A horrific noob's commentated 'band adventures

[EpicMan]

I'm glad to see Hengband get some (English) exposure on YT, it and TOME2 were my favorite roguelikes as a teenager.

I had a near-death from hunger in the new Hengband a few weeks ago. I had entered a dungeon (can't remember which, mountains maybe) from the surface, dived down, filled my pack with loot then ate and dropped my food to carry yet more loot. Recalled back to surface and found myself in the middle of nowhere. I got about a third of the way to the nearest town before I became faint.
Nobody I encountered dropped food so I had to chug !CCW until I was merely hungry so I could return to the world map and figure out the exact directions to the town.
I eventually ran out of !CCW (I started with about 80) and had to waste my potions of Healing but I managed to stumble into town and make it to the Inn.

[smbhax]

I'm glad to see Hengband get some (English) exposure on YT, it and TOME2 were my favorite roguelikes as a teenager.

I had a near-death from hunger in the new Hengband a few weeks ago. I had entered a dungeon (can't remember which, mountains maybe) from the surface, dived down, filled my pack with loot then ate and dropped my food to carry yet more loot. Recalled back to surface and found myself in the middle of nowhere. I got about a third of the way to the nearest town before I became faint.
Nobody I encountered dropped food so I had to chug !CCW until I was merely hungry so I could return to the world map and figure out the exact directions to the town.
I eventually ran out of !CCW (I started with about 80) and had to waste my potions of Healing but I managed to stumble into town and make it to the Inn.

Ooh that's a good tip, I may have some healing potion or other that could tide me over a few extra turns, I'll have to check on that. Depending on how this Recall power works--hm well eh if I can't get it to work I'll probably just starve well before I make it out, but I suppose you never know what sort of fortuitous arrangement of up-shafts may materialize. ; )

Does regular Recall just have a chance to drop you somewhere out in the wilderness, or was there a particular reason that happened?

[EpicMan]

Ooh that's a good tip, I may have some healing potion or other that could tide me over a few extra turns, I'll have to check on that. Depending on how this Recall power works--hm well eh if I can't get it to work I'll probably just starve well before I make it out, but I suppose you never know what sort of fortuitous arrangement of up-shafts may materialize. ; )

Does regular Recall just have a chance to drop you somewhere out in the wilderness, or was there a particular reason that happened?

I think if you enter a dungeon from the wilderness you recall up to its surface location instead of a town, but I'm not 100% sure.

[DrWho42]

thanks for the uploads! i've subscribed to your youtube channel

[smbhax]

thanks for the uploads! i've subscribed to your youtube channel

Thanks! That's really encouraging! : D

[Djabanete]

I recommend Android Berserker in Hengband.

As an Android, your level-ups are based on your equipment, not your XP. You'll have an extremely powerful early game, and your first good pieces of equipment will send you rocketing up to experience level 15, 20, 30, in much less play time.

It's not necessarily easy to actually win, as the Berserker has key weaknesses in the end game (can't easily escape a bad situation). But you can get to the mid-to-end game relatively quickly and experience a TON of content without having a clue what you're doing.

Edit: If you choose the Munchkin personality, it IS pretty easy to win, and it can be done by a reckless, blundering player (me) in 4--6 hours repeatably. I used to do that often

[smbhax]

Ooh yeah I'm really curious about Android from what I'd read in the help text. Good to read more about it, thanks for mentioning it!

I'm doing random builds currently but wouldn't mind if it came up. ^_^

I did know the basics about Munchkin, which I've been avoiding, from the help--although I didn't imagine it made THAT big a difference, gosh!

