How to compile very old Angband versions?

[lea2501]

Hi! i wanted to try out the first Angband versions, i downloaded the source code for 2.4.frog-know (i think its the first public version) from http://rephial.org/release/2.4.fk and typing:

$ make

i get:

gcc -g -fwritable-strings -DLIBDIR=\"/home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/lib\"  -c /home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/src/main.c -o /home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/obj/main.o
gcc: error: unrecognized command-line option ‘-fwritable-strings’; did you mean ‘-Wwrite-strings’?
make: *** [Makefile:43: /home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/obj/main.o] Error 1

Maybe someone knows how to make it compile in newer linux distros, im trying in a up-to-date arch linux.

[Julian]

Originally Posted by lea2501

Hi! i wanted to try out the first Angband versions, i downloaded the source code for 2.4.frog-know (i think its the first public version) from http://rephial.org/release/2.4.fk and typing:

$ make

i get:

gcc -g -fwritable-strings -DLIBDIR=\"/home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/lib\"  -c /home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/src/main.c -o /home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/obj/main.o
gcc: error: unrecognized command-line option ‘-fwritable-strings’; did you mean ‘-Wwrite-strings’?
make: *** [Makefile:43: /home/lea/games/roguelikes/angband/2.4.fk/angband/obj/main.o] Error 1

Maybe someone knows how to make it compile in newer linux distros, im trying in a up-to-date arch linux.

That’s gonna be tricky to fix without some serious code surgery. Writing to constant strings hasn’t been legal C for a long, long, time. (Probably because it’s a huge source of potential problems.)

You’d likely have better luck with Ben’s versions.

[JanusDuo]

I am also wanting to compile old versions of Angband. I started playing on Fangband (not FaAngband) back in the 90s and eventually found the official Angband community in the 2.8.x days and played until around when Ben stepped down. I haven't played much since but recently got my first ever laptop and am having a really fun time installing and playing all my old favorite games. While hunting down the old Fangband binary I found rephial.org which did not exist last time I checked up on the community. I did find DOS binaries for all the old PCAngband stuff. I am fascinated that so many features in Fangband did not make it in to the official game until the Ben era (and even then destroying items wasn't implemented until the middle of his tenure) but reading about it isn't the same as playing it and I want to run a few characters on as many of the stable releases from prior to the beginning of Ben's era. I am particularly insterested in the 2.5/Charles Swiger era which I completely skipped over. I'm happy to use Linux (I am running Arch but I wouldn't mind spinning up another distro for this) or DOS (Dosbox). I tried to compile Angband 2.7.8 for Linux (which is actually Ben Harrison's second stable version to "ship") but I ran into compile errors with this as well.

 [janusduo@ArchBox src]$ sudo make install
[sudo] password for janusduo:
gcc -O -Dregister= -c io.c
io.c:12:10: fatal error: bsd/sgtty.h: No such file or directory
   12 | #include <bsd/sgtty.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make: *** [Makefile:151: io.o] Error 1

I found a copy of a file named sgtty.h in another place in my filesystem and tried pointing to that but what followed was a bunch more errors. I tried picking through them and didn't really get anywhere so I reverted io.c for now. I did go through config.h and set the install directory and anything that seemed to need my attention before compilation but I'm really just guessing here.

Are there any post PCAngband and pre-Ben Harrison binaries for DOS( or Linux) kicking around? I haven't been able to find any. I downloaded the Angband 2.7.8 linux binary from https://web.archive.org/web/20061028...Angband/Linux/ but when I tried to run it I go a "cannot execute binary exec format" error. This leads me to suspect that I will need to somehow compile source myself if I want it to run on Linux so maybe DOS binaries are a better bet. Does anyone know how to compile the 2.5-2.6.2 or at least pre 2.7.4 (which is the earliest DOS binary after PCAngband that I've been able to find online.)

[Julian]

Or, I suppose, getting an old version of gcc installed, which may be easier.

You may also be in for a hard time of finding compatible curses/ncurses libraries; I don’t know how much their interfaces have changed over the decades.

[Mike]

The feature was removed in gcc 4, so you'll need gcc 3.x.


