How do you setup Angband?

[Grotug]

I finally got Angband windows semi-decent (but still not as nice as it was on my macbook) and then I was trying to modify the constants and somehow I lost all my game window settings (and monster history), so I figure I'll take this as an opportunity to maybe learn a better way of setting up the game windows and fonts so the game looks as full screen as possible. How do you do it? What OS do you use and what screen resolution do you play at? Maybe you can take a screenshot and post it here?

All the computer games I play I enjoy in full screen mode. I don't like to see any elements that aren't part of the game on my screen. Therefore, it's really important to me to have the main Angband window take up as much of my screen as possible, and for there to be no white space anywhere on the screen (the white space above each game window is really annoying).

The way I set it up on my mac was simply to use Mac's zoom feature to zoom in on the main window, thus giving the illusion of full screen mode. But I haven't been able to get the zoom feature on Windows 10 to behave in a way I am comfortable with, so I've given up on getting Angband to be full screen this way. I was able to adjust the fonts to make the main window take up most of the screen, but there were still white bars at the top of the main window and the monster window to the right of the main window. I guess there is just no way to get rid of them.

Here is how I got it to look on my Mac: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q4MDmX9MWY&t=155s

I guess the easiest way to get it how it was on my mac is to maybe find a good program that can zoom the whole screen the way MacOS does (the windows zoomer is cumbersome and annoying, but maybe I just need to give it more time to get used to it).

[Raerick]

Long time lurker here. I have linux, but I use the windows version via wine. I've had different setups over the years but this is the setup I have settled on. I keep the tops of windows to a minimum by carefully resizing windows. Only the main and top inventory window have a bar (and I only use the inventory window to keep track of my character's current burden since if I need to see my inventory I can use the command easily enough.) Monster list and object list don't really need to be that big in my experience as I can check the full lists easily enough with a command and the most relevant objects and dangerous monsters tend to be toward the top of the lists. Window for monster recall (don't need object recall at all) is sizable as some monsters have a lot of information to cram into the window.

https://i.ibb.co/9cy4fwc/angbandscreen.png

[fph]

Participating in the "rate my Angband setup" thread...

[Grotug]

@fph I don't suppose you want to instruct me on how to get my Angband to look ultra cool like yours, all void of white bars or borders? What version of Angband is this?

[fph]

It's simply the recent SDL2 port on a standard Linux environment (angband -msdl2). All I changed was the size and position of the windows; no further customizations.

[Grotug]

I wonder if it'd be possible to emulate Linux/SDL2 port on windows 10, because running Angband on Windows is more uncomfortable than on my Mac. For some reason I thought the opposite would be true.

Welp, I'm super jelly. You're living the dream while I keep banging my head against the dungeon wall. :-/

Okay, I quickly found this article: https://www.howtogeek.com/170870/5-w...re-on-windows/ and think I will go the Xubuntu route. Wish me luck! My h4ackz0r skills are scarily absent.

@fph I may ask for your help installing SDL 2 on xubuntu as it looks like it might be a slightly tricky maneuver for -2 INT guy, here.

[takkaria]

It wouldn't be a lot of work to get SDL2 working on Windows...

[Grotug]

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait... crap. I'm already installing Xubuntu. And it looks like installing SDL 2 on windows is a *lot* easier than doing it on Linux since on the SDL 2 webpage there is a download link for Windows (I know what to do with these!) and for Linux there is no download link (I do not know what to do when there is no download link ). Instead of a download link, it says to contact your distribution maintainer for updates (which, of course, I have no idea who or what that is, and it sounds like a whole lot more bother than clicking on a download link).

So let me get this straight. I actually do not need Linux to get my Angband to look like fph's? All I need is to install SDL 2 on my windows? It's SDL 2 that enables it to look like that, not Linux?

[fph]

I don't know what display modules are compiled into the standard Windows binary; you can try running "angband -msdl2" from a command line and hope it works, but I doubt. Otherwise, the answer is that no matter what OS you want to use, you'll have to recompile the game yourself.

Compiling Angband is probably easier to do under Linux than under Windows (or, at least, I am more used to it ), so if you have Xubuntu available, you can use that.

The procedure is:

1. Download the Angband source code, unzip it in a folder of your choice, and open a command window inside that directory.

2. Install some required packages; I think you'll need this command

sudo apt install build-essential libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev autoconf automake

3. Follow the instructions in compiling.txt: you'll need to give these commands

./autogen.sh
./configure --with-no-install --enable-sdl2
make

3. Run the game with

src/angband -msdl2

I hope this works! Remember to thank our fellow user t4nk who wrote this display module. Let us know if you encounter any error messages; my first line may be missing a few packages.

EDIT: libsdl2-dev, not libsdl2-devel

[takkaria]

Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait... crap. I'm already installing Xubuntu. And it looks like installing SDL 2 on windows is a *lot* easier than doing it on Linux since on the SDL 2 webpage there is a download link for Windows (I know what to do with these!) and for Linux there is no download link (I do not know what to do when there is no download link ). Instead of a download link, it says to contact your distribution maintainer for updates (which, of course, I have no idea who or what that is, and it sounds like a whole lot more bother than clicking on a download link).

So let me get this straight. I actually do not need Linux to get my Angband to look like fph's? All I need is to install SDL 2 on my windows? It's SDL 2 that enables it to look like that, not Linux?

OK, sorry to get your hopes up - I posted that as a sort of reminder to myself to play with things to try and get it working.

SDL is a cross-platform library. So there are loads of things built with it that are cross-platform.

At the moment, the Angband SDL port is only readily available on Linux, and has only been tested there too, I think. But with a small amount of coding work, it will be quite possible to build an SDL2 port on Windows. And I think it probably makes more sense long-term for Windows users to switch to the SDL2 port than it does to use the existing poorly-maintained Windows frontend.

I sadly won't have time to look at this anytime soon - I don't even have a Windows virtual machine hanging around thesedays. But if anyone has the inclination and the skills I don't think it would take long at all.

[Nick]

I sadly won't have time to look at this anytime soon - I don't even have a Windows virtual machine hanging around thesedays. But if anyone has the inclination and the skills I don't think it would take long at all.

I want to say that this might be something that might happen at some point not too far away, but I don't think that's sufficiently vague

[t4nk]

BTW, that reminds me that I promised Nick to do something with makefiles, but I don't remember what... Nick, what was it?
As for SDL2, I can write a makefile for crosscompiling (Linux host, Windows target). Actually, textui2 should already have it. I tested it (SDL2 with textui2) on Windows and it works, so this one should also work (edit: I mean this port, the makefile will need some changes).

[Nick]

BTW, that reminds me that I promised Nick to do something with makefiles, but I don't remember what... Nick, what was it?

I think you're probably thinking of this.

While we're near the topic, I nearly tried to incorporate textui2 a couple of weeks ago, but decided it was too big for now - I still would like it to come in some time though. At some stage we should make a plan

[t4nk]

Now that I think of it, the port will also require new main(). And also presumably a way to choose a savefile at startup. Luckily, that is also already implemented in textui2, but some coding work is still needed. In the meantime, Grotug, I do suggest to try Xubuntu