AngbandOS

[iggy_hunter]

So after about 7 months of refactoring and thousands of modifications, I've finally got a solid direction on what I want out of AngbandOS.

The history of Angband/Moria/Rogue etc... is legendary, but it seems like we have run out of innovation and only a few of us hardcore fans remain. I really want to breathe some new life back into the game.

I've kinda been heading in this direction ... but now I've got my sights set on a final destination. That destination is to allow users (not developers) to create and modify that game in virtually every aspect online and without any experience or resources needed.

I've got two ideas that come to mind: Harry Potter and Star Wars. We should be able to alter the game enough to make what appears to be a completely different game where players can choose Harry Potter characters and which house they are in or Star Wars characters and whether they are the light side, dark side and/or jedis.

I'm working on being able to make every aspect reconfigurable through the web UI to include:
- all items
- all monsters
- all spells
- all stores
- all store owners
- dungeon design
- town level
- visual ASCII representations
- all attacks and effects
- all screen layouts
- game title and opening

Alternate goals:
- I want the game to be able to be hosted or run locally.
- I do not want to be the only person capable of running/hosting the game. AngbandOS is an open/public repo.
- I want the game to be capable of running on Linux, Windows, Mac and mobile devices.

At this time, I'm on point to meet all of these goals but I am probably about 1 to 2 years out from achieving even some of them.

[ekolis]

AngbandOS sounds like an operating system. This sounds more like an "Angband Maker"...

[iggy_hunter]

That is an awesome way of putting it, yes. I've added another goal. Someone mentioned using machine learning. I want to setup an API that allows anyone to design reinforcement learning AI into a character. I'd like to have two interfaces, one full web, and one via API ... so that AngbandOS can be used as a platform for learning RL.

[fph]

Sounds cool! Is there any part of this that you'd be willing to contribute back into Vanilla?

The added configurability and refactorings sounds like it would be a useful improvement even for the base game.

[Pete Mack]

V already has had a *lot* of refactoring.

[iggy_hunter]

At this point, the code base for AngbandOS isn't even remotely compatible with Vanilla. Before I started refactoring there were only 710 class definitions/objects. Now I'm at 6241 objects. 40 years of different developers, add-on, updates, bug fixes etc on Angband is extremely difficult to unwind.

AngbandOS is public for anyone to download via github. Mind you, the primary target is now a native HTTP server, not a console game. The original Cthangband WPF target is still working and does utilize the "core".

Yes, once the refactoring is done, AngbandOS should easily mimic Vanilla. All of the original algorithms are still there, I'm not rewriting anything.

[caruso]

This sounds interesting. Is it going to be comparable to Seven Day Band?

By the way, I still often lurk around here. A comp may inspire me to play Angaband again... (A Quickband comp would be especially nice.)

[iggy_hunter]

I've never seen that Seven Day Band ... interesting concept ... but it doesn't appear that AngbandOS is heading in that direction.

Like ekolis mentioned ... it will be at least a "Maker" ... but not on the fly.