Reviving Iso-Angband

[Fenrir]

Edit: small update on the question oozes vs. jellies

Oozes will become flat, almost pool like shapes, while jellies are more upright, little hills. The Quylthulg species of monster is yet to be researched.

Good plan. Keep up the good work, Hajo!

[Etinarg]

I'll do my best. Painting went well so far, and coding - well I got the little changes done, that I needed, so that was good, too.

I think I should slow down a bit though, that will be more healthy  with regard to a steady progress.

Thank you all for the feedback so far, particularly the encouraging messages

[Etinarg]

I rediscovered the old readme.txt for Iso-Angband 0.2.4 and updated it a bit. Also made it available online as a start for a documentation thread:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=198.0

Most interesting fact seems to be the option to switch to a bigger font, with a larger viewable area for the isometric display:

Options: src\angband.exe -- --hexfont 15x30.hex

That should do the trick.

[Etinarg]

No new screenshots this time, but some progress on images and config files:

- Ooze image and config.
- Jelly image and config.
- Priest image and config.
- Singing drunk image adapted.
- Village idiot image adapted.
- Mercenary image adapted.
- Merchant image adapted.
- Fixed a small mistake in bat image (removed gray bar to the right).
- Fixed config for white mouse, white rat and gray rat.
- Updated config entries for singing drunk, aimless merchant and mean mercenary.

Nothing major, mostly finetuning. The problem with the misconfigured rodent images itches me a bit, but I want to collect more changes before publishing a new release.

I've set up a thread for known bugs:
http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=197.0

I'll update images as I come across them during playtesting. There are still a whole lot of images missing.

[getter77]

Coming right along...keep at it!   

[Etinarg]

Some more progress:

- Fix: Centipede had light gray pixel about 20 pixels above.
- Added broken bone image.
- Updated dungeon background tile to a dark brown color.
- Updated pebbles/iron shots image.
- Added bolts image.
- Added ring and amulet images, updated config.

A screenshot with the new broken bone, amulet and ring images. Hail the debug commands for ease of item creation Finally I figured how to use those and now can more easily test my images and configuration.

click for full size view

I'm not quite pleased with the appearance of rings and amulets, but I guess in this size and style there isn't much to do. The sparks are already a break of the visual style, but rings and amulets are pretty special in roguelikes and I thought, they deserve a special touch. Most important is that the player can recognize the images easily, and such small things like rings are pretty hard to see, the sparks definitely help there.

I wonder if all magic items (rods, wands, staves) should have sparks? Potions and scrolls I like without the sparks, so I'll keep those as they are now.

[getter77]

Seems like a good idea for me for each class of magical stuff to have a spark to it, preferably a different colored spark though.  Congrats on this continuing to come along nicely and your debug wranglings!   

[Etinarg]

Thanks

I'm glad that the old Iso-Angband code works so nicely. It seems I had almost everything in place already when I released the 0.2.4 in 2003, which is a big help now.

Differently colored sparks are doable. I'll experiment a bit and see what looks good.

I assume that there will be a lot of changes in the graphical appearance, also for the already existing graphics. I hope to have a solid and consistent look finally. What itches me a bit, is, that with each iteration the graphics become more detailed, while I wanted a "simple" style. Now detailed is not a bad thing per se, but it seems to move the appearance from "abstract" to "realistic", and I want to stick towards the abstract end of this scale.

Not so good news: I had a crash with the look command a while ago, and currently I'm clueless what to do. Right now I only have a stone-age compiler, and no debugger for Windows. I didn't want to code C again, and now must see how to solve such problems without diving too deeply into C coding again. I understand that it's very annoying for players if the application crashes and their game is reset to the last point where they left and started again, and will try to fix such problems. On the positive side is, that the look command seems to work in most cases, this was the first and only crash that I had since picking up Iso-Angband development again. So maybe I can postpone looking into the problem until I have a better development environment.

Meanwhile I'll do more images, update the existing images and hope that my rogue will stay alive long enough to see some of the higher level content

[Etinarg]

I was working some more on the magic items:

- Wand/rod/staff images.
- Wand/rod/staff configuration.
- Modified floor tile to show a bit less regular grid.
- Modified the granite wall tile to blend better with the magma and quartz vein tiles. Needs more work, maybe.

I'm still a bit undecided about the sparks for magic items. So far only rings and amulets have gotten sparks.

A view of the dungeon with the new walls.

click for full size view

And a view of the town at night, with the new walls, new floor grid, and new background tiles.

click for full size view

I like the view of the town at night.

