FAangband 0.3.6

[thapper]

Nowhere to be found?

After killing Morgoth I decided to stick around Angband 100 to see if I could finish of Ungoliant and Sauron as well (to get a more complete monster memory or just because I could, I don't know). Then I noticed a "path leading South to Nowhere" and upon entering... yes I got to Nowhere town! Or almost, since I appeared to be stuck in a permanent wall. A phase door later I was out and about in the town. Unfortunately all the shops says "You see no store here" when I try to enter. I'm considering moving here, it seems like a nice and quiet place, especially since there are no exits...

I believed you had removed this place, but maybe I was mistaken?

[Nick]

I believed you had removed this place, but maybe I was mistaken?

It has a life of its own.

So, a path south on Angband 100. Words fail me.

[thapper]

I decided to not move in and instead recall to my home but I did set a recall point in Nowhere Town. Unfortunately I couldn't recall there later, first my rod of recall didn't work at all but after visiting some other level "manually" I could get it to recall to that level when I tried to go to nowhere. There I was tired of fooling around and decided to retire, when I looked one last time through my character dump I noticed that the last message I got was from Nick, the spirit who thundered that I should prove worthy of my traditions or die ashamed, I guess I did the latter...

[HallucinationMushroom]

Congrats! I came across this Nowhere Town entrance before, but I was in debug mode trying to find ways to Nowhere. This was about 2 years ago. Since I was unable to reproduce it I figured it was a debug mode glitch. I would find it interesting if you were to go back to Ang (58?) to see if the path to Nowhere is still there. I'm thinking that perhaps it's a one-time-only gate to Nowhere, after you kill Morgoth.

[Nick]

BTW the new V makefile model is infinitely cleaner than what you are using. If you switch over, you will never have to maintain individual OS makefiles again (knock on wood.)

OK, I have reached the point where I might think about implementing this. Roughly what is involved (asking beats thinking)?

[Nick]

OK, I have reached the point where I might think about implementing this. Roughly what is involved (asking beats thinking)?

OK, so having given it some thought, it seems that there are three possibilities:

1. Edit the V Makefile.osx, and slot that straight in;
2. Use V's Makefile.osx as above and V's main-crb.c;
3. Something smarter.

It's 3, isn't it?

[Pete Mack]

Damn it, I responded once, but the token was expired. THen I "hit the back button and reposted", including full rewrite of what I wrote. And the cursed token was still expired!

Augh!

[Pete Mack]

Here's the answer: the reason that V's Makfile.xxx OS-dependent and Compiler dependent files are stable is that they don't include any variant-dependent information.

I presume you don't want to use autoconf and that sort of thing--it's a bad idea unless you know how it works. (The only downside(?) of this is that FA can't be included in any Linux distributions.) In that case you will want the following files:

* Makefile.xxx for all non-generic-*NIX platforms (that includes OSX.)
* Makefile.std for generic *NIX
* Makefile.src, and rename it Makefile.inc. (You can't use V's makefile.inc unless you use autoconf.)
* The current main-crb.c and osx/ subdirectory, and any similar up-to-date main-xxx.c, if they are different from yours. V has now has environment-dependent subdirectories for gtk, win, nds(?), and osx. ('Rowan' and others made a lot of improvements to main-crb.c after I stopped working on it.)
* up-to-date main-xxx.c as necessary.


Then:
1. Add rough-and-ready .h-file dependencies to Makefile.inc (copy them from your most up-to-date Makefile.xxx)
2. Fix the source-file list in Makefile.src
3. Set the COPYRIGHT and VERSION variables in Makefile.inc (These are used by the various Makefile.xxx files for #defines and string-replacement--no need to change individual Makefile.xxx or any other files.)

Then:
Compile

Then:
Debug

[Nick]

Cool - I actually do most of the V stuff already then (I've been using autotools for a while, and have a mk directory, although it looks like V has changed since I last synched at about 3.0.9). I don't have separate subdirs for win and gtk, but that shouldn't be too hard; and I'll try strategies 1 and 2 and see how I go.

[skunker]

What are the chances an iphone version could be made? I played the WinCE version for a good 2 years before switching. Rogue and Rogue Touch just aren't cutting it. I'm willing to donate!
________

[Pete Mack]

What are the chances an iphone version could be made? I played the WinCE version for a good 2 years before switching. Rogue and Rogue Touch just aren't cutting it. I'm willing to donate!

This is a tough port, as iPhone has no buttons. I'd like one too, but I don't have a good feel for how to write the UI.

How to use gestures?
How to use inertial sensor?
How to use screen real estate?
How to avoid making errors because there's no keyboard and the screen is small?

How to organize commands?
What to display on the main screen?

Actually doing the port from the OSX build doesn't look so hard, as there's an old (3.0.6) Angband port to Objective C at ridiculous fish. But a straight port would be completely unplayable.

[Nick]

What are the chances an iphone version could be made?

Well, the Rogue developer has expressed an intention to port Nethack and Angband at some point. I don't expect that I'll be doing an iPhone port any time soon, but you could always put pressure on other people (not mentioning Lebannen or Pete Mack by name).

EDIT:Oh, hi Pete

[skunker]

This is a tough port, as iPhone has no buttons. I'd like one too, but I don't have a good feel for how to write the UI.

How to use gestures?
How to use inertial sensor?
How to use screen real estate?
How to avoid making errors because there's no keyboard and the screen is small?

How to organize commands?
What to display on the main screen?

Actually doing the port from the OSX build doesn't look so hard, as there's an old (3.0.6) Angband port to Objective C at ridiculous fish. But a straight port would be completely unplayable.

The 3.5 Win Mobile version did a very good job of using the touch screen. Admittedly I was using a stylus so the precise touches were much easier. My old phone only had a 2.5" 320x240 screen so the iphone's screen is large in comparison. I didn't use my old slide out hardware keyboard because I played in portrait.

I'm not a big fan of the gestures in Rogue, there are just too many and executing can be tricky. Touchscreen WinMobile phones have letter recognition which worked great when playing 2.3. Want to drop, draw a "d", zap draw a "z", etc.

Just a thought. Of course, I probably don't need to spend anymore time playing with my phone.
________

[Nick]

This is a tough port, as iPhone has no buttons. I'd like one too, but I don't have a good feel for how to write the UI.

How to use gestures?
How to use inertial sensor?

These would be icing on the cake, if you could get basic functionality working.

How to use screen real estate?
How to avoid making errors because there's no keyboard and the screen is small?

How to organize commands?
What to display on the main screen?

See the screenshots from the WinCE port in this thread. The only real issue with playability is that you might have to use a stylus rather than fingers for precision.

[Pete Mack]

See the screenshots from the WinCE port in this thread. The only real issue with playability is that you might have to use a stylus rather than fingers for precision.

iPhone doesn't have a stylus. It's fingers or nothing.