Angbamd, without eyeballs!

[Dragonboneman]

Dark - 'scuse my butting in but don't I know you from the Project Aon forums? They're up to Book 20 now, in case you didn't know.

Doomy

[Dark]

Wow doomy, --- or should that be Dragonboneman, --- Hi! it's been a while.

I really need to play through the lw stuff again, including the last couple. I've been geting the E-mails and even writing announcements of lw progress for Audiogames.net, ---- but I admit I do need to reacquaint myself with the series.

Right now obviously, I've just discovered Angband, ---- the first Roguelike I've found compatible both with my level of site and screen reading software, --- given the look command's ability to cycle through objects, the big tyle mode, and high contrast of the yellow targit box as well as the player in the old tyles set, especially in the Oanband varients with the double tyle mode, ---- though I've been having quite a bit of fun with Daajangband as well.

this is a great discovery for me, ---- given my thing about exploration, and the fact that I can't usually play games like zelda owing to all the blasted text.

Fair enough as reguards the sound Nick, ---- though not entirely essential, I would appreciate it in the next version, ----- especially if some extra sounds could be added if possible to go with the extra environments and game events.

[Dragonboneman]

Wow, first time I've seen someone pop up on an entirely separate forum I also happen to be a member of. Spooky!
I've been playing roguelikes off and on for about five or six years, mostly Vanilla which I have won a few times now.

Have you tried the Dubtrain sound pack? I think it is excellent. Works in Vanilla and NPP.

Link: http://www.dubtrain.com/angband/

[Dark]

Spooky indeed, ---- though i must confess not the first time it's happened to me.

My general problem with roguelikes is the asqi graphics are slightly too small for me to see, and too damnably confusing with a screen reader, ----- imagine listening to "hash Hash hash hash" about 50 times!

I've tried Nethack and adom, but had litle look with either, --- and only really stumbled on Angband on a whim.

I started out playing Vanilla, but as usual when i try out something else, i thought I'd check out the recently posted varients, ---- hence why i began on Daajangband, ---- which is nice sinse it has the Maia race as an easy option while I get used to in game stratogies.

I'm greatly impressed that you've actually finished the game though. My best thus far is 400 ft, though i got eaten as soon as I got down there which was irritating.

I looked at the soundpack actually on the Angband wiki page at http://rephial.org/ however it seemed to only come bundled with a rather older version of Angband which didn't include some of the nicer features of the original.

[Dragonboneman]

I only won thanks to some excellent coaching from more experienced players.
That sound pack I linked you to is different from the one on the main site - it's 18 megs of sounds for just about everything, including background atmosphere, all made by one guy in his own studio. I think it adds a lot to the game.

[Dark]

Nice indeed. I particularly like the clanging chimes of doom when you enter new levels. As an added bonus, it also works very well with Daajangband, sinse Daaj is I believe fairly close to the original, ---- close enough for all the sounds to work anyway.

I just wish it was a trifle louder, sinse Hal, ---- my screen reader, actually seems to drown things out, so I need to turn Hal's volume down and my speakers up in order to balance things. This is okay, ---- accept I have to always remember to reverse the process afterwards or the loudness would cause my head to explode!

Even with assistance, --- I'm stil impressed at your winning.

[Pete Mack]

@dark
It sounds like Windows ASCII mode needs to be brought into the 21st century. The OSX ASCII uses scalable (truetype) fonts. There's no fundamental reason Windows can't do the same.

[Dark]

To be honest, Ascii text and screen readers in general don't go well together.

The principle problem is screen readers are made to read lines of text, not individual symbles.

Reading along horizontally is generally okay, ----- though stil hard to approximate distance, but the second you read up or down a line, the screen reader reads out the hole line entirely, this makes things horribly combplicated, and a nightmare to check.

The completely blind people I know who have tried Roguelikes have done so using a braille display, ---- a device which displays 40 characters of text in braill by pushing up various pins.

As said devices are about $3000, not everyone (including me), has one, ----- and even if you do, you can only practically see a line of 40 characters, so looking around the screen stil takes amazing amounts of time, ---- even assuming the spacial relations are understandable (and diagonals are near impossible to get).

On the pluss side though, practically speaking you only really need to know the distance and position of the various on screen objects, ---- particularly monsters), and can then work out stratogy accordingly.

My thought is therefore if a system of coordinates relative to the player's position were added to information given by the curser in the look and targit commands, a blind player could know where things are and take steps accordingly. If the system worked along the lines of the player being 00, up and right being positive, down and left negative, this would give all necessary information, ----- thus if you heard a monster was at -3 1, you know it was north east of you a litle over to the left.

A couple of years ago someone did try an experimental project along these lines called warprogue, ---- but that actually lacked several of Angband's more accessible features such as list visible monsters and items, and the auto targiting look curser.

The project was also discontinued, which was rather sad sinse it did look promising and people were showing considerable interest.

Other than the coordinate system, the only other things I could think of which would be needed would be a directional look command to stop players running into walls, ---- ie, giving object and distance information on what is immediately in los such as a monster, wall or unknown grid, and possibly some extra alert messages, ---- for example when a player discovers an unexplored exit, ---- eg in a room with multiple exits or at the fork of a passage, so a totally blind player can remember that for future reference.

