3D Angband?

[PowerWyrm]

I remember some time ago a thread about porting Angband to 3D. Sounds like the idea was abandoned... Would it be hard to implement?

[ghengiz]

I'm not an expert, but perhaps the code of vulture's eye, an isometric GUI for nethack, could be adapted...

[getter77]

That'd be Blengband, which, IIRC, was aimed at Blender's 3D capabilities. It got kind of decently far along as per my foggy recollections---too bad it just kinda stopped.

Easier targets would probably be: Most any modern, game oriented 3D engines like Unity3D and such or some of the non-commercial underdogs of which there are many hard at it still.

However, another option that could perform as a dark horse of sorts: Necklace of the Eye

http://www.roguetemple.com/z/noteye.php

[PowerWyrm]

I checked the Blengband thread, but I still can't figure out how to replace Angband's 2D display with 3D without rewriting the whole game...

Necklace of the Eye seems something to investigate, although it has very little documentation. Unfortunately, it does not work with roguelikes which create their own ASCII displays like Angband. Using Necklace of the Eye would mean writing a new port with direct output to the console.

From what I see from Vulture's Eye's description, it's an isometric GUI using SDL for drawing. This could work with the SDL port... I'll check it too.

[PowerWyrm]

I just checked Vulture's Eye's source code... The ISO display is nothing more than:
- get tile info at (x,y): feature, object, monster...
- use a big switch to map tile info with tile name
- open corresponding png file (one per tile...) and create a surface
- compute the ISO position (i,j) for the tile
- draw the tile at (i,j)

Should be quite trivial to implement in the SDL port...

[Nomad]

I know Hajo was working on a version of Iso-Angband about a year ago, although unfortunately the website seems to have disappeared.

[zaimoni]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Necklace of the Eye seems something to investigate, although it has very little documentation. Unfortunately, it does not work with roguelikes which create their own ASCII displays like Angband. Using Necklace of the Eye would mean writing a new port with direct output to the console.

The curses port already exists....

[PowerWyrm]

Originally Posted by zaimoni

The curses port already exists....

You're absolutely right lol... I'll check that too.

[BreathesFire]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

I remember some time ago a thread about porting Angband to 3D. Sounds like the idea was abandoned... Would it be hard to implement?

This works as long as you maintain a birds eye view over the same 2D viewing area. I just don't see 3D as an improvement unless you are able to change the perspective angle and increase the viewable range, which requires some major UI editing. Otherwise, you either just not render tiles outside of 2D visiongrid or angle it down close and lose surrounding information behind you.

-edit
-I actually don't know how large you can make the 2D viewable area, so this might not be as problematic as I originally thought

[PowerWyrm]

I plugged the GCU port to my variant and downloaded NotEye. The result is... interesting (see attached screenshot).

The big problems I'm facing with that are:
- pressing keys doesn't seem to work 99% of the times (GCU port alone does that... pressing the key works, it is even processed by the game, but nothing happens)
- key presses in NotEye are hardcoded in QWERTY mode (using AZERTY keyboard, the UI is a PitA)