gbadev.org forum archive

Note, this is a very preliminary release. While I've played it fairly extensively (at least, I've hit minetown, dived for the luckstone, and worked through the first few levels of Sokoban), it's very likely there are bugs, so be warned.

With that said, I'd like to announce my port of NetHack to the DS. This work is unique from previously efforts in the area, in that it minimizes the use of an on-screen keyboard, and attempts to make full use of both screens, displaying an unscaled, interactive game map on the bottom screen (by default it uses the standard 16x16 NetHack tileset), and a minimap, message, and status information on the top screen. Additionally, all commands are entered by selecting from a command list, rather than using an on-screen keyboard, which makes it much easier to use.

You can download the port here, where you'll also find an extremely sparse guide on it's use.

Enjoy! And feel free to post comments, suggestions, or bugfixes either here or in the comments section on the project page.

And, of course, not long after I post version 1.0, I make it to the top of Sokoban and discover a bug in my tile caching code.

With that, version 1.1 is now available, for those who might've actually downloaded version 1.0. :)

hey, that's cool

btw...

Quote:

Now, I couldn't figure out how to get my code working with Desmume, so I just gave up and used a camera. You'll have to forgive the consequent bluriness?

it's not working because your port is not working without write support...
but i've made two screenshots
http://theli.ho.com.ua/temp/title.png
http://theli.ho.com.ua/temp/begin.PNG

cool beans!
can't wait to play.
_________________
God Speed

Awesomeness!

This definitely is now, and probably forever and always, be my favorite homebrew release!

The build is really nice and extremely clean. Great stuff there chief!

So far, I haven't quite warmed up to your command window though.
I'd much prefer just to have the standard keyboard by default.

Also, I believe there's a font that's the same size as the one you're using but has a more presentable appearance.

It's Toki Tori for the Gameboy Color.
http://media.gameboy.ign.com/media/015/015977/img_1382080.html

Any chance you could possibly rip the font from that rom and see if it's usable with your port?

Well, it's finals week so I probably can't give too much feedback until next week.

Congratulations!

Champagne and fireworks for Abcd1234!

Question, I saw a bitmap file in the root folder for this, does that mean i can edit the sprites to my liking?
_________________
God Speed

Jakeohagan wrote:

Question, I saw a bitmap file in the root folder for this, does that mean i can edit the sprites to my liking?

yes, and you can use different tilesets of different sizes

Yeah, after enough purists complained, NetHackDS now supports a lovely, full color text mode, complete with IBM graphics if you want them. Downloads are in the same place.

To enable text mode, just edit /NetHack/defaults.nh and comment out the OPTION line containing the tile definitions, and voila! 8x16 colored text mode glory!

As for the other comments:

Opus: The command-window idea was my way of minimizing the use of the keyboard. In order to gain access to all Nethack commands, you a) have to memorize the key set, and b) have to use Shift and Ctrl extensively, both of which are pretty cumbersome. The command window minimizes those actions to a single tap... about the biggest problem, right now, is accuracy, and the fact that the font is a bit small, which means you need to be pretty accurate when tapping. But, I'm obviously open to suggestions for improvements. :)

Jakeohagan: Heck yeah, hack away, the tiles are a simple BMP file. The project site describes the requirements for file format.

Oh, and as for font, I'm just using a small BDF I found. Ripping fonts from an existing ROM is a) tough, and b) illegal, so I'd rather just get suggestions for a better font. :)

Okay. Please, please, please, don't take this as a bitchy post. It's not even like that for me. Right now, you're my new personal hero! :o)

You said you were up for suggestions so that's all I'm trying to do.

So here's what I see. Feel free to strike me down with terror if my thinking is completely off center on this.

Okay.
Have the keyboard on the bottom screen as default at all times.
Replace the "ESC" key with the "`" key to the left of the "1".
Get rid of the "F1" - "F12" row.
Drop the directional keys above, right on top of the keyboard.

This should free up about 4 to 5 lines on the bottom screen that can be used for your character's name and title, along with the stats and conditions.

On the top screen, allow for 1 to 5 lines for message display.

The command line could be on the top or bottom of the screen, where ever it would fit best.

The rest of the top screen would be for display.

Also, have the inventory pop up as a window on the top of the display screen.

Finally, have the "Select" or "Start" button on the DS be used to toggle your mini map.

To me, that's the perfect build.

At least say you'll consider this.

Oh please! :o)

Abcd1234 wrote:

Jakeohagan: Heck yeah, hack away, the tiles are a simple BMP file. The project site describes the requirements for file format.

Thats really great to hear, Its late so i guess I'll start tomorrow, so would that put out a possibility to create mods (eh sorda), if so, some one should make a place to post there's custom content.

just a suggest.
_________________
God Speed

Opus:

Heh, what you've described basically flies in the face of the entire approach I've been trying to take. :)

Having the map on the lower screen means that you can use it for tapping. Which means speed movement is trivial (simply tap the target location), as is attacking, opening/kicking doors, angle movement, and a whole manner of other things. It really was the mode of operation I was going for.

*However*, that said, I can think of a bit of a compromise. Rather than popping up the command window, how about a mode where pressing (possibly holding) L pops up a virtual keyboard, from which you enter commands (after all, the command window is really just an abstracted virtual keyboard), after which it immediately dismissed. This allows you to use a keyboard for command entry, while maintaining the existing map layout. Would that be more usable to you?

Incidentally, don't forget you can bind keys with commands as you like. So if there's a common set of commands you're using often, bind them to keys! It certainly makes things go faster.

Last edited by Abcd1234 on Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:28 pm; edited 1 time in total

Abcd1234 wrote:

Ripping fonts from an existing ROM is a) tough

If you can dump it, you can rip it by running it in an emulator and looking at the tile viewer.

Quote:

and b) illegal

In what country? In the United States, bitmap fonts are not subject to copyright and are rarely design-patented. Would you take a moment to fill in the Location field of your profile?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

tepples wrote:

In the United States, bitmap fonts are not subject to copyright and are rarely design-patented.

Uh, is this true? How come, and do you have any references?

Really! Interesting... I can't imagine why copyright would only apply to vector-based fonts, such as TTF, but... *shrug* Regardless, if someone else wants to rip said font and throw it into a BDF, be my guest. But, to be honest, it's kinda low on my list of priorities. :)

I don't think that's correct.

Glyph shapes aren't subject to copyright, so you're allowed to produce a knockoff font as long as you redraw the shapes. Postscript and other "code" used to define the shapes as well as the font name are subject to copyright, so you can't name your knockoff Arial, or directly dump the glyph shapes into your new font. I would guess that a bitmap font is subject to the same copyright rules as any other bitmap art.

Abcd1234 wrote:

Really! Interesting... I can't imagine why copyright would only apply to vector-based fonts, such as TTF

In the United States, typefaces as such are considered useful objects and are thus subject to design patent law rather than copyright law. That's why this bitmap isn't warez in Fort Wayne, Indiana (my loc), or Scottsdale, Arizona (where gbadev.org is registered). But a TTF is a computer program whose output is bitmaps. For more information, see 37 CFR 202.1 and the sources cited in Typeface#Legal aspects and Copyright#Typefaces on English Wikipedia.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

This game doesn't work at all. It loads, then immediately displays two black screens, and nothing gameplay related.

Have you applied the appropriate DLDI patch for your cart? Because unless your cart auto-patches (such as R4's with the most recent firmware), you'll have to patch manually (I had this very problem this afternoon while trying to get NetHackDS running on a friend's R4).

And yes... it needs to fail more gracefully in cases like this (there are other situations where it'll do something similar, such as when attempting to parse a defaults.nh with errors in it).

Abcd1234 wrote:

Have you applied the appropriate DLDI patch for your cart? Because unless your cart auto-patches (such as R4's with the most recent firmware), you'll have to patch manually (I had this very problem this afternoon while trying to get NetHackDS running on a friend's R4).

And yes... it needs to fail more gracefully in cases like this (there are other situations where it'll do something similar, such as when attempting to parse a defaults.nh with errors in it).

I always patch manually. So, yes.

In that case, I'm at a loss. Have you modified anything in the install archive (ie, defaults.nh, etc)? The config file parsing is rather fragile, right now, and errors in that file will result in a non-working install.

In essence, a straight unzip of the archive to the root of your card (preserving the directory structure), along with DLDI patching of NetHackDS.nds, should produce a working install. If that's not the case, something very odd is going on, and I'm unable to explain the issue (certainly I haven't come across any other reports of similar problems).

By the way, what brand of homebrew device are you using? NetHackDS absolutely requires a backup device that supports writing (my own tests have been limited to the R4, which is a slot-1 SD-based device). Of course, there are few devices out there, these days, that don't support writing, but it seemed worth asking.

I could've sworn I said already. Oops.

I'm running a Games 'n Music card and 1gig Sandisk microSD.

I did the installation exactly how you said. Standard procedure.

And yes, I did DLDI patch it. I actually tried it again to check. Still didn't run.

Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what the problem could be, then. Certainly many other people have been running the code successfully... maybe a bug in the DLDI driver or something? I wonder if anyone else has been able to get the code running on a Games N' Music device...

Regardless, I'd bet dollars to donuts it's a libfat problem of some kind... I can think of nothing else that would break a completely clean installation.

Hey Abcd1234!

Thanks for not going apecrap over some of my suggestions. In a nutshell, all I really was asking for was to see if you'd at least "consider" making a secondary, more traditional build (with a static keyboard) along with what you have already envisioned. I certainly wasn't giving you any negative feedback. No sir, not me. :o)

This port of Nethack is wired out of it's skull on speed! And I dig that!

It's almost like an amped up version of Contra 4! I definitely like your personal take on this port. It has to be, by far, the most creative port ever done for this game.

Just a few suggestions if you don't mind.

Perhaps create an option to edit the wait cycles per turn. Yeah?
I mean allow the user to slow the game down if turbulent rushing screaming speed full jet power arcade Nethack isn't quite their style.

And with the screen clipping. How about some forced carriage returns after your character has squibbed (it's not possible to actually ascend, correct? I'm mean that's just a myth, right?)

So the final screen would be something like

Goodbye Smellybutt the Barbarian...[forced carriage return]
You died in The Dungeons of Doom[forced carriage return]
on dungeon level 5 with 1490 points,[forced carriage return]
and 0 pieces of gold,[forced carriage return]
after 1687 moves.[forced carriage return]
Killer: Ms. Narodnaja, the shopkeeper[forced carriage return]
You were level 5 with a maximum of[forced carriage return]
55 hit points when you died.[NO NEED TO USE A FORCED CARRIAGE RETURN HERE! :op]

Anyway, if you break the end text down something similar to this, you should be able to display two high scores on the screen at the same time for the top scores option.

So what's your thinking on this?

Oh and hey, keep the new updates coming!

Cheers. :o)

Yeah, the entire ending sequence, from the high scores to the tombstone code, needs serious work... 'course, my efforts have obviously been focused on getting the main gameplay working correctly (I'm still paranoid I'll discover it'll run out of RAM during a full ascension run... I doubt it, but the fears linger), so little cosmetic things like a readable game summary have fallen by the wayside. But rest assured, I want 'em fixed as bad as you do. :)

But never fear giving suggestions. Just keep in mind, things like completely re-orging the UI are what I would describe as exceedingly non-trivial... as such, I don't plan to do any major UI overhauls any time soon. However, as I say, I'm certainly open to finding compromises that might work (such as providing an on-screen keyboard in lieu of the command list, as a configurable option).

Okay. I've got another overbearing, petty tyrant dictating suggestion of unnecessary gameplay fluff for you to consider with your port.

All I ask is that you give it some thought, like don't say hell no to it at least until tomorrow. :o)

So here it is. You'll have two different modes of play. There will be a walk mode and a run/travel mode.

The run/travel mode it what you already have in place.... tapping on the screen and having your character run to that location.

Walk mode would be slightly different, using the bottom screen like a compass.

Take a good look at this page under Moving around:
http://roguelike-palm.sourceforge.net/iRogue/play.php

In walk mode, your character can only take one step at a time. No accidental warping or missed steps.

The advantages are clear for walk mode:
No need for additional on-screen directional keys that clutter up the display.
In Nethack, you know that one missed step could cost you your character's life, this should completely eliminate that possibility of happening.
No loss in touch screen accuracy if someone is wanting to have a much smaller tileset.

So what's your thought on this? Can you handle it's awesomeness? :o)

Oh hey, how can I return my character's cursor graphic back to the way you had it originally? I'm not finding that option in the default.nh file.

Thanks chief!

Opus wrote:

Okay. I've got another overbearing, petty tyrant dictating suggestion of unnecessary gameplay fluff for you to consider with your port.

All I ask is that you give it some thought, like don't say hell no to it at least until tomorrow. :o)

So here it is. You'll have two different modes of play. There will be a walk mode and a run/travel mode.

The run/travel mode it what you already have in place.... tapping on the screen and having your character run to that location.

Walk mode would be slightly different, using the bottom screen like a compass.

Take a good look at this page under Moving around:
http://roguelike-palm.sourceforge.net/iRogue/play.php

Now that's a very interesting idea... though, I'm not 100% sure I can actually implement it neatly given the framework of the game.