There are actually some accessible games, ---- even highly grid based ones which play entirely via coordinates, even things like a talking version of mine sweeper or battleships, hence my thought on this one, ---- though of course personally, the old tyle set, big tyle mode and huge curser box combined with my screen reader make the game entirely playable for me.

[Pete Mack]

@dark, I was suggesting the larger font to allow people with limited sight to see the letters.

Probably the 'l'ook/'x'amine cursor jump algorithm needs to work better; start with monsters that are LOS in decreasing risk order and distance, then do monsters out of LOS, then do everything else.

[Dark]

Okay, ---- certainly a good thought, ---- sinse normal sized ascii fonts are certainly too small for me, ---- hence the use of tiles, and also the reason I haven't been able to play games like Adom, or a couple of Angband varients I've had a look at like Zangband or Tiny angband sinse they don't include the old tile set, ----- though if there is a way of installing that tile set I'd certainly appreciate knowing about it (it wouldn't matter if an object showed up with the wrong tile being as I use the look command for identification, ----- just as long as it showed up so I could know it's position).

The thought on the auto targiting curser going in order of danger is also a good one. What I've generally been doing is making frequent use of the list monsters command to tell me when monsters are visible, when one is, finding it visually, then using directional keys and the look curser to point in the approximate direction, ---- though there have also been times I've had to scroll through all available objects as well.

I must admit though, sinse my last paladin in Daaj met a sticky end at 300 ft, ---- admittedly after getting higher in level than any of my previous characters and taking out some interesting monsters such as Lotho baggins, monsters and escaping a few sticky situations, ---- particularly some nasty spots with multiple orcs and poltergeists, I've been having a bit of a break from Angband for a day or so so as to come back with a fresh eye.

I have learnt one thing though, ---- superb feeling=superbly evil monsters!"

[PaulBlay]

I've had a look at like Zangband or Tiny angband sinse they don't include the old tile set

I'm something of a local representative for TinyAngband so I'd like to get some more detail on that and help if I can.

I don't use tiles myself so I'll probably need to do some researching. However there is a 16x16 tile set that I think should work with TinyAngband. TinyAngband also works with the excellent Dubtrain sound set (which you will need to unzip in the /lib/xtra/sound directory).

I don't know of any 32x32 tile kit that would work right now (but I can see if something can be managed).

[buzzkill]

Z+ has a fairly complete tile set. You won't notice omissions until you get fairly deep into the game. Although it doesn't support double tile mode, you can get full 32x32 tiles by adjusting the tile width and height. There are a few minor graphical glitches, ones that I find annoying, but tolerable, and nothing that will cause a crash.

Check this thread for details and a screen shot.

[Dark]

Hi.

Well, generally bigger is better. I'm not totally certain what tile size I've been using in vanilla or Daaj, using the big tile mode with the old tile set. i tried the increase tile hight option in the menue, but i didn't notice a difference, ---- and size didn't seem to be directly addressed in that menue only something called "term-0" to "term-7" window.

It's entirely possible I got things wrong though. To be perfectly honest sinse i do not use a screen magnifyer to read text, and most of the games I've played have either been on consoles or less technically manipulatable than Angband, i'm not half as up on my pixel sizes as I should be.

i've used patches, or contrast altering utilities in the past, ---- but never got down to the nuts and bolts quite as much as with Angband.

If someone could let me know what the default tile hight and width would be if running a copy of Angband for the first time using the old tiles tile set and big tile mode, that would be a great baseline to know, sinse that is probably the smallest size I would find practically playable.

On the other hand, I'm soon going to be replacing my 19 inch flatscreen with a 24 inch one, ----- whether tat has any bearing on things i'm not sure.

appologies for my total lack of knowhow, but it's only actually been two years sinse I started looking into playing graphical games on a pc, sinse up until that point i just used a laptop where the screen size is way too small for me to even considder usin my site.

I would certainly like to play tiny Angband though. Some of the features such as quests, and the extra shops looked really interesting.

also, as someone who's thus far barely made it to 500 ft, it'd be quite nice to have a game where I could considder the vague and remote possibility that I might be able to run into Morgoth at some point within the next century, ---- lol! I'd certainly quite like to be able to give old Iron bonce a good poking and finish off what Fingolfin started, ;D.

[buzzkill]

If you've played FA with 'big tile' and 'double tile mode', and I believe I read somewhere that you had, then that's the exact size I'm talking about when I refer to 32x32.

Adjusting the tile height through the menus is utterly annoying because it will adjust the tile size only one pixel at a time (and it doesn't tell what the current values are). In order to go from a tile height of 16 to, let's say, 32 you would have to click that menu option 16 times. It's much easier to edit the angband.ini file (with any text editor, such at notepad) located in the main angband directory and change the values there. Check the link in my previous post for details.

As for meeting Morgoth, just know that you're not alone. Heck, I'm just recently ran into Time and Anti-Magic Hounds for the first time and I've been playing for years. They kinda make me miss the Gravity Hounds.

[Pete Mack]

Or, you can bring the other ports up to spec--try the OSX version. Configuration is a breeze, and all fonts & sizes are available with a couple clicks.

There's no good reason for windows not to work as well, except that windows supports Windows 95 and the like. (Upgrade to a stripped-down XP already! There's no reason to accept random system crashes.) And even with Win32, it could do a better job.

Replacing Win32 UI with .NET UI would make life a lot easier.