I definitely don't have a clue but I'm not in a hurry to win or even get real far. I actually kind of hate beating games. And finishing books, and so on. More about the journey and whatnot I suppose. '_' 'bands having potentially infinite dungeons is probably a great deal of what drew me to them. : D

[smbhax]

Angband - ill-advised hydra-summoning and potion chugging! 'O'

https://youtu.be/tJhJB08R_XM

0:00 - start
1:20 - depth 18
5:10 - good Leather Shield of Resistance
24:30 - depth 19
28:40 - Shagrat, the Orc Captain
45:26 - hydras
1:03:13 - an Umber hulk tunnels!
1:04:50 - ill-advised potion chugging 'O'

Mmmmaybe I shouldn't have set off the rune of summoning; probably should'a tried the uh wand of slowness or whatever on the 4-headed hydra it summoned, at least! Probably shouldn't have chugged those three unidentified potions, either. Oh my stats! = ooo

Umber hulks can dig tunnels, that's really cool!

[smbhax]

Hengband // Just how deep does the Yeek cave go??

https://youtu.be/otPi3xAh5VI

11th level Barbarian Berserker:

0:00 - Yeek cave depth 8: snagas
12:50 - Town (Outpost)
18:33 - Oh that trident
28:36 - Yeek cave depth 8 (regenerated): nurglings
35:15 - Nami, the Mate
45:51 - Lochaber axe, dual wielding
48:27 - Yeek cave depth 9: gremlins, war bears
51:07 - Pakuman
55:14 - Brodda, the Easterling
56:12 - Lousy, the King of Lice; Leather Jacket
1:03:32 - Yeek cave depth 10: tax collectors
1:14:32 - Yeek cave depth 11: Robin Hood, the Outlaw
1:17:28 - Dailai Dongzhu, the Captain of the Southerners
1:23:38 - Goliath, the king of ant-lion
1:29:08 - Town again
1:36:22 - Yeek cave depth 12: Lagduf, the Snaga
1:43:52 - Aries, the youngest cheetahmen
1:54:32 - Yeek cave depth 13: kamikaze yeeks
1:56:16 - Boldor, King of the Yeeks
2:05:56 - Outpost
2:07:46 - "Dump Witness" quest
2:23:06 - accidental Wilderness
2:25:46 - Angband depth 1
2:27:26 - Outpost: "Old Man Willow Quest"
2:29:36 - wrap!

[There was a lot this time so I'm just gonna whack in my whole YouTube video description write-up...even though I always write way too much in them.]

My "Recall" ability says "MP 10" which turns out to mean that it takes off six or seven HP when I use it; also fails a lot, prob 'cause INT/WIS are 3.

Without being able to read scrolls, or afford store buy-back, left with inventory "feeling" on gear; so far, "{good}" and "{excellent}" items haven't been cursed, so wear/wielding those. Get feels fast on most weap/armor, never(?) on rings. Before I learned this, sold what turned out to be an ego trident (from Smeagol). Ah.

Poison wears off this char really fast! And so many HP, even CCW potions seem insignificant.

Dual-wielding two less enchanted weapons I found farther down in Yeek cave, I'm now doing 280+ damage per round which seems ridiculously overpowered for character level 19!

My female Barb Berz got titled "Rage Prince" at lev 16. Was going to put in a bug that it should be "Rage Princess" for a female but eh that wouldn't fit in the left-hand column there, so...I dunno. There just shouldn't be gender assigned to characters anyway, I think that's what vanilla Angband does now.

Found some "vault"-like spaces that were completely shut-in and had to be dug into, with usually nothing or maybe one small monster inside. Did find some biggish caverns scattered around Yeek cave depth 11, that was a nice variation.

I'd thought Yeek cave (from glancing through source files) only went down 8 floors, but it kept going for a bit. ; )

When first used the Recall ability in town (CL 12, Yeek lev 8), I only had the Yeek cave option. When I did it next (1:36:01 , CL 17, Yeek 12), I had another option: Angband level 1! What causes that to appear? And there's a hint about Angband you can get from the rumor option at the town inn or whatever, I noticed later--that was the first one I got there. Angband itself is located sorta midway east across the continent. Oh and I found when I accidentally wandered SE from town, that if you recall from the wilderness to a dungeon, then back, you go back to that spot in the wilderness, rather than to the last town you were in. Good to know!

Thought my big 3 stats couldn't be drained but CON went from 18/82 to 18/80 from a diseased Nurgling bite.