The problem is that the NetHack core takes care of movement based on taps. I simply implement a low-level function (nh_poskey) which returns key and click events. Now, I could have special handling in that function such that, depending on the movement mode, I would convert the taps to the appropriate movement keys, rather than passing them back directly. But there's a problem: you don't always want that conversion to happen.

For example, imagine the user uses the "What Is" command. When the command is invoked, NetHack calls nh_poskey to get a location from the user. In that case, you want the real click passed through, not the synthesized movement key. But, at that level in the code, there's no way for me to know what's happening in the game (every nh_poskey call looks the same to me... I have no idea if it's just a regular imput request, or as part of a command like "What Is"), to determine if I should be passing the tap back as a raw click, or if I should be converting it using the movement compass.

So the only solution to such cases is to have the user manually turn off walk mode when those specific commands are invoked. I suppose that's an option, though it does seem a bit ugly.

Quote:

Oh hey, how can I return my character's cursor graphic back to the way you had it originally? I'm not finding that option in the default.nh file.

I'm not sure what you mean. You mean you don't want there to be a visible, reverse-video cursor (which is normally centered on the hero)? If so, a) there's no way to turn it off right now, though I could certainly add an option to do so, however, b) I'd recommend against it... without that cursor, there's no way to know where you are when you're invisible. :)

Besides, the current implementation is a pretty close match to what you get in the original Unix version... are you saying you don't like that?!? ;)

Quote:

Besides, the current implementation is a pretty close match to what you get in the original Unix version... are you saying you don't like that?!? ;)

Yeah, sorry boss. I don't care none too much for the reversed video cursor.

Besides, I've never been invisible before. How's that for my base line talent level to this game?

Well, there is the source code available to the palm port. I suppose you could always give it a quick look in your spare time while drinking a keg of beer with a snorkel. You do party right? :o)

Okay. So here's my suggestion for the day before I pass out again.

Patches! I'd like to see some added flavor for the vanilla version.

http://bilious.homelinux.org/?296
http://bilious.homelinux.org/?11
http://bilious.homelinux.org/?45

None of these effect the core gameplay, it just adds some really nice touches with coloring. This is the first time I ever went into the mines without seeing the orange walls.

I'm expecting a huge, disappointing look from you on this, which is fine. Hopefully when you release the source code, compiling it back together with some added patches will be fluffy cake.

By the way, I only mentioned that walk mode idea since my last three characters squibbed on me unnecessarily because I didn't touch the screen exactly where I should have. Yeah, that's right, I blame you for all three of their untimely deaths. :o)

Still, this is the best homebrew. I don't think I can thank you enough for what you've put into this port.

Cheers!

Opus wrote:

Yeah, sorry boss. I don't care none too much for the reversed video cursor.

Heh, well, like I say, I can add an option to flip it on/off. But I'm tellin' ya, the minute you find yourself invisible, or surrounded by other humans and can't tell yourself apart from the others, you'll regret it. ;)

Quote:

Well, there is the source code available to the palm port.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that's a port of Rogue, which is very much a different game (NetHack is more of a spiritual successor to Rogue, but I don't believe there's a lineage of code sharing). As such, what works in that implementation might not work in my port.

Quote:

I suppose you could always give it a quick look in your spare time while drinking a keg of beer with a snorkel. You do party right? :o)

Ha ha... those days are long behind me, my friend. :) Oddly, being married with a day job == not terribly conducive to all-night benders.

Quote:

I'm expecting a huge, disappointing look from you on this, which is fine. Hopefully when you release the source code, compiling it back together with some added patches will be fluffy cake.

Bingo! My approach, here, is to put together something with extremely minimal changes to the core. Once I've got the code released (which should be sooner rather than later), people can feel free to snag it, patch it, and build it with whatever patches they'd like.

Quote:

By the way, I only mentioned that walk mode idea since my last three characters squibbed on me unnecessarily because I didn't touch the screen exactly where I should have. Yeah, that's right, I blame you for all three of their untimely deaths. :o)

LOL. Well, I really do want to try and clean up the touchscreen accuracy... I have some ideas for multiple sampling and averaging that might clean things up.

On the bright side, I discovered that, minus some bugs, my fixes to enable the text mode cursor make "What Is" and similar commands usable without tapping (you can use the arrow keys to move the cursor around, and A to select), which means that walk mode isn't such a crazy idea after all. So, on the TODO list it goes...

Thanks for the quick fix! Just about to load it up.

I have one more idea that you might be interested in implementing.
I can't stand the keyboard, call me lazy if you must.
So rather then typing in Elbereth over and over I was wondering if you could save the last entered keyboard command so it would already be there after you type it once. Of course then you would have to implement a clear button on the keyboard to make deleting the previous command easier.

Also what does the Redo command do? I've only tried it when engraving, and that didn't work. Does it only work on commands that do not ask for more input from the player?

Again Great Work!

Redo is equivalent to ^A in the unix port. It's particularly useful for things like "Throw" or "Apply", as it redoes the previous command without prompting for an inventory item. It appears you're right, though, in that it doesn't work for Engrave (I can only assume that's true of all commands that require input).

As for input, what I've always meant to add is an input history. So you could just hit the up/down arrows on the virtual keyboard to flip through the history and select something you entered previously.

That sounds great with input history.

I have found a bug with the new joypad menu selection when using secondary menus such as with Drop (all types, coins, etc) and Yes/No secondary menus. The A button does not register your selection it exits out of the menu because the A button is still set as 'pick up object'.

*edit*
Thinking that over again, menus secondary menus such as drop need to use of counters... so the left/right joypad directions need to be used also. Not quite sure what right directional pad does at the moment, it looks like it redraws the screen.
*/edit*

Also the new highlighted menus are awesome! Can you allow the whole highlighted area to be used as the button? Currently you can only select with the text, even when it is highlighted. Its not a big deal but I think it would work well, atleast on the secondary menus that only have one item per row.

Last edited by Scribble on Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:40 am; edited 1 time in total

That would be because item selection/deselection is done using X and Y, respectively. Yeah, it seems a little weird, but basically the mode is you select items with X, then hit A to confirm your selections (or B to cancel) and dismiss the menu. The manual has been updated to reflect this (though I've got further edits I need to make to it).

As for the hotspot for the text, yeah, I had intended to do that... I just never got around to it. :)

Awesome works great!

Ahh shoot, I accidentally left some debugging code in that release... the result is that the DS won't power down after a save. I've released version 1.8a to address this.

Alright, I just put out version 1.8b... yeah, I know, it's really fast after the previous release, but I thought it was worth it. This version fixes the touchscreen inaccuracy problems (at least, they're fixed on my DS).

it seems with the latest version that the CHAT version is not working... did anyone else noticed that?

Agmaii wrote:

it seems with the latest version that the CHAT version is not working... did anyone else noticed that?

Well, I just tested out 1.8b on my NDS Lite, and chat with both tapping and the directional keys *seems* to be working fine.

Do any of the other directional commands (such as force, throw, etc) work for you? Because if they do, then chat should, as well.

EDIT:

Actually, I lied. It appears there's a weird, intermittent bug in directional commands (I've definitely seen it with kick) where joypad presses are ignored, but touchscreen taps work fine. I'll look into it tonight, but for now, the workaround is to just tap an adjacent cell it indicate a direction.

I also, as it happens, found a rather odd bug in the menuing code when paging down with the joypad that I need to look at (ie, sometimes it doesn't work at all), *and* I had a game crash on me this morning when I tried to open the inventory... I have no idea what that was about... hopefully it'll reproduce at some point, though, because a) any crasher is a concern, and b) I'd rather not lose another game. :/

EDIT 2:

Gah, well, I see what the problem is with kick, et al... still won't be able to roll out a fix until tonight, but at least I know what's wrong (damn uninitialized variables).

Ok thanks for looking into it

oh and somehow CHAT does work again... very strange

BTW

Is it possible to have music (like a MOD or Mp3 the user can choose himself) in the background?
I like nethack with background music, normaly my computer would provide me but while traveling, with DS only, it's hard ;).

Agmaii wrote:

Ok thanks for looking into it

oh and somehow CHAT does work again... very strange

Yeah, that'd be the intermittent part of the bug, and it's actually quite explicable (there's an uninitialized variable gumming up the works. Since it's uninitialized, the value it takes on is dependent on what was in memory at the time the stack frame was allocated, and so one minute the code will work fine (because the variable just happened to initialize to 0), and the next it won't).

Quote:

Is it possible to have music (like a MOD or Mp3 the user can choose himself) in the background?
I like nethack with background music, normaly my computer would provide me but while traveling, with DS only, it's hard ;).

I've thought about that. My biggest concern is CPU usage... certainly, MoonShell gets pretty non-responsive when audio is playing back (just try moving a window while some music is playing). Of course, that may be an artifact of MoonShell's implementation, but it's still an issue.

But, I have thought about it, and I might play around with it once I've got the base game up and running w/o major bugs or usability issues.

Ah yes... I understand.
Good luck anyway!

Aight, 1.9 is out. Among other things, I've implemented that iRogue-style movement compass (obviously it's optional, and defaults off) and a keyboard history. I've also fixed that bug in directional commands, as well as making it possible to indicate the floor ('>'), in addition to yourself ('.'). Taps on locked doors don't kick immediately, which is good if you don't want to tick off the guards in minetown. I've optimized the status updates, so if you like 'time' enabled, go for it. And there's a couple other bugfixes, as well.

Oh wow! This is a big update!

You implemented both compass mode and the ability to disable the cursor as well, plus always defaulting to the keyboard if needed?

The only thing holding me back from saying that I love you right now is that I'm not too sure how attractive you are. :op

Oh and when will we finally be seeing the "Name you character" improper speech corrected on the selection screen?

I'm hoping for release 1.9a subset 2.1b version 4 feature 2! :o)

Opus wrote:

Oh wow! This is a big update!

You implemented both compass mode and the ability to disable the cursor as well, plus always defaulting to the keyboard if needed?

Yup. Just put this in your options line (I assume you want relative compass mode... IMHO, absolute is borderline unusable... :):

OPTIONS=compassmode:1,!cursor,!cmdwindow

Quote:

The only thing holding me back from saying that I love you right now is that I'm not too sure how attractive you are. :op

It's alright, like I say, I'm married already. ;)

Quote:

Oh and when will we finally be seeing the "Name you character" improper speech corrected on the selection screen?

LOLFR, I never noticed that... I have my name specified in my options file, so NetHack never prompts me for it. It's fixed in SVN. :)

Quote:

I'm hoping for release 1.9a subset 2.1b version 4 feature 2! :o)

Aight, just give me an hour or so...

Okay, just finished up with finals today.

So here's my game plan for the next 32 hours....

Pass out, wake up, get drunk, pass out, wake up, pass out, wake up, play some Nethack, pass out, wake up, post some feedback here, pass out.

If all goes well I'll stay true to these intentions. :o)

But real quick, in the meantime, I'm still getting some missteps and double movements with your current version.

It's almost like playing Nethack on ice.

I posted earlier about custom created wait cycles. I think you should still consider something in nature to this idea.

Say that a person wants the maximum speed of their character to only move one step per second, trying to go any faster than that won't occur.

This takes away accidental double taps on the screen and directional keys.

Also, say you wanted to move 5 steps up, normally you would press the directional pad 5 times up. In this way, after each wait cycle is finished, it goes back to receiving input values. So in this case, holding the D PAD will continue to move the character at the minimal speed allowed. No need to pound on the D PAD as much, it's more like gliding your character along.

The same would apply for using the touchscreen as well. I think the end result with holding the stylus on to the touchscreen would be like slowly leading your character through the dungeon. Think Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass as an example of this concept where Link walks in the general direction of wherever that stupid little idgit fluffy thing with wings is at on the screen.

Just make sure that only the direction input is voided during the wait routine, everything else should run the same at full speed.

Anyway, that's it for now.

No need to thank me for the complete awesomeness of my idea.

I know you're grateful, you don't need to share that special feeling with me for others to read.

Cheers!

It's an interesting idea... I'm curious, though. Do you have this problem with the PC version? If not, why not? Is it strictly because you're using the stylus for motion, and you find yourself inadvertantly tapping more times than you intend? Certainly it's pretty tough to do this with the D pad (I recently completed Sokoban using the latest version, and all of my accidental movement issues have largely disappeared (the newest version does it's best to flush the input events prior to each game iteration)).

As for repeats on the D pad, yeah, I've been thinking about that... the thing is, for large movements, I tend to just resort to touching the destination I want to go to. After all, why should I enter the directions when the game can handle it all for me? :) Still, I'll probably get around to it eventually.

Doing it for the touchscreen, though... that *might* be a little trickier. Still, an interesting idea worth exploring.

But the movement speed limiting thing... that just feels like a hack to get around other gameplay issues that are better resolved. 'course, I very well may be wrong, in which case I may implement such a thing in the future. :)

Hello again!

I've been playing nethack on alt.org lately and have an incredible addiction to the 'n' key! I use it all the time such as when I need to search for a door or passage 'n' '15 'search', or when I'm at an altar n '50' 'search'. Can NHDS do this? It really is a pain to mash the B key when waiting at an altar.

An idea would be instead of having Ex-cmd prompt, just a command prompt so the auto # doesn't get added. Or the ability to add commands to the command menu?! :)

Problems then would occur because you have to turn on num-pad to make 'n' available, but is easily fixed by resetting 'Key Config's. But resetting Key Configs over and over is a pain in the ass, so possibly add the option to set key configs in defaults.nh.