[Ex]

I was working some more on the magic items:

- Wand/rod/staff images.
- Wand/rod/staff configuration.
- Modified floor tile to show a bit less regular grid.
- Modified the granite wall tile to blend better with the magma and quartz vein tiles. Needs more work, maybe.

I'm still a bit undecided about the sparks for magic items. So far only rings and amulets have gotten sparks.

A view of the dungeon with the new walls.

Nice town! Great to see this getting updated so much. Good work!

click for full size view

And a view of the town at night, with the new walls, new floor grid, and new background tiles.

click for full size view

I like the view of the town at night.

[Etinarg]

Nice town! Great to see this getting updated so much. Good work!

Thank you

For all those who want to try it, I've uploaded a new development snapshot, Iso-Angband 0.2.7:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/site/misc/iso-angband/releases/iso-angband-0_2_7.zip

There is a Windows executable included, so if you use Windows, you can try it right out of the box. Sources and images are included as well, and I think it should compile for Linux, too, but I had no chance to test that yet.

Change log:

- Ooze image and config.
- Jelly image and config.
- Priest image and config.
- Singing drunk image adapted.
- Village idiot image adapted.
- Mercenary image adapted.
- Merchant image adapted.
- Fixed a small mistake in bat image (gray bar to the right).
- Fixed config for white mouse, white rat and gray rat.
- Updated config entries for singing drunk, aimless merchant and mean mercenary.
- Fix: Centipede had light gray line about 20 pixels above.
- Added broken bone image.
- Updated dungeon background tile to a dark brown color.
- Updated pebbles/iron shots image.
- Added bolts image.
- Added ring and amulet images, updated config.
- Wand/rod/staff images.
- Wand/rod/staff configuration.
- Modified floor tile to show a bit less regular grid.
- Modified the granite wall tile to blend better with the magma and quartz vein tiles.

If you find mismatching images or run into something strange please let me know.

Bug report thread: http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=197.0

[Etinarg]

Not much progress to report this time:

- Sling image and config.
- Crossbow image and config.
- Shield image and config.

But still something new and hopefully useful for people: I've made some of my tiles from Iso-Angband and my H-World project available under the "creative commons - attribution,  share alike" license:

http://www.funkelwerk.de/forum/index.php?topic=189.0

Those are the "recolorable" tiles. Both projects use a rendering engine that can replace color ranges on the fly, and make these appear in the configured color - e.g. make a yellow centipede appear yellow by swapping the colors of the source image.

The tiles might still be useful, since it's fairly easy to swap the color ranges by hand.

[Etinarg]

Again, only a minor progress report:

- Improved several weapon images.
- Added bent sword image.
- Added two handed sword image.
- Updated blade weapon config.

But hey, even small progress is progress

[Anvilfolk]

See, that's the problem with graphical roguelikes! Instead of expanding gameplay, you're expanding graphics! Gameplay is more important! That's the main reason I play roguelikes, not 1337 graphicz!

Sorry Hajo, I had to say it! 


Oh, WAIT! This is supposed to be a graphical version of an already programmed roguelike. Nevermind then

[Etinarg]

Hehe

If I wanted to make a new game, or add new features, I sure would (I have tried that in the past). But I want to make graphics, and therefore it seemed to be a good idea to take an existing game and add graphics. At least that is easier than making a new game.

These days, I don't like coding anymore. I'm not much of a game designer (although I wish I was), but painting, or more general, working with graphics I like to do. Angband was the first roguelike that I played for a longer while (A small contact with Larn, and a longer contact with uMoria had happened before), so I stick with that.

I know there aren't many roguelike fans who like graphics. But I know there are some, so much I understood from the emails that I got during the past years.

I know I'm a bit out of place here.  Also, that's why I had given up on the project in 2004, there was just too much discouraging feedback.

Now I do it because I like to paint. I'd do it just for myself, too. I'll share what I make, in the hope that some people enjoy it. If no one does so, it still was fun to make the graphics. If it stops being fun, I (and the project) will be gone again, until I have a new idea.

Game design and such I leave to others who can do that better. In this forum there are plenty, so things will be good, don't you think?

Edit: Must have missed the last sentence of your message Anvilfolk, sorry.

But I let my message stand, maybe it helps to understand why I resurrected Iso-Angband, and why I stick to very simple graphics.

Edit 2: Also it bothered me to have had this project unfinished so many years. It's been on the edge of actually being playable when I gave up. I felt I gave up too early, let the circumstances discourage me too quickly. Since it didn't let me rest, I picked it up again. Still I wish for more encouragement from outside, but I know, it only will work if I draw motivation from myself, not the outside, so I try to do it in a pace, and in a style that suits me. I'm trying.