semi-psuedo variants for non-programmers

[will_asher]

I am not a programmer, but like other people, I also like to make my own version of things. I know most of my game-designing ideas will remain as they are -daydreams, but I recently discovered how easy is it to edit certain things in the game using the text files in the 'edit' subfolder. So I am in the process of making my own semi-psuedo variant of Angband. Obviously, I can't change a lot without knowing the programming language (I don't even know what language Angband is written in), but I'm thankful to whoever created the edit subfolder for making me be able to change what I can change. I have a couple questions about doing this:

1>Would it be against copyright rules to redistribute the changed text files as a semi-psuedo variant?
(I wouldn't expect many people to be interested in something like this anyway, but I'd like to be able to share it in case anyone is interested.)

2>Should there be a new section of the Angband ladder on this site for
dumps from this type of personal variant? (It wouldn't fit on the main ladder when you can (for example) make Ringil appear on level 1 with rareness 1 if you wanted to.) 'cause I'd still like to be able to post dumps even though these wouldn't fit in the main ladder.

3>Is it possible or too much to ask for someone nice who knows how to program to make it so we can change more types of things in the text files in that folder?

thanks

Will

PS: I somlemnly swear not to post such dumps on the main ladder, I realize that that wouldn't be right. I made a separate set of folders for my edited version, so I still have the unchanged version also.

[pav]

You can redistribute your modifications under same license as the original files are (which I imagine is Moria license).

You can't change the variant name as reported in the dump from edit files.

[GSN]

If you can take the time, learn lua. With some variants you can do much more than is allowed by the /edit files, and they are pretty limited in possibilities. You have the most elbow room in r_info, and the least in k_info and f_info. You cannot add new kinds of objects or new potion/wand/rod/staff effects, for example.

[pav]

If you're to learn Lua, you might as well just learn C.

[GSN]

Learning C is not enough, however, to compile Angband; you must also have a grasp of your operating system to know which libraries must be installed etc.

[pav]

I'd say learning C is the hardest part of it, still

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by GSN

If you can take the time, learn lua. With some variants you can do much more than is allowed by the /edit files, and they are pretty limited in possibilities. You have the most elbow room in r_info, and the least in k_info and f_info. You cannot add new kinds of objects or new potion/wand/rod/staff effects, for example.

Except in Unangband. And possibly some other variants... I seem to remember Kamband, or Cthangband having something similar.

Andrew

[Big Al]

Originally Posted by will_asher

3>Is it possible or too much to ask for someone nice who knows how to program to make it so we can change more types of things in the text files in that folder?

It's certainly possible to move more stuff to edit files, however the more important question is, what would you like to see there? I can't imagine that there is a lot more that would efficiently be placed in the edit files. Stuff like spells and such need to coded by hand and wouldn't really work.

I should not to difficult to modify some stuff without extensive programming knowledge; for example, if you want to add a new spell, just look through the code and find all the places where spells are referenced; do some copy and pasting and a bit of editing and you have a new spell, etc.

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Big Al

It's certainly possible to move more stuff to edit files, however the more important question is, what would you like to see there? I can't imagine that there is a lot more that would efficiently be placed in the edit files. Stuff like spells and such need to coded by hand and wouldn't really work.

I should not to difficult to modify some stuff without extensive programming knowledge; for example, if you want to add a new spell, just look through the code and find all the places where spells are referenced; do some copy and pasting and a bit of editing and you have a new spell, etc.

You can do this in edit files: for instance, in Unangband, its quite possible to define a new spell effect, such as a staff of Perilous summoning, which clones all monsters in line of site, by doing the following in spell.txt:

N:344:Perilous Summoning
A:55:33:1
B:LOS:CLONE


and object.txt



N:158:Perilous Summoning
G:_:w
I:55:33:0
W:10:0:50:0
A:10/1:50/1
P:0:1d6:0:0:0
Y:15:2

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec...536640abd890fa

Andrew

[will_asher]

I looks like I should be editing Unangband instead of vanilla to be able to do more with the edit files. Last time I played Unangband it still had some nasty bugs, so I gave up on it for awhile. Maybe I'll download the most recent version and edit that instead.

About other things I'd like to be able to change in the txt files, I didn't have anything complicated in mind. Just things like being able to make new slays for new types of monsters I'm adding, and make certain monsters of different types appear together. (I wanted to add Haradrim and make them always appear with mumaks). And make new vulnerabilities, currently, HURT_LITE, and HURT_ROCK are the only ones. Is there a way to make monsters more vulnerable to certain elements or types of weapons?
With Unangband being able to edit spells, I'd make new summon spells for particular types of monsters which don't have a spell to summon them. If I could, I'd also had monster spells like curse (opposite of scroll of blessing) and hallucenate.

Whatever I just can't do without coding is okay, I'd just want to know how much I am able to do without coding.

Also noticed the lurker above looks exactly like the floor. I never noticed that before because when you have graphics turned on, it has a picture for the lurker above. Why does it have a picture for it when you're not supposed to be able to see it?

Also again, there's a few flags in the monster txt file I was wondering what they do:
F:POWERFUL
F:ESCORTS (there's an ESCORT flag, so why an ESCORTS flag?)
F:STUPID

Those were the only three I wasn't able to figure out what they do.