How to play on mobile (Android/iOS)?

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Flambard
King Vampire
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Joined: Wed 20.06.2007, 10:49

How to play on mobile (Android/iOS)?

Post by Flambard » Mon 27.04.2020, 16:44

This guide mostly concerns Android, because we don't really ship iOS binaries.

However, if you have a Mac and an iOS device, you can compile it yourself. Such version would only last you 7 days (till next recompile), which is bloody inconvenient, but, well... it's doable.

One thing to keep in mind: mobile interface (although friendly-looking) is not aimed at new players. If you are a newbie, you should probably start with the desktop version, to get a grasp of how the game is controlled and played. There are lots of commands, and depending on your class, you'll need quite a bit of them.

If you're veteran (PW)(M)Angband player, however, you will understand what mobile interface is trying to do, so keep reading.

Here's a list of known quirks, which you'll have to put up with, to be hopefully properly fixed at some point:
- when the game starts, all you see is a black screen and on-screen keyboard
- just wait for a bit, it's actually querying the meta...
- when server list appears, use the on-screen keyboard to pick a server
- after entering your password and hitting Enter, the on-screen keyboard might disappear BEFORE actually sending the Enter key? (weird bug)
- if that happened, just pull up the keyboard back, and press Enter again
- when asked to press any key, you can hit the Escape icon

And those are features, not bugs:
- 'Enter' menu (which shows a list of all possible commands) is intentionally disabled.
- '%' Edit macros menu is also intentionally disabled: messing with macros can lead to disastrous consequences, especially if there's no easy way to just delete a pref file. Please see QuickBar notes below, for an alternative to macros.

General buttons

Top-left corner (or right bellow a message popup) - ESCAPE.
This is the most important key, which is always onscreen. In most cases it works like keyboard ESC button, allowing you to quit various prompts, stores, will clear command queue, etc.
In some cases it can also collapse icon panels, AND ALSO should be used to "press any key".

On-screen keyboard button (Top-right corner).
This button will toggle on-screen keyboard. When everything else fails, pop it up, and use good-ol' keyboard. Hopefully this would never happen, but that's the universal fallback for everything missing from the mobile interface.

Toggle Icon Overlay (Bottom-Right corner).
This button toggles the rest of the interface. Everything except general buttons will be switched off.

QuickBar 1-9 (Bottom)
Those icons also always stay onscreen and can contain your custom shortcuts. Learning to use quickbar is highely recommended.

Category selectors

On the right, you have category selectors, which are
1) Character Commands
2) Directional Commands
3) Player Commands
4) Inventory
5) Equipment
6) Spells

Each controls which command icons you'll see on the left side of the screen.

Quick Bar

Anything can be dragged to the quick bar! Category selectors, commands, basically any icon that you see on screen can be dragged into quick bar.

Of note, when dragged to quick bar:
- Pickup command: will additionally display floor item
- Floor item toggle: will additionally display floor item
- Inventory object: will create a macro for that item
- Equipment object: will create a macro for that item
- Spell: will create a macro for that spell

Item-related macros will also display number of items in first found inventory slot (but not the total sum).

Some suggestions for the quick bar:
- 'R'est key
- 'g'et item key
- up/down staircase traversal, if you stair-scum a lot
- arrows if you're using a bow
- your most-used spells here (attack, detect?)

Basically, if you'd macro something on desktop version, put it into the quickbar.

Using items

1. Open your inventory.
2. Tap an item to select it (no action is performed at this point).
3. Tap a command from the list on the left (this finally triggers the action).

However, at some points, the game will ASK YOU for an item, and present the inventory screen. In such cases, clicking on item will immediately trigger the choice.

To make matters even more confusing, it's possible to start from a command AND THEN select an item (like in regular Angband). To do this, close your inventory (by using ESCape icon). While possible, and can be useful in some cases, this is not recommended.

Here's a promise: it's much easier to grasp by trying it out, than to read about it, and it's not actually complicated, and, dare I say it, quite intuitive.

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