Oh! My CHR went up two points from wielding that Lochaber Axe--this is the kind of boost I don't get to see because of not having regular IDing access, but I should have been able to spot that on my character sheet (it went down 1 later from a graze busting through a glass door for a silly quest in town 2:13:04; restored it via Potion of Restore Charisma 2:18:24).

[EpicMan]

The Mayor in Outpost can ID your gear for a price. You will be without *ID* until you get to another town, where the library will offer "Research Item".

[smbhax]

The Mayor in Outpost can ID your gear for a price. You will be without *ID* until you get to another town, where the library will offer "Research Item".

Oh wow, thanks! I'll have to check that out! : D

[smbhax]

Angband // chopping old forest tree monsters with a +10 Ring of Damage!

Level 26 human warrior:

https://youtu.be/GZDvCtepblg

0:00 - start
6:14 - town (read wrong scroll ; D)
14:34 - +10 Ring of Damage
19:17 - couldn't see this cold vortex??
20:54 - acid ants ughhhhhhh
34:07 - Boldor, King of the Yeeks
46:37 - floor 20
50:21 - old forest trees
58:51 - wrap-up & what's next!

Puzzled as to why I couldn't see that cold vortex until I was within two tiles of it! = o Are they just hard to see?

It's that seemingly inevitable time in the dungeon for acid ants! I suppose I should have backed down the corridor to see if I could lure them into a longer field of fire, but I wasn't confident they would keep coming out after me back there. Well, anyway these "only" took me down by eight AC, pretty light by my past standards; I guess that Shield of Resistance (not to mention the +10 Ring of Damage!) helped! They love spitting on my boots, though. ; P Guhh.

The Rod of Illumination was coming in really hand in all those dark rooms--and it recharges so fast! I wonder if it's making the game a little less exciting by revealing all...then again it's probably just that I'm somehow way over-leveled at the moment. A lot of regenerating a floor and playing it twice due to silly trips back to town, I suppose. : P

[smbhax]

Had a mini-adventure when I decided to try compiling Umoria in Cygwin! Ran into three things I had to hack to get it to compile/run; the short version--my notes--is this:

~~~~~~~~
had to install cmake

git clone https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria/umoria.git

headers.h
- comment lines 21, 27, 28
- add "#else" as line 22

game_save.cpp
- comment lines 810, 811, 812

cd umoria
cmake .
make

cd umoria
./umoria
~~~~~~~~~~


Longer version:

After installing cmake, cloning the repository to my local drive, and running cmake, the make failed with

In file included from /home/smbhax/umoria/src/config.cpp:7:
/home/smbhax/umoria/src/headers.h:28:5: error: #error "Unknown compiler"
   28 | #   error "Unknown compiler"
      |     ^~~~~
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/umoria.dir/build.make:76: CMakeFiles/umoria.dir/src/config.cpp.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:83: CMakeFiles/umoria.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:91: all] Error 2

headers.h uses one set of includes if your system IDs as Windows, another for Apple and Linux, and then intentionally errors out if it isn't any of those; if I was smart I'd know how to ID Cygwin for it, but instead I just commented the "else...error" out, and made it default to treating everything not Windows like Apple/Linux...which maybe it should have set up to do anyway, but what do I know. : P

So once that's done, the next make error is:

/home/smbhax/umoria/src/game_save.cpp: In function �bool loadGame(bool&)’:
/home/smbhax/umoria/src/game_save.cpp:810:29: error: array subscript 66 is above array bounds of �Tile_t [66][198]’ [-Werror=array-bounds]
  810 |                 if (tile >= &dg.floor[MAX_HEIGHT][0]) {
      |                             ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In file included from /home/smbhax/umoria/src/headers.h:59,
                 from /home/smbhax/umoria/src/game_save.cpp:8:
/home/smbhax/umoria/src/dungeon.h:55:12: note: while referencing �Dungeon_t::floor’
   55 |     Tile_t floor[MAX_HEIGHT][MAX_WIDTH];
      |            ^~~~~

