JBand
| JBand | |
|---|---|
| Angband Variant | |
| Developer | PaulBlay |
| Based on | Angband 3.1.1 dev |
| Theme | Fantasy |
| Download | Not yet. |
|
[There is no Official site] | |
I am considering starting work on a Japanese version of Angband. The name JAngband was already taken, so I chose JBand.
Planned Features
- Gameplay unchanged from 3.1.1 dev (and keep up with updates) (See Angband SVN)
- Source files in Unicode
- Freely switchable between Japanese and English during play.
- Utilize C++
So why Unicode? While nasty things(tm) can happen whether you are using Unicode or not Unicode is the future, and Shift-JIS or EUC-JP is definitely the past. So the the reward in the long term for learning how to overcome Unicode related problems should be greater than that for Shift-JIS or EUC-JP.
Why freely switchable? From my experience with other multi-language games bugs creep in because it is awkward to do proper testing in both languages. This should be alleviated by allowing switching between languages while the game is still running.
Why C++? For the purely selfish reason that I would like to learn the language. I am also hopeful that C++ features should (when I'm familiar with them) make multi-language support more transparent.
Problematic Points
- Many compilers will not work with Unicode source files. (Dev-C++, for example).
- Unicode file format differs slightly between Windows and other platforms.
- I know even less C++ than I do C.
- File size and memory usage will undoubtedly go up a lot.
Progress to date
- Changed *.c and *.h to Unicode. Still compiles with VC++, no longer compiles with Dev-C++.
- Minor code changes to remove very many compiler warnings.
Next to do
- Find (or write) a utility to strip the bytes at the top of Unicode text code that Windows uses (and Linux hates).
- See if it compiles in Linux.
- Code changes to remove compiler warnings in Linux.
- Code changes to allow the *.txt and *.hlp files to be in Unicode.
- Code changes to support both Japanese and English text in data files (monster.txt, etc.)
The Impossible Dream
I think it would be neat if the trunk of Vanilla Angband was used my work to better support multiple languages. I don't think that will ever happen, though. :-P