Creating an Angband Variant

[OOD Town drunk]

Can anybody recommend a source for learning Angband Variant creation? Whether it be a .doc, .txt, .pdf, or a YouTube video?
I have a bit of programming experience, (I taught myself QBasic from a text book when I was about 11, and I took about 3 months of VisualBasic before I dropped out of high school) I have also been using computers for as long as I have been making memories, so I can handle it

Anyway, I just have some really cool ideas that I wanna try out. Any suggestions on where I can get started?

[T-Mick]

Download the source codes of a few variants and pick at them. That's the best resource you'll find.

[OOD Town drunk]

Download the source codes of a few variants and pick at them. That's the best resource you'll find.

I've been poking around the Vanilla files. Although now that you mention it, looking through multiple variants for comparison would be quite informative. I will start checking a few out. Thanks for the tip!

Although if anyone knows of any good sources for a beginner, I would still appreciate the info!!

[OOD Town drunk]

Is there a variant in which you can create your character, a la the Elder Scrolls Series? (I'm thinking of the level of character creation detail like in Daggerfall, which is a bit like Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, but far more in depth; for those of you only familiar with the newer elder scrolls games)

For example; Instead of picking a class, you would build your character from scratch, deciding your stats, strengths and weaknesses, your schools of magic (or lack thereof) and any and everything else. In Daggerfall, you can decide your resistance to the different elements, at the cost of slower leveling (If I remember correctly, It's been a decade or two)

I'm just curious because that is one of the main things I would like to see in a variant

[Derakon]

There are variants with skill-based progressions; in Sangband all you pick at the start is your race, for example. Zangband and its derivatives have magic schools that you can pick at the start, and IIRC Hengband and its friends also add personality modifiers on top of that (e.g. giving +10%SP, -10%HP to whatever race/class combination you selected).

I haven't played the games you're talking about so I don't know exactly what you're looking for.

[OOD Town drunk]

There are variants with skill-based progressions; in Sangband all you pick at the start is your race, for example. Zangband and its derivatives have magic schools that you can pick at the start, and IIRC Hengband and its friends also add personality modifiers on top of that (e.g. giving +10%SP, -10%HP to whatever race/class combination you selected).

I haven't played the games you're talking about so I don't know exactly what you're looking for.

Never played the Elder Scrolls series!? IMHO (And the opinions of many many others)They are some of the best Sandbox RPGs ever made!!! Although I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of those things that are indescribably awesome to me, and then I find out that online there is an entire cult of people dedicated to the hatred of it.. lol

But if nothing else, pick up Skyrim. You will definitely not regret it.

[Raajaton]

The mere mention of Skyrim makes me want to play it again. I did buy the latest Dragonborn DLC somewhat recently and haven't gotten around to playing it yet, so I suppose I should do that soon. Skyrim already has the most played time of any of my steam games at the moment - about 140 hours!

Certainly a great game for anyone who enjoys open world rpg's.

[Mondkalb]

In FAangband you start in different places with different races; depending on that some chars start with higher levels; you can also pick from some class depending additional skills.

[OOD Town drunk]

The mere mention of Skyrim makes me want to play it again. I did buy the latest Dragonborn DLC somewhat recently and haven't gotten around to playing it yet, so I suppose I should do that soon. Skyrim already has the most played time of any of my steam games at the moment - about 140 hours!

Certainly a great game for anyone who enjoys open world rpg's.

I hear in Dragonborn you can fight and cast from horseback and some other innovative changes, like ever more uber uber-tough dragons. In all honesty, I have been playing the Elder Scrolls series since like 96 or 97 or whenever daggerfall came out, and while I think that each game took the previous game, and honed it closer to perfection, by the time I played Skyrim, I was so familiar with the series that I was bored of it in a mere 100 hours or so. Granted, I have probably spent about 400-500 hours on Oblivion (over the years), and at least a hundred or 2 on each Daggerfall and Morrowind, (I never did play Arena, the 1st in the series) So boring of Skyrim in 100 hours or so doesn't seem too insane LOL

[Raajaton]

I seem to get really sucked in to every other Elder scrolls game. I, like you, didn't play Arena, but I played a fair amount of Daggerfall, and unreasonable amount of Morrowind, a little bit of Oblivion, and a lot of Skyrim.

Not sure why but for some reason I didn't get as sucked into Oblivion as most people did. Well, probably one of the biggest factors was the fact that it was given to me as a gift for Xbox 360, and playing it with a controller just didn't feel natural for me. Perhaps I should go back and play it on PC some day. I hear there are an astronomical amount of mods to bring the graphics up to Skyrim levels and beyond.

[OOD Town drunk]

I played oblivion so much that I would start new games and then hunt for any quest anywhere that I hadn't already completed a dozen times.
Lucky for you, you have an entire continent of Elder Scrolls to explore and conquer! I'm quite jealous actually. Oblivion is quite similar to Skyrim. Well, each game seems quite similar to the one before it, really. They just refine each one a little more.

Here is a youtube video I found with a sample of the character creation process from Daggerfall, if anybody cares to check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I0NO2buEEs

Obviously I cannot implement an identical character creation system. I would just like to design one kinda like this, primarily mimicking its extreme detail and depth.

[Patashu]

If you want to see what changes exist between a variant and vanilla (or between variants) very quickly it is useful to use a diff tool, such as

http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/

or

http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/

which compare text files and highlight all additions/deletions/changes.

If you are new to programming in C, you'll have to do a lot of reading and basic usage of the language, as it's possibly the least newbie friendly language today. (Or, you could contribute to Pyrel )