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.

AngbandBase

So, the Angband Variant Project has taken a bit more shape, with a code repository (edit 5/12/10: now moved here). Anyone interested is welcome to help; just get a github account, and I'll add you as a collaborator.

The idea in brief is to have the code for file-handling, display, UI etc separated out from the code for the game proper (where game can mean Vanilla or a variant). AngbandBase should contain all the code that there would be no reason for a variant maintainer not to want.

As I see it, the two big advantages are easier UI maintenance, and portability to more platforms for everyone; the main disadvantage is just getting it organised and keeping it organised.

There are some tricky issues at the boundaries of what to include and what to exclude (targeting, pathfinding and menus among them).

Some day, I may actually do some work on it instead of talking about it and pasting stuff from the forum into my blog.