OmnibandTk 1.5

[tnb]

A UI update for OmnibandTk is available here:

OmnibandTk-1.5.zip

This 20MB archive contains AngbandTk, KAngbandTk, OAngbandTk and ZAngbandTk as well as a set of sounds. These are the same old versions as before but with an updated UI. See the List of Changes in the Help Window to see what is new.

Happy Canada Day!

[Karzack]

I'm not sure what to say but, awesome. I remember playing this a long time ago. I think it was this one. I don't remember k and o being in it though, maybe I just didn't play them. It's been a long while. I love the interface.

Thanks for the update.

Any future plans for this one? New variants to add or anything else?

Wasn't there also a TOMETk?

[tnb]

I don't have any plans to add any new variants, although it would be nice. I know people are still playing (mostly ZAngbandTk) and using the mouse to move in the old version is almost impossible due to the speed; my old computer didn't need any slow-down code.

Managing macros and keymaps is easier. There's a new Controls window that makes it simple to assign keys to the game commands. The icon set can be switched while the game is running. And there's an all-ascii icon set.

There was TomeTik but its unrelated.

[Donald Jonker]

Thanks for this. I just played my first game of Kangband up to clvl27 before stupidly neglecting FA when I shuffled equip. Fun old variant that I never tried before.

One question about the UI that I haven't been able to figure out: I was pretty stoked when I saw that squelch had been implemented, but can't figure out how to get the game to hide and/or destroy squelched items. As it is, it merely marks them.

[tnb]

Walk over squelched items to destroy them. For that to work turn off the "Verify destruction of worthless objects" option (in KAngbandTk) or the "No query to destroy known worthless items" (in ZAngbandTk). I'm not up-to-date on how modern variants destroy squelched objects.

[Bill Peterson]

Good to see you back, tnb, hope you enjoyed your holiday from *banding.

Do you have any plans to upgrade the *band versions, particularly Vanilla? There have been many changes since 2.9.2, but regrettably no significant advances in UI. Sometime around 3.0.0 we did get the bigtile mode and the ability to use the Gervais graphics, otherwise I'd probably still be playing your 2.9.2.

Do you have the latest source posted somewhere? And does it still compile under Linux?

Thanks for your work.

[andrewdoull]

Good to see you back, tnb, hope you enjoyed your holiday from *banding.

Do you have any plans to upgrade the *band versions, particularly Vanilla? There have been many changes since 2.9.2, but regrettably no significant advances in UI. Sometime around 3.0.0 we did get the bigtile mode and the ability to use the Gervais graphics, otherwise I'd probably still be playing your 2.9.2.

Do you have the latest source posted somewhere? And does it still compile under Linux?

Thanks for your work.

Bill - not quite sure what you're suggesting as most of the work in Vanilla has been UI related.

Andrew

[Bill Peterson]

Andrew, I think we're just seeing events from different perspectives, you from the development side and me from the users side. I could have been more specific as I was referring primarily to the graphics presentation and "look and feel" of AngbandTk, not overall Vanilla UI issues. And while the developers may have expended a lot of energy on the overall user interface, 3.1.1 really doesn't look much different than 3.0.1 after the bigtile patch and the support for the Gervais tiles was implemented. I suspect what you're talking about are things like the SDL and Gtk ports and the mouse support. While those are useful and important work for the developers (and appreciated) they really don't change the look and feel very much. Of course I don't use those ports, just the Windows and X11, so maybe I've missed something there.

I remember being involved in a conversation on r.g.r.a 6 or so years ago concerning Vanilla graphics and UI issues. I was one of a distinct minority advocating AngbandTk and the isometric graphics as a good example to be followed in the future, to try to make Angband look and feel more like the commercial games than it currently did. At that time the response of the majority of the community was that they weren't interested in such but wanted the developers to focus on gameplay. Many, if not most of the respondents to the thread seemed to be content to play with the ASCII characters.

