Updating Vanilla for dummies

[Dragonboneman]

Greetings,
I have played roguelikes for about three years now, especially Vanilla which I have been fortunate enough to win three times (HE Ranger and Dunadan Warrior in 3.0.6, plus another HE Ranger in 3.0.7s2). I have a question though - what is the easiest way to upgrade to the latest version? I understand there's a way to do it without losing monster memory, preferences and so on, but I'm not hugely familiar with technical matters and don't really know what I'm doing. I'm on Windows XP.

Oh, and one other question if I may be so bold. Any prospect of *band making an appearance on GP2X?

[Daven_26d1]

If you don't want to lose your monster memory, just copy your savefile(s) from {angband}\lib\save to the same dir in the new install. This kind of savefile copying is definitely not considered cheating! You can port your high scores similarly.

As far as preferences go, you used to be able to dump to/load from a text file, but I can't remember offhand whether that functionality still exists. To be honest, you usually need to go through the options again anyway, because they tend to change from version to version.

[ajps]

Originally Posted by Dragonboneman

Oh, and one other question if I may be so bold. Any prospect of *band making an appearance on GP2X?

I would say yes there's a pretty decent chance, but probably only if someone who owns one knows enough to port it, and not the current version.

The SDL port looks like it would be easy enough to get up and running but there's the obvous problem of the lack of a keyboard. There are plans afoot to support more varied input types, including handheld-type systems, so in a future version (maybe even 3.1.0) it should be "straightforward" to port to something that's Linux-based and supports SDL.

What's the traditional thing to say? Oh I remember - if you want to send me one, I'll have a go at porting to it.

[Dragonboneman]

Daven - thank you, that looks easy enough to do. Monster memory and the high scores table are the most important things, it won't take too long to set up the display and other preferences.

Ajps - I'm aware that the lack of a keyboard is a stumbling block, but there is already a GP2X Nethack port with a useable menu-driven interface which I think would lend itself well to Vanilla.

[Daven_26d1]

Originally Posted by Dragonboneman

Daven - thank you, that looks easy enough to do. Monster memory and the high scores table are the most important things, it won't take too long to set up the display and other preferences.

The path for the highscore file is {angband}\lib\apex\scores.raw - I couldn't remember this off the top of my head when I replied originally. Just remember to make a copy of the files first if you are going to wipe the folders and install the newer version in the same location!

As for preferences, I think many of them will be ported with your savefile anyway, but I might be wrong.

[Dragonboneman]

Thanks again!

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Dragonboneman

Greetings,
I have played roguelikes for about three years now, especially Vanilla which I have been fortunate enough to win three times (HE Ranger and Dunadan Warrior in 3.0.6, plus another HE Ranger in 3.0.7s2). I have a question though - what is the easiest way to upgrade to the latest version? I understand there's a way to do it without losing monster memory, preferences and so on, but I'm not hugely familiar with technical matters and don't really know what I'm doing. I'm on Windows XP.

Copying across your pref files (those stored in lib/user/, containing macros and whatnot) will cause you problems with the new game, but scores and savefiles can be copied freely, as others have said.

[Dragonboneman]

Got a game running, with the old monster memory etc. While I had to reconfigure the display, I noticed several of my preferences were saved. So all's well, thanks again to all who helped.