Graphics on OSX

[rubjo]

Greetings, fellow adventurers

I have enjoyed playing Angband and other roguelikes since the days of Moria on my old Amiga. Die-hard ascii users will of course scorn at this, but I have always preferred graphic tiles.

I might be missing something really obvious and stated clearly in some documentation or in-game help here, but how can I use reasonably big tiles (I prefer Shockbolt's) together with a font size and font tracking that doesn't waste half my screen estate for character stats and other text?

I seem to remember something called tile multiplier in previous versions / other roguelikes. Do I have to compile my own Angband version from source to be able to play with this functionality?

[ngoclong19]

Greetings, fellow adventurers

I have enjoyed playing Angband and other roguelikes since the days of Moria on my old Amiga. Die-hard ascii users will of course scorn at this, but I have always preferred graphic tiles.

I might be missing something really obvious and stated clearly in some documentation or in-game help here, but how can I use reasonably big tiles (I prefer Shockbolt's) together with a font size and font tracking that doesn't waste half my screen estate for character stats and other text?

I seem to remember something called tile multiplier in previous versions / other roguelikes. Do I have to compile my own Angband version from source to be able to play with this functionality?

I think it's in Options->Graphics->Tile Multiplier on Windows, maybe the same for OSX.

[myshkin]

I might be missing something really obvious and stated clearly in some documentation or in-game help here, but how can I use reasonably big tiles (I prefer Shockbolt's) together with a font size and font tracking that doesn't waste half my screen estate for character stats and other text?

I seem to remember something called tile multiplier in previous versions / other roguelikes. Do I have to compile my own Angband version from source to be able to play with this functionality?

Which version are you playing, and what font face and size are you using? For me, switching between ASCII and any of the tilesets doesn't change window size or glyph size.

[rubjo]

Thank you both for replying. I should have tried the Windows version before asking - the menu options for graphics are different here, complete with tile multiplier and all. I guess the OS X port doesn't have this possibility (yet). I have tried both the current 3.5.1 and latest 4 beta.

No worries, I'll just use the Windows version.

[rubjo]

Any updates here?

After some time away from Angband, I wanted to try the latest version.

Is there still no way of setting tile size/multiplier in the Mac build of the game?

[bio_hazard]

It's not tile multiplier per se, but if you go settings>Edit Font and select a larger font, it will also make the tiles larger.

[rubjo]

Yes, I€™€ have seen that, but (as I imagine anyone would want) I would like to keep the left-hand stats text small while increasing the tile size. Being able to lock the tile aspect ratio to square, independently from the aspect ratio of the font height/width would be good too, if possible. But I guess it i€™€™s not.

[Nick]

I've filed this as a bug, but I have some doubts about my ability to resolve it (most of the work on the Mac port has been done by other people). I'm also finding the Mac port generally a bit laggy and unstable; I will have a look at this some time, but I can't promise when.

[takkaria]

Yes, I€™€ have seen that, but (as I imagine anyone would want) I would like to keep the left-hand stats text small while increasing the tile size.

This is not possible in any of the ports of the game as of now. someone did some work that would enable this in the past but it never got integrated (partly my fault).

[rubjo]

Thanks! I would be very grateful for any improvement making graphics usable on macOS, even just a simple "set tile width to the double of font width".

[backwardsEric]

I've filed this as a bug, but I have some doubts about my ability to resolve it (most of the work on the Mac port has been done by other people). I'm also finding the Mac port generally a bit laggy and unstable; I will have a look at this some time, but I can't promise when.

The "overdraw cache" used currently does have the potential to render the same grid location multiple times depending on how many times text_hook is invoked to update a row. When porting the Cocoa interface to Hengband, the "overdraw cache" didn't work so I used an approach of noting the changes requested by the text_hook, pict_hook, and wipe_hook calls but did all the actual drawing when xtra_hook was called with TERM_XTRA_FRESH. Putting those changes back into Angband makes the drawing somewhat more efficient - at least according to profiling results of a half-troll warrior blundering around 650'-1000'. Though, for me, both stock 4.2.0 and the modified version felt good enough on the hardware I have.

The changes to main-cocoa.m, from git format-patch, are attached. They do have the disadvantage of taking up more screen real estate to show the same information: the rectangle for one grid location will typically be two pixels wider and taller than in 4.2.0. The changes also don't do anything to address the request to allow the tile size to be separated from the text size.

The profiling results are below. All used an 80 x 24 main window in 13 pt Verdana Bold along with message and inventory windows, both in 10 pt Verdana Bold. The show_target and hp_changes_color display options were on; other system-independent display options were off. The hardware was an early 2015 MacBook Pro (13' Retina, Intel Iris Graphics 6100). The XCode Instruments, either Counters or Time Profiler, were run with the default options. No attempt was made to keep the rendered content the same between runs - the half-troll warrior got progressively deeper in the dungeon and acquired better light sources and telepathy along the way.

                                         % of total time in Term_fresh() and its children
Instrument        Tiles       Run#       4.2.0  Modified
Counters          None        1          19.7%  11.2%
Counters          None        2          22.0%  13.8%
Counters          Original    1          22.2%  17.8%
Time Profiler     None        1          21.2%  18.1%

[Nick]

The changes to main-cocoa.m, from git format-patch, are attached. They do have the disadvantage of taking up more screen real estate to show the same information: the rectangle for one grid location will typically be two pixels wider and taller than in 4.2.0. The changes also don't do anything to address the request to allow the tile size to be separated from the text size.

Thanks, I'll add those in some time.

While I have the attention of someone with current macOS programming knowledge - I don't suppose you have any idea why the lore.txt and window.prf files are filing to rewrite on Catalina, do you? I suspect it's not liking writing lore.txt.new when lore.txt already exists, but am not sure. I think I have a couple of ideas for a workaround, but any extra info would help.

[backwardsEric]

While I have the attention of someone with current macOS programming knowledge - I don't suppose you have any idea why the lore.txt and window.prf files are filing to rewrite on Catalina, do you? I suspect it's not liking writing lore.txt.new when lore.txt already exists, but am not sure. I think I have a couple of ideas for a workaround, but any extra info would help.

This documentation, https://developer.apple.com/document...?language=objc
, has some discussion about what's implicitly allowed for access in ~/Documents and what will trigger a user prompt. The Info.plist key that's described there is listed as optional so I doubt that its absence in Angband's Info.plist is causing the problem. The console messages could indicate which file access is getting blocked (i.e. whether it's writing the *.new version or the renaming) and why a user prompt to allow access doesn't appear. I haven't installed Catalina so that's all the possibly useful information I have.

[Nick]

This documentation, https://developer.apple.com/document...?language=objc
, has some discussion about what's implicitly allowed for access in ~/Documents and what will trigger a user prompt. The Info.plist key that's described there is listed as optional so I doubt that its absence in Angband's Info.plist is causing the problem. The console messages could indicate which file access is getting blocked (i.e. whether it's writing the *.new version or the renaming) and why a user prompt to allow access doesn't appear. I haven't installed Catalina so that's all the possibly useful information I have.

Thanks, that helps

[mrfy]

I still have Catalina installed so if you need me to try something, let me know.