FAangband 0.3.5

[Nick]

FAangband 0.3.5 is now available from http://angband.oook.cz/faangband as source or compiled for Windows, OSX, WinCE or Nintendo DS.

This is mainly a bugfix and minor feature version, and is intended to be the last of the 0.3.x series (but I've said that before). The plan is to do some more work on improving the DS port (and maybe one or two other projects), then start on 0.4.0.

Note that this is the first release of the DS source code; it's still pretty messy, but could be adapted in current form to make a basic DS port for any other variant.

Detailed changes follow:

Features
--------
- added (still very rough) Nintendo DS port

- made days 5 times shorter

- made taking stairs use energy again, but made the player get the first turn
on entering a new level

- hitting the enter key to bring up menus is now an option

- light fuel is no longer used when there is natural light

Bugfixes
--------

- stopped crashes on lighting rooms (fix by George)

- fixed delay in monster action on entering a level (fix by Si Griffin)

- made macros work properly (Irashtar)

- fixed (I hope) running, tunnelling etc crash bugs in Windows XP, partly by
disabling the 'h'andle command (which I hope to bring back later) (Zikke,
Elrosk, HallucinationMushroom, Seany Clayton at least)

- the player can rest when monsters which can pass through walls are moving
(Si Griffin)

- staves of Banish Evil and scrolls of Elemental Attacks id properly
on use (Si Griffin)

- fonts have been extended, and made to work properly in Windows (blank walls
fix due to Arralen!)

- slight formatting error in character notes fixed

[Zikke]

Woohoo thanks for the update! Apart from the crash-issue-when-running fix, I'm most looking forward to being able to disable the Return menu oh, my "productivity" will go up (but real work productivity will go down... lol)




edit: When I [I]nspect an identified mushroom of Cure Critical Wounds, it gives me the blurb about mushrooms in general, but doesn't say anything about the Cure part. Is that by design? (I may have just never noticed it before) I was checking to see if this mushroom cures ailments like a potion, or just hitpoints.

[Bandobras]

[lots of patches by many people listed]

It would be so great to have an SVN repository from which to steal (and view) FAA patches... I really can't imagine why FAA and NPP don't have SVN. That's crazy.

[Donald Jonker]

I'm not sure if this has been covered, but:

The tunneling crash still happens, but *only* (as far as I can tell) when you've attempted (fruitlessly) to increase/decrease the tile width or height.

By the way, is there any chance of making the tile increase/decrease work sometime in the future? I'd like to find a happy medium between single and double tile mode for the gervais set .

--J

[Nick]

It would be so great to have an SVN repository from which to steal (and view) FAA patches... I really can't imagine why FAA and NPP don't have SVN. That's crazy.

Simple answer - I don't understand it well enough. My main development tools are emacs and grep, with gdb and valgrind when absolutely necessary. FA really is a two-bit operation.

[Nick]

I'm not sure if this has been covered, but:

The tunneling crash still happens, but *only* (as far as I can tell) when you've attempted (fruitlessly) to increase/decrease the tile width or height.

That's very interesting - I wasn't even fully aware that you could try to increase/decrease tile height

By the way, is there any chance of making the tile increase/decrease work sometime in the future? I'd like to find a happy medium between single and double tile mode for the gervais set .

Well, now I'm aware it's a possibility I'll look into it. What I will probably do for now, though, is disable that option altogether.

[buzzkill]

FA really is a two-bit operation.

A very fine two-bit operation. I'm happy to see the shortened days. Keep up the good work.

[chris28]

Just to indicate to those who want to test the DS version that it is necessary to rename the directory in the root of the card " faangband " (in download its name is FAangband035_DS).

Thanks for this new release.

[Bandobras]

My main development tools are emacs and grep, with gdb and valgrind when absolutely necessary

That's exactly my toolset, with two more bits for svn up, svn ci, svn diff and svn merge. Don't people send you patches? What then? SVN is easier than manual applying of patches and moreover makes your every change a patch that you may afterwards manipulate, too (e.g. view a log of them).

