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Re: Angband variants

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On 9 Aug 2021 as I do recall,
          Sebastian Barthel  wrote:

> Am Sun, 08 Aug 2021 21:15:18 +0100 schrieb Harriet Bazley:
> 
> >
[snip]

> I would also say that a little WIMP aroundings are extremly helpful in
> acceptance. The version I knew had only the "mainframe variant" of
> save included, wich meant on had to use a save command from within the
> games control commands. Since I tried v 3.0.5 yesterday the comfort
> has been increased VERY by the inclusion of a save dialog an the
> possibility to use F3 as the "normal" speedsave key. Extremley
> helpful.

I don't think I ever bothered to use the save command - I used to use
Ctrl-X for 'save and exit' in order to leave the game, and relied on
Angband's not crashing during play.   Which it almost never did.

The WIMP version does have a 'panic save' feature compiled into it which
will attempt to save a !!PANIC!! file if it crashes, in order to avoid
overwriting your existing savefile.  I think I did see that happen a
couple of times in some of the more weird variants, and the panic
savefiles did restore the game successfully.   It seems to be a very
stable application.


> The other things like iconbar icon and a little menu with informations
> about the authors are essential for RISCOS to get a good feeling. E.g.
> Elite does this too - nobody needs this extra for the game, but its
> much better integrated into the desktop experience. But the best thing
> in 3.0.5 has been the option to maximize or at least "blow up" the
> viewport of the game from its normal 40x24 (or so) to a much larger
> view of the dungeon. This gives a massive better game overview. Short:
> WIMP integeration is a must. And its done already.

I remember reading about 'bigscreen support' in the Help files, but I
don't think I ever tried to use it (I don't even know how!)
I've been playing on the standard dungeon layout for too long, ever
since 2.4 Frog-knows ("Ported to the Arc by STRYQX" in 1993).

> 
> I've seen the Mulite module and a ZAPreadraw module. The latter one can 
> eventually simply be replaced by a newer variant wich is > ARM7/SA clean 
> and usable at the latest machines.

The MuLite 1.00 module (as versus 0.01 provided in the older ports)
ought to be 32-bit safe but apparently isn't.   Trying to use the
MususDo command gives an 'undefined instruction' error.  Looking at the
ReportWhere command and at the BASIC assembler source suggests that the
problem is that this part of the module is actually the strings in the
module command table and not valid machine code in the first place, but
I have no idea why it is getting executed.   :-(

The module is extremely simple, but I don't remember enough about module
construction (or indeed about assembler;  why is my STMFD instruction
being disassembled by StrongED as SMTDB, and what do either of them
mean?) to work out what is going wrong.

On the other hand, simply replacing all references to MususDo and
MususIconSprites in the !Boot file with the modern Do and IconSprites
commands respectively is sufficient to fix that particular error.
It's just rather embarrassing, since I was personally responsible for
creating it!

[snip]


> > All the calls to that module could probably be
> > dropped now, since all it does is supply *commands that didn't exist in
> > RISC OS 3.1 and 2.)
> 
> But it should be kept save - eventually - if(!) anybody can be found who 
> is willing to recompile the complete thing, it could be of much use if 
> there are some other compiles of newer angband versions >= v4 wich then 
> could be made run on older machines too.

I suspect that it probably isn't possible to compile a C program which
would run on all versions of RISC OS from RISC OS 2 to RISC OS 5/6, or
from an ARM2 to the latest ARM chips.  I also suspect that the Angband
ports probably haven't been able to run on RISC OS 2 for some time - I
was probably the last person still regularly using them on RISC OS 3.1,
which was why I put the effort into trying to update the MuLite module
instead of letting Antony Sidwell simply use the Do command.

I don't know if it would be possible to compile newer variants in a way
that would allow them still to function on RISC OS 3.1, but I don't
think there are any programmers left who would bother to do so (the only
reason for doing it is if you want to use the software yourself!)  The
MuLite module is only useful if you are running RISC OS 3.1 - it would
be nice to understand why it has stopped working, but I don't think any
future releases of Angband are very likely to want it....


In fact, looking at the release notes for Angband 3.0.9, I see that by
2007 MususUtils ("and the last vestiges of RISC OS 2 support") and
ZapRedraw had both been dropped from the distribution package.   Which
means that the version of the Angband-Kit that I located is not, after
all, the latest one - newer versions had mouse-click support, although
frankly I'm not too worried about losing that!

