Re: [games-sig] Re: Intent to retire nethack-vultures (Vulture's Eye and Vulture's Claw)
Copying me directory was a good idea to get my attention. Fedora list mail goes to another folder and it is easy for me to miss stuff, though I was planning to double check this thread for objections before doing a retire.
On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 18:46:14 -0400, Dennis Payne dulsi@identicalsoftware.com wrote:
The reason for the crashing on startup is that it is not loading the font.
/usr/games/vultureseye/fonts/VeraSe.ttf -> /usr/share/fonts/bitstream- vera/VeraSe.ttf
/usr/share/fonts/bitstream-vera/VeraSe.ttf does not exist.
/usr/share/fonts/bitstream-vera-serif-fonts/VeraSe.ttf
Thanks for doing this. I wasn't sure how to get to specific threads in gdb and wasn't sure what the error was. I fixed this issue for several other games and can do it for nethack-vulture pretty easily now that I know what the problem is.
Updating the link allows it to start. I'm against losing games. So I'd rather keep the current version at the moment. When I get a chance I'll look into new versions of the program.
I'm against losing games as well, but don't find the time to do as good a job on the ones I maintain, as I should.
Even getting Vulture's Eye up to 3.67 is going to take more work than I can commit to any time soon. That uses a pretty old version of nethack. While it will likely never be up to date again, since Vulture's Eye upstream looks like it might be dead now, it would be nice to get it closer. I found some indications the game was commercialized on Steam and was probably getting updates as recently as 2017. The code license would allow anyone who had gotten a binary to get source, but the developer wasn't making it generally available. I'm not even sure I can find my 3.67 copy any more. And I have not seen any mention of anyone providing source later than that.
If you want to be added as a co-maintainer or take over the package, I'm fine with that. A decision should be made before f33 branches, if there is enough interest to keep it around in spite of its support shortcommings.
I'll get the font issue fixed and do new builds for f31, f32 and rawhide. It's a sort of generic fix to work around problems caused by a change in f32's font packaging. A temporary fix was added for f32, but is not going to be kept for f33. The idea is for a simple rebuild to be able to deal with changes in font paths.
I'll look harder to see if I can get a copy of 3.67. It isn't available any more from where I got it and I may have lost the copy I had downloaded to evalute a number of years ago.
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 09:03:31 -0500, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
I'll look harder to see if I can get a copy of 3.67. It isn't available any more from where I got it and I may have lost the copy I had downloaded to evalute a number of years ago.
There is some source code archived at: https://archive.org/details/VultureForNetHackCommunityEdition2.4
It doesn't have as much coverage as 3.67. I haven't verified that this is the modified nethack code. If it is unmodified, then it's useless for vulture. The build instructions seemed to be for nethack and so might turn out not to be very useful. This was archived in 2017 and probably is from no earlier than 2015.
Steam still seems to to the package and a slash'em version as well. They are supposed to come with source if you get them, but I don't know if it will be really usable. I'm not getting a Steam account to check out what is there. (When I get proprietory games, they are DRM free from GoG.)
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 09:56:48 -0500, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 09:03:31 -0500, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
I'll look harder to see if I can get a copy of 3.67. It isn't available any more from where I got it and I may have lost the copy I had downloaded to evalute a number of years ago.
The version I saw should have been 2.3.67. So the 2.4 community addition would have been a sucessor to that from about 3 to 4 years later.
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 09:56:48 -0500, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Fri, May 22, 2020 at 09:03:31 -0500, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
I'll look harder to see if I can get a copy of 3.67. It isn't available any more from where I got it and I may have lost the copy I had downloaded to evalute a number of years ago.
I found a source rpm that has the 2.3.67 tarball in it. It looks reasonable. https://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/opensuse/repositories/games/openSUSE_Tumblewe... I have a local copy for now.
My feeling is that one will have better luck with that tarball, than with the 2.4 source that got archived.
I reopend a bug requesting an upgrade for vulture.
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Bruno Wolff III