[FA] FAangband development

[Nick]

No birth options? That's rather odd... what are you doing with all the birth options?

The only birth options left were the notes relaated ones, maximise, preserve and the roller/autoroller/points ones. How to roll has gone to the birth page as in V, everone gets notes now, and I've fixed preserve on and maximise on (or off, I can never remember which the one everyone uses is). I think the only thing even slightly controversial is preserve, and IMO it's not a good idea in FA.

[ekolis]

No birth options? That's rather odd... what are you doing with all the birth options?

[Nick]

Get 0.3.0 out soon I wouldn't even mind losing my savegame.

Shouldn't be too much longer - the main job left is cleaning up the mouse interface.

[Nick]

Say, dunno if I should start a new thread for this or post here, but I fired up v0.23 on Vista and after creating my character it told me "Could not create the notes file!" and exited.

There is a birth option for precisely this issue - the one about writing the notes to the save file directory (adult_notes_save, I think). As of 0.3.0 this will not be an issue, as there will be notes but no notes file (and, incidentally, no birth options).

[ekolis]

Say, dunno if I should start a new thread for this or post here, but I fired up v0.23 on Vista and after creating my character it told me "Could not create the notes file!" and exited. I put the game in My Documents, so it shouldn't be a permissions issue as if I'd placed it in Program Files... any idea what could be going on here? I do know that my home dir is C:\Users\Owner while my username is Ed (it's a long story but I can explain if you need me to :P)... perhaps the game is looking for C:\Users\Ed and not finding it when trying to create the notes file?

[petebull]

I don't care for the notes...

Get 0.3.0 out soon I wouldn't even mind losing my savegame.


Hopefully I get around creating a AAR soon.

[Nick]

Does this mean that some of the more thorough changes have been postponed/cancelled or that you've done oodles of code to ensure compatibility?

It turned out to be easier to translate than I thought. I probably could have done the notes too (although that would have been messy), but with the turncount bug in 0.2.3 I thought it wasn't worth it.

[Seany C]

I can live with losing notes and keeping savefiles compatible should encourage people to change sooner rather than later.

Does this mean that some of the more thorough changes have been postponed/cancelled or that you've done oodles of code to ensure compatibility?

[Nick]

How do people feel about savefile compatibility being broken for 0.3.0? My main reason for wanting to do this is that some objects (particularly ego items and artifacts) are going to change quite a bit as a result of the new resistance system. It doesn't seem sensible to me (either from a character continuity point of view or a worth-all-the-coding point of view) to translate when so much has changed.

Well, I've changed my mind on this one. Old savefiles will be importable - notes will be lost, though. Complaints, comments?

[Nick]

In V SVN I fiddled with the UI for the message searching; I think I made it nicer.

Thanks, I'll have a look at that. And thanks everyone for the comments generally - I'm probably going to end up leaving it almost the same for now.

[takkaria]

When viewing help files and looking at the previous message recall, there is a facility for searching for a particular word in there. Two questions:

1. Did anyone know about this?
2. Would anyone care if it went?

In V SVN I fiddled with the UI for the message searching; I think I made it nicer. I have used it a few times -- mainly to figure out when I picked up an item.

[petebull]

When viewing help files and looking at the previous message recall, there is a facility for searching for a particular word in there. Two questions:

1. Did anyone know about this?
2. Would anyone care if it went?

1. Yes

2. A little - i don't use it too often, but now and then.

If you think about improving the whole help system I'd guess the need for that feature is decreasing.

[Nick]

I read The Farthest Shore and liked it.

It's the third in a four-part series - all worth reading IMO.

[Seany C]

When viewing help files and looking at the previous message recall, there is a facility for searching for a particular word in there. Two questions:

1. Did anyone know about this?
2. Would anyone care if it went?

Hmm....

1. Nope

2. Technically, no, given that I didn't know about it, but it would be handy to have, given greater visibility so we can find it...

[Big Al]

1. Yes I knew about it (though it's not as obviously documented in FA as in other 'bands). I didn't know that you could use it for message recall too.

2. I use it very seldomly, but on occasion. It would be a lot more useful if you could search all the help files at once, instead of having to search each one, one by one. The whole in-game help system is, overall, rather archaic looking.