What's happening with V4?

[fizzix]

You really think existing variant maintainers are going to rebase their variants on Pyrel??

Inconceivable in my view.

A.

I agree with you. But, I think with a flexible and easy to understand enough codebase, you might get new volunteers to migrate the codebase over.

However, I think the proliferation of new variants, many of which that steal the good ideas from others are a bit more likely. I hope to have enough knowledge of pyrel to release my own also.

[nppangband]

The issue then also comes largely to visibility---Sil has managed to kick up some dust, and 3.4 has done a bit as well largely thanks to the Shockbolt tileset even if it isn't all quite working 100% as per Fizzix's latest video adventure, but NPP is very much in the background as far as public, to say nothing of Roguelike community, awareness. IIRC, due up next for it specifically was a massive overhaul to come focusing on improving the UI and newcomer friendliness----a very good idea as that is the public "weakness" of Angband alongside "just a grindfest, why bother?".

Slowly working on on a better UI, but when I focused exclusively on UI I think I actually lost players. I am going back to adding some new features so keep my core players interested. NPP 061 is going to have a much more useful sidebar.

[getter77]

Yep, I caught wind of a bit of that over in the 3.4.1 reckonings thread alongside the overhaul for questing going down---good stuff. I'd suppose ideally a release generation would have bits and pieces to appeal to all camps while still whittling away at the weaker bits and the content todo list----either that or just a ludicrous shotgun of releases/content like what Chengband somehow manged these past several months before seemingly going quiet a bit a few-some weeks on back now.

Though I suppose unlike v4 here, the design notion of NPP being overtly keen on absorbing the niftiest general bits from other variants as they happen and as it can colors things a fair bit differently.

A question to either team then, though probably it has been part of my harassment before in other topics: When it comes down to such "external" ideas/features---what's the protocol on getting it into the mix? As in, is the expectation for a trickle of player feedback that expressly mentions "Please take X from Y---sadly Y is defunct, but this is cool!" or is there some concerted effort on like a yearly pancake jamboree to do an exhaustive auditing playthrough of a specific (random) variant and have a more judicious examination on the whole of it and what to take away from the experience to start reckoning on integration?

Or a bit of both? Something else entirely? Both projects seem to be in sort of odd territory since there isn't some sort of mad multi-verse Angband variant out there to help balance the scales on yet.

[Derakon]

v4's specific goal was to allow the devs to try out controversial changes that wouldn't be allowed into Vanilla proper without a lot of playtesting. It's thus not really a traditional variant; the features it adds are only going to be ones that the devs want to trial for inclusion in Vanilla. And those features are going to tend to not be huge game-changers, since people tend to not want Vanilla to change drastically for whatever reason.

[LostTemplar]

You really think existing variant maintainers are going to rebase their variants on Pyrel??

I hope no. According to my experience it is harder to update to some prepared 'codebase' then just rewrite some obsolete code from scratch (assuming that variant in question is seriously different from vanilla).

I have impression, that Angband devs hugely underestimate, how far away variants actually are from vanilla.

[Magnate]

I have impression, that Angband devs hugely underestimate, how far away variants actually are from vanilla.

Do you mean in terms of thinking or of code? Speaking only for myself, I don't think I underestimate this on either count. I've studied the code of a few variants (S, O, Un, FA, NPP, Sil, Steam) and my conclusion is that the code diverges much less than the thinking. Some of the concepts in Sil, for example, are light-years from V, but required only minor evolution of the code.

I am not for a moment saying that converting a variant to a different codebase is anything other than a colossal task - I watched Nick do it twice and shared his pain (well, a bit). But I think it is simply because the Angband codebase is so large, not because variant code is completely different. There are just so many lines of code to adjust, even if the adjustments are not too complicated.

In future I think tools like git will make this much easier, as certain changes will be merged or cherry-picked without much conflict - but it will still be a huge manual effort.

The point of Pyrel is that it's different on two counts - it's a completely different design (different 'object model') and a different language. A variant maintainer who wanted to take advantage of those two things might bother rebasing his/her variant on Pyrel, since it would be an equivalent amount of work to updating to the 3.5 V codebase (most variants are based on much older versions).

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Do you mean in terms of thinking or of code?

In Halls of Mist I proceed by quick coding, playtesting, undoing some changes, playtesting some more, having a great idea that breaks everything, starting to code it, realizing that it was a bad idea after all, undoing some changes, coming up and coding a different idea, playtesting, refining, repeat ad infinitum.

I've had several very different phases of "thinking" behind the rule system. I discard old systems almost as often as I create new ones.

When I started coding FayAngband I didn't know anything at all about C; now I'm able to write clean functions that make sense. (When I feel like it...)

All the time, partly subconsciously, I've treated my current codebase as just a testing ground for ideas. Coding and playtesting ideas is so much faster when you don't have to care about the cleanliness of the code. Slowly the best ideas are starting to form something resembling a good, logical gamesystem. Once I'm perfectly happy with the basic building blocks of my game, I will start considering porting to Pyrel.

Porting to Pyrel would be a perfect opportunity for cleaning up and building the "perfect" version of my game from start to finish, with better coding skills. Clearly I'm in a position where it's much more useful than for most variant maintainers.

It will probably help that I'm aiming for a simple system, not some simulationist monster. With simple systems perfecting the ideas is the most time-consuming part, not coding.

[Derakon]

I hope no. According to my experience it is harder to update to some prepared 'codebase' then just rewrite some obsolete code from scratch (assuming that variant in question is seriously different from vanilla).

I have impression, that Angband devs hugely underestimate, how far away variants actually are from vanilla.

Angband's C codebase is going nowhere anytime soon. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if it were still in use ten years from now, and I don't expect any current variant maintainers would switch to Pyrel unless they decided that the amount of work involved would be worth the eventual payoff. Pyrel isn't really meant for current variant maintainers, though they are of course more than welcome to avail themselves of it if they want to.

What I really want Pyrel to do is enable more new variants to be made. Angband used to have dozens of active variants back in the heyday of RGRA, and I firmly believe that was because it was one of the most easily-modified games out there, at the time. However, we've pretty much stood still (in terms of modifiability) while the world has moved on without us. Now, in comparison to all of the other possible routes you could take to make your game, Angband is simply hard to deal with: a large, intimidating block of code with no obvious place to start.

[Zireael]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I just saw this and I loved the rune-based ID and splitting the egos. How can I download v4?

[Magnate]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I just saw this and I loved the rune-based ID and splitting the egos. How can I download v4?

here