Z+Angband dev

[Pete Mack]

Hmmm. One reason I like the current model is that every class of game data now has an iterator associated; that is, it forrms a normalized relation. I come from databases as much as programming, and this just seems natural to me. Take a look at the lore code to see why this can help.

[Gwarl]

Hi t4nk check out the progress I made on angband.live, I think it's taken a different direction since we spoke about it and I don't expect work from you but it is nice to see you came back to angband after all.

[t4nk]

Originally Posted by Gwarl

Hi t4nk check out the progress I made on angband.live, I think it's taken a different direction since we spoke about it and I don't expect work from you but it is nice to see you came back to angband after all.

That looks pretty fancy. I see you've even forked Poschengband? Congratulations

[droof]

I've looked around in Z variants. Poschengband completely replaces Zangband 2.4, just everything is better in Poschengband. It's the "static quest" Z branch.

Zangband 2.7.5 is a different beast though and Z+Angband has continued development on that version. This looks like the branch with the promise for a true random wilderness and dynamic interesting quests. So it makes sense to continue development on Z+Angband.

Zangband and Z+Angband only have sound support for Amiga and Mac Carbon. Oh Amiga, good memories there. Sound and music don't work, this needs SDL mixer code for modern sound support.

ZangbandTK is interesting in that it has all game commands and options in window menus. I haven't seen that in any other variant yet. That's very useful for feature discoverability.

[johnretroreload]

I'm really enjoying the discussion of the code and potential directions of a new Z+Angband project.
2.7.5 was the definitive return to the soul of zang for me which Z+angband has continued. Quests and randomisation remain key for me on this variant.
That will explain why I was having trouble with the Win and Dos build in enabling the sound+music, thanks for highlighting.
Lua in newest TOME - I haven't considered that.. Nice comment by droof about migrating and syncing for a v3.5 for easier future coding concept.
Fun and fresh while being authentic to vanilla zang is key for me.

Originally Posted by droof

I've looked around in Z variants. Poschengband completely replaces Zangband 2.4, just everything is better in Poschengband. It's the "static quest" Z branch.

Zangband 2.7.5 is a different beast though and Z+Angband has continued development on that version. This looks like the branch with the promise for a true random wilderness and dynamic interesting quests. So it makes sense to continue development on Z+Angband.

Zangband and Z+Angband only have sound support for Amiga and Mac Carbon. Oh Amiga, good memories there. Sound and music don't work, this needs SDL mixer code for modern sound support.

ZangbandTK is interesting in that it has all game commands and options in window menus. I haven't seen that in any other variant yet. That's very useful for feature discoverability.

[Pete Mack]

Lua is overrated, IMO. Yeah it allows flexibility in spell set, but 8t turns out that the flexibility is almost never needed. When a spell can be described by a line or two in a text file, and there are a h7ndred or more spells, adding even a small amount of boilerplate multiplies fast. Text file+simple parser really is considered a software best practice. It's right there in all the textbooks.

[droof]

Lua is used by game engines. Scripted story sequences, scripted levels, complex quests, new game modules, total conversions and in case of Doom 3 I think it was even used for artificial intelligence monster behaviour.

But Angband is a game, not a game engine. It's not like anyone could write a total conversion mod in Lua for Angband, instead that gets hacked into the code in C.

If Angband was really a game engine and Vanilla Angband was a Lua module for the game, then that would a different story. That would be like the T-Engine.

[Pete Mack]

OK, that makes sense. The way angband 3.0 used it really didnt.

[johnretroreload]

Originally Posted by droof

Lua is used by game engines. Scripted story sequences, scripted levels, complex quests, new game modules, total conversions and in case of Doom 3 I think it was even used for artificial intelligence monster behaviour.

But Angband is a game, not a game engine. It's not like anyone could write a total conversion mod in Lua for Angband, instead that gets hacked into the code in C.

If Angband was really a game engine and Vanilla Angband was a Lua module for the game, then that would a different story. That would be like the T-Engine.

Coding as clean and efficiently as possible, thanks for clarifying. I'm weak on programming these days.

[AnonymousHero]

Originally Posted by droof

Lua is used by game engines. Scripted story sequences, scripted levels, complex quests, new game modules, total conversions and in case of Doom 3 I think it was even used for artificial intelligence monster behaviour.

Just shows that people don't learn from their mistakes As a practical matter, yes, it has been used successfully... but the so has Visual Basic.

Originally Posted by droof

But Angband is a game, not a game engine. It's not like anyone could write a total conversion mod in Lua for Angband, instead that gets hacked into the code in C.

This is an excellent and apt point. I have an aversion towards Lua because my first encounter with it was while porting T2 away from Lua into C/C++[1]. I don't think the science is anywhere near settled on dynamic/static typing in terms of defect rates, but Lua just seems to make all the wrong decisions even for a dynamically typed language: Arrays are really just magical hashes, indexing the wrong thing doesn't say "hey! you indexed the wrong thing", it just returns "nil", there doesn't seem to be any data structure other than hashes, really, etc. It just awful... and my hypothesis is that the only way the big studios have been able to make it work is because they can throw a lot of people/testing at it. (Of course, DarkGod isn't a big studio, but DarkGod is DarkGod.)

[1] ... and you're absoultely, right T2/Angband was not using Lua as a higher level scripting over a high-perf C engine. It was just "let's write C in Lua" (T2) or "let's use Lua to avoid doing a parser for dice-arithmetic" (Angband)... which is pointless and awful.