If you only want to play it though and don't intend to modify it, with the only problem being that there aren't any Linux/amd64 binaries around, then you may find it easier to run an old binary under an emulator (wine for example, or something more exotic depending on what you used BITD - advantage = you get the full retro experience. disadvantage, same

[Julian]

Originally Posted by JanusDuo

I am also wanting to compile old versions of Angband. I started playing on Fangband (not FaAngband) back in the 90s and eventually found the official Angband community in the 2.8.x days and played until around when Ben stepped down. I haven't played much since but recently got my first ever laptop and am having a really fun time installing and playing all my old favorite games. While hunting down the old Fangband binary I found rephial.org which did not exist last time I checked up on the community. I did find DOS binaries for all the old PCAngband stuff. I am fascinated that so many features in Fangband did not make it in to the official game until the Ben era (and even then destroying items wasn't implemented until the middle of his tenure)

Variants weren’t really a thing until Ben’s tenure; his code cleanup and exiling of game data to text files made it much, much, easier to make a variant.

I tried to compile Angband 2.7.8 for Linux (which is actually Ben Harrison's second stable version to "ship") but I ran into compile errors with this as well.

 [janusduo@ArchBox src]$ sudo make install
[sudo] password for janusduo:
gcc -O -Dregister= -c io.c
io.c:12:10: fatal error: bsd/sgtty.h: No such file or directory
   12 | #include <bsd/sgtty.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make: *** [Makefile:151: io.o] Error 1

You may be in luck. IIRC, there were several makefiles and a bunch of compile-time options to deal with the plethora of Unixen. I’m guessing that it’s trying to build for a BSD instead of Linux, and there’s probably a better set of options in the Makefile, and you just need to comment out the ones it’s using and uncomment one of the others.

[JanusDuo]

Originally Posted by Mike

The feature was removed in gcc 4, so you'll need gcc 3.x.

Oh, thank you for that info! I'll try using one of the gcc 3.x versions next time I get back to working on this. This is exactly the sort of advice I was hoping to find here. I used to lurk in an Angband channel on an IRC server back in the day. Stormfront or something? I wonder if there is an IRC chat or a Discord that Angband folks like to use these days. This was the nearest I found with a quick DuckGo. I'll do some more searching later.

Originally Posted by Julian

Variants weren’t really a thing until Ben’s tenure; his code cleanup and exiling of game data to text files made it much, much, easier to make a variant.

Oh yeah, for sure. I was reading on the Rephial page of Angband 2.5.0-beta that FAngband was the first, and I think it forked off of an early PC version of 2.4.frog-knows. It amazes me that instead of that becoming the next official version the later official versions simply re-implemented all of its features into what had become the official Angband version.

Originally Posted by Julian

You may be in luck. IIRC, there were several makefiles and a bunch of compile-time options to deal with the plethora of Unixen. I’m guessing that it’s trying to build for a BSD instead of Linux, and there’s probably a better set of options in the Makefile, and you just need to comment out the ones it’s using and uncomment one of the others.

Yeah, that makes quite a bit of sense. I'll chase down that possibility when I get back to it. I have a very busy two weeks ahead of me so unless I happen to have time to kill that I don't expect I probably won't get into it for a while.

Thanks to you both so much for the feedback! I really love Angband, it was my first d20-inspired video game RPG and is still my favorite. ToME <2.3.5 ended up being my favorite variant, although before I got into that I spent a lot of time with Zangband. Around that same time I met Eric Bock on the IRC and played his Zceband variant a bunch too which has a lot of cool stuff like demons from Doom, rocket and shard attacks, as well as explosive barrels and stuff like that.

Has anybody ever seen an Angband variant with a Doom style "Build Engine" GUI? I never knew at the time how similar Doom was to a Roguelike under the hood, being a 2D overhead game which is then displayed in 3D. Ah well, there is always that game "One More Dungeon" which is basically a modern take on this idea. I just think it would be more fun for me if it was Angband content and possibly turn-based.

[fph]

Originally Posted by JanusDuo

Has anybody ever seen an Angband variant with a Doom style "Build Engine" GUI? I never knew at the time how similar Doom was to a Roguelike under the hood, being a 2D overhead game which is then displayed in 3D. Ah well, there is always that game "One More Dungeon" which is basically a modern take on this idea. I just think it would be more fun for me if it was Angband content and possibly turn-based.

This reminds me a lot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon's_Eye , although it's just isometric, not true 3D.

Anyhow, welcome! It seems we have similar tastes in terms of variants.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by JanusDuo

I wonder if there is an IRC chat or a Discord that Angband folks like to use these days.

There's #angband and #angband-dev on freenode.net, but they're both pretty quiet these days. There is also an angband channel on the roguelikes discord server, which is quite active. Also there's angband.live, which is a webserver with Angband and multiple variants playable from a browser, and which also has chat.

[johannna]

Old versions of gcc are finicky in the extreme. Use the --traditional flag to get past some of the issues.