Angband 3.3.0 is out

[Timo Pietilä]

Changing the win pref file works fine, assuming you do it in the 3.3.0 angband folder and not the 3.2.0 one. Thanks everyone.

:-D. these things happen....

[Estie]

Changing the win pref file works fine, assuming you do it in the 3.3.0 angband folder and not the 3.2.0 one. Thanks everyone.

[kaypy]

BTW, these days you can update the feature graphics in-game under the knowledge menu. (I had a patch land a while ago) Then you just need to save the modifications from the options screen.

[Timo Pietilä]

Weird, I was going to suggest that you took a look in lib\user for .prf files that you might have created that would load after font-win.prf but if you created a new character that shouldn't be the problem...

Unless they are class names or character has same name as previous one.

[thapper]

Alas, it doesnt for me, which is weird since it looks exactly like your problem.
Adjusted font-win.prf, replacing 127s with 1s. Started new character. Walls all black.

Weird, I was going to suggest that you took a look in lib\user for .prf files that you might have created that would load after font-win.prf but if you created a new character that shouldn't be the problem...

[Estie]

Alas, it doesnt for me, which is weird since it looks exactly like your problem.
Adjusted font-win.prf, replacing 127s with 1s. Started new character. Walls all black.

[Zikke]

Edit: I found this problem adressed in the "Invisible walls" thread. If I am not mistaken, the solution provided there by thapper requires a recompile ?

For me, I closed Angband and adjusted that file, and just started Angband and it worked right away.

[Estie]

Thanks Nick, didnt know about that feature. However, the problem persists.

1. In the editor I get to pick from a couple symbols which look mostly like letters. Unfortunately, there is no massive block among them. I picked something with good amount of "filling" but it looks weird.

2. The symbol I pick only shows if lit. After I leave the area with my torch, its back to black. There used to be an option "map remembers torch lit grids" (which I never toggled....just remembering the name in this context), however that seems to have gone.

Edit: I found this problem adressed in the "Invisible walls" thread. If I am not mistaken, the solution provided there by thapper requires a recompile ?

[Nick]

On windows (unfortunately vista), and perma walls are just black. Going to "interact with visuals" only has options to dump and load, not to change.
What to do ?

Go to the knowledge menu (~), look at terrain (or features, or whatever it says), and use the visuals editor (v).

[Estie]

On windows (unfortunately vista), and perma walls are just black. Going to "interact with visuals" only has options to dump and load, not to change.
What to do ?

[myshkin]

By the way, I see that now there are two different versions of the help files checked in, one in LaTeX under /doc and one in pure text under /lib/help. This is usually not a good practice, since the two versions will probably diverge after some edits.

I agree, and we do not intend to have two sources of documentation very long.

There are several programs around that convert TeX to plain text; I think it would be useful to autogenerate the files in /lib/help from the LaTeX source at compile-time. (assuming they are still needed -- do we need a plain-old-ASCII inline help where there's a professionally formatted PDF sitting around in the same directory?)

As long as we have in-game help, we do need some manner of ASCII or something that the game can render into text.

If this is of interest, I think I can prepare a patch that performs the compile-time conversion. Possible downsides:
1) I cannot guarantee that the formatting of the ASCII help files will be preserved exactly -- this will likely be abandoned in favor of the default style of the TeX-to-plain text converter that will be used (which is not necessarily worse or better. I plan to try out several converters and use the one that makes a better job)
2) there will be an additional program needed for "make manual" to work. Since we recently added a full LaTeX system to the dependencies, I suppose this is not a big deal.

Let me know if this is worth doing.

I am a little worried about requiring LaTeX, actually. While I like the power of LaTeX for producing the manual, I would prefer that people not need to have LaTeX installed to build and install the game from source. It's not clear to me whether it's better to distribute the output of the LaTeX-to-text converter as part of the source distribution, or to use a lighter-weight format as source, to be converted to LaTeX, text, HTML, PDF, etc. as desired.

I don't think we're married to the current in-game help engine, either. Its input is not quite plain text, but the menu and tag markup is quite nonstandard.

[fph]

By the way, I see that now there are two different versions of the help files checked in, one in LaTeX under /doc and one in pure text under /lib/help. This is usually not a good practice, since the two versions will probably diverge after some edits.
There are several programs around that convert TeX to plain text; I think it would be useful to autogenerate the files in /lib/help from the LaTeX source at compile-time. (assuming they are still needed -- do we need a plain-old-ASCII inline help where there's a professionally formatted PDF sitting around in the same directory?)

If this is of interest, I think I can prepare a patch that performs the compile-time conversion. Possible downsides:
1) I cannot guarantee that the formatting of the ASCII help files will be preserved exactly -- this will likely be abandoned in favor of the default style of the TeX-to-plain text converter that will be used (which is not necessarily worse or better. I plan to try out several converters and use the one that makes a better job)
2) there will be an additional program needed for "make manual" to work. Since we recently added a full LaTeX system to the dependencies, I suppose this is not a big deal.

Let me know if this is worth doing.

[myshkin]

@qwerty: the angband concept of help is less about advice and more about simply explaining how the game works (there's an online guide which does more of the advice stuff). So what we're really looking for is someone who will follow the dev versions of 3.4 and think "ah, this change means that lib/help/foo.txt is out of date" and make the necessary changes/updates. This would be a whole lot better than coming to release time and thinking "hmm, what do the last 1200 commits mean for the help text?" ... we live and learn ;-)

I did a slow, but not terribly detailed pass through the help files while updating qwerty's LaTeX source to match the help files. I undoubtedly missed things, though. I'd greatly appreciate anyone else's looking through the help files and/or the manual for inaccuracies. As Magnate said, we hope to have just one set of source files for documentation by 3.4.

@relic: sorry, I don't know. I'm not even sure whether the OSX version has been built yet, or whether it has but it's not yet been uploaded to rephial. I'll try and find out.

I've built a 3.3.0 OSX dmg; it should be on rephial as soon as someone with access uploads it.

[Magnate]

How do I make walls display? I tried interacting with visuals but the best I've managed so far was to let me see the walls of rooms, but not hallways, and only those in line of sight.

*yar, of course there's already another thread about this.

Yeah, this is Windows-specific, so I won't be much help - sorry.

@qwerty: the angband concept of help is less about advice and more about simply explaining how the game works (there's an online guide which does more of the advice stuff). So what we're really looking for is someone who will follow the dev versions of 3.4 and think "ah, this change means that lib/help/foo.txt is out of date" and make the necessary changes/updates. This would be a whole lot better than coming to release time and thinking "hmm, what do the last 1200 commits mean for the help text?" ... we live and learn ;-)

@relic: sorry, I don't know. I'm not even sure whether the OSX version has been built yet, or whether it has but it's not yet been uploaded to rephial. I'll try and find out.

@Tobias: IMO the pdf should be in lib/help like all the other help files, but that's because I'm obsessive about keeping top-level directories clean. I can see an argument for putting it in the main Angband folder, so that people see it straight away.

[Raxmei]

How do I make walls display? I tried interacting with visuals but the best I've managed so far was to let me see the walls of rooms, but not hallways, and only those in line of sight.

*yar, of course there's already another thread about this.