I am now into the phase of going back and fixing things that I had left for the end, so I feel like it's not too far off, but I'm hesitant to put a number on that. I guess I'm hoping to be starting to try compiling in earnest this month (there have been a couple of laughable attempts), and hoping to get something actually out for criticism next month. But take all that with a big grain of salt.

[Nick]

When you have a build that compiles and runs past character creation, will you be making it available for alpha/beta testing?

That's the idea. I'll probably play a little first to iron out the really obvious stuff, but then other people are going to be much better at finding flaws than me.

[Bill Peterson]

I hope you can wait at least a bit

When you have a build that compiles and runs past character creation, will you be making it available for alpha/beta testing?

[Nick]

Just found your thread. I want to let you know that your effort is greatly appreciated and I can't wait to see you finish the project.

I hope you can wait at least a bit

[Stokviz]

Just found your thread. I want to let you know that your effort is greatly appreciated and I can't wait to see you finish the project.

[Nick]

Another update - I've done the monster creation and management stuff, and dungeon generation. I'm now working on the main game loop, and then will do a big pass through both codebases to see what I've missed and remove unnecessary code. Then I'll try compiling.

I'm going to leave LoS until I have an actual running game - it can be part of the process of making sure it plays the same.

[davidk64]

Thanks for the updates Nick (and backwardsEric). I check the forums each day hoping for news of Beleriand. I'm looking forward to seeing it!

[Nick]

I have changes for Angband 4.2 to allow for a tutorial mode and have the tutorial layout driven by a data file (rather than a special save file as in Sil). It still needs some tidying and more work on the draft tutorial in the data file. Because it introduces a new object type for the tutorial notes, it also breaks moving save files back and forth from other 4.2 versions. I'm not planning on putting it forward as a pull request until we've started making save file breaking changes for 4.3.

That sounds brilliant