[Announce] Cthangband 6.6 Release

[Dean Anderson]

As you might have guessed if you read the name of the thread before opening it, I've just released Cthangband 6.6.

There are no major changes, just a few minor tweaks and bugfixes. The full list of which is:

• The 'K' command now recognises that rings and amulets with negative bonuses are worth destroying.
• Being out and about at midnight might be really good or really bad depending on the date...
• Fixed bug where quest info wasn't properly reset between characters.
• Added documentation about the different towns and the types of shop that can be found in them, as well as the services provided by each shop.
• Changed the colour of a couple of townsfolk to avoid overlaps.
• Renamed the group versions of the various novices to apprentices so they don't get confused with the individual versions in the kill list and monster recall.
• General stores now run an escort service.
• Fixed lighting of town fortifications at night.
• Corrected the spelling of Hlanith, which had been spelled wrongly for over two decades before I noticed!
• Sunrise and sunset are now accurately(!) calculated, based on the date (assuming that the island is on the 51st parallel north).
• Game time is now tracked properly, rather than just inferred from turn count.
• Yig added to list of patrons, replacing Mordiggian.
• You can now invoke the favour of Great Old Ones with a scroll even if you don't have one as a patron.
• Thresholds for boring levels decreased to reduce amount of re-rolling.
• Fixed a few incorrect pluralisations of monster names.
• Curses can now be removed at the temple.
• Fixed bug where if you had *exactly* the right amount of gold for a shop service it would think you couldn't afford it.
• Fixed resting for the night/day recovering hit points but not mana.
• Documentation about feelings updated to show the separate monster/treasure feelings.
• Special levels now override the separate monster/treasure feelings.
• Viva la slime molds!
• Player skills now show a relative rating as well as an absolute percentage.
• Changed a few UI text colours and symbols to make things easier to read against the textured backgrounds.
• More behind-the-scenes code refactoring.

The new version can be downloaded from here

[HugoVirtuoso]

https://gurbintrollgames.wordpress.com/cthangband/

I just found this. Dean, is this your webpage?

[smbhax]

The Cthangband 6.6 launcher defaulted to Consolas Bold font for me, which in Fullscreen on my 1920x1080 display made the game incredibly hard to read. I couldn't find a way to change font while in game, so I exited and did some experimentation, eventually finding MS Gothic, which was a vast improvement in scale and legibility.

I'm not sure if the game has Consolas Bold specified as a default, or if that's just the top one in my font list or something and so got selected automatically, but it's very bad as a first impression and really doesn't do the game justice.

Also, I kept hitting Esc multiple times to back out of menus impatiently, and this kept bringing up the quit the game y/n prompt, which was a little unnerving; tying backing out of menus to Esc is expected, but to have it also prompt you to quit the game each time you hit it an extra time is kind of scary.

[Dean Anderson]

Originally Posted by HugoTheGreat2011

https://gurbintrollgames.wordpress.com/cthangband/

I just found this. Dean, is this your webpage?

Yep - "Gurbintroll Games" is the imprint under which I publish my tabletop RPGs.

[Dean Anderson]

Originally Posted by smbhax

The Cthangband 6.6 launcher defaulted to Consolas Bold font for me, which in Fullscreen on my 1920x1080 display made the game incredibly hard to read. I couldn't find a way to change font while in game, so I exited and did some experimentation, eventually finding MS Gothic, which was a vast improvement in scale and legibility.

I'm not sure if the game has Consolas Bold specified as a default, or if that's just the top one in my font list or something and so got selected automatically, but it's very bad as a first impression and really doesn't do the game justice.

I also use fullscreen on 1920x1080, and I prefer to use Consolas Bold as the font because I think it looks best (especially on main game display). That's why I chose to use it as the default font.

It just goes to show how subjective font choice is, since I think it's the best font and you think it leaves a bad first impression.

Anyway, you can select any monospace font that you have installed - although whatever font you choose it will probably be squashed slightly as most fonts are taller than they are wide and the game has to squish each character into a square grid cell. I've tried to give a good compromise between glyph deformation and kerning, but since it has to use the same values for all fonts (and each individual font will have its own starting proportions) it will look better on some than others.

