Reviving Iso-Angband, an isometric view addon for Angband

[Nick]

This is looking great. Am I right in thinking it's going to be essentially a graphical front end that can be put on any variant? Just, you know, asking

[Hajo]

It's mostly a modified main-sdl.c and a few files with support code (PNG image loading, and drawing color-adjusted bitmaps onto SDL surfaces). So it should work with all variants which use the standard term system and the main-xxx.c files.

But turning the map screwed the direction input. Menus still want cursor up/down keys to be up/down, but the map's x-axis now runs downwards and the y-axis now runs to the right. I have changed two places in cmd1.c and cmd3.c to make movement work "as expected", but I don't think it was correct to fix the problem this way. I need to find a distinction if input will control a menu or means a direction on the map. If there is a good solution for this problem, it should become a fairly clean graphical frontend.

[Derakon]

Is there any particular reason why navigation input needed to be rotated 90°? I mean, the grid is still axis-aligned so why should it matter?

[Hajo]

Well if you press the "down" key and your character moves "right" on the screen you feel confused :P

I've turned the map display to make better use of the screen space. To give illusion of depth, the smybols in front overlap the symbols in the back, and map display space along the screen y axis becomes smaller.

To show 60x20 tiles horizontally with 24x12 raster means an area of 1440x240 pixels being used, which seemed very awkward to me. Displaying 60x20 tiles vertically in this raster uses 480x720 pixels, which seemed to be much better. And there is extra space besides the map now to show inventory, message or other additional windows (terms). Rotating the map requires to translate all input to the right map directions, but I'm somewhat confident that Angband internally has solved this problem already and it's just for me to find the right place to make this translation.

[Derakon]

Right, I get that the orientation looks nicer, but why not just rotate the town? And the dungeon, of course. That way you can display things exactly as they are and still get the orientation you like. Have the in-memory representation of the world match the displayed representation and you'll have a lot fewer headaches.

[takkaria]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Right, I get that the orientation looks nicer, but why not just rotate the town? And the dungeon, of course. That way you can display things exactly as they are and still get the orientation you like. Have the in-memory representation of the world match the displayed representation and you'll have a lot fewer headaches.

I think what Derakon says is the way to do this. You could maybe do it by altering the keymaps, but I wouldn't vouch for that working completely. There are likely to be some hidden assumptions about up always being up.

[Hajo]

I feel a bit hesitant to change the Angband codebase itself. Meanwhile I have reverted my changes in the command files, and just added a few key mappings to my pref file. This seemed safer, in order not to break things, since all the game internals are unchanged, and only user input and map display output is being rotated.

Game menus have different keybindings than the game commands, so the rotated keys are not affecting game menus, which is just what I needed.

At least until I know more about the games code, this seems to be the safest way to work.

The next while I'll be busy adapting my old graphics and editing the pref files for the graphics

[PowerWyrm]

Nice to see that you work on ISO-Angband again!

I tried to implement some iso view for my variant some time ago, but couldn't come with something so advanced. So I implemented a simple pseudo-3D view that works with the SDL port. You can check it here:

http://www.mangband.org/forum/viewto...start=15#p8948

Also did you check Necklace of the Eye? The isometric and 3D views you can get are quite nice. You just need to fill a little configuration file, and there you go:

http://www.mangband.org/forum/viewto...9&t=1955#p8991

[Hajo]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Nice to see that you work on ISO-Angband again!

Thanks I hope I can work more steadily on it this time. So far progress is good, and I'll be able to reuse much of the former graphics work. Just the code is new.

It seems meanwhile there have been made a lot of graphical frontends, each with its very own style, and benefits. I think though I'm mostly done with the code now, I've been trying to use the simplemost approach that came to my mind.

24x12 seemed to be very small as tile raster, and I changed to 30x15, which seems to work well (aka "shows enough of the map") with the "center view on player" option.

http://yanotavar.sourceforge.net/screens/alpha-001.png

The doors might change, but those were quick to make for a test. Granite walls, quarz and magma veins are in place now, but all still subject to changes. Potions and scrolls are also configured to show properly as graphics.

[Hajo]

This new main-sdl.c is quite nice, I must say! Kudos to the developers who made it

I've been experimenting a bit and moved the control buttons to the right, so that the map window can take the full screen height. Also I put up two extra terms as examples to the right of the map window. With a smaller font they should be quite useful.

http://yanotavar.sourceforge.net/screens/alpha-002.png