Angband: Maintain or Develop?

[takkaria]

I spent a few hours over the last day or so writing a little article about my views on the future of Angband. I thought I should probably post it here for people to read, otherwise it would be a bit of a wasted effort.

Angband: Develop of Maintain?

[Larvitz]

I read your entire article, and I fully support you. ^_^ I think your points are good, and your goods are pointy. ^_^ Develop. I always want more. ^_^

Code on, Takkaria. You = the shit. ^_^

[dionysian]

I would prefer Angband to be under active development. I can't imagine any reason to prohibit improvements to the game. If you're prone to nostalgia, you can always play an old version... they're not going anywhere.

[chem]

That's an interesting read! Here are my thoughts...

Angband has a long history of maintenance; the period of 1999-2006 was quite slow-paced for the game in terms of big changes, with the vast majority of changes being interface changes, code cleanups, and bug fixes. Whilst I believe this might have been sustainable back in the early 2000s, in the days of the variant explosion and its aftermath, I don't believe it is now. In the middle of 2004 newsgroup traffic dropped sharply and has continued to decline ever since. Keeping Angband on a drip feed of maintenance releases would do less than keep existing players.

Totally agreed! I'm glad you have that point of view.

First, new players. I'm not content in keeping Angband with the existing player base; I want to draw in basically all the people who would be interested in playing Angband and make the interface good enough so that they can pick up the basics without getting scared off. Any work towards this goal is work towards keeping Angband alive and healthy, since new players are the lifeblood of the game.

I'm happy to read this was the first priority -- it's something that the [V] maintainer is in a better position to do than variant developers. The progress made by [V] in interface/usability and new users can filter down to variants, but the flow rarely goes the other way.

Maintaining Vanilla is, I daresay, a harder job than maintaining variants (with apologies to Nick, Andrew, et al.). With a variant, the creator is the maintainer, and if you have a vision, you can carry it out; there is no issue of staying true to some of idea of "the game".

While one has to be more careful in changing [V] than a variant, I think now is a good time to note something that you didn't talk about: contributions to [V] from variants or patch authors. I mean, you've _done_ this, but I think this has the ability to keep [V] more lively and define your maintainership than something like a Nintendo DS port (apologies to DS fans). Variants like [O] or NPP were originally basically testbeds for game concepts that the authors thought could be incorporated in [V] one day. There are a lot of good things out there -- 4GAI, NPP/hengband/Z quest systems, additional races and classes -- which could be added to [V] and revitalize the [V] playerbase.

Given [V]'s SVN source control (for easy reversion and history of changes), bug trac system (collaboration helper), GPL accomplishment (open source encouraging collaboration), and the many popular variants with great ideas out there, I think [V] has a great opportunity to not only push forward with your vision, but with popular ideas from others as well.

[Donald Jonker]

It all sounds good to me as well. I also favor aggressive development: Eddie's patch to 309 is a complete vanilla experience, so for my part, "Forward! For God's sake forward!"

I'm a little fuzzy on the "explanations" part... I suppose you mean, for example, the change from {good} and {cursed} to [magical} requires some explanation? Could you elaborate what form this takes and what exactly you mean (in other words, explain )?

[takkaria]

While one has to be more careful in changing [V] than a variant, I think now is a good time to note something that you didn't talk about: contributions to [V] from variants or patch authors. I mean, you've _done_ this, but I think this has the ability to keep [V] more lively and define your maintainership than something like a Nintendo DS port (apologies to DS fans). Variants like [O] or NPP were originally basically testbeds for game concepts that the authors thought could be incorporated in [V] one day. There are a lot of good things out there -- 4GAI, NPP/hengband/Z quest systems, additional races and classes -- which could be added to [V] and revitalize the [V] playerbase.

Given [V]'s SVN source control (for easy reversion and history of changes), bug trac system (collaboration helper), GPL accomplishment (open source encouraging collaboration), and the many popular variants with great ideas out there, I think [V] has a great opportunity to not only push forward with your vision, but with popular ideas from others as well.

I intend to carefully look at features from other variants when it's appropriate; I would be interested into looking at AI changes in the future, but they're not a priority for me, and if I implement quests, they will be closer to the vision that the original creators had—special levels which you may stumble on once in a while with certain themes. New races and classes I'm not so interested in—adding more "stuff" isn't a goal, but enhancing fun is.