Also, I kept hitting Esc multiple times to back out of menus impatiently, and this kept bringing up the quit the game y/n prompt, which was a little unnerving; tying backing out of menus to Esc is expected, but to have it also prompt you to quit the game each time you hit it an extra time is kind of scary.

I might re-word that prompt, since it's not asking if you want to quit the game (as in abandoning it) - only if you want to exit back to the menu.

And you need to confirm that too. If you just hit Esc again the prompt goes away.

Even if you say "yes" to the prompt and end up back at the main menu, you're only one keypress away from re-joining the game where you just left off. I deliberately avoided using the Esc key to also quit the menu and close down the game so that if you won't press it one too many times and end up doing that by accident.

[smbhax]

Originally Posted by Dean Anderson

I also use fullscreen on 1920x1080, and I prefer to use Consolas Bold as the font because I think it looks best (especially on main game display). That's why I chose to use it as the default font.

Before reaching the dungeon display screen, the new player has to find their way through a screen or two of text, and in Consolas Bold on my display, those screens were nearly illegible. The colored text on a graphical background probably wasn't helping, I suppose. But the text was also bold and very stretched horizontally. It was really hard to read the instructions.

It just goes to show how subjective font choice is, since I think it's the best font and you think it leaves a bad first impression.

I don't know if you're going to find many people who think those first few pages of text are easy to read, especially not in squished Consolas Bold.

Anyway, you can select any monospace font that you have installed - although whatever font you choose it will probably be squashed slightly as most fonts are taller than they are wide and the game has to squish each character into a square grid cell.

Would it look better if you scaled without altering the font's aspect ratio? Ie, without squishing it? I don't get the same sense that fonts are being squished when I select different fonts in Sil-Q, for instance, or when I tried different fonts for the Windows console display of DCSS. You might also consider a specifically tailored, somewhat squared and bold font, such as Angband uses for its main window display.

[Pete Mack]

If you are finding that maintaining main.xxx.c files is tedious,you might want to borrow them from Vanilla. Those are quite solid:
* 64-bit compliant
* many platforms
* OSX build up to date
* use of include files and Defines so that Makefile is portable across variants and operating systems.
Etc.
A number of variants are using V's main.xxx.c and Makefiles.

[drez]

I also have experienced the scrunching of the fonts which makes it very unplayable but realized too that MS Gothic scrunched the least. Also, I couldn't figure out how to turn the music and sound off? Very annoying.

[Dean Anderson]

Originally Posted by smbhax

Would it look better if you scaled without altering the font's aspect ratio? Ie, without squishing it? I don't get the same sense that fonts are being squished when I select different fonts in Sil-Q, for instance, or when I tried different fonts for the Windows console display of DCSS.

The display is designed to run at a 16x9 resolution with 80x45 characters - which results in exactly square cells for the characters, meaning that on the main display vertical and horizontal distances match each other.

Basically, something has got to give - if you have square cells and rectangular characters to put in them, either:

1. The characters are stretched to fit the cells.
2. The characters fill the cell height but not the width, and are therefore widely spaced.
3. The cells are resized to fit the characters and the display doesn't fill the whole screen.
4. The cells are resized to fit the characters and the display has a variable number of columns/rows depending on what font you choose.

I've chosen a combination of 1 and 2 as the preferred option, compromising between the amount of stretch and the amount of spacing so neither is excessive.

Option 3 is unacceptable (to me) because it would mean that full screen isn't full screen. And option 4 isn't even under consideration, because the program relies on knowing how many rows and columns the screen has in order to lay out the screen and place text in the correct places.

You might also consider a specifically tailored, somewhat squared and bold font, such as Angband uses for its main window display.

You can use any truetype font you have installed on your computer. If there is a particular one you like then you can install it and Cthangband will pick it up and include it in the selection - the selection isn't hard-coded.

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

A number of variants are using V's main.xxx.c and Makefiles.

Cthangband is written entirely in C# and doesn't use any kind of "main-xxx.c" or any makefiles.

Originally Posted by drez

I couldn't figure out how to turn the music and sound off? Very annoying.

There are sliders for the volume of music and the volume of sound (so you can adjust them independently of each other) on the splash screen that it shows you every time you start the program - the same splash screen that lets you choose what font to use.

Simply adjust those sliders to zero and the music and/or sounds won't play at all (it's smart enough not to bother trying to play sound at zero volume).