ZAngband 2.0.4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ' 1. Bug fixes      ' ' 2. Introduction      ' ' 3. Requirements      ' ' 4. Installation      ' ' 5. Differences...    ' ' 6. Amiga Features    ' '7. Credits ' '8. Contacting me... ' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bug fixes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bug fixes This list is mainly for people who've played a previous version of Amiga Zangband. Note that the program file is the same as in the latest version of Zangband announced on r.g.r.a; only the graphics and docs have changed. Bug Fixes Thanks to everyone who pointed these out, especially Bablos and Joseph W Dixon. Between them, they found most of the bugs. Thanks! o Most special 'ZAngband' objects were not displayed properly. o Unidentified objects wouldn't appear on dungeon under no-graphics mode. Fixed. o Objects in inventory/store/graph could be corrupted. o Palette save under non-graphics mode incorrect. Enhancements o If you don't provide a save file name (using -u) when you run ZAngband, it will automatically choose the last one you used. o Some ZAngband monsters now have more appropriate icons. o Spoiler support now compiled in; use " as a Wizard command. o Highscore table export now works a lot better. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction This is an Amiga port of Zangband 2.0.4, the source of which was released early November 1997. Zangband has an expanded magic system, talking uniques, lots of extra weird monsters and vaults and all sorts of other things. ZAngband is based upon Angband 2.8.1. If you've never played Angband before, try that first; ZAngband is harder than 'vanilla' Angband. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Requirements... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Requirements Absolute Minimum You'll need at *least* this to run ZAngband (and Angband, for that matter) Kickstart 1.3 1.4 Mb of memory 68000 - a faster processor is nice, but by no means necessary. Recommended Level This is what I'd recommend to get the most out of ZAngband: Kickstart 3.0 or better 2Mb of memory 68020 or better. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Installing ZAngband 2.0.4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Installing ZAngband Installing to Hard disc Select a directory to install ZAngband to. I use 'DH1:Games/'. Now unpack the archive to this directory (a directory called 'ZAngband' will be created) From the CLI: lha -a -x x ZAngband.lha DH1:Games/ If you have a KS 2.0 or better system that's all you'll need to do. To run ZAngband, just run the program 'bin/ZAngband' If you only have Kickstart 1.3, you'll also need to: Place these two commands in your 'S:startup-sequence', or, better, make a small script file with these two lines in and execute that everytime you want to start ZAngband: assign ZAngband: DH1:Games/ZAngband path add ZAngband:bin Replace 'DH1:Games/ZAngband' with your path. Note that 'ZAngband:' needs to point to the directory containing 'file', 'data', 'apex' etc. 3.2. Floppy installation You can (just about) install 'ZAngband' onto floppy discs, but it's pretty tight. Compression utils (eg. 'Powerpacker', 'EPU') might help. First get two empty (and formatted) discs. Name the first one 'ZAngband', and call the second 'ZMain' (or something). Assuming you've extracted the archive somewhere (RAM: ??), copy the 'bin' directory to 'ZMain'. Everything else ought to go on the 'ZAngband:' disc. You (probably) won't be able to fit everything on the second disc (ZAngband is larger than standard Angband); I suggest you delete the sound files, and/or the help files. Good luck. Playing ZAngband Assuming you have ZAngband installed properly, just run the 'bin/Zangband' file. Note you can use the '-U' option to load a previous savefile; if you don't specify one, ZAngband will attempt to load the one you last used. ZAngband -uMark (or whatever your savefile is called) Type ZAngband -? for a list of options. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Differences -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Differences First, see the 'New features' section if you haven't already. This explains the (few) extra things I've added in this port. Things to note about this version of ZAngband: As originally supplied, ZAngband asks you 'Really leave the level?' every  time you use a staircase. This really ought to be an option, but I've just  removed it in this version; I found it pretty annoying... ZAngband adds many new monsters. I don't have graphics for these, so I've  tried to pick icons that are fairly closely matched. However, it's a lot better than the previous versions (for those of you who've seen those) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Specific Features -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga specific improvements Most of these features were present in the recent ports of Amiga Angband, but they are listed here for completeness. For a list of the new features added in this port, click here : 'New features' Amiga-specific features of this version of ZAngband: o Full (optional) graphics and sound. See the file 'user/settings.prf' for instructions on how to turn these off or on. o The sounds are stored in the 'xtra/sound' directory. You