History of angband

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  • Pete Mack
    Prophet
    • Apr 2007
    • 6883

    History of angband

    Was there ever one written? This project has been kept alive for an astonishingly long time, so it'd make sense to have a real history written down, lest we forget.
  • Nick
    Vanilla maintainer
    • Apr 2007
    • 9637

    #2
    The release details an rephial (start here and go forward) almost qualify; there's also the Angband chapter in Dungeon Hacks. But yes, it would be a good thing to have.
    One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
    In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

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    • Pete Mack
      Prophet
      • Apr 2007
      • 6883

      #3
      Yikes. A whole lot has happened (not all of it good, of course) since 2.5, which was rather my point. Maybe we need a FrogKnows competition?

      Comment

      • debo
        Veteran
        • Oct 2011
        • 2402

        #4
        Originally posted by Pete Mack
        Yikes. A whole lot has happened (not all of it good, of course) since 2.5, which was rather my point. Maybe we need a FrogKnows competition?
        We did one not so long ago (relatively speaking.) Despite the apparently large number of posters who thought this was a good idea, only 2 people participated, probably because the requirements to get it running were awful. The general feedback was "this is kinda fun but the UI is too terrible to for us now and I probably wouldn't do it again."

        Glaurung, Father of the Dragons says, 'You cannot avoid the ballyhack.'

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        • PowerWyrm
          Prophet
          • Apr 2008
          • 2986

          #5
          Originally posted by Pete Mack
          Maybe we need a FrogKnows competition?
          FrogKnows is unplayable. Drops are garbage and monsters take too long to kill.
          PWMAngband variant maintainer - check https://github.com/draconisPW/PWMAngband (or http://www.mangband.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=9) to learn more about this new variant!

          Comment

          • takkaria
            Veteran
            • Apr 2007
            • 1951

            #6
            Originally posted by Pete Mack
            Yikes. A whole lot has happened (not all of it good, of course) since 2.5, which was rather my point. Maybe we need a FrogKnows competition?
            I think Nick was referring to the list of versions on the right hand side. If you follow through from one version to the next, there is some history of the events and discussions around the major releases, pieced together from newsgroup posts at the time. This includes releases we don't have the source code for in some cases.
            takkaria whispers something about options. -more-

            Comment

            • rhutson
              Rookie
              • Jul 2013
              • 23

              #7
              Yikes! So there's no copies available of the early 2.7.x source code?

              I'm almost sure that I have the 2.7.3 source code since that's my Linux executable-only release on rephial.org. I may have the 2.7.2 source code as well. The surmountable problem is that they would be on a Linux box with no Wi-Fi card which is currently being used as an end table.

              Comment

              • rhutson
                Rookie
                • Jul 2013
                • 23

                #8
                That was actually fun in a reminiscent way. This monitor does not support my custom designed video resolutions, the root file system was corrupt, I got to quickly recall how to use fdisk and correct the cylinder size, but with the most disturbing finding being the floppy diskette drive being flagged by BIOS as broken.

                While I did retain the 4.2 BSD source code along with proprietary Sun source code, I did not retain the missing Angband source code as I would have assumed that someone else would have done so.

                I did find all encrypted emails both from and to Ben, Charles, and many other game players before, during and after that transition period. I would say that translated history of that transition is "close enough".

                Comment

                • Nick
                  Vanilla maintainer
                  • Apr 2007
                  • 9637

                  #9
                  Originally posted by rhutson
                  Yikes! So there's no copies available of the early 2.7.x source code?

                  I'm almost sure that I have the 2.7.3 source code since that's my Linux executable-only release on rephial.org. I may have the 2.7.2 source code as well. The surmountable problem is that they would be on a Linux box with no Wi-Fi card which is currently being used as an end table.
                  Getting hold of that would be good. The relevant bits of the commit history on the Angband Variant Repository show that it's pretty slim pickings in the early 2.7s.
                  One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
                  In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

                  Comment

                  • rhutson
                    Rookie
                    • Jul 2013
                    • 23

                    #10
                    Originally posted by Nick
                    it's pretty slim pickings in the early 2.7s.
                    Our posts likely overlapped, but I have discovered that I have no such source code to share.

                    I thought that older source code was on phial.org, but phial is gone. Ben would surely have source code copies of his Angband releases, but they have disappeared, for reasons unexplained.

                    I obviously cannot discuss certain internal dyanmics, but Ben and I both recognized that Angband was once very buggy. That bothered us both, very much.

                    Comment

                    • johnretroreload
                      Rookie
                      • Feb 2018
                      • 20

                      #11
                      Angband history

                      https://groups.google.com/forum/#!ms...8/vPxfKrk_HcMJ - Just found these surveys of angband personal history
                      'Mischa E Gelman posted several general-purpose Angband surveys
                      some years back, and a lot of people had a good time with them'

                      https://groups.google.com/forum/#!to...nd/yJLrDkoMGgw - Angband vs nethack

                      Plus the earliest version I could find was for the DOS 286 version of Angband 2.7.9v3 (1/24/96):
                      *Especially with ftp.thangorodrim.net/ being down

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