Key Config also seems to have an error when trying to select 'game commands' from the menu with buttons rather then the stylist. You have to press the button really quick, if you hold the 'X' button down when selecting 'game command' from the menu, when you release the button it will select key config as the mapped game command.

Also with Key Config would it be possible to allow for R+A, R+B, etc. commands? Then also would it be possible to add commands from the command prompt as possible key config options? This would allow for me to set 'n50s' to R+B !!!!!!

Also sacrifice should really be renamed offer :)

Should give you a bit to do this weekend, let me know what you think! :P

Thanks!

Ahhhh key configs are saved after a quit.

Scribble wrote:

Hello again!

I've been playing nethack on alt.org lately and have an incredible addiction to the 'n' key! I use it all the time such as when I need to search for a door or passage 'n' '15 'search', or when I'm at an altar n '50' 'search'. Can NHDS do this? It really is a pain to mash the B key when waiting at an altar.

Wait... you aren't... altar camping, are you?!? ;)

Incidentally, you don't have to hit 'n' to do repeats (at least in the Unix version). If you just start typing a number, and then hit a command, it just works.

Anyway, I could probably add a new command type to the window, something like "Repeat", that would cause a prompt to appear so you can enter a count, followed by the command window re-appearing so you can pick something. Shouldn't be too tough.

Quote:

Key Config also seems to have an error when trying to select 'game commands' from the menu with buttons rather then the stylist. You have to press the button really quick, if you hold the 'X' button down when selecting 'game command' from the menu, when you release the button it will select key config as the mapped game command.

Ahh, I'm not flushing the events before prompting for a key. Good catch, it's already fixed in my subversion repo.

Quote:

Also with Key Config would it be possible to allow for R+A, R+B, etc. commands? Then also would it be possible to add commands from the command prompt as possible key config options? This would allow for me to set 'n50s' to R+B !!!!!!

Well, right now, holding down R (or L, if left-handed mode is on) allows one to scroll the map around. But I suppose I could allow mapping commands to all but R + the directional keys.

Quote:

Also sacrifice should really be renamed offer :)

Heh, ironically, I just created the command window using one of NetHack's internal structures, and oddly, internally, the command is called 'sacrifice'. But, I agree, it's now fixed in svn. :)

Quote:

Should give you a bit to do this weekend, let me know what you think! :P

Good suggestions, of course! OTOH, I'm currently bogged down getting word-wrapping support into place so that, a) we can get away from clipped text, and b) it'll support larger fonts (one of my users has poor vision and requested the feature). Of course, this also means I need to support a command window that's multi-page, since a larger font means all the commands won't fit on-screen. But, I've got a free weekend ahead of me, so hopefully I can get a few of these things implemented.

Of course, meanwhile, I've got a game to play! I actually have a level 13 Valk right now that's doing remarkably well, and I'm just levelling up before hitting the Quest, which I've never done before...

This looks great! I liked the previous Nethack port for DS, too, but this is how I always wanted it. I`m not very experienced in Nethack so not having to remember all the buttons (or look at the list of what they do) constantly, is awesome. And using the touch screen to move is what I always wanted.

This is going to make my 17-hours of sitting in a plane day after tomorrow so much easier. :)

Nice nice! Good work. Thanks.

Any plans to port angband :D!?

man... my minisd adapter fails me exactly when you released 1.10!
Tomorrow I will play!

Woot back into the groove now!

So I was looking into some cool new things I could bug you about, and found somethings you might feel like adding.

First off some background information you might not know about is the
nethack patch database http://bilious.homelinux.org/

There are two patches that really add some flavor to nethack.

One is the HP color monitor - http://bilious.homelinux.org/?45
This alerts you when your health is lowered by changing the color of your health

The other is Menucolors - http://bilious.homelinux.org/?11
This allows you to change the color of items in your inventory by setting options in default.nh.

Here is my option file for alt.org/nethack so you can see how many options you can set. - http://alt.org/nethack/rcfiles/Scribble.nethackrc
Both of these patches are in use at alt.org public server so head on over and check them out.

Both of these patches use tty to implement the colors so some hacking will be needed if it is at all possible to use these patches in your port.

Error with Key Config and setting num_pad on.
Because left, right, up, down are set to h,j,k,l keys when setting these keys while in num_pad mode you cannot set movement correctly.

I'm trying to get the 'n' command to work. Gonna be away from the computer for the weekend and am going to have a lot of time to play nethack on my DS. :)

*edit*
Well reading the guidebook more I found out that if you don't have the num_pad option on you can just hit numbers and allow for repeating commands (RTFM more Scribble). So I kinda just rigged repeating by setting commands for 1, 5 and 0. So I can just select those. Nice thing is that after doing this I can hit redo and it will redo my 50s command :)

An idea to implement this so it would be easier to use would be just prompt the keyboard for number input. Then parse the input, and output each number. I'm not sure how you bring up the keyboard so I'll let you handle that :)

Hey, what's going on Scribble?

I saw you over at #nethack a few days ago, I should have stopped for a moment to say my greetings to you. :o)

Anyway, yeah, I made almost the exact same post in this thread if you look around for it. You know, it's possible to have all those requests added to the game by doing it yourself. You just need to compile the puppy on your own. If you're looking for some help doing this, maybe we can meet up over at #nethack and together we should be able to build the extended color version that you mentioned.

Okay, this one's for Abdec32124 (sp?). Sorry, I rode the short bus to school, never quite learned the alphabet or them fancy numberings. :o/

So going back to what I was saying before, I'm definitely getting some double movements with my character. I'd say it's about 5 to as much as 10% of the time. It seems to mostly occur when I press the D PAD upwards. I'll check to see if I encounter the same troubles with my other DS systems to make sure it's not something that's happening with a bad or touchy control pad.

Well, I was wondering if there was anyone who knew where to grab the 64x64 "absurd tileset" (every site I went to had a dead link) and if it's possible that it would even work with this port.

I found this completely obscene 128x128 graphical tileset located here:
http://usrsrc.org/svn/nhtiles/trunk/output/tilesets/

I would try to see if this works myself but I don't know how to convert a .png file to .bmp or if 128 is even divisible by the number 8 which seems to be some sort of rule if one is going to use a custom tileset.

It's ridiculously ginormous, but it could be somewhat interesting to see on the little screen.

Okay then, I'm out of here like a fat kid in dodge ball. :o)

LOL! I just went back to see when you stated stuff about patches and I see its the post before I started monopolizing abcd1234's time. :P

I'm on irc most of the time just shoot me a msg! I've been checking out the source and right now I'm still seeing how I can implement counts easier. Its not working out very well because of how its implemented in nethack itself. I'm not too good at c++ and never really worked on something like this so if you know a good amount we could try to add in some patches.

Opus wrote:

Hey, what's going on Scribble?
Anyway, yeah, I made almost the exact same post in this thread if you look around for it. You know, it's possible to have all those requests added to the game by doing it yourself. You just need to compile the puppy on your own. If you're looking for some help doing this, maybe we can meet up over at #nethack and together we should be able to build the extended color version that you mentioned.

Ah, perhaps not. See, those patches are for the tty version, right? So, dollars to donuts, they affect the tty port, only. IOW, in order to get similar functionality, I'm betting it's necessary to go in and implement them in the NDS window port code (ie, what I wrote).

EDIT: Just to confirm, yes, those patches are definitely specific to the TTY port, and as such, won't work with NHDS out of the box. *sigh* It would've been so much easier if they'd just altered the core and inserted ANSI escape sequences or something...

Of course, writing said patches probably isn't *too* tough... the menu colour implementation, in particular, is probably fairly trivial. The HP/Hunger colouring would be a bit more work, though (since I'd have to parse the game output).

EDIT 2: Well, that's only partly true. Those patches have a *lot* of features, so recreating them for NHDS may be non-trivial. Perhaps some code theft is possible, but it's still not looking as easy as I'd like.

Opus wrote:

So going back to what I was saying before, I'm definitely getting some double movements with my character. I'd say it's about 5 to as much as 10% of the time.

*50%* of the time?!? :)

Opus wrote:

It seems to mostly occur when I press the D PAD upwards. I'll check to see if I encounter the same troubles with my other DS systems to make sure it's not something that's happening with a bad or touchy control pad.

Yeah, the only way that can happen is if NHDS is registering the first click, then registering the key being released, and then registering another click. But if you're giving the key a reasonably firm press, the only way I can see that happening is hardware problems (incidentally, I just recently killed a level 13 Valk after >40,000 turns, and never saw the double movement you speak of).

Opus wrote:

I would try to see if this works myself but I don't know how to convert a .png file to .bmp or if 128 is even divisible by the number 8 which seems to be some sort of rule if one is going to use a custom tileset.

Well, all I can say is, if you can find the set, and convert it to 8 bpp (the original set is 32 bpp), in theory you should be able to use it... although, at that point, memory may start to become a significant issue (having never tried it, I really can't say for sure :).

Last edited by Abcd1234 on Wed Dec 19, 2007 7:03 pm; edited 1 time in total

Scribble wrote:

LOL! I just went back to see when you stated stuff about patches and I see its the post before I started monopolizing abcd1234's time. :P

I'm on irc most of the time just shoot me a msg! I've been checking out the source and right now I'm still seeing how I can implement counts easier. Its not working out very well because of how its implemented in nethack itself. I'm not too good at c++ and never really worked on something like this so if you know a good amount we could try to add in some patches.

Actually, I already have in mind exactly how to implement the count stuff, it just needs to be implemented. In short, the user will be able to tap-and-hold a command to indicate they want the command repeated. The keyboard will then pop up and request a count, and then the magic will happen.

If you want implementation details, I can provide them (in short, it'll all be done in sys/nds/arm9/src/nds_cmd.c), but rest assured the infrastructure is already in place to do this, it just needs to be done (the key binding stuff will have to be changed a bit, but that's pretty straight forward). :)

EDIT:

And now it's implemented in SVN (along with binding R+[A, B, X, Y, Select, or Start]).

Aight, yes, yet another version out. What can I say, I don't like to hold back the new features. :) Anyway, version 1.11 sports: command repeats, a working message history, support for binding R+[A, B, etc], and a few bug fixes, most notably in the save handling so it'll support multiple saved games (just enter different names).

And no, Opus, I still don't have the speed throttling in. :)

Awesome!!@!

And hot on the heels (again) of 1.11, I've just posted version 1.12. This is a pretty big release and adds, among other things:

* hpmon support.
* menucolors.
* additional flexibility in key bindings, including the ability to rebind R+[Up,Down,Left,Right], and to bind extended commands to keys.
* drag support for moving the map around.
* greatly improved text and menu rendering speed (probably 2x faster, if I had to guess).
* enhanced support for keyboard mode and the number_pad option.
* and, of course, various bug fixes.

Enjoy! And Happy Christmas!

And now an update to my update. I had to issue 1.12a to address a critical bugfix in the command window code that snuck by. Other than that, it's the same as 1.12.

I'm not sure if anyone else is getting this problem but when I load a game the colors for the preset tile set are not being correctly shown. The colors are distorted, like bad tracking on a vcr tape. This is with 1.12, haven't been able to play on 1.12a. I looked at the tile set with picture viewer and all the colors are correct.

I loaded the game directly after unzipping so I didn't change anything. Let me know.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Gah, yeah, I had a couple other users spot that one. This is what happens when you have enough features that testing all combinations starts to become a problem.

So, with that, version 1.12b is out, now, addressing the palette bug. Enjoy! Hopefully... :)

*sigh* And yes, I've put 1.12c out. I'm hoping this is the last bugfix release for this version... anyway, this one fixes a more minor drawing problem which shows up in text mode in situations where tiles need to be erased (such as dark rooms, etc).

Hey! What's up G Money Dog ABCD Nuts?!?!?? How ya doin'?!?! :o)

Sorry for not giving you so much as a dim flicker of recognition the past week over your new builds, I was spending a good portion of that time visiting with the in-laws over the holiday.

Anyway, pop quiz. Rifling through some of your previous posts, from what I'm reading, it looks like it's not going to be possible to recompile your engine with this patch:
http://bilious.homelinux.org/?296

To me, no build will ever be complete without being able to add this coloring feature. Honestly, Nethack just isn't the same without it.

So let me understand something here. When you finally do decide to release your Nethack DS alpha gamma beta final revised 2.314.c version, are you saying that adding patches won't work with your source code?

If so, then I never liked you. :o)

I should get a chance to play around with your latest release hopefully sometime tomorrow and will post any new contempt I have with your current port.

Well, I'm currently flushing 7 days of sobriety down the tubes right now, I've had some catching up to do. So anyway, I should end this post now since I'm beginning to feel like I'm hazing in and out of consciousnesldhjayegcbosduafh..............

Opus wrote:

Anyway, pop quiz. Rifling through some of your previous posts, from what I'm reading, it looks like it's not going to be possible to recompile your engine with this patch:
http://bilious.homelinux.org/?296

To me, no build will ever be complete without being able to add this coloring feature. Honestly, Nethack just isn't the same without it.

Actually, that particular patch is a trivial addition. I'm just testing out a version that includes that patch, with the colouring defaulting to off, but enableable through defaults.nh. If things look good, it'll be in the next release, which will be coming out shortly.

