[FA] FAangband development

[Nick]

I believe that immersion should be ahead of everything else in the context of goals.

I agree completely. Every variant needs a reason for being, and FA's is the immersion in a consistent world. That does need to be balanced with gameplay, but that's not too much of a constraint.

[K.I.L.E.R]

I just have to add my two-cents.
I believe that immersion should be ahead of everything else in the context of goals.

The reason I love Angband and it's variants is due to the experience. It doesn't feel like a hack and slash game (a la Diablo).
There are many Angband variants offering a more hack and slash style of play, I believe FAngband's concentration on creating an immersing experience is what can make it stand out from the rest of the crowd.

[Nick]

And its really great being able to accidentally destroy items if you're using the roguelike keyset.

Good point. I guess it could be 'y'/'n'/'*' where * is the appropriate thing for the keyset.

[andrewdoull]

Yes, it's a good idea (and easy to fix) and is now on my list for next version. I usually play pick up everything, so it's not one I think of.

And its really great being able to accidentally destroy items if you're using the roguelike keyset.

Not one of my favourite UI improvements...

Andrew

[Nick]

Is it possible to, when picking up items, extend the available commands from:

"Pick up <item>? ['y'/'n']"

to

"Pick up <item>? ['y'/'n'/'k']"

Yes, it's a good idea (and easy to fix) and is now on my list for next version. I usually play pick up everything, so it's not one I think of.

[pav]

Yeah, I hack that prompt to every variant I start playing But be aware that it usually leads to free destroy.

[zangbandfreak]

destroying items

Hi,


Is it possible to, when picking up items, extend the available commands from:

"Pick up <item>? ['y'/'n']"

to

"Pick up <item>? ['y'/'n'/'k']"

I don't know about everyone else, but i don't like to have items lying around on the floor.

Or if that's not an option, can anyone tell me how i add this feature myself?

[Nick]

Boots of Elvenkind - speed + stealth (capped at +3)

Like in NPP and I think V - sounds reasonable.

Randart rings and amulets (possibly remove Ring of Eregion in this case)

Rings need a shakeup - losing the elven rings has left a bit of a gap. If I do the multiplicative resistances thing, I'll probably put more random little bits of resistance on rings of protection, for example. But randart jewellery is a good idea (although amulets are actually better than O), and I will have to revisit randarts for the resistance change anyway.

Scroll of Mass Identify

I still don't know what to do about identify. We'll see.

Potion of Seeing - restores sight, gives temp rBlind + SeeInvis
Potion of Sanity - removes Conf + Halluc, gives temp rConf + rChaos

I like this. Again, resistance changes will have an effect here.

Store services to recharge items with guaranteed success and maybe offer ID/*ID* for a price...

I'm not overly fond of store services - I guess I like even players with loads of gold to be at the mercy of the RNG

Magic users should be able to pseudoID whether rings and amulets are at least cursed.

Maybe. I don't have strong feelings about this one.

I'd like to see randart rewards for killing dungeon bosses (at least those that do not grant specialities).

I know you would You don't have to kill Ungoliant, you know.

Speed cap on rings of Warfare should be increased to at least +10.

This comes under revamping rings.

Allow the Priest shop to stock WoR.

Probably a good idea.

Maybe have occassional exotic dungeon stores or traders in the wilderness - fixed inventory for the lifetime of the level. Black market prices but {excellent} stuff on offer.

I don't like stores thematically, but traders are an option. Maybe have them behave a bit like the desperate adventurer.

I'd like to see a greater variety of wilderness vaults and maybe more mixed terrain. For example there could be large areas of rock in the forest or plains to navigate around before you get to the mountains etc. Also more lakes would be nice.

...unless you were running from a pack of hounds. But yes, more wilderness vaults are needed - I think we have proof of concept now. And the mixed terrain you describe could actually be done by a similar mechanism to the vaults.

I've a feeling there is no daylight on the mountaintop levels - is that right?

