Well, duh

After spending considerable time trying to work out how to manage keeping AngbandBase up to date, and how to make it an integral part of Vanilla, it turns out there is a simple solution. I simply had to make a branch of the official V repository called AngbandBase. Now keeping it up to date is as simple as 'git merge official/master', unless names change or new files come in.

And I suspect (but haven't checked) that incorporating it into a variant is about as easy - make the V repository a remote, and then merge the AngbandBase branch into the variant's master. All with the magic of git.

PS Well, not quite as magic as I'd hoped. Every Vanilla file deleted in AngbandBase causes a conflict in the merge; they then have to be forcibly removed and everyone's happy again. Is there a simpler way to do that?

FAangband at github

A bit over a year ago, for various reasons (including the fact that I predominantly used Ubuntu at the time) I made a repository for FAangband at Launchpad.

A couple of months ago Vanilla moved to github. Having been involved now in V development there, I've become very used to git - more so than I ever really did to bazaar. So I have now put FA on github. I have done this by making my master copy both a bzr and a git repository. Currently, I plan to do most of my day-to-day work with git, then push changes to both github and launchpad. Bugs can be reported in either place; I may one day use the wiki feature on github; and I will continue to do forward planning through launchpad.

We'll see how it all works out.

Extended Characters

V fork now has extended character support - a windows build is here. My next task is to extend the standard V font set to include extended characters (and probably, while I'm at it, NPP-style door etc. glyphs).

Which files for AngbandBase?

Here is the current list of Vanilla files, and how they relate to AngbandBase.

AngbandBase

button.c
debug.c
debug.h
game-event.c
game-event.h
gtk/*
h-basic.h
HEADER
main.c
main-crb.c
main-gcu.c
main.h
main-nds.c
main-ros.c
main-sdl.c
main-win.c
main-x11.c
main-xxx.c
Makefile
Makefile.inc
Makefile.nds
Makefile.nmake
Makefile.osx
Makefile.ros
Makefile.std
Makefile.win
prefs.c
signals.c
snd-sdl.c
textui.h
ui.c
ui-event.h
ui.h
ui-menu.c
ui-menu.h
util.c
z-bitflag.c
z-bitflag.h
z-file.c
z-file.h
z-form.c
z-form.h
z-msg.c
z-msg.h
z-quark.c
z-quark.h
z-rand.c
z-rand.h
z-term.c
z-term.h
z-type.c
z-type.h
z-util.c
z-util.h
z-virt.c
z-virt.h

Should be copied from V with names changes where necessary

Makefile.src
nds/*
osx/*
win/*


Potentially useful as templates for variants

angband.h
birth.c
cave.c
cmd0.c
cmd-know.c
death.c
doc/*
game-cmd.c
game-cmd.h
history.c
init1.c
init2.c
init.h
pathfind.c
randname.c
score.c
squelch.c
target.c
ui-birth.c
ui-birth.h
xtra2.c


Definitely not AngbandBase

angband.ico
angband.man
attack.c
cmd1.c
cmd2.c
cmd3.c
cmd4.c
cmd5.c
cmd-obj.c
cmds.h
config.h
debug.c
debug.h
defines.h
dungeon.c
effects.c
effects.h
externs.h
files.c
generate.c
list-blow-effects.h
list-blow-methods.h
list-effects.h
list-mon-flags.h
list-mon-spells.h
list-object-flags.h
list-player-flags.h
load.c
load-old.c
monster/*
object/*
option.c
option.h
player/*
save.c
savefile.c
savefile.h
spells1.c
spells2.c
store.c
store.h
tables.c
tests/*
trap.c
types.h
variable.c
wizard.c
wizard.h
wiz-spoil.c
wiz-stats.c
x-spell.c
xtra3.c


In other news, today has been updating my angband fork with takkaria's latest changes, and doing a (hackish) SDL frontend version of UnAngband.

An Original Idea

Maybe I can use this blog to talk about what I've been doing.

Today, I finished adding Unandrew's double and triple tile support to my fork of Angband. The idea is that eventually I will have added all the natty UI stuff that I can think of that variants have and V doesn't, and can then use bits of the fork as AngbandBase.

This may also involve some moving around of Vanilla code, so I'm kind of hoping that this will fit in with takkaria and all the other stuff that's happening with V at the moment.

Mmmm, linkalicious.

Why do we do this?

I guess every Angband variant maintainer has their own reasons for making a variant. In my case, one of the chief things that attracted me to Angband in the first place was a deep and lifelong love of the entire Tolkien Middle-earth mythology. Given that, the main theme that I pursued - immersion in Middle-earth - was an easy choice. So I made my variant.

The thing I was unprepared for was the interaction with players. I already knew that Angband had a vibrant, interesting community; but the thing that has kept me maintaining is that other people have actually enjoyed the thing I do for my own enjoyment.

Two things stand out for me. One is the long developing collaboration I have had with Si Griffin - starting with the Windows CE port of FA, and including a release (v0.3.6) by Si rather than me.

The second one, which needs no further comment, is this.

The Curse of Posband

Posband is/was a wonderful variant, branched off NPPAngband by Alex Ulyanov. After much fruitful work, he declared it orphaned, and more or less left the *banding community. Then it was taken over by Graham Phillips and Avenger, who made a home page and now aren't around much. Rick Frankum (now vanished) did some work on artifact reward generation. And here is the latest - last seen on the forums about two months after starting this thread.

So this is the first step (no actual work done) in adapting Pos to AngbandBase.

It was nice knowing you all.