Quote:

So let me understand something here. When you finally do decide to release your Nethack DS alpha gamma beta final revised 2.314.c version, are you saying that adding patches won't work with your source code?

Some do, some don't. It really depends on the patch. Anything that integrates directly with a window port (such as wintty) won't work without modification (for example, menucolors required specific work to integrate it's functionality into my windowing subsystem).

The patch you provided, however, simply alters the core, and so incorporating it is trivial.

EDIT:

Ha ha, actually, I apparently lied. Specifically, that patch happens to expose a bug in my tile caching code that I've been meaning to fix, and now have a good reason to. :)

And, with the inclusion of that patch, I've got version 1.13 out the door. This is a somewhat more incremental update, adding:

* a saved game selection menu (assuming you don't have a name set in defaults.nh).
* a new movement scheme, suggested by a fellow named Mesh, called triggermode (see the website for details).
* the inclusion of http://bilious.homelinux.org/?296, by default off, enabled with the mapcolors option.

Dude, this latest release is most awesomeness!!!

Someday I'm going to write a song about you! :o)

And, of course, I discover I left some debugging code in. Whoops. 1.13a out, now... *sigh*

Hey dude!

So let's see what kind of unnecessary weirdness that I can generate between us today? :o)

You still haven't changed the "Name you character" typo.

compassmode:2 is completely buggy and you have your left (cookie hand) and right (beer hand) mixed up when using the touch screen feature for this mode.

I immediately warmed up to the new trigger mode feature, it's definitely a more graceful way to move your character, but there seems to be a conflict with that and the default binding for that key.

So laying on the B button cause the engine to search furiously by accident when I'm only trying to use it for character movement.

Is there a way so that the B button is only used for trigger mode and nothing else? I couldn't find a way in your notes to delete the default search command binding for the B button.

Anyway, this is turning out to be quite a perfect build. Looks like your almost there with a finished release.

Congrats! :o)

Really late edit: compassmode:1 doesn't work well either. My character was on a chest so I pressed left trigger for the keyboard, but when I then tapped "l", it closed the keyboard screen and move my character one step to the right. Repeated the same error 5 times in a row before I gave up on trying to loot the stupid idgit.

Last edited by Opus on Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:09 am; edited 1 time in total

Opus wrote:

Hey dude!

So let's see what kind of unnecessary weirdness that I can generate between us today? :o)

You still haven't changed the "Name you character" typo.

Well now that's bizarre, I thought I fixed that... probably forgot to check it in or something. :)

Quote:

compassmode:2 is completely buggy and you have your left (cookie hand) and right (beer hand) mixed up when using the touch screen feature for this mode.

Hmm, I'll look into it. It's *very* possible I broke that getting number_pad to work, and I haven't had a chance to test it deeply

Quote:

I immediately warmed up to the new trigger mode feature, it's definitely a more graceful way to move your character, but there seems to be a conflict with that and the default binding for that key.

So laying on the B button cause the engine to search furiously by accident when I'm only trying to use it for character movement.

Is there a way so that the B button is only used for trigger mode and nothing else? I couldn't find a way in your notes to delete the default search command binding for the B button.

It's already in SVN (I noticed the exact same problem).

Quote:

Anyway, this is turning out to be quite a perfect build. Looks like your almost there with a finished release.

Heh, I'm not sure it'll ever really be "finished"... :)

Out of curiosity, what about compassmode 2 is "buggy" for you? I mean, it's certainly difficult to get used to (without a reference point for the center of the screen, it's hard to tell where to tap), but it seems to work well enough for me (after fixing the u/d l/r swapping bug).

BTW, I've put 1.14 up on the project website. It fixes a number of bugs and regressions, including that compassmode bug, gets bonesfiles working, adds support for unbinding keys, adds the sortloot patch, and a few other things besides.

Quote:

Out of curiosity, what about compassmode 2 is "buggy" for you? I mean, it's certainly difficult to get used to (without a reference point for the center of the screen, it's hard to tell where to tap), but it seems to work well enough for me (after fixing the u/d l/r swapping bug).

Did you read my last full post? I'm only asking because I added a comment the same exact minute you wrote your reply.

You know, I think most likely the real reason why I'm have some difficulty with compassmode is solely based on my own personal ignorance. Maybe I'm not quite understanding how it is supposed to work.

I'll admit it, I can be impatient at times. I'm one of those people who stands in front of a microwave screaming "COME ON!!!! IT'S BEEN TWO MINUTES ALREADY!!!!!!"

I understand this is a problem, and I'm working out those issues. :o)

But in Nethack, I play real slow, never taking an unnecessary step for any reason.

Is there a way to expand the radius like the Palm port? I mean it would be nice if I could touch any edge of the bottom screen to take one step diagonally. I guess that's what I'm kind of asking for with this feature. Too many times I guess I'm touching outside the radius which causes the character to immediately warp at that point, and for me, taking only one step at a time feels more natural.

Well anyway, I thought to mention on how I would like to create a custom font for this port. I'll need the program to use and to be pointed to a good readme file or faq on how to draw up a multicolored font in .bdf format. Right now I don't have the first clue on where to go for this.

I do, however, have a little history with this. You can check out my old and extremely outdated webpage when I used to translate a few games as a side hobby:
http://www.angelfire.com/goth/patches/

If you look at the font for Nobunaga's Ambition 2, I think I was able to draw some really nice lettering for the small display that was needed.

So yeah, if you could give me a little direction on how to go about creating a custom font that's compatible with this port, I should be able to have something very elegant to contribute with this project.

Cheers. :o)

Opus wrote:

Quote:

Out of curiosity, what about compassmode 2 is "buggy" for you? I mean, it's certainly difficult to get used to (without a reference point for the center of the screen, it's hard to tell where to tap), but it seems to work well enough for me (after fixing the u/d l/r swapping bug).

Did you read my last full post? I'm only asking because I added a comment the same exact minute you wrote your reply.

What can I say, I read quickly. ;)

Quote:

Is there a way to expand the radius like the Palm port?

Not currently, no, mainly because I can't think of a nice way to present the option to the user (the way the code is implemented, the radius is the square of the pixel distance, not the distance itself, which means you get a logarithmic dropoff in radius as the value is increased... makes for a rather non-intuitive user experience).

Quote:

I mean it would be nice if I could touch any edge of the bottom screen to take one step diagonally. I guess that's what I'm kind of asking for with this feature. Too many times I guess I'm touching outside the radius which causes the character to immediately warp at that point, and for me, taking only one step at a time feels more natural.

Ironically, the behaviour is precisely the opposite of what you describe. :) If you tap near the center of the screen (in mode 2), you get single steps. If you tap far away, you get shifted movement (ie, the equivalent of the capital letter movement keys).

Which is why I think compass mode 1 is *far* more intuitive. Basically, if you tap fairly close to the hero, you get single steps. If you tap far away, you get the shifted movement. And the hero is always the center of the compass, so it's far easier to judge distance and direction.

Quote:

Well anyway, I thought to mention on how I would like to create a custom font for this port. I'll need the program to use and to be pointed to a good readme file or faq on how to draw up a multicolored font in .bdf format. Right now I don't have the first clue on where to go for this.

Well, any BDF editor will work. A quick Google search brings up fontforge, although if you're a Windows user, you'll need Cygwin/X installed first, as per the Windows install notes.

Alternatively, you could create the font in some other format and convert to BDF (it looks like there are a number of converters available).

Abcd1234 wrote:

A quick Google search brings up fontforge, although if you're a Windows user, you'll need Cygwin/X installed first, as per the Windows install notes.

Would installing Cygwin screw up devkitARM? I seem to remember wintermute stating that devkitPro software will never be compatible with Cygwin.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

Last edited by tepples on Sun Dec 30, 2007 8:25 pm; edited 1 time in total

I have no idea, actually... I'm a Linux snob, so the question has never come up for me. :)

Well, version 1.15 is now released. The main change in this version is yet another modification to the control scheme. Gone is triggermode, replaced with the far more flexible CHORDKEYS option. This option allows the user to decide which keys are chord keys (by default, this is set to "r"). So, if you like DSCrawl's key setup, for example, you can set CHORDKEYS to up,down,left,right,r, and then bind keys accordingly (eg, Up+Right+B -> Up-Right).

Additionally, there are a few other nice features, such as the ability to bind keys to toggleable options (eg, hpmon, keyrepeat, etc), a new command to list the current set of key bindings, a menu for selecting extended commands (rather than the virtual keyboard), control over whether or not key repeating is enabled, and finally, hilite_pet support.

Enjoy, and happy new year!

Heh, and then I put out 1.15a. This fixes a map rendering bug in graphics mode. Nothing critical, but I wanted to get the fix out there.

I don't want to interrupt you or anything... but didn't you release quite a few beta, alpha and whatnotelse editions the last days ? Give yourself a break... your are overworking yourself aren't you ? Still good work.

*snicker* Two things to keep in mind: first, NHDS isn't work, it's a hobby... kinda tough to get overworked on a hobby. :)

Second, not to be arrogant or anything, but I'm a very fast programmer. I tend to spend maybe a couple hours a night hacking around on NHDS while the wife is watching TV... but a couple nights often translates into a new release (as is evident by the frequency of updates :).

Have you accended on your port yet?

In two days I return to school and quite clearly I'm going to fail my winter break goal of accending for the first time :(

Hopefully it wont be a hard semester, so I can hack during class. :P

Last edited by Scribble on Thu Jan 03, 2008 6:01 am; edited 1 time in total

Ugh, I've never ascended, period. The closest I've come so far (and this was on my DS, as it happens) is a level 13 Valk that had finished Sokoban and Mine's End, and while leveling up for the quest, hit a trap door, landed on level 20, where I got greedy and wiped out a nest of leprechauns, and then found myself facing a hallway full of monsters lead by an energy vortex which engulfed me and killed me in 5 turns (boo no shock resistance).

But one day! One day... :)

Okay, so with this latest release I apparently have some catching up to do with your mad genius.

I am officially lost on how to use the CHORDKEYS feature.

In the default.nh file I have this line commented out.
CHORDKEYS=up,down,left,right,r (I don't know what this means though)

So now the D PAD doesn't work at all, that's good right?

But how do I exactly bind a key? I rifled through your site and read up on the latest features, but it's not making too much sense to me right now. Any chance you could provide one example on how to bind a key using the standard keyboard display, and not your command input system? That would help out tremendously.

What I think I would like is for the D PAD to only work going UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT with no extra keys needed for those four directions, while UP RIGHT + B, for example, would be for the diagonal movements.

Since your so hardcore on options, how about one for the coloring frame around the mini map? I'd prefer something a little more softer than the red you have as default.

Also, and this is just some friendly feedback, would you consider coding a softer transition between screens?

It runs pretty chunky and twitchy, especially at the start when creating a character. What's your thought on a fade out then fade in to the next screen? Something along the lines of rendering all the screen colors slowly/quickly to black, refresh the new updated screen, then slowly/quickly bringing up the colors back to normal. That would look really tight if you understand what I'm saying on this. :o)

Finally, with the keyboard input system, how about some coloring (I LIKE BLUE!) for when you touch on the screen? The way you have it set up right now, it just blacks the key and the edges around it out and looks a little weird.

Well, keep up the great work! I for one will probably be the first to pepper your alphanumeric name with tender loving strokes when you eventually make it to the final version.

Oh, and for the third time, Name you character is still not corrected.

Dude. :o)

Opus wrote:

Okay, so with this latest release I apparently have some catching up to do with your mad genius.

I am officially lost on how to use the CHORDKEYS feature.

In the default.nh file I have this line commented out.
CHORDKEYS=up,down,left,right,r (I don't know what this means though)

So now the D PAD doesn't work at all, that's good right?

But how do I exactly bind a key? I rifled through your site and read up on the latest features, but it's not making too much sense to me right now. Any chance you could provide one example on how to bind a key using the standard keyboard display, and not your command input system? That would help out tremendously.

Well, with that setting, the direction keys are chord keys now, not regular keys. So, to use them, you combine them with other keys.

So, hit F1 to enter key config mode. Now press, say, Up + B, and bind that to Up. And so on, and so on.

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What I think I would like is for the D PAD to only work going UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT with no extra keys needed for those four directions, while UP RIGHT + B, for example, would be for the diagonal movements.

Heh, funny you should mention that, that capability I implemented last night after someone else asked about it. The way it currently works is that, if a key is a chord key, it *must* be combined with a non-chord-key in order to bind something to it.

In SVN HEAD, you can bind commands to *individual* chord key presses. But, a) you can't use combinations of chord keys (ie, Up + Right can't be bound to something, only Up and Right separately), and b) the command only activates once the key is released (since, until that point, there's no way to tell if you're going to combine it with a regular key press). This should be familiar to Windows uses who tap Alt to activate the window menu.

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Since your so hardcore on options, how about one for the coloring frame around the mini map? I'd prefer something a little more softer than the red you have as default.

Heh, perhaps I'll move those colours out to a separate palette file, so you can hack 'em up as you see fit. :)

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Also, and this is just some friendly feedback, would you consider coding a softer transition between screens?