I think you're right, and that's a bug. Sloppy coding on my part; when I introduced mountaintops as a new type of level, I just whacked them on the end of the list, forgetting that everything after a certain point got no sunlight.

Thanks for the ideas. I have quite a list now...

[Psi]

Here are some of my ideas for FA. See what you think:

Boots of Elvenkind - speed + stealth (capped at +3)
Randart rings and amulets (possibly remove Ring of Eregion in this case)
Scroll of Mass Identify
Potion of Seeing - restores sight, gives temp rBlind + SeeInvis
Potion of Sanity - removes Conf + Halluc, gives temp rConf + rChaos

Store services to recharge items with guaranteed success and maybe offer ID/*ID* for a price...
Magic users should be able to pseudoID whether rings and amulets are at least cursed.
I'd like to see randart rewards for killing dungeon bosses (at least those that do not grant specialities).
Speed cap on rings of Warfare should be increased to at least +10.
Allow the Priest shop to stock WoR.
Maybe have occassional exotic dungeon stores or traders in the wilderness - fixed inventory for the lifetime of the level. Black market prices but {excellent} stuff on offer.
I'd like to see a greater variety of wilderness vaults and maybe more mixed terrain. For example there could be large areas of rock in the forest or plains to navigate around before you get to the mountains etc. Also more lakes would be nice.
I've a feeling there is no daylight on the mountaintop levels - is that right?

[Nick]

I plan to implement this in Vanilla for 3.0.9; I'll probably have a go at it just after 3.0.8. Feel free to nick it from where when it's done (it'll use some new cross-platform directory scanning code so there are no such problems, and only be invoked for the relevant ports which don't have their own way of handling savefiles.

Sound like a plan. Nick by name and nick by nature...

FLTK is pretty unheard of, really. Qt would be interesting, and is cross-platform where GTK2 isn't. There is a proper GTK2 port in development for Vanilla, though.

Found it, pinched it (well, plan to). I have been vaguely thinking of trying to write a Qt port just for the hell of it, but given that (a) I know no Qt and (b) I know nothing else relevant I'll probably find something else to do with the rest of my life (new version of FA, mouse stuff for V, etc etc).

[takkaria]

Agreed, but I'm a bit scared of this - the O version at least doesn't seem to behave well in Windows when you are moving savefiles around. It probably should be done as a port-specific thing for when there isn't menu-based savefile handling.

I plan to implement this in Vanilla for 3.0.9; I'll probably have a go at it just after 3.0.8. Feel free to nick it from where when it's done (it'll use some new cross-platform directory scanning code so there are no such problems, and only be invoked for the relevant ports which don't have their own way of handling savefiles.

While we're on this (and in the absence of a porting forum ) is there any value in having other interfaces, like Qt or FLTK? I don't know enough about this to judge, and any commentary I could find on GTK vs Qt seemed to be decided on religious grounds.

FLTK is pretty unheard of, really. Qt would be interesting, and is cross-platform where GTK2 isn't. There is a proper GTK2 port in development for Vanilla, though.

[takkaria]

Not much point doing anything else than SDL. Or plain X11.

Disagree. I want to have a new Tk-like port using Qt, because Qt is cross-platform. Other than that, a GTK2 port is good because it can use system antialiased fonts easily, which I happen to really like.

[Nick]

I decided to add the improvements to main-x11.c myself, you should have a diff file in the mail.

That works great, thanks.

[pav]

Not much point doing anything else than SDL. Or plain X11.

[CJNyfalt]

I decided to add the improvements to main-x11.c myself, you should have a diff file in the mail.

While we're on this (and in the absence of a porting forum ) is there any value in having other interfaces, like Qt or FLTK? I don't know enough about this to judge, and any commentary I could find on GTK vs Qt seemed to be decided on religious grounds.

Well, the value for having a Qt port would mostly be that users that only use Qt based applications (and not any Gtk ones) could save memory space if they compile the program to use dynamic linking, since only one version of the library would then be loaded into the memory.