BTW, how to you set up emacs not to break Angband coding guidlines? I tried for months and failed.

[Nick]

Just to indicate to those who want to test the DS version that it is necessary to rename the directory in the root of the card " faangband " (in download its name is FAangband035_DS).

That was dumb of me - it's fixed now (zipfile is still FAangband035_DS.zip, but the directory inside is faangband).

[Nick]

That's exactly my toolset, with two more bits for svn up, svn ci, svn diff and svn merge. Don't people send you patches? What then? SVN is easier than manual applying of patches and moreover makes your every change a patch that you may afterwards manipulate, too (e.g. view a log of them).

I've thought it might be helpful from time to time, but it's never seemed worth the time to learn; also, I tend to like staying as low level as possible. I also keep a diary of all the work I've done on FA, and I do now use kompare (KDE diff frontend) quite a bit - although I still generally make changes by hand.

BTW, how to you set up emacs not to break Angband coding guidlines? I tried for months and failed.

I don't follow the guidelines - I have reformatted most of the code to follow the emacs defaults (two space tabs, etc). When I started it was on a laptop with a smallish screen, so I try not to break 80 chars per line.

[Bandobras]

I've thought it might be helpful from time to time,

Well, of course you know best. And even if you don't, you have all the right to stay irrational and use First Age tools (-3, -8). But just for the fun of discussing the issue to death, I'd like to argue a bit more.

but it's never seemed worth the time to learn

You probably mean the worth of your comfort, but it's also the comfort and ease of collaboration of other people. Not that there's a whole lot of other people that could possibly get interested in contributing to an Angband variant, SVN or not...

also, I tend to like staying as low level as possible.

svn diff | less, that I use a lot, is quite lower level than KDE kompare. Of course there are good SVN modes for emacs, but the Angband mood must be such that I prefer lower level, too. BTW, I find the diff mode of emacs really great for simultaneous comparing and editing. Never tried kompare (I'm a gnome-man, or rather FVWM and commandline).

I also keep a diary of all the work I've done on FA

I guess you'd find keeping the diary with the help of SVN really similar to what you do now. Iinstead of 'emacs my_secret_diary', you'd do 'svn ci' that fires up emacs (actually $EDITOR) automatically. The result would be more accurate, linked with actual code changes, at once online.

I don't follow the guidelines - I have reformatted most of the code to follow the emacs defaults (two space tabs, etc). When I started it was on a laptop with a smallish screen, so I try not to break 80 chars per line.

I like 80 chars, too and I can stand 2 spaces. Perhaps we could agree on something here? I guess the true emacs way is spaces instead of tabs and GNU formatting style, but I'm not sure these were the defaults you talk about. It's high time that Angband be liberated from the vi yoke.

[Nick]

The tunneling crash still happens, but *only* (as far as I can tell) when you've attempted (fruitlessly) to increase/decrease the tile width or height.

OK, my testing has concluded that tunnelling crashes the game in XP if and only if NumLock is off; in fact, the regular arrow keys have the same effect. Moral: Numlock on in XP for now.

[roustk]

And even if you don't, you have all the right to stay irrational and use First Age tools (-3, -8).

If emacs is First Age, what is vi? (Although I'm partial to cat and ed for small programs, I usually break down and use vi for Angband. "cat - | gcc -x c - ; ./a.out" teaches you not to make too many mistakes.)

[Mistakes like forgetting that . is not in my path...]

[Bandobras]

That's a misunderstading. Emacs is (+3, +26). What is (-3, -8), is my_secret_diary, non-versioned filesystem and an archive copy every few days for source control. About the power of vi I can say nothing --- I've never managed to exit it without friend's help or perhaps kill -9 (though it might be immune even to that, I can't remember). What I know from hearsay, though, it that vi has no automatic indent, so coding styles affected by vi end up with too complex tab rules that smart people can follow, but computer tools and emacs users fail badly. That's unfair.