It runs pretty chunky and twitchy, especially at the start when creating a character. What's your thought on a fade out then fade in to the next screen? Something along the lines of rendering all the screen colors slowly/quickly to black, refresh the new updated screen, then slowly/quickly bringing up the colors back to normal. That would look really tight if you understand what I'm saying on this. :o)

Well, there's a couple issues, there. The first is that I'm not terribly careful about making sure I've rendered the menus, etc, before displaying their graphics layers. So sometimes you'll catch glimpses of previously rendered text before the new content is drawn. That can definitely use some polish, and perhaps now's the time to start cleaning that up.

As for fades, etc, that all depends on what the DS graphics hardware can do. IIRC, it does handle some sort of between-layer alpha blending, so it might be worth playing around with that to see what's possible.

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Finally, with the keyboard input system, how about some coloring (I LIKE BLUE!) for when you touch on the screen? The way you have it set up right now, it just blacks the key and the edges around it out and looks a little weird.

Yeah, that's a bug. A long standing bug, but a bug regardless. I'll add that to the bug list for the next release. :)

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Oh, and for the third time, Name you character is still not corrected.

Dude. :o)

You know, I've decided that's staying. Call it a reminder that software can never reach a true state of perfection. ;)

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So, hit F1 to enter key config mode. Now press, say, Up + B, and bind that to Up. And so on, and so on.

Okay. Sorry, I looked at your main site as well as your DS manual but didn't see anything about the F1 key. Thanks.

So let's see what type of junk I can bellyache about your port today? :o)

Commands such as wield, eat, wear, apply, etc. doesn't give a command prompt (like what do you want to wield?), it just goes straight to inventory.

I really like the key bindings, awesome job on that! However, always having it show on the screen what the binding for the key is each time it's being pressed gets old pretty fast, at least when it comes to the movement directions.

I'm not understanding the number_pad feature. If it's set to OFF then I can freely move my character using the D PAD bindings but I can't use commands such as loot 'l' or kick 'k' using the standard keyboard interface. If I set the number_pad to ON, all of my key bindings seem to go completely nuts on me. Instead of DOWN + B moving my character down one step like it was set to, it now says that I can't jump very far. I don't get it.

On your over head map, there's two pixels missing, one on the top right and the other on the bottom right corner.

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You know, I've decided that's staying. Call it a reminder that software can never reach a true state of perfection. ;)

The way you program, I believe it. :o)

Opus wrote:

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So, hit F1 to enter key config mode. Now press, say, Up + B, and bind that to Up. And so on, and so on.

Okay. Sorry, I looked at your main site as well as your DS manual but didn't see anything about the F1 key. Thanks.

Yeah, it's not in there... the doc is a little behind. :) In additiona, F2 shows the current key bindings.

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Commands such as wield, eat, wear, apply, etc. doesn't give a command prompt (like what do you want to wield?), it just goes straight to inventory.

Fixed. I hadn't considered that, if you're using the keyboard, you might just want a character prompt. :)

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I really like the key bindings, awesome job on that! However, always having it show on the screen what the binding for the key is each time it's being pressed gets old pretty fast, at least when it comes to the movement directions.

I can certainly make that optional.

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I'm not understanding the number_pad feature. If it's set to OFF then I can freely move my character using the D PAD bindings but I can't use commands such as loot 'l' or kick 'k' using the standard keyboard interface. If I set the number_pad to ON, all of my key bindings seem to go completely nuts on me. Instead of DOWN + B moving my character down one step like it was set to, it now says that I can't jump very far. I don't get it.

If number_pad is changed, you need to rebind the direction keys. Remember, the key bindings map a button to an ASCII character or characters, *not* a particular action. So if you bind the keys with number_pad *off*, then Up is k, Down is j, etc. If you then enable number_pda, suddenly Up is 8, Down is 2, and so forth, but your key bindings are set to k, j, etc (hence why Down is causing you to 'j'ump).

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On your over head map, there's two pixels missing, one on the top right and the other on the bottom right corner.

Yeah, that's been there for a while... it's one of those cosmetic bugs that falls by the wayside while I'm busy fixing more important things, like control bugs that people bitch about. ;)

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Yeah, that's been there for a while... it's one of those cosmetic bugs that falls by the wayside while I'm busy fixing more important things, like control bugs that people bitch about. ;)

Now that's funny! :o)

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Ah nuts. And I was in such a good mood.

Rebinding the keys using number_pad=1 didn't work. I think it's because UP still equals 'k' and not '8'. Since there's no way to bring up the keyboard when trying to bind a key there's no possibility of mapping any directions with number_pad ON.

There was a message in my last game stating
Your right leg is in no shape for kicking.
Press A...

You're locked out from entering anything at this point except for the A button, but once that's pressed it also immediately triggers the binding for that key as well.

One last point. When binding a key and you go into "toggle options", if you press the cancel "X" on the bottom right screen the engine completely crashes and your entire game data is erased.

I feel bad constantly posting feedback like this. You probably think I'm a tool by now. Then depression sets in. :o(

Opus wrote:

Rebinding the keys using number_pad=1 didn't work. I think it's because UP still equals 'k' and not '8'. Since there's no way to bring up the keyboard when trying to bind a key there's no possibility of mapping any directions with number_pad ON.

No, that should work fine. If number_pad is turned on (just setting number_pad is sufficient, you don't need a value with it), the key binding menu changes from mapping the character directions to the numeric directions. So, if you bind Up to the Up direction, it'll bind 8 in number_pad mode, and k if number_pad is off. So you should just be able to turn on number_pad, and start binding away.

And for the record, I tested it thusly:

1. Deleted my old keys.cnf.
2. Added OPTIONS=number_pad,!cmdwindow to my defaults.nh.
3. Started a game and verified the direction keys *didn't* work.
4. Selected "Key Config", hit the up direction, then selected Up.
5. Verified that the new binding worked.

Does a similar procedure not work for you? If not, how so?

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There was a message in my last game stating
Your right leg is in no shape for kicking.
Press A...

You're locked out from entering anything at this point except for the A button, but once that's pressed it also immediately triggers the binding for that key as well.

One last point. When binding a key and you go into "toggle options", if you press the cancel "X" on the bottom right screen the engine completely crashes and your entire game data is erased.

Ah! Both excellent catches! These are fixed in my SVN tree and will be part of the next release, which should be in the next day or two.

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I feel bad constantly posting feedback like this. You probably think I'm a tool by now. Then depression sets in. :o(

Oh hell no. I really appreciate these kinds of bug reports, partly because fixing them simply improves the application, and partly because it proves that people are actually playing the damn thing. :)

Aight, version 1.16 is out the door. It doesn't contain much in the way of cosmetic changes, sorry Opus. :) But it does:

* Add yet more flexibility to the keybinding support (you can now bind individual chord key presses, redefine the key used to open the command window, and bind keys to run and fight movements).
* Contains some changes to the key help code (it's disabled by default, now, and can be controlled via defaults.nh).
* Cleans up the keyboard drawing, and makes the palette file user editable.
* Moves the minimap colours into their own palette file, so you can hack them up if you want.
* And finally, fixes a few bugs, including a crasher when dismissing the "Toggle Options" menu without selecting something.

I'm beginning to feel like an hysterical old maid in constant menopause with all of the bitchery I tend to provide you on this port.

But hey, I'm more than ever excited to see how far this project has come since it's initial release.

First, fantastic job in cleaning up the keyboard drawing! It looks really slick now. However, the top portion just above the directional keys on the keyboard doesn't always clear the background. So you'll consistently see two or so lines of the dungeon on the same screen as the keyboard. This has me seeing red and angers me to no end!!!!

Okay, I think I just got a little too excited there. I burped and am feeling much better now :o)

So let's here, what other stuff did I run into with this latest release?

Okay, the open 'o', throw 't', kick 'k', etc. isn't as functional as it used to be for some reason. I'm using
OPTIONS=number_pad:1

If I bring up the keyboard and tap on one of the directional keys on top of the screen for movement, it works just fine. But say I press 'k' and then it asks in what direction, the D PAD doesn't work and the directional keys are now mapped differently, so I end up having to think what number, say '2' for down, needs to be entered. Again this just ticks me off and makes me want to spit!

Wow, I really need some immediate, intensive psychotherapy, huh? :o)

If you're going to force a new screen that shows everything on the floor when a character is over several objects, you might as well also allow them at that time to pick stuff up instead of clicking off that screen just to bring it back up again with the "pick up" command.

Thanks for the command prompts such as "What do you want to throw?", etc. Unfortunately, there's one big problem with this... it asks for a letter from my inventory. Since nothing in my inventory has a letter attached to it when being displayed, most of the time I'll end up pressing '*' because it's very hard to keep track of my pack order. Does this make any sense in what I'm saying on this? You might as well bring up the inventory screen like you had before instead of leaving the keyboard to enter objects from your inventory.

The spell 'Detect monsters' is close to being worthless as it only flashes the hidden enemies on the screen for .17 of a second (yeah, that's right, I timed it.) Shouldn't there be some kind of user input after it says "You sense the presence of monsters" before the spell is finished so you can at least look at your surroundings for however long is needed? I would imagine the same would apply for 'Detect food' and other similar magical spells.

At one point the letter 'a' was highlighted on my keyboard for no reason and touching other keys couldn't make it go away until I finally press that darn button. Weird. Probably couldn't recreate that bug again if I tried.

I thought of a new binding feature but I'm not too sure if you'll like the idea or not. On my Nokia Internet Tablet, if you hold the stylus on the screen, there will be a brief pause, and then it slowly draws a small circle like the letter 'O' around the area where you're holding the stylus down at. When it finishes the drawing, a pop up window comes up where you then tap on what extended option you would like to use. You could possibly implement a similar feature like this to bring up the command window. It seems like it would be easier this way than contorting you hands in irregular motions by pressing on whatever button is needed. Anyway, I'm expecting a shootdown on this idea so it's all about what you think is most functional.

Say you're frozen several turns by one of those blue eye idgits. The red frame on the minimap that shows what area of the screen is being displayed twitches horribly even though your character doesn't move during the entire time while being paralyzed. This miniscule cosmetic bug should become priority number one in your next release!

Finally, any chance you could draw a 256x192 graphic in MS PAINT that shows the radius and how the pie slices for direction are coded? It doesn't need to be perfect at all, but I think one of the reasons I'm still having difficulty with compass mode is because I can't visualize how you implemented the math on the DS screen.

I'm sure there were other things worth mentioning but it's so hard to remember all of your unnumberable programming mistakes in one sitting.

Oh and I see you still have the Name you character grammatical speech impediment proudly uncorrected.

Touche! :o)

Opus wrote:

I'm beginning to feel like an hysterical old maid in constant menopause with all of the bitchery I tend to provide you on this port.

But hey, I'm more than ever excited to see how far this project has come since it's initial release.

First, fantastic job in cleaning up the keyboard drawing! It looks really slick now. However, the top portion just above the directional keys on the keyboard doesn't always clear the background. So you'll consistently see two or so lines of the dungeon on the same screen as the keyboard. This has me seeing red and angers me to no end!!!!

Meh, cosmetic. :) I'll get to it eventually, along with many others, probably in the next release.

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Okay, the open 'o', throw 't', kick 'k', etc. isn't as functional as it used to be for some reason. I'm using
OPTIONS=number_pad:1

If I bring up the keyboard and tap on one of the directional keys on top of the screen for movement, it works just fine. But say I press 'k' and then it asks in what direction, the D PAD doesn't work and the directional keys are now mapped differently, so I end up having to think what number, say '2' for down, needs to be entered. Again this just ticks me off and makes me want to spit!

Aha, I see what you mean! It appears I was a little over-zealous when enabling prompts for keyboard mode. It's now fixed, so that it prompts for a direction key as it did before (thus allowing you to use the joypad).

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If you're going to force a new screen that shows everything on the floor when a character is over several objects, you might as well also allow them at that time to pick stuff up instead of clicking off that screen just to bring it back up again with the "pick up" command.

That's nethack for ya. It does that in the Unix version, as well. Don't ask me why. It's how it is. And there is, quote honestly, nothing I can do about it.

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Thanks for the command prompts such as "What do you want to throw?", etc. Unfortunately, there's one big problem with this... it asks for a letter from my inventory. Since nothing in my inventory has a letter attached to it when being displayed, most of the time I'll end up pressing '*' because it's very hard to keep track of my pack order. Does this make any sense in what I'm saying on this? You might as well bring up the inventory screen like you had before instead of leaving the keyboard to enter objects from your inventory.

Actually, I've just changed the menus so that, if cmdwindow is disabled, then the inventory labels are displayed.

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The spell 'Detect monsters' is close to being worthless as it only flashes the hidden enemies on the screen for .17 of a second (yeah, that's right, I timed it.) Shouldn't there be some kind of user input after it says "You sense the presence of monsters" before the spell is finished so you can at least look at your surroundings for however long is needed? I would imagine the same would apply for 'Detect food' and other similar magical spells.

Ahh yes, I see... this if fixed in SVN (I wasn't honouring the blocking flags on the map and message display calls).

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I thought of a new binding feature but I'm not too sure if you'll like the idea or not. On my Nokia Internet Tablet, if you hold the stylus on the screen, there will be a brief pause, and then it slowly draws a small circle like the letter 'O' around the area where you're holding the stylus down at. When it finishes the drawing, a pop up window comes up where you then tap on what extended option you would like to use. You could possibly implement a similar feature like this to bring up the command window. It seems like it would be easier this way than contorting you hands in irregular motion by pressing on whatever button is needed. Anyway, I'm expecting a shootdown on this idea so it's all about what you think is most functional.

