Angband on PSP

[daddy32]

Another day...
Vanilla 3.0.9 compiled and running OK - this is starting to be exciting.
Will release upon request.

As for the Symbian version: I would be extremely happy to have one (except my phone (E51) has a tiny display), but unfortunately have no free time to invest into this.

[Widget]

I'd be up for collaborating on a Symbian port, Magnate. I've got an E71 with full qwerty keyboard so it should run quite nicely. Not familiar with the codebase though.

[joelsanda]

Very nice that people are getting Angband to run on these mini-computers. I'm looking at getting a netbook simply so I can have Angband available while waiting in lines or for the kids to play. I'd probably buy a smartphone in a heartbeat if there was way to play Angband on it...

A significant reason I bought my Acer netbook was to play Angband on the bus or couch without the burden of a full blown laptop. I did buy an external number keypad for it but ended up not using it, as balancing that with the laptop on the couch or bus was too much of a hassle. I use the mouse pad when I need to move or target diagonally.

Angband 3.1.0 beta is available for the Android but I've found movement to be real difficult unless you use roguelike commands. And have eyesight +100.

[Pete Mack]

So does this mean we should make the roguelike keyset the default? It was designed for primitive keyboards (no numpad), which seem to be coming back into vogue.

I hate the numpad anyway, since it moves fingers away from the home (asdfhjl keys.

[Magnate]

I'd be up for collaborating on a Symbian port, Magnate. I've got an E71 with full qwerty keyboard so it should run quite nicely. Not familiar with the codebase though.

Now we're getting somewhere. I'm now quite familiar with the angband codebase, but have never built as much as an egg timer on Symbian. I have a bookmark to download the Symbian S60 developer kit, and the Symbian SDL stuff, but that's it. Presumably I have to set up some sort of build environment in Windows, because Nokia seems to assume that people interested in hacking Symbian will be using Windows (duh). Then we try compiling things there and seeing if they install/run on the phones? I've also never compiled anything under Windows so this is going to be a bit of an adventure (unless Nokia have ported their SDK to Linux since I last looked).

My assumption is that if we can get an 80x25 screen on each device (easy for mine with its 800x352 internal screen - that's a nice 10x14 font), we can start by hacking main-sdl.c to restrict it to a single main window and work from there. If your E71 can't reach 80x25 we're into more low level hacking (but there is a ticket to add support for 16-row displays so it will be helpful).

(This would be easier if there was a curses port for Symbian but I can't find one.)

Hmmm. I foresee great success any year now. (But seriously, this is good timing, as 3.1.2 is due out soon, so it would be good to start afterwards.)

[Widget]

Well Putty for symbian with a 5x7 font gives me 64 columns and 28 rows. I've not tried symbian development yet, apart from installing python and having a play.

I'll have a vague look at the S60 stuff.

[fph]

(This would be easier if there was a curses port for Symbian but I can't find one.)

PDCurses includes a curses port that runs on top of SDL (on any SDL implementation I suppose). I don't know if a SDL+curses+main_gcu port is going to be easier to code than a SDL+main_sdl, but in any case here is the port.

Oh, and by the way, I have a N79 (a S60 phone with no full qwerty keyboard). If it is going to be a supported platform, I volounteer as a tester.

[Magnate]

PDCurses includes a curses port that runs on top of SDL (on any SDL implementation I suppose). I don't know if a SDL+curses+main_gcu port is going to be easier to code than a SDL+main_sdl, but in any case here is the port.

Oh, and by the way, I have a N79 (a S60 phone with no full qwerty keyboard). If it is going to be a supported platform, I volounteer as a tester.

Well don't hold your breath, as main-s60.c is still entirely vaporware, but thanks.

I'm inclined to think that curses on top of SDL will cause more problems than it solves, but if main-sdl proves unco-operative I'll certainly investigate pdcurses. Thanks for the tip.

[Magnate]

Well Putty for symbian with a 5x7 font gives me 64 columns and 28 rows. I've not tried symbian development yet, apart from installing python and having a play.

Hmmm. I don't know angband's low-level code well, but it might be possible to use fewer than 80 cols without too many problems. I guess we'll find out.

[d_m]

Hmmm. I don't know angband's low-level code well, but it might be possible to use fewer than 80 cols without too many problems. I guess we'll find out.

Currently a lot of things assume that you have 80x24 and just draw off the screen edge if you don't. The GCU port currently checks to make sure you have 80x24 and refuses to start otherwise.

I could remove that check, but a lot of descriptions, the character info command, etc, will all be hard to use unless there is a substantial UI refactor.

[Pete Mack]

FAAngband has a small screen layout, and is very close to the V codebase. You might try borrowing from there.
(Same model for file.c, etc)

[Nick]

As Pete says, FA has dealt with this. A search for small_screen in the FA code is a good way to start.

Partly to make displaying variable screen size stuff easier, FA has also developed a different way of displaying some stuff. The 'C' screen is one (although this can be handled fine without) and using Pete's menu code for all selection menus is another. The menu stuff really should go into V, IMHO.

This change and full mouse control are the only small screen UI things really different between FA and V; if those were sorted, it would be trivial to get V running properly on Windows Mobile, for example.

[Magnate]

As Pete says, FA has dealt with this. A search for small_screen in the FA code is a good way to start.

Partly to make displaying variable screen size stuff easier, FA has also developed a different way of displaying some stuff. The 'C' screen is one (although this can be handled fine without) and using Pete's menu code for all selection menus is another. The menu stuff really should go into V, IMHO.

This change and full mouse control are the only small screen UI things really different between FA and V; if those were sorted, it would be trivial to get V running properly on Windows Mobile, for example.

I'm confused. I thought V already had Pete's menu system (tickets 97-100 on trac.rephial.org)? If not, what is left to import, Pete?

I have to say that I'm daunted enough by the challenge of trying to compile something for S60. I'd really like to leave the small_screen stuff as an orthogonal project. Perhaps if someone wants to import that from FA (Widget?), by the time I get round to actually compiling HEAD on Symbian, it might already be in there ...

I created ticket #1077 for the small_screen import. I'll add another ticket if there is still work to do importing Pete's menus.

[Pete Mack]

FA uses the menus for every selection. V still has a few left (spell-lists, a few others.)
As for small-screen, do take a look at the FA source. It's really not that big a change.

[Nick]

I'm confused. I thought V already had Pete's menu system (tickets 97-100 on trac.rephial.org)? If not, what is left to import, Pete?

Things like spell selection and item selection have scrollable (and mouse-selectable) menus in FA. You really should try it out (or O110u if you prefer - it has the same interface). Don't forget to set the show_lists option (it's in gameplay options) to yes.