[Pete Mack]

I remember being involved in a conversation on r.g.r.a 6 or so years ago concerning Vanilla graphics and UI issues. I was one of a distinct minority advocating AngbandTk and the isometric graphics as a good example to be followed in the future, to try to make Angband look and feel more like the commercial games than it currently did. At that time the response of the majority of the community was that they weren't interested in such but wanted the developers to focus on gameplay. Many, if not most of the respondents to the thread seemed to be content to play with the ASCII characters.

Angband is a roguelike, hence ACSCII graphics and turn-based play remain at it's heart. The real changes in UI aren't to the graphics, but to other usability issues. (Knowledge menus, mouse interface, hand-held interface, menu interface, etc.) If you want better GFX, find a volunteer artist. We will be forever in your debt.

[Nick]

First can I say it's great to see you doing *band stuff again, tnb - you stopped before I started, so it's nice to see you're not just a myth. I haven't played your Tk versions much - I tend to prefer playing with ascii - but they are hugely impressive.

This latest version seems like a significant improvement, too. I played a little, and it struck me that the main thing it would be nice to add is mouse pathfinding - as seen in current V and several variants. If you are thinking of doing another update, I think that would be a handy inclusion.

[tnb]

Good to see you back, tnb, hope you enjoyed your holiday from *banding.

Do you have any plans to upgrade the *band versions, particularly Vanilla? There have been many changes since 2.9.2, but regrettably no significant advances in UI. Sometime around 3.0.0 we did get the bigtile mode and the ability to use the Gervais graphics, otherwise I'd probably still be playing your 2.9.2.

Do you have the latest source posted somewhere? And does it still compile under Linux?

Thanks for your work.

I have no plans to upgrade.

I uploaded the source code here. It did compile on Unix the last time I tried but I was having problems with window management on that platform. The build system is CMake. It has some external dependencies:

Tcl 8.5.7
Tk 8.5.7
TkHTML 3.0
TkTreeCtrl 2.2.9
zlib 1.2.2

[Bill Peterson]

Thanks for the quick reply. It sounds like the build process hasn't changed. Lucky for me as I'm pretty sure I have all the documentation and build instructions from the previous release, and if memory serves I was able to build it many years ago.

Sometime after you went on hiatus I did diffs between AngbandTk, Vanilla 2.9.2 and 2.9.3 to try to see how much work it would be to upgrade one version. I never followed through partly because the 3.0 versions of Vanilla made so many changes, particularly Lua. I think I'll look again at 3.1.x to see if an upgrade might be reasonable. At the least it will educate me on the new code base.

[APWhite]

I have been doing a lot of work on the zborg240 over the past several months. I'll download this zangbandtk and see if the tkborg still works.

APWhite

[omega]

A UI update for OmnibandTk is available here:

OmnibandTk-1.5.zip

This 20MB archive contains AngbandTk, KAngbandTk, OAngbandTk and ZAngbandTk as well as a set of sounds. These are the same old versions as before but with an updated UI. See the List of Changes in the Help Window to see what is new.

Happy Canada Day!

I don't usually like to be a thread necromancer, but as someone who has played Omniband since before you kind of disappeared in 2001, I'm glad to see the update! The new layout is very much like the customized one I've been using for 10 whole years now (one of the first things I install on every computer I own and use).

Even though you didn't make the games themselves, thanks for making them utterly playable. I don't like playing any other way, really.

I'd completely given up on seeing anything else from this project and was pretty content, but kudos for popping back up with this. Here's hoping I'm playing it for another 10 years!

And yes, I registered just to say this. Thanks Tim!

(Hope you see this, because I wanted to tell you for ages and ages.)

[Mushuukyou]

tnb?! Are you Tim Baker?!

I heard you fell off the planet!
I just recently found out about ZangbandTK, and I love it to allll hell over ANY of the dungeon crawlers out there, even the new stone soup that's updated frequently!

It has a lot more life to it.

Anyhow, is that you really you? Are you going to continue updating ZangbandTK? That thing is a work of art... I'd love to talk with you.. please contact me mushuukyou at gmail dot com... can't send private messages on here it seems to you.. sorry to be a crazed fan.