can turn off a sound by moving the appropriate sound file to the 'xtra/sound/off' directory. o You can use any non-proportional font for the display. See the file 'user/settings.prf' for instructions. Note that proportional fonts are not supported. o You can change the screenmode to pretty much anything you want; See 'user/settings.prf'. o Public screen support. Provided you have KS 3.0 or better, you can make 'ZAngband' open its windows on the named public screen. The program 'PubScr' (in the 'bin' directory) will create a public screen. For example, 'Pubscr NAME ZAngband WIDTH 648 HEIGHT 512 DEPTH 5' attempts to create a public screen with the above attributes. You would then need to put the line 'SCREEN.name ZAngband' in the 'user/settings.prf' file. The public screen will be automatically closed when no windows remain on it; or you can explicitly close it with 'PubScr NAME ZAngband CLOSE'. Using public screens also allows you to use multiple windows. For example, you can use one window to show your current inventory, one to list the recent messages etc. There are a total of 8 possible windows. You may use the 'Options/Window Options' section of Zangband to control what each window displays. As usual, see 'user/settings.prf' At the moment, multiple windows can not be used on a custom screen. o Intuition menus, which allow you to execute game commands and to read the help files. You can turn these off in the (guess) 'user/settings.prf' file. Note that KS1.3 users can not use menus. o Graphics in store/equipment/inventory listings, and options to toggle this feature on/off. (Options/User Interface menu). o Map of the dungeon; use RIGHT AMIGA + 'm' to view the map. KS2.0+ only :( o The following keyboard shortcuts are built in: o SHIFT + Numeric key 1 - 9 = Run in a direction o ALT + ... = Tunnel in a direction o CTRL + ... = Open door in a direction o Cursor Keys = Move in direction. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Features -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- New Features o Slightly better colour handling. There is now a 'redefine colours' option in the menu (or use RIGHT AMIGA + 'r'). This will bring up a ReqTools palette requester. In case you didn't know, standard Angband also lets you change the colours; use '&'. You can also use the 'Save Palette' (RIGHT AMIGA + 's') and 'Load Palette' (RIGHT AMIGA + 'l') options. This saves the current palette as 'colours.prf', which is automatically loaded on startup. o 'Quick' graphics option. When activated, this can make the graphics output several times quicker, resulting in far faster screen redraws. This usually has to be explicitly turned on at the command line. Use 'ZAngband -q' to enable this. Of course, you can use '-q' with the other options as you'd expect. eg. 'ZAngband -q -UGimli' ***IMPORTANT*** It will (probably) not work on Amiga's using gfx cards. Specifying '-q' will cause ZAngband to (sometimes) write directly to the screen memory in the interests of speed. I don't know what this will do on gfx card machines; just don't use it (you don't need it anyway - right :) ). On my machine (AGA 68030/50, CPU caches ON), -q makes redraws approx. 4 times faster using KS3.0, and around 7 to 8 times quicker using KS1.3. I find the speedup very noticable (but then again I'm biased :) ) - I've always found the slow redraws slightly annoying (and on my A500 it was *really* bad); you may never have noticed... Obviously, the performance varies depending on setup. I have no idea what it'll be like on your Amiga - it may even be slower using a plain 68000. The best thing to do is to try it; see if it makes any difference to you. I'd especially recommend it to 1.3 users, as the graphics.library routines in 1.3 are *slow*. It would be great to have some feedback on this; if anyone uses it, let me know. Further speed increases are possible. o Option to save the highscore table as an ASCII file. It's saved as 'apex/scores.txt'. Its in the menu or use RIGHT AMIGA + H. Not that useful as it is, but more work is being done on this... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- History -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Credits ZAngband was written by Topi Ylinen The current maintainer of Angband is Ben Harrison. See 'http://www.voicenet.com/~benh/Angband/' for more information on the history and current status of Angband. Lars Haugseth wrote the original (and subsequent versions of) the Amiga source code. The graphics were drawn by Torben Kristiansen, James Larimer and Thomas H. Davies. I (Mark Howson) updated and enhanced Lars' old (2.7.9v6) Amiga source and added the extra features found in this port. Acknowledgements Thanks to: Lars Haugseth for allowing me to use his Amiga source code. Magnus Holmgren and Nico François for 'reqtools.library', which this program uses. Bablos, who has given me endless suggestions, ideas and constructive criticism. Thanks! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contacting me Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions, comments, or anything  else relating to Angband. Suggestions for improving this port (or ideas  for future versions) are especially welcome :) Note that I didn't write ZAngband - I just Amiga'd it. Mail me (Mark Howson) at 'Mark.Howson@nottingham.ac.uk'