I have no idea what this is or how to fix it properly; but it's another intentional internal error check--making sure the floor tiles are valid, maybe?--so I just commented it out. = P

Update: this is a known game error occurring when compiling with gcc 11, rather than 10: https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria/umoria/issues/44

After that, the game built--but running it just gave this error:

Can't open score file 'scores.dat'

That file existed, so I don't know why it couldn't read it. It appears to be a binary file. Sooo I just commented out the part in main.cpp that checks that file and prints the error. = P

That gets the game running, except you have to click through this in place of the high score screen at the end:

Error opening score file 'scores.dat'.  -more-

So I commented that error message out in scores.cpp--now the game quits real fast! : D

[Update: Ah! "cmake ." builds the game into a subfolder named "umoria" inside your home/[username]/umoria folder (so umoria/umoria/umoria.exe : pppp)--and the game wants you to cd to that directory before running the .exe--if you do that (and of course don't actually comment out the scores.dat loading stuff in main.cpp and scores.cpp that I was talking about above) the scores work, and other things like the splash screen and "v" version command work. : PP Sooo yeah.]

Ahem. So that was my awful hacking of Umoria. I'd got the source code in the first place because I was thinking maybe I could do something like I did in Hengband to make the door navigation less clunky, ie just auto-succeeding when having to pick a random door lock or something. But I find Umoria's code a lot harder to figure out for this non-programmer--also, it doesn't seem to take AS many clicks as Hengband sometimes did to pick a door lock, and besides, Umoria has lots of other door things that can slow you down, too. But, now that I can play the game in a decent console--without the flashing cursors, screen refreshes, and other garbage I'd been getting in the Windows cmd terminal--they somehow seem to fit with the pace of the game. So I didn't mess with 'em.

Although my left wrist was irritated by the end of my little test play sessions. Maybe I'll have to make the "s" searches auto-succeed. = P [Edit: Oh, the manual suggests that entering "0s" would automate search command mashing, neat!] [Update: "0s" WILL take up 99 turns if it doesn't find anything, however, so that's awkward. So maybe like "11s" if you must.]

Update 11/8/22: the game_save.cpp build error was fixed in July: https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria...d14425755e7ba5

[smbhax]

Umoria \\ running this 1987 roguelike--slightly incorrectly--in Cygwin on Windows 11!

Starting a half-elf warrior and running the game from the wrong directory, which broke scores, the splash screen, and the version display, oops! (Updated notes in the post above--after recording this--for less error-filled compiling and running, hurgh.)

https://youtu.be/v-UBXj0-soI

0:00 - start
0:41 - notes on compiling in Cygwin
4:01 - wrong! I broke the scores! 'p'
7:17 - character creation
9:37 - haggling in town
20:37 - 50 feet down in the dungeon
41:33 - 100 feet
1:02:37 - foot-dragging back to town
1:11:26 - selling in town
1:21:52 - Angband comparison
1:24:44 - wrap-up & what's next!

Wow so stairs are always disconnected--even when you go back up to town, where you then have to re-locate the stairway down (1:20:25)!!

[smbhax]

Hengband \\ ~ The sea creatures teach me critical lessons = o ~

https://youtu.be/7SZ2u-htfbY

19th level Barbarian Berserker:

0:00 - start
1:35 - Old Man Willow quest
16:35 - Thieves Hideout quest
19:15 - Warg problem quest
40:45 - Water Cave quest
44:26 - New Barbarian Berserker ;_;
1:09:29 - wrap!

Okay well I learned two definite lessons here:

a) Don't take a Danger level 35 quest when you're character level 21, no matter how tuff you think your Barbarian Berserker is!)

b) Barb-Berz's inability to use rods/staves/wands/scrolls leaves them without most of the usual means of escape when running into a scrape! = o

I was gonna try again with the Barb-Berz, because I was having so much fun smashing things, and indeed ground my way to level 7 and depth 4 of the Yeek cave at the end of the episode, but point b) having occurred now to me...I think I'll just roll a new random character next time and try something new! ^_^