Well, tap-and-hold in the map is already reserved for other functions (such as indicating '>' when asked for a direction). But I was asked to add an icon on the map display, say in the lower right-hand corner, which would trigger the command window, and I'm still thinking about implementing that.

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Say you're frozen several turns by one of those blue eye idgits. The red frame on the minimap that shows what area of the screen is being displayed twitches horribly even though your character doesn't move during the entire time while being paralyzed. This miniscule cosmetic bug should become priority number one in your next release!

LOL, yeah, that's just because the map is being redisplayed each time, even though nothing had changed. That, in theory, should be fixed now.

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Finally, any chance you could draw a 256x192 graphic in MS PAINT that shows the radius and how the pie slices for direction are coded? It doesn't need to be perfect at all, but I think one of the reasons I'm still having difficulty with compass mode is because I can't visualize how you implemented the math on the DS screen.

Do you know how iRogue handles this? I agree, it's a problem, but I don't know what the right solution, is, TBH...

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I'm sure there were other things worth mentioning but it's so hard to remember all of your unnumberable programming mistakes in one sitting.

Oh and I see you still have the Name you character grammatical speech impediment proudly uncorrected.

Touche! :o)

Enjoy! ;)

I'm back with more suggestions! I see Opus caused a lot of problems for yah :P

Alright first topic, Picking up Objects!
How about a feature that allows you to select multiple objects at the same time when picking up.

Here is what I'm talking about, how the pickup command is prompted
---------------------------------------------
- Scrolls -
- a cursed unlabled scroll -
- Spellbooks -
- a uncursed dark brown spellbook -
- Potions -
- a murky potion -
- a golden potion -
---------------------------------------------

Such as if I want to pick up a bunch of scrolls I just hit the "Scrolls" prompt and all of the scrolls get selected. Or if I want to pick up scrolls and gems I hit both of them and they are selected, while I don't pick up any spellbooks or such that are on the ground.
Do you currently have a way to just pickup all items on the ground?
My poking fingers are hurting from polypiling.

Too much inventory bitching! Ok there is a serious problem for certain commands because they prompt way too much inventory then is needed.
Such as instead of getting your whole inventory when you want to eat, you should only get your comestibles. Also there should be an button at the bottom to show all inventory to select from (incase you are polymorphed into a xorn and want to eat that iron ring).

The commands that should have this option are
Apply - This command should only show items that can be applied
Dip - not for the first prompt but for the second because you can only dip into potions, or fountains,water and such)
Drink
Eat
Engrave
Fire
Wield
Wear
Throw

Thanks again, and again, and again!

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Such as if I want to pick up a bunch of scrolls I just hit the "Scrolls" prompt and all of the scrolls get selected. Or if I want to pick up scrolls and gems I hit both of them and they are selected, while I don't pick up any spellbooks or such that are on the ground.

Hmm... not a bad idea at all. I'll look at it.

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Do you currently have a way to just pickup all items on the ground?

If you hit Select, it'll pick all items in the menu.

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Too much inventory bitching! Ok there is a serious problem for certain commands because they prompt way too much inventory then is needed.
Such as instead of getting your whole inventory when you want to eat, you should only get your comestibles.

Well, I wouldn't describe that as a "serious problem". :)

It's also suprisingly difficult to change... sending a '?', instead of '*' as it does now, would generate a proper subset list. *But*, if the list contains only one item, the game doesn't use a normal menu. So I'd have to hack that... and even with that, there's no way, without further hacking in the core, to add an "Other Item" item to the pick list resulting from the '?'.

Basically, it's a problem that I'm not sure is worth bothering to solve... it's a bit inconvenient, yeah, but it's hardly even remotely close to a showstopper.

:(

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It's also suprisingly difficult to change... sending a '?', instead of '*' as it does now, would generate a proper subset list. *But*, if the list contains only one item, the game doesn't use a normal menu. So I'd have to hack that... and even with that, there's no way, without further hacking in the core, to add an "Other Item" item to the pick list resulting from the '?'.

Yah, I thought that was gonna be hard to do with one item, but I didn't want to say anything so you would get halfway through it then and have to finish it :P

A possibility would be to have a button on the bottom by the 'X' and 'check' that would redo the command with '?' instead of '*'. (I'm thinking those are just key buttons now...)

Or selecting the command with a different button such binding a key to make commands execute with '?'. Such as R+A on command window.

Not much to post this time around, so Abcd1234, you can breathe a sigh of relief before reading any further. :o)

Binding a key with the toggle option doesn't take. I originally had the SELECT key set for inventory. I then tried to change it to toggle the display cursor option but the key remained bounded for inventory. I then nulled out the SELECT key, tried to bind it once again to a toggle option, tried several different options, but none of them took. The SELECT key was still NULL after numerous attempts.

I got that weird 'a' key highlight thing on the keyboard again. Stayed that way through an entire game since I never needed to apply anything. No clue as to what triggers it though.

When it prompts for direction, can you also allow the D PAD to accept a direction along with the directional joypad on the keyboard screen as well? I think I finally have a really nice set up for movement now. D PAD for up, down, left, and right while A, B, X, Y are each independently set for the diagonal movements. I'm surprised how intuitive it feels and it's definitely my favorite way to move my character.

I have OPTIONS=!cursor. Unfortunately this makes it very difficult for looking around, teleporting, casting spells on a certain area on the screen, etc. Is there an easier way than needing to change this option every time? For some reason I've got a little hangup on having my character displayed as an inverted graphic, that's the only reason why I don't have the cursor set to on. In Stuart's version, which actually got me into this game, the character wasn't highlighted but you still had full use with the cursor. The DOS version also doesn't fully highlight your character either so that's why I think it looks a little weird seeing that main graphic inverted.

In the toptenwin ending screen, the third score entry starts with a hard tab about 1/4 into the screen before it shows the display.

One last question. If I would like to bind the 'R' button to pan the map using the D PAD, from what I'm reading in your release notes, I have to define all the D PAD directions as chord keys as well? If so, then only pressing a single direction on the D PAD will no longer work for character movement without binding that to yet another key. Am I understanding this correctly?

Well, thanks chief! Again, another impressive release! It almost restored my faith in your programming skills. At least you're showing some potential. :o)

Opus wrote:

Not much to post this time around, so Abcd1234, you can breathe a sigh of relief before reading any further. :o)

Binding a key with the toggle option doesn't take. I originally had the SELECT key set for inventory. I then tried to change it to toggle the display cursor option but the key remained bounded for inventory. I then nulled out the SELECT key, tried to bind it once again to a toggle option, tried several different options, but none of them took. The SELECT key was still NULL after numerous attempts.

Bizarre, I'll look into it.

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I got that weird 'a' key highlight thing on the keyboard again. Stayed that way through an entire game since I never needed to apply anything. No clue as to what triggers it though.

Yeah, I'll see if I can get it to show up here... one thing to try though: hold down a keyboard key while releasing/pressing the command window button. Could be a keyboard redraw issue with that.

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When it prompts for direction, can you also allow the D PAD to accept a direction along with the directional joypad on the keyboard screen as well?

It's actually supposed to (you might recall it actually did in the previous release). That's fixed in my SVN tree (I think, anyway), and will be so in the next release.

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I have OPTIONS=!cursor. Unfortunately this makes it very difficult for looking around, teleporting, casting spells on a certain area on the screen, etc. Is there an easier way than needing to change this option every time? For some reason I've got a little hangup on having my character displayed as an inverted graphic, that's the only reason why I don't have the cursor set to on. In Stuart's version, which actually got me into this game, the character wasn't highlighted but you still had full use with the cursor. The DOS version also doesn't fully highlight your character either so that's why I think it looks a little weird seeing that main graphic inverted.

Yeah, I'd argue that's a weird quirk with the DOS version. Again, without a cursor, there's no way to tell the difference between the hero and other human characters (such as shopkeepers). The Unix version (you know, the original :), actually has a cursor on at all times.

That said, I *should* be able to disable the cursor if it's currently sitting on the hero. Perhaps I'll change the cursor option to a compound option that'll take three values: 0, 1, and 2. 0 would be a visible cursor. 1 would be cursor visible, but disabled on the hero. 2 would be cursor off entirely.

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In the toptenwin ending screen, the third score entry starts with a hard tab about 1/4 into the screen before it shows the display.

Yeah, I'm not sure there's much I can do about the toptenwin... I'm amazed it looks as good as it does, TBH, as I'm just wordwrapping the output I get from the game.

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One last question. If I would like to bind the 'R' button to pan the map using the D PAD, from what I'm reading in your release notes, I have to define all the D PAD directions as chord keys as well?

Oh god, no. CHORDKEYS can be set to any keys you like. The release notes simply provide one alternative example. In your case, add:

CHORDKEYS=r
OPTIONS=cmdkey:l

to your defaults.nh. BTW, I'm just guessing what you want the cmdkey to be... heck, you might have it set to something else, already. Either way, at this point, you'll have to rebind all your keys, because CHORDKEYS has been changed. Sorry. :/ (Alternatively, if the above config is exactly what you what, then you could turn lefthanded mode on).

Anyway, with that done, you should be able to go ahead and bind R+Up, R+Down, etc, to the panning directions.

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Well, thanks chief! Again, another impressive release! It almost restored my faith in your programming skills. At least you're showing some potential. :o)

FINALLY! I have approval! ;)

I am glad to see that Nethack now has a formidible port with multiple control schemes and flexibility... and an author who is prepared to listen to the players.

However, I have a small (or rather, not so small) suggestion to make. Since I like using the combination d-pad + stylus, I was wondering if it were possible to add a row or column of icons for important and often-used commands on the bottom screen like POWDER currently does.

This would ideally be optional (since not everybody wants their screen real estate to be taken away), and the icons would have to be relatively small, but I think it could be useful. Suggested icons would be inventory, the commands list, wait, and so on (which commands should be iconed depends on how many can fit there).

And while I am at it, I may have found a bug - the history command works properly, but the entries in the help command (history, list of commands) do not. And for completion purposes, the NethackDS port documention should be added to that command, too. :)

Thank you for working on NethackDS, and I hope that many people will use the chance to play it on their two screened portable.

EDIT: Of course stylus + button pad (for directions) could work, too - I am afraid I forgot about left-handed people. :S Sorry.

Yeah, I've had another user ask for an icon to pop up the command window. A more generalized mechanism, controlled from defaults.nh, would be even better, though... I'll add it to the list and see what I can do.

Not much to add this time around. So far she's been running like a dream ever since I finally got a perfect working system for character movement.

Anyway, in the Gnomish mines, the walls are yellow. In both Stuart's DS port and the version I have in Dos with the patch applied, the colors are orange instead. What gives Abcd1234? Are you color lame or something? :o)

Oh, and in the Gnomish town, the colors revert back to it's original vanilla color set. For some reason, the mapcolors patch doesn't reach that far into the dungeon. Weird.

I can send you my current save file if that would help problem solve the issue.

The only other thing that I can think of right now is that when selling inventory at a store, the message gets cropped off the screen, but to me, that really pales in comparison to my usually rantings.

Anyway, hope you got another release coming around soon.

This is definitely a great game to fall asleep to late at night without having to resort to sleeping pills and alcohol.

Well, post back when you've got the chance and give us an update on where you are in this project.

Opus wrote:

Not much to add this time around. So far she's been running like a dream ever since I finally got a perfect working system for character movement.

Anyway, in the Gnomish mines, the walls are yellow. In both Stuart's DS port and the version I have in Dos with the patch applied, the colors are orange instead. What gives Abcd1234? Are you color lame or something? :o)

Feel free to hack the palette. :)

And, for your information, the StuartP/DOS versions show it as "brown", because that's the colour used in the PC VGA text mode. I opted for the xterm palette, since I preferred something a little brighter, and frankly, I thought the brown was a bit ugly.

But if you want it brown, just open up map.pal, and edit the fourth entry (I think) and make it more orange/brown as you see fit!

Quote:

Oh, and in the Gnomish town, the colors revert back to it's original vanilla color set. For some reason, the mapcolors patch doesn't reach that far into the dungeon. Weird.

Actually, that's because the walls in minetown are, for the most part, regular dungeon walls, not rock walls (as in the mines). That's implicit in the patch, and should match the behaviour of any other ports.

Quote:

The only other thing that I can think of right now is that when selling inventory at a store, the message gets cropped off the screen, but to me, that really pales in comparison to my usually rantings.

Yeah, that applies to all prompts. I should probably change it to word wrap into the input line (if there is input, it'll end up getting blacked out, anyway, which matches the current behaviour).

Quote:

Anyway, hope you got another release coming around soon.

Yeah, I do apologize for the lack of status/version updates, recently. Work has been crazy busy for me, and the wife and I have a bunch of travel lined up over the next few weekends, which tends to curtail my development work a bit (though, I did do a bit of bug fixing on the plane last night).

Anyway, work continues, albeit rather slowly. I think I've fixed a nasty touchscreen bug that was resulting in long pauses, and in one case, a flat out lockup that destroyed a rather promising character I had going :( (just finished Sokoban and mine's end, had a decent stash of gear including a blessed bag of holding, amulet of reflection, some quality wands and rings, etc, and was just getting ready to head down to the quest). And there's some UI cleanups and other things that I have ready for release.

