Favourite *band variant

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Due to current competition, I once again looked into tweaking the Un graphics. As it stands now, without even something as basic as the walls displaying properly, I find it unplayable.

Could you clarify what you mean here? Are you unhappy with walls as # marks? I reverted that option due to the number of complaints about the Windows ANSI walls not displaying with particular windows OS versions.

However, the 800+ (!!!) terrain types quickly scared me off. Andrew, are all of the terrains used in the standard game, or are many of them only used in campaign mode? Why so many different, yet seemingly identical, wall types?

Use the knowledge menus (~) to see which tiles are actually significant from a visibility point of view. You can also assign the appearance that way (v) but be sure to dump the reassignments to file if you need to.

There are a number of reasons for differing wall types:

1. These help theme particular dungeon levels.
2. The walls can be searched and interacted with in a variety of different ways.
3. They help you find potential locations to search for secret doors.
4. They help clue you in on the most powerful monster on the level.
5. They have corresponding graphical tiles.

Andrew

[Acenoid]

Hey there!

favourite variant is mangband as it's multiplayer, persistent and nice people play it. Greatest change is the "fake" realtime mode.

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

Could you clarify what you mean here? Are you unhappy with walls as # marks? I reverted that option due to the number of complaints about the Windows ANSI walls not displaying with particular windows OS versions.

I'm, pretty much, a graphics junkie. If it doesn't support DVG graphics, I'm not playing it, the exception being Steam. What I find so tragic about UN is that despite supporting DVG and double/triple tile, and it's many play innovations, I'm still not playing it.

The BIG problem: Blank spaces/unexplored areas appear as x's rather than nothing. This is apparent in all the attached pictures.

The other problem: The ASCII towns are acceptable (top/right) save for the whole screen being filled with x's. The DVG town buildings are made mostly of #'s for some reason. But in the dungeon, the walls don't show up as #'s. Well, some do, but many (on some levels a lot, in some areas nearly all) are various numbers 0-9, and other symbols as well, which make ID'ing a wall as a wall a bigger chore than is should be. This is worse when trying to use DVG graphics, as the small characters on the large tiles all pretty much look the same leading one to often mistake unexplored areas as walls, or walls as something else. As you can see, it's not at all apparent, without closer inspection, that our hero (top/center) is nearly surrounded by walls. The ) for wall symbol is a particularly bad choice (top/left), esp when combined with the 3, the 1, the %, the *, and then throw a few items on the floor or a few monsters in the room and you would really have a mess. Having a consistent/unique color for all wall tiles would be a good place to start.

Normally, me being me, I'd just take the DVG and fix it as I go. Once most of the terrains are functioning somewhat, it would probably be much better. But like I said earlier, the nearly 1000 different terrain types scared me off.

EDIT: Forgive the multiple edits, this accidently posted before I was done with it.

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

I'm, pretty much, a graphics junkie. If it doesn't support DVG graphics, I'm not playing it, the exception being Steam. What I find so tragic about UN is that despite supporting DVG and double/triple tile, and it's many play innovations, I'm still not playing it.

The BIG problem: Blank spaces/unexplored areas appear as x's rather than nothing. This is apparent in all the attached pictures.

You can start by changing the invisible trap graphic using the pref files to something other than an 'x' - a blank space would be fine. Since you've made such a passionate argument for it here, I'll be adding an option in the next release to have the same behaviour for the trap notification area that Angband now does.

The other problem: The ASCII towns are acceptable (top/right) save for the whole screen being filled with x's. The DVG town buildings are made mostly of #'s for some reason. But in the dungeon, the walls don't show up as #'s.
[snip]
Normally, me being me, I'd just take the DVG and fix it as I go. Once most of the terrains are functioning somewhat, it would probably be much better. But like I said earlier, the nearly 1000 different terrain types scared me off.

Luckily there's a function to help you with this. Go into the '~' knowledge menus, choose terrain knowledge, select a terrain who's graphic you want to change and hit 'v'. You'll be able to pick an new DVG graphic for this. You can also use copy and paste here to copy graphics around ('c' and 'p' if I remember correctly).

I hope this helps.

Andrew

[Pete Mack]

Yes, c&p works, and it helps. But when the number gets into the 1000's, you might want to try writing a (perl) script. Or you might want to add more support in the graphics editor.

EDIT: in fact, that sounds like a fun project... Mini-RDBs are so much fun. Hmmm.

[JimmyMike]

So far I've been enjoying FAangband the most. Tried ToME, couldn't get too much into it. Vanilla is fun, but sometimes feels like it needs a little spice.

-JimmyMike