I suspect that may be the reason why I don't ever remember playing it
much, or at all - the A5000 was my main Angband-playing machine.   I
still have the original release archive for 'Angband309' and can e-mail
it to you if you are curious;  it ought to be fine under !RPCEmu.



> 
>  
> > Right, I've been through setting all the filetypes by analogy with the
> > old version of the toolkit (and a little deduction),

Only apparently the version I initially uploaded wasn't actually the
one which had them set.   Whoops!

> > and I'm pretty sure I've now got what ought to be a working version
> > of the Angband porting kit, with its complete instructions for
> > cross-compilation etc.   So given the source for an Angband variant
> > circa 2004, a C compiler suitable for targeting the modern
> > processors, and a sufficient knowledge of C programming, makefiles,
> > etc., it *should* be possible to recompile Angband for RISC OS
> > and/or debug the cause of the various weird errors...!
> > 
> > I can put it on my website, though it would be better hosted somewhere
> > else.
> > http://www.bazleyfamily.co.uk/angband/angband-kit.zip (217Kb)
> 
> 
> Together with the last version v 3.0.9 this would be a very good move 
> towards a "NEW" game for the new and forthcoming generations RISCOS 
> computers.
> 
> 
> <https://web.archive.org/web/20200221040230/http://rephial.org/
> downloads/3.0/angband-3.0.9-src.tar.gz>
> 
> 
> If You have an account at ROOL You eventually could do a new thread with 
> links to the angband-kit.zip to v 3.0.9 and to the Quickband Sources. 
> With some good luck this will activate somebody who is willing to do the 
> (little) conversions and the recompiling.

I don't have accounts on any of the web boards (I don't normally read
them, unless they show up as Web search results).  I think you're right,
and that most of the active programmers are probably to be found there
(no doubt browsing from their Linux machines) rather than on
comp.sys.acorn.*


[snip]


> 
> By the way - I used the Angband v 3.0.5 I wrote about on a !RPCEmu with 
> RISCOS 3.7 where it could be used in all its flavours. And it took at 
> least 2 hours - then I died in the deeper dungeon at Level 3 beeing 
> beaten by two big an poisened spider; no Chance; all 37 healthpoints gone 
> away in seconds. Too bad. :( ....  ;)

Yes, Angband really is ridiculously addictive and playable for
what is still basically a mainframe ASCII game.   :-D


> 
> But: the same thing didn't started in RISCOS 5.22 (with and without the 
> free Aeomulor module); the RPi test will be done sometimes, but I think it 
> will give the same result.

That helps to confirm that it is a general problem with later versions
of RISC OS rather than with a specific processor.

-- 
Harriet Bazley                     ==  Loyaulte me lie ==

Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

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Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-07-29 23:52 +0100
  Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-03 19:10 +0100
    Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-07 11:33 +0000
      Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-07 15:12 +0100
        Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-07 19:36 +0100
          Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-07 23:04 +0000
            Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-08 03:06 +0100
              Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-08 19:02 +0000
                Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-08 22:03 +0100
              Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-09 12:54 +0100
          Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-08 00:04 +0000
            Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-08 03:40 +0100
        Re: Angband variants Alan Dawes <alan.dawes@argonet.co.uk> - 2021-08-08 10:35 +0100
          Re: Angband variants Chris Gransden <chrisg@care4free.net> - 2021-08-08 13:38 +0100
            Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-08 16:16 +0100
              Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-19 00:39 +0100
                Re: Angband variants Toronto Backlawn <joe@arthwere.tzq> - 2021-08-21 16:02 +0000
            Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-10 13:05 +0000
              Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-10 14:17 +0000
              Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-10 21:23 +0100
                Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-10 21:11 +0000
                Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-10 23:51 +0100
              Re: Angband variants Chris Gransden <chrisg@care4free.net> - 2021-08-13 16:24 +0100
                Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-13 18:49 +0000
              Re: Angband variants Chris Gransden <chrisg@care4free.net> - 2021-08-13 16:28 +0100
          Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-08 15:55 +0000
            Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-08 21:15 +0100
              Re: Angband variants Sebastian Barthel <naitsabes@freenet.de> - 2021-08-09 12:06 +0000
                Re: Angband variants Harriet Bazley <harriet@bazleyfamily.co.uk> - 2021-08-09 15:34 +0100

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