In all likelihood, the first import of code from variants will be in dungeon generation and maybe some terrain types, but that won't be for a while—there's a lot of work to be done just working on base V things for the moment.

[takkaria]

It all sounds good to me as well. I also favor aggressive development: Eddie's patch to 309 is a complete vanilla experience, so for my part, "Forward! For God's sake forward!"

I'm a little fuzzy on the "explanations" part... I suppose you mean, for example, the change from {good} and {cursed} to [magical} requires some explanation? Could you elaborate what form this takes and what exactly you mean (in other words, explain )?

I mean, basically, I want to work out a coherent world that the game works in. At the moment, there is no explanation for just why the town is like it is, how exactly storekeepers get their wares, why a character can tell something is "magical" at all, why they know damage dice by default, etc. I would like to figure out reasons for why things are as they are in in-game terms, since it makes deciding what to do in corner cases easier. At the moment, changes to the above things are all a bit disjointed and there's no overall reason why things are one way rather than another.

[chem]

In all likelihood, the first import of code from variants will be in dungeon generation and maybe some terrain types,

Terrain! Yes. I was not attempting an exhaustive list of things I found cool in variants, but the [Un] terrain and its effects are quite neat. My favorite aspect of that variant.

[Narvius]

I would prefer Angband to be under active development. I can't imagine any reason to prohibit improvements to the game. If you're prone to nostalgia, you can always play an old version... they're not going anywhere.

These are my thoughts, +1.

[Pete Mack]

I say: keep it under development, especially for UI. (More slowly for gameplay.)

One thing: I suggest you play some more games to completion, even with save-file scumming or with wizard enabled.

You are unlikely to keep the game properly balanced if you don't play through occasionally, with fairly quick diving. (There's already some evidence of this in 3.1 IMO.)

[takkaria]

I say: keep it under development, especially for UI. (More slowly for gameplay.)

One thing: I suggest you play some more games to completion, even with save-file scumming or with wizard enabled.

You are unlikely to keep the game properly balanced if you don't play through occasionally, with fairly quick diving. (There's already some evidence of this in 3.1 IMO.)

Yeah, 3.1 definitely does show signs of it. I need to play more.

[Pete Mack]

Yeah, 3.1 definitely does show signs of it. I need to play more.

Just remember to dive, especially if you don't cheat. Spending hours before reaching 2000' won't help you with game balance. And it's more fun that way....

You can try the current comp character. Judging from the results so far, it's just about ideal for fast play. :P

[Nick]

Thanks for that; very interesting and encouraging. Just a couple of comments:

1. Vanilla is the main game. You should do what you need to do to improve the game, and not consider the variants except as a source of ideas. Variants only exist at all because of Ben's cleanup, so any further cleanup you do will promote variant development in the long run. Also, maintaining V is a much tougher gig than any variant, and don't let anyone tell you different.
2. My feeling that you were exactly what the game needed as maintainer has only got stronger over time. Nonetheless, I still feel guilty about nominating you to do it and disrupting any other plans you might have had. Any time you want to let me off the hook here I'd be grateful.

[TJS]

Development is definitely what brought me back into playing Angband. I like the idea that Angband will continue to develop for years to come, slowly building up a fanbase along the way. I really like the new things like the mixed blessing rings and the removal of a lot of junk.

I'm also pleased that you're resisting the calls to add more classes and other content for the sake of it. One thing that puts me off some roguelikes and RPGs in general is the bewildering array of choices when you start a game for the first time.

It certainly stops me playing some variants when I get confronted with loads of races, classes and skills when I load it up. Having a few choices that are clearly defined and have a real effect on gameplay is more appealing to me than hundreds of options for everything.

And I also agree that simplifying things is the way to go, with needlessly complicated stuff being removed.

I think you're doing a great job!

[tigen]

Yeah, definitely develop.

I do wonder sometimes why V couldn't have started by taking NPP, and stripping some things out that didn't fit for V. For example, a new release could have been NPP, minus extra classes, minus quests, and maybe a toned down usage of the terrain.

In the long run, from working with Angband's sources I feel that a more modern and modular approach to the code structure would be beneficial. But I think that would involve basically a complete rewrite, probably structured using extensible events/sensitivity lists like Incursion. (However I'm very skeptical of the need for the scripting VM thing in Incursion.)

Incursion is pretty amazing though, with the tactical options, multiclassing, alignments and diplomacy (hey, Charisma actually does something!) But it's rather slow paced compared to Angband.