Angband problems

Oy, what's happened to Angband? I just tried the latest from SVN.
The newest 3.0.* versions have some of these problems too:

* Please put back the item selection letters in stores and during birth.
It's more convenient to just hit one key (birth) or two (stores) than
to use the arrow keys and then Enter - in particular when there are
many choices. Though I suppose arrow keys in stores are a welcome
alternative for some users.

Also it was a lot more convenient to hit Space once for the next
inventory page in a store than to lean on the arrow keys until the
inventory stops scrolling. And put back the '-more-' so we can see
that there _is_ more to see.

* I suppose joining personal equipment and inventory in stores may have
simplified some things when 's'elling items, but I dislike it:

Empty equipment slots are not shown, and I needed that reminder of
which slots to fill up for quite a while when I was learning the game.
For that matter, some things I don't even know what are (or didn't
know before Angband), so I couldn't tell which slot they belonged in.
E.g. a tulwar could be a helmet as far as I knew.

With just one long list one must scroll even more to get to some of
the items. The old 'e' and 'i' followed by 's' (sell) give fewer key
presses to get to the item I want. (Unless I didn't remember what I
was wearing, but usually I think I know where I'm going.)

I can't tell equipment I wear from equipment in my inventory. (Well
OK, that's fixable with some info text lines.)

With the old 'i'/'e'/'I' commands, we didn't lose our current place in
the inventory list in the store. Now if I'm looking at some store
item and then peek at my inventory to compare, I have to move/scroll
back to the store item afterwards before buying it.

Still, I wouldn't mind the new interface if the old commands to access
inventory/equipment were still available. Inventory, equipment,
examine, take on/off, (un)inscribe, sell/drop.

* With roguelike commands, 'x' (examine), 'w' (wear), 'T' (take off)
don't work in stores.

* With standard commands, 't' (take off) doesn't work in stores. And
there is no command for 'l'ooking at the character inventory when
that's displayed in a store. There is an 'I' command, but that works
like outside stores - yet it does not work at all when looking at the
store inventory.

* At home, we now 's'ell items to ourselves instead of 'd'rop them.

* With X11 on Linux, the arrow keys in selection menus act as if they
were on the numeric keypad, so 'down' selects option or menu #2!
That's particularly bad now that selecting an option toggles it.

Without X11, I can move up and down the menus with arrow keys - but
Enter does nothing. In particular, in the main Options Menu it does
not enter the selected menu.

* I'm not sure I like that selecting an option now toggles it.
It certainly needs to be mentioned on the options menu screens.

I guess it makes it easier to change options, but OTOH it's a bit
irritating to go to an option and then have to toggle it back, before
pushing '?' for its help text. Maybe 'h <option selector>' could be
an alternative command for jumping to the help text for that option.

Anyway, it's too easy to accidentally change an option, maybe at first
without noticing, and end up not knowing what the default was. That
done, it's hard to decide what the option should be if one doesn't
know the game very well. That was so before too, but it's worse now.

It would help to mark options which have been changed with a '*' or
something on the screen, and add a key for "reset current changes"
or "leave menu ignoring current changes".

Well, actually 3 kinds of changes would be useful to mark and offer
to reset - change from the default, from the current character
(savefile), and since entering the menu. Urgh.

* More menus than before do not say how to leave (ESC key).

* More bugs:

- On the graphic floor (default startup with X11 on Linux), floor and
walls look identical! They do look different without X11. (At
least I hope this is a bug.)

- The ESC key does not work without X11 (unset DISPLAY; src/angband).
I had to do ^Z and "kill <angband pid>", which made Angband exit
with "src/angband: software bug".

- During birth, '?'-ESC (Help-Back) selects the current item and moves
to the next menu. '?'-'?' (also Help-Back in this context) doesn't.

- Menu "To create a character, would you like to:" has two (a)
choices.

* Some older nitpicks about help/explanation texts:

- I've been wondering, why is it called "hit die" instead of "hit
dice" (shown during birth)? birth.txt uses both terms. Whatever
"die" means here, it's not what a non-insider will guess.

- "birth options" -> "birth options (affecting difficulty/gameplay)"
in the birth screens would clarify a bit what they are about.

It's a bit misleading anyway since '=' takes us to the main Options
Menu, but maybe it should simply be changed to start with the cursor
at the birth options in the Options Menu.

--
Regards,
Hallvard
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Lack of iPad 2 pre-ordering
    ... uncontrolled process where Apple has to sit back and watch it happen?? ... The stores are selling out of their resupply inventory on a daily ... $1B of retail inventory before pushing the "Sell" button? ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Book value, how to invest?
    ... They all have the same problem -- whenever a particularly profitable niche in their business opens up, Wal-Mart grabs it and undercuts them. ... So, they have survive by weaving together a set of related businesses under one roof, none of which are big enough for Wal-Mart to get interested in, and by managing their balance sheets properly. ... Adding Circut City to Best Buy gives Best Buy nothing, as all they'd be doing is taking on inventory, and since most CC stores are close in proximity to BB stores, they'd have a spend a year closing stores and getting out of leases and firing people, all of which carry costs. ...
    (misc.invest.stocks)
  • Re: Lack of iPad 2 pre-ordering
    ...  Is that how pre-orders work? ... The stores are selling out of their resupply inventory on a daily ... Everyone would have then been screaming at Apple for how ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Pulling data out and understanding total queries
    ... I have a table with inventory counts for each of our 10 products in 1800 ... stores for every week of the year. ... Total Units Sold per item: ... tblCalculatedSalesDataHomeDepot)) AS Stores ...
    (microsoft.public.access.queries)