As such, the only thing holding up another release is further testing of the touchscreen code. After that's out the door I'll get to some of the other feature suggestions, including a configurable toolbar on the map screen, and the word wrapping of prompts as I mentioned above.

Don't ever go that long without posting a reply to me!

For god's sake, don't make me call the police to see if you're still okay!
Don't make me call hospitals at two in the morning asking if you were hurt! :o/

But yeah, it's good to hear that you're spending some quality time traveling with your loved one. It times like those that can be really fun!

My wife gets really good rates through work so we usually travel about four or five times a year as well.

I think that I have finally gotten to the point now where I can no longer hear that screaming, terrifying voice inside my head on lift-off. :o)

Well, in Stuart's port, I'm positive that the Gnomish town was also colored but that's not even a big deal to me anymore.

I gave up hoping for a perfect port by you about a month ago. :o)

Anyway, keep us updated when you get the chance.

Cheers!

Well, version 1.17 is out the door. Among other things, it has some menuing enhancements (tappable menu headers, and action menus now start out only showing relevant inventory items), as well as some bug fixes, including further refinements to the touchscreen code.

Quote:

Well, version 1.17 is out the door. Among other things, it has some menuing enhancements (tappable menu headers, and action menus now start out only showing relevant inventory items), as well as some bug fixes, including further refinements to the touchscreen code.

*Begins slow clap*

Dude! That has to be the lamest and most sad sounding announcement from you that I have ever read so far.

Where's the excitement? Where's the energy that I expect from you!?!?!

Where's the Pop Tarts, champagne, and fireworks??!?!?!

If this project no longer makes you feel creative or happy just let it go man.

Oh great, now I'm depressed..... :o(

Anyway, how was the vacation time away with your wife?

Please don't respond with any of the tawdry, smut action details... All I want to know is if you two had some fun. :o)

Cheers.

Quote:

Dude! That has to be the lamest and most sad sounding announcement from you that I have ever read so far.

I aim to please!

And vacation continues... travelled the last two weekends, travelling the next two as well. I'm sure I'll sleep at some point...

Long time since I have posted anything, but I have been checking your site on and off for awhile.

I found a nasty little bug tonight that is rather annoying to say the least. If you load a saved game, then check your inventory with the inventory command the game will freeze.

The only way I found to combat this is if you use a command that will bring up a inventory menu such as the drop command, then you can use the inventory command and it will not freeze the game.

I'm not sure if I'm the only one that is experiencing this bug because it happens everytime I try it.

Saw that you were sick there for a bit, hopefully your better now!

*edit*
Nevermind... wasn't running 1.17. I was also missing out on the sweet sort you put in!

Thanks for your hard work.

Dwarf Fortress port? lols.

Geez, not to mention the minimized picklists for actions (ie, only showing food for eat, etc). Honestly, anyone not running 1.17 doesn't know what they're missing... :)

And, yeah, I'm still alive, and yeah, I have some things brewing for the next release, it's just taking me a really long time (for no good reason... I just like to procrastinate).

Hey ABCD! What's happening chief?

So just wanted to rear my ugly head in here and ask if you have any intention of incorporating the new font that JanoSicek's developed.

It's looks sooooo gooey! :o)

Here's the thread:
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=14848

I'm not sure what it'd gain, other than squinty, tiny text. :)

I mean, it's possible, sure, but I'm not sure why I'd bother, as the current arrangement seems to work pretty well (and I've had more people ask for larger text, rather than smaller).

First off, many thanks for this wonderful port!
It's better than a lot of ds games out there, I play it all the time :D

According to the changelog and your reactions in this thread, the menu will only show the relevant inventory items, however, for some reason it doens't work for some reason. Can I change it in the options and if yes: how? Do I need to add something to my defaults.nh file? if yes: what?

O and in reply to a post earlier on this thread about control schemes with chordkeys and whatnot. My configuration is pretty hard to use at first, but if you keep using it it'll become a second nature. I wanted a configuration that had the most commands mapped to buttons, cause I dislike using a menu (not your fault abcd :P)

I have 6 chordkeys: A B X Y L R. And so each of these buttons can be modified by up, down, left and right. The start button brings up the menu. I'll post the complete layout here if someome would like a full example.

The thing that would help me (and sorry to add a small feature request in here) is if the command menu could be rearranged. There are al lot of commands on that have already been mapped to buttons. If there was a possibility to remove them from the menu or place them on the outside so the ones i still need are close to eachother, it would be perfect.

The port is already more than playable in my opinion, but it'll speed up the playing process a lot.

teru wrote:

First off, many thanks for this wonderful port!
It's better than a lot of ds games out there, I play it all the time :D

According to the changelog and your reactions in this thread, the menu will only show the relevant inventory items, however, for some reason it doens't work for some reason. Can I change it in the options and if yes: how? Do I need to add something to my defaults.nh file? if yes: what?

Nope, it should just work. Just make sure you've installed version 1.17. In what cases are you noticing it *not* work?

Interesting idea, removing mapped items from the command menu, though... certainly worth adding as a configurable option (defaulting off).

Quote:

Nope, it should just work. Just make sure you've installed version 1.17. In what cases are you noticing it *not* work?

Interesting idea, removing mapped items from the command menu, though... certainly worth adding as a configurable option (defaulting off).

Well, it never really worked. I tried removing everything nethack related from my r4 and unzipping everything from a zipfile called NethackDS_v1.17.zip (so I'd swear it was the right version). But when I use apply or eat it still shows every item in my inventory. So I'm really lost.

Adding it as a configurable option would help moving through the menu faster a lot in my case, so I for one would really appreciate it.

I'll try downloading 1.17 again and doing a fresh install. I'll post the results later, fingers crossed :D

-EDIT-

Ok I removed everything from my r4. Redownloaded the firmware and reinstalled it. Also downloaded nethack again from this url: http://frodo.dyn.gno.org/~brettk/download/NetHackDS_v1.17.zip (this is the right place though, is it?) Anyway, booted up the game, called my character "Teru", picked random and got a nice sexy female wizard, picked up a food ration, opened up the menu, selected 'eat', then answering something from the inventory (the other option is other, which gets me the same result.). And all my inventory is there for me to select again (just like in the old days :P). I make all my selections with x, because a cancels the menu's.

There must be something I'm doing wrong, I just can't figure out what... luckily the game is still playable, I'm just a gimmicky kind of guy and want to use all the crazy new gimmicks you throw in there. Any Ideas yet?

Thanks anyhow, the port still beats giant chunks of elephant doo out of most ds games.

teru wrote:

Anyway, booted up the game, called my character "Teru", picked random and got a nice sexy female wizard, picked up a food ration, opened up the menu, selected 'eat', then answering something from the inventory (the other option is other, which gets me the same result.).

Wait, what? If you have an edible item in your inventory and select the Eat action, you should first get a menu with two main subgroups. The first is Comestibles, and it should contain all items fit to eat. The second is Other, with a suboption of "Something from your inventory". *That's* the feature. :)

See, before, the first menu just gave you everything. Now, it will only show you what you can eat, along with an option to pick something else.

So, is the menu not showing up like this for you?

Quote:

Wait, what? If you have an edible item in your inventory and select the Eat action, you should first get a menu with two main subgroups. The first is Comestibles, and it should contain all items fit to eat. The second is Other, with a suboption of "Something from your inventory". *That's* the feature. :)

See, before, the first menu just gave you everything. Now, it will only show you what you can eat, along with an option to pick something else.

So, is the menu not showing up like this for you?

Eh well yes that is excactly what the problem is. Sorry for making it overly complicated, sometimes I just can't get my point across. Anyway, AFAIK the only option I get, every time are 'other: something from inventory'. I'll check real quick now if I get the same result now that I know exactly what it is supposed to do. I'll report back to you in a sec.

Thanks for taking the time to help me figure this odd thing out by the way.

-EDIT-

Okay I checked it, and indeed the menu is not showing the way it's supposed to for me. I tried read and drink with a wizard, ensuring I had something both to read and to drink. A menu popped up with the only option being: 'Other: something from your inventory.'

To be perfectly, absolutly and wholly clear about this:
From what I understand now, when I choose read, a menu should appear giving me the options: scrolls (with the scrolls listed from my inventory), books (with the books listed from my inventory) and other, right? RIGHT?

Or am I just totally unable to grasp the whole idea behind everything anyone is saying to me? AM I GOING BARKING MAD REAL SLOWLY (though faster than I expected)??

teru wrote:

Eh well yes that is excactly what the problem is. Sorry for making it overly complicated, sometimes I just can't get my point across. Anyway, AFAIK the only option I get, every time are 'other: something from inventory'. I'll check real quick now if I get the same result now that I know exactly what it is supposed to do. I'll report back to you in a sec.

Thanks for taking the time to help me figure this odd thing out by the way.

That is truly bizarre. Have you modified your defaults.nh in any way? If so, could you post your copy? Perhaps some setting you have enabled is breaking the menu generation code.

I will post my defaults.nh here, the only weird thing is, I tried it with a totally fresh install as well, and for some strange reason it didn't work as well.

I have one more trick up my sleave though: I'll try it on my girlfriends R4 and ds as well. If this doesn't work, I'll just keep silent on this manner until someone else gets this same small error too. I don't think it's worth wasting a lot of time and effort on it just because just 1 person has this thingamajiggy.

Just to be sure, I have posted my defaults.nh below.

I found two other small things, (you might know these already, but didn't see them in someone elses bugreport):

1. Sometimes when the 'Hungry' stat is on the 3rd row (2nd being the one that starts with Dlvl:xx), it doesn't get removed right away. It only changes when a new message appears (like: You see here a lasagna). This might be a nethack thing, I don't know, but sometimes is a bit confusing.

2. As you can see in my defaults.nh, I have bound a,b,x,y,r and start to chordkeys. Right after I made an inventory selection (like dropped some items), when i press a lone chordkey (in my case 'a'), it isn't recorded. I have to press it again and then it works.

Well thanks a lot agian.

Code:

# Sample config file for NDS NetHack
# A '#' at the beginning of a line means the rest of the line is a comment.
#
# Some options MUST be set in this file, other options can be toggled while
# playing. For a list of options available see the <opthelp.> file.
#
# To change the configuration, comment out the unwanted lines, and
# uncomment the configuration you want.

# *** OPTIONS ***
#OPTIONS=tile_file:tiles.bmp,tile_width:16,tile_height:16
OPTIONS=color,ibmgraphics
OPTIONS=toptenwin
#OPTIONS=autopickup,pickup_types:$
OPTIONS=noshowexp,lit_corridor
OPTIONS=menucolors

MENUCOLOR=" blessed "=green
MENUCOLOR=" holy "=yellow
MENUCOLOR=" cursed .* $being worn$"=orange&underline
MENUCOLOR=" cursed "=red
MENUCOLOR=" unholy "=brown

# *** Some NetHackDS Specific options ***
#
# You prefer a keyboard for commands? If you insist...
# OPTIONS=!cmdwindow
#
# Change command window to L/R toggle visibility, rather than require they
# be held.
# OPTIONS=holdmode
#
# Swaps the R and L buttons.
# OPTIONS=lefthanded
#
# Enable doubletap mode. Changes menus and windows to require double-taps for
# selecting items.
# OPTIONS=doubletap
#
# Disable the cursor? Okay...
# OPTIONS=!cursor
#
# Enable compass mode. A value of 1 enables relative mode, where taps around
# the hero are mapped to a compass, and translated to movement keys. A value
# of 2 enables absolute mode, where the taps are examined relative to
# the center of the screen. See the iRogue website for examples of how this
# works.
# OPTIONS=compassmode:1
#
# Controls whether or not we do pretty colours for the HP counter.
OPTIONS=hpmon
#
# Enables some additional map colouring for special areas.
OPTIONS=mapcolors
#
# Defines which keys are chord keys, which can be combined with regular keys for
# keybinding purposes. The example below allows one to create a setup identical
# to triggermode, in that the user may then bind the various directions plus
# B to the various directions.
CHORDKEYS=a,b,x,y,start,r
#
# Defines the key which will be used to pop up the command window.
OPTIONS=cmdkey:l
#
# Disables key repeating within the game itself (still works in menus, the
# command window, etc).
# OPTIONS=!keyrepeat
#
# Display the key help lines.
OPTIONS=!keyhelp
#
# These options define which keys are displayed in the help lines, and in
# what order they are shown.
HELPLINE1=up,down,left,right,r,l
HELPLINE2=a,b,x,y,start,select

# *** Personal Preferences ***
# Some options to set personal preferences. Uncomment and change these to
# suit your personal preference. If several people are to use the same
# configuration, options like these should not be set.
#
#OPTIONS=name:Janet,role:Valkyrie,race:Human,gender:female,align:lawful
OPTIONS=dogname:Dingor,catname:James,fruit:lasagna
OPTIONS=horsename:Epona
OPTIONS=autopickup,pickup_types:$"=/!?+
#OPTIONS=packorder:")[%?+/=!(*0_`
#OPTIONS=scores:10 top/2 around/own
#OPTIONS=nolegacy,noverbose
#OPTIONS=menustyle:traditional
#OPTIONS=time
#OPTIONS=number_pad:1
#OPTIONS=hilite_pet
#

I can confirm teru's problem here, if I use eat the only option is
"Other: something from your Inventory"

I also experience another bug (sorry if it was mentioned before):
The highscore list is not as it should be. The first 3 or more entries are displayed correctly, but then some seemingly random entries follow, which are increasingly indented to the right. There are also not all entries shown, only ca. 1.5 pages while there should be more than 30 entries. I could make screenshots if you want.

