Graphical UI and other upgrades to Angband?

[Shockbolt]

I'd not call these screen mockups I'll be posting here for suggestions, but rather ideas for Angband UI/graphics upgrades. I've spent a little time making this Angband game screen, be aware that everything might not be 100% perfect as is.

Ideas behind it:

-Made the UI graphical rather than pure text based
-Added mouse support
-Menu/Game/Map/Inventory/Help screens are switchable by tabs to the top of the screen
-Wounds, haste, bleed, hunger etc are displayed by their respective icons to the left, beneath the player stats.
-Customizable fast buttons for spellbooks, lightsources etc placed to the bottom right of the screen. A click on a spellbook might open up a list of spells and allow the player to quickly cast one of them. A click on a lightsource switch it on/off

[awldune]

That looks nice, especially for ports to mobile devices (iPad).

It looks like you would shoot an enemy by clicking the Bow icon below and then selecting a missile and target? A "repeat last command" button would save a lot of tedium if so.

One idea that might help ranged combat would be for double-clicking an attack spell (or missile when shooting) to auto-target the nearest monster.

A row of "quick use" item slots would be nice when you are using a lot of devices. Especially useful to warriors who have to use their detect rods all the time.

[sethos]

That looks fantastic!
I do have a few points though.

I know that I try to move through my turns fairly quickly, and having everything on tabs sounds, well, really bad. I think that there is plenty of room on the left if you were to shrink the text, and you could have something display there, albeit it would be small. Maybe if you could pick between monster list, Inventory, equipment, or monster memory? (those just happen to be the subwindows I cannot live without. I use messages as well, but you seem to have covered that.)

Auto Clear -More- is so sweet. until it gets you killed. Not yet for my character!

[Derakon]

I wish I had about 24 more hours in each day so I could work on all the projects I want to do, because a ground-up rewrite of Angband in Python with a more close-in focus and so on would definitely be one of them.

[smileyy]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I wish I had about 24 more hours in each day so I could work on all the projects I want to do, because a ground-up rewrite of Angband in Python with a more close-in focus and so on would definitely be one of them.

I'm doing the same thing, but in Java, with the plan for a web UI as the first client (connecting to a local or remote server). And also as a brain stretch exercise of "If I were to write a roguelike from scratch, without ever looking at angband code, but knowing some of the ideas that go into it, how would it turn out?"

[Timo Pietilä]

Just a quick post to say that graphical interface is not an upgrade in my opinion. Others might disagree, but I like things like they are done in Sangband (and even old vanilla) more.

If this get implemented please keep the old way in the game.

[Shockbolt]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

Just a quick post to say that graphical interface is not an upgrade in my opinion. Others might disagree, but I like things like they are done in Sangband (and even old vanilla) more.

If this get implemented please keep the old way in the game.

I'm not saying that the way the game is played should be changed, I'm only saying that it should include graphics, to bring it up to 2011. The general keyboard commands should by all means remain 100% as before, and in addition Angband should have a way to control the game more or less by mouse/tablet also, as most people do have one of these attached to their computers.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by Shockbolt

I'm not saying that the way the game is played should be changed, I'm only saying that it should include graphics, to bring it up to 2011. The general keyboard commands should by all means remain 100% as before, and in addition Angband should have a way to control the game more or less by mouse/tablet also, as most people do have one of these attached to their computers.

And I'm not saying that your graphics are bad. I just like the old way better. Symbols instead of pictures.

[Shockbolt]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

And I'm not saying that your graphics are bad. I just like the old way better. Symbols instead of pictures.

I didn't think that either, I do know now after all these months that the hardcore players do love their ascii

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Shockbolt

I didn't think that either, I do know now after all these months that the hardcore players do love their ascii

We're all safe on this one - takkaria has said on several occasions that the core ascii game is not going anywhere. But that doesn't mean we can't have nice fancy graphics as well! (I also like the pseudo-graphic symbols used in Sangband btw - I wonder if Leon created his own font.)