This sounds negative, but these are only small details. I and my sister enjoy playing the game a lot, many thanks for it!
_________________
<dsFont> <Game Collection>

Well, I tried my girlfriends ds, and it did the same thing.
My guess would be that it has something to do with the R4 me and her use, but then again, I'm no develloper so I would now.

ThomasS: Your bug is known :) I believe he has no intention to change it anytime soon, since it is purely cosmetic.

Does saving work for everyone else? I have tried with R4, R6 Gold and Supercard miniSD but I always get an error when trying to save. Other games can save on all these devices.

Saving works perfectly for me, what version of nethack do you use and what version of r4 firmware. More importantly probably: Did you make any changes to the defaults.nh *if so can you post it here*?
Do you have a Saves map *can't remember or check the proper name it should be though*?

Just some ideas that popped up for me.

Everything should be latest versions and I haven't modified anything. I don't find any saves map.

I've tried with 4 different DS's, 3 different memory cards and 4 different adapters and some alternative dldi's. Different booting methods too.

After trying so long it sure is weird if everyone else got theirs working.

I only have a r4-card, so I don't know about the others. The nethack folder (which shuld be on the root of your card) should contain a map called: "save", which is where the savegames are stored.
If you don't specify a name and role in your defaults.nh, and there is a savefile there, you should be able to choose it. Try creating the map save in your Nethack folder, and create a file within the save map.

I placed a backup of my defaults there (d.txt) and I get to choose it as a saved game, weird, but a quick way to check if at least that works.

And you're right, after such a long time fiddling around with it, it should work... so I'll wish you good luck!

Hehehee, thank you! It worked :D

Seems like IZArc doesn't extract empty folders, it just skips them and that "feature" caused this problem.

Phew, I can finally stop cursing and start playing one of my favourite games of all times :D

The same thing plagued DSLinux for a while, with several Windows extractor programs ignoring empty directories and causing severe problems. While the DSLinux wiki was updated to suggest using a program like 7zip, the problem was also avoided by creating hidden dummy files in the otherwise empty folders.

Well, after spending the entire summer doing basically nothing with this thing, this last weekend I had a bit of inspiration and built ports for the two major NetHack variants, SporkHack, and Slash'EM. Now, these are *definitely* ALPHA releases... I've barely had a chance to do any playtesting with these things. But I figured, I might as well get them out there now and see if any low hanging fruit is caught.

Anyway, you can download them here:

SporkHackDS 1.0, based on the latest patch available.
Slash'EM DS 1.0, based on Slash'EM 0.0.7E7F3.

Enjoy!

Oh, and BTW, tile support in SporkHack is broken, primarily because the monster list has changed in that port, and no one, to my knowledge, has created a tileset for it.

when i try to build my own character in slash'em the game does not load. i has this problem on both the ak2 and akrpg.

it only seems to do this if i choose flame mage > doppleganger > female.

-another world

another world wrote:

when i try to build my own character in slash'em the game does not load. i has this problem on both the ak2 and akrpg.

it only seems to do this if i choose flame mage > doppleganger > female

Oooh, nice catch. I'll take a look, thanks for the bug report!

Ah, found it... silly memory stomper on a fixed width buffer. Apparently the string "Pick the alignment of your female doppelganger Flame Mage" is longer than the code has had to deal with before. :)

I've been regularly playing Slash'em DS successfully on my DS-X pretty much since it was released and haven't had it crash until last night. My character is a lawful elf flame mage. I was in the 2nd level of the gnomish mines, burdened, and went to go down the stairs to level 3. Right after I hit "down" to go down the stairs I kept getting messages like this:

program in disorder - perhaps you'd better #quit.
get_location: (103,96) out of bounds
program in disorder - perhaps you'd better #quit.
get_location: (103,96) out of bounds
Press a key.....

Pressing a key just keeps repeating these messages over and over. I can bring up the command window but whatever command I select just produces a similar list of "program in disorder...." messages.

I haven't turned my DS off yet, and put it in sleep mode to see if anything changed when it woke up but it's still the same.

I'm posting this to help troubleshoot the bug, and to see if anyone knows any way I can rescue my character. I understand this is considered an alpha release so these things may happen. But he's a pretty good character so I'd like to recover him if possible. Is Slash'Em DS compiled with the "recovery" option?

Thanks very much. Let me know if any more information would help.

xy1331 wrote:

I've been regularly playing Slash'em DS successfully on my DS-X pretty much since it was released and haven't had it crash until last night. My character is a lawful elf flame mage. I was in the 2nd level of the gnomish mines, burdened, and went to go down the stairs to level 3. Right after I hit "down" to go down the stairs I kept getting messages like this:

...snip...

I'm posting this to help troubleshoot the bug, and to see if anyone knows any way I can rescue my character. I understand this is considered an alpha release so these things may happen. But he's a pretty good character so I'd like to recover him if possible. Is Slash'Em DS compiled with the "recovery" option?

Wow, that's impressive. That suggests, to me, that your character somehow landed *outside* the generated map. The weird thing is, the code is *supposed* to teleport you to a valid map location, but apparently that isn't working, either. My bet would be that x_maze_max or y_maze_max is too large (and 103x96 *does* seem rather large, given that nethack maps are only, AFAIK, 80x24 or thereabouts).

In theory, you might be able to read a scroll of teleport to get back to a valid map location. Alternatively, a cursed potion of gain level might work.

But either way, odds are you're boned, as the stairs are outside the valid map boundary, which means even if you get back on the main map, you can't go up, and if you managed to go up and out, you wouldn't be able to go back down (lest you land outside the map once again).

Bizarre error, though... pity I have no idea how that could even happen, outside of a genuine bug in the original code. :(

I really like this port, thanks for your hard work.

Is there any way you could add a "move only in diagonal while pressing L/R" feature like in Shiren DS? I like to move with the dpad, but moving in diagonal is difficult.

Thanks!

Leniad wrote:

I really like this port, thanks for your hard work.

Is there any way you could add a "move only in diagonal while pressing L/R" feature like in Shiren DS? I like to move with the dpad, but moving in diagonal is difficult.

Thanks!

I'm not sure I understand the question. If one of the shoulder buttons is defined as a chord key, you can already bind (for example) R+Up to Up-Right, R+Right to Down-Right, etc. Is that what you mean? Or am I misunderstanding?

That is _almost_ what I want, but then the user would have to remember to use up for up-left, and left for left-down.

What I want, and Shiren does, is this:

R+Up: Nothing
R+Right: Still nothing

R+Up+Right: moves up-right.

Much more friendly, and less YASD-inducing.

Then again, I don't know how difficult it would be to implement...

Well I started a new character (still a lawful elf flame mage) and made it down to level 12 of the gnomish mines. Then a trap door opened under me and instead of falling through to the next level I got this (from the paniclog):

0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (20,56) out of bounds
0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (20,77) out of bounds
0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (19,56) out of bounds
0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (10,56) out of bounds
0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (9,-9) out of bounds
0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (103,2) out of bounds
0.0.7E7F3 20081207: impossible get_location: (103,2) out of bounds

I backed up my character so I restored it and tried to use the stairs to go down a level. Seems like no matter how I try to go down to level 13 it crashes like that.

Just thought another post might help debug. Thanks!

I love it, thanks a lot.
Edit3: I am talking about NethackDS. :)

I noticed some things though, correct me if I am wrong:

-The "Who are you?" question is replaced with "Enter You Name:". I think you mean "Enter Your Name:", but I would prefer "Who are you?" anyway.

-No turn counter in-game. It would help to have one, to keep track of the amount of times you have searched etc.

And it might be very hard to implement, but I would like a in-game text reader. *A lot.* ;)

In any case, I like it way more than the previous NethackDS (which was great too). Thanks!
MM

Edit: as other people have noted, the text is really small. Could you size up the things that can be sized up? I mean, in the action menu (L) there isn't any room, I understand, but in a yes/no screen or a "What do you want to pick up?" screen, there is space enough to make the text bigger.

Edit2: just a thought, in case you are going to make a keyboard version. How about binding L to shift and R to tab, that should solve the shift/tab hassle on the touch screen. :) I, myself, like the action menu over a ds keyboard though.

Edit4: Another thought. Not very Nethack-ish, but you could size down the action menu (and therefore, make the text bigger) by making sub-menus. Things like Consume -> drink/eat or Main Menu -> Save/Help/What is/What does/Auto-pickup.
Another idea is using the Nethack logo as the DS icon:
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Anyone know what happened to the website? Seems to have gone AWOL.

It's back now... I hope. The PSU in my server went the way of the dodo. :)

By the way, I've begun the process of moving the project over to GitHub. So far, I've moved the source repository and the binaries over, and will probably slowly move the other content over as well. You can find the project at:

http://github.com/fancypantalons/nethackds

gbadev.org forum archive

DS homebrew announcements > New port of NetHack to the DS released.

#146347 - Abcd1234 - Mon Dec 03, 2007 1:17 am

#146353 - Abcd1234 - Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:02 am

#146377 - theli - Mon Dec 03, 2007 7:23 am

#146382 - theli - Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:22 am

#146391 - Jakeohagan - Mon Dec 03, 2007 2:53 pm

#146429 - Opus - Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:27 am

#146435 - Jakeohagan - Tue Dec 04, 2007 5:53 am

#146436 - theli - Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:24 am

#146437 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:29 am

#146438 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:31 am

#146439 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:33 am

#146441 - Opus - Tue Dec 04, 2007 7:29 am

#146445 - Jakeohagan - Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:07 am

#146458 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:30 pm

#146459 - tepples - Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:30 pm

#146461 - kusma - Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:44 pm

#146464 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:20 pm

#146481 - ecurtz - Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:22 pm

#146488 - tepples - Tue Dec 04, 2007 8:49 pm

#146501 - Markzilla - Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:41 pm

#146505 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 05, 2007 2:23 am

#146510 - Markzilla - Wed Dec 05, 2007 3:35 am

#146518 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:15 am

#146519 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 05, 2007 7:27 am

#146553 - Markzilla - Wed Dec 05, 2007 7:12 pm

#146554 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 05, 2007 7:31 pm

#146570 - Opus - Thu Dec 06, 2007 2:57 am

#146581 - Abcd1234 - Thu Dec 06, 2007 7:42 am

#146718 - Opus - Sat Dec 08, 2007 12:24 am

#146739 - Abcd1234 - Sat Dec 08, 2007 8:10 am

#146759 - Opus - Sat Dec 08, 2007 9:26 pm

#146764 - Abcd1234 - Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:28 pm

#146790 - Scribble - Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:14 am

#146792 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:20 am

#146795 - Scribble - Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:34 am

#146796 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:38 am

#146797 - Scribble - Sun Dec 09, 2007 4:41 am

#146798 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:01 am

#146823 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 09, 2007 7:41 pm

#146864 - Agmaii - Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:41 am

#146875 - Abcd1234 - Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:14 pm

#146878 - Agmaii - Mon Dec 10, 2007 4:49 pm

#146879 - Abcd1234 - Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:57 pm

#146899 - Agmaii - Mon Dec 10, 2007 11:10 pm

#146912 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 11, 2007 5:45 am

#146924 - Opus - Tue Dec 11, 2007 10:41 am

#146930 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 11, 2007 2:22 pm

#147007 - Opus - Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:21 am

#147008 - Abcd1234 - Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:56 am

#147148 - Scribble - Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:42 am

#147159 - Scribble - Sat Dec 15, 2007 4:49 pm

#147187 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 16, 2007 2:48 am

#147210 - some_guy - Sun Dec 16, 2007 8:34 am

#147213 - Kamu - Sun Dec 16, 2007 9:03 am

#147299 - Scribble - Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:45 am

#147362 - Scribble - Wed Dec 19, 2007 5:03 am

#147363 - Scribble - Wed Dec 19, 2007 5:21 am

#147364 - Opus - Wed Dec 19, 2007 6:57 am

#147366 - Scribble - Wed Dec 19, 2007 7:41 am

#147389 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:29 pm

#147395 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 19, 2007 6:59 pm

#147467 - Abcd1234 - Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:02 am

#147470 - Scribble - Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:34 am

#147621 - Abcd1234 - Mon Dec 24, 2007 6:26 pm

#147637 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 25, 2007 12:28 am

#147648 - Scribble - Tue Dec 25, 2007 6:47 am

#147664 - Abcd1234 - Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:07 pm

#147687 - Abcd1234 - Wed Dec 26, 2007 3:18 am

#147793 - Opus - Fri Dec 28, 2007 1:32 am

#147797 - Abcd1234 - Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:28 am

#147803 - Abcd1234 - Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:56 am

#147807 - Opus - Fri Dec 28, 2007 6:44 am

#147822 - Abcd1234 - Fri Dec 28, 2007 2:32 pm

#147888 - Opus - Sat Dec 29, 2007 10:33 pm

#147895 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 30, 2007 2:09 am

#147899 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 30, 2007 3:04 am

#147900 - Abcd1234 - Sun Dec 30, 2007 3:20 am

#147903 - Opus - Sun Dec 30, 2007 5:03 am