Angband: Maintain or Develop?

[Djabanete]

Develop, 100%!! You've been doing a fantastic job so far and (as long as you're up for it) we'd all like to see more!

[tigpup]

Very interesting article.

I agree with your push to develop.

I also agree that attracting and keeping new players is important.
How this can be done is a challenging question. Having an active and open forum is certainly important, especially when the learning curve is so steep.
Learning is an important aspect of the game. One important aspect here is answering "why did I die?". Perhaps giving more details on the death screen could help here. Eg: (i) "You were killed by a XYZ Hit Point acid breath from a mature black dragon. You had no acid resistance". or (ii) "You recieved multiple blows from various monsters whilst you were paralysed. You had no source of free-action to save you from paralyzation". etc. I realise this has it's limitations, and could be difficult to implement.

Many modern games allow the player to start and make some progress very quickly. Angband is less like this, and that may scare some people off; the "what am I meant to do?" issue.

Some things are unintuitive to the newbie. It's quite easy to walk around slowed and/or with reduced stats, and die not knowing why. Perhaps a set if suppresible 'obvious help' messages would help. "You are at speed -5, and your strength has fallen to 15". These could be repeated after a set number of turns as a reminder.

Another thing I feel is that learning the game without spoilers is very difficult. In particular, I mean monster spoilers. Deeper in the dungeon, so many things can kill you if you're unprepared, that monster knowledge is vital. Probing only partially deals with this. It could take a newbie many battles with Sauron to uncover his weakness (and his attacks), but use the spoilers, and you know exactly how to prepare. This feels wrong. Either they are 'spoliers' and considered cheating, or they contain information that should be available in-game (perhaps free, or perhaps at a price).

Final idea on helping newbies... a demo character with a demo script. "You are in the town, go to the general store..." etc. Have a few preset (non-random) dungeon levels where the basics can be explained, in a step-by-step way.

-Neil.

[Zikke]

I agree with the above post. An in-game tutorial would be excellent. Sort of like an instanced dungeon (in modern game terms) where in-game messages can walk a player through navigating the Town and then going down into a pre-mapped dlvl 1 and having them kill some weak things and find a couple basic pieces of gear, eat some food, combine a torch, etc.

I also think having a set of guides in a separate section of the forums (locked threads) and advertising these in-game would be a great help to players who want to learn more than the tutorial.


Another thought about diving, [actually I'm going to make a new thread about this]

[tuppe666]

I'm not one for posting, but that article was a joy to read, well written and well thought out.

I look forward to seeing these improvements. I am a little concerned about the focus on consoles, particularly handhelds, although to be fair I've only played on a gamepark device and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I remember buying a 17" monitor just so I could get more boxes on the screen...so I'm a little concerned especially with a more "Wesnoth" Angband, as graphics requires more real estate, as does terrain.

I'm also a little concerned about any "dumbing down", I applaud any effort which reduces the learning curve...but still provides the depth that promotes replay...but thats really hard. For the same reason I'm against implemented changes like this

#596 Make monster XP and native depth always known, even without
kills

and for changes like this

#39 (Bring back player ghosts (may not make it for 3.1))

This post has come across as more negative than I'd like. I look forward to your changes and am grateful your making them.

[takkaria]

I look forward to seeing these improvements. I am a little concerned about the focus on consoles, particularly handhelds, although to be fair I've only played on a gamepark device and it wasn't a pleasant experience. I remember buying a 17" monitor just so I could get more boxes on the screen...so I'm a little concerned especially with a more "Wesnoth" Angband, as graphics requires more real estate, as does terrain.

Terrain doesn't take up any more real estate than any other grid does. It's all ASCII characters, unless you turn on graphics...

I'm also not abandoning desktop gameplay; I just think that handhelds are a great place to have Angband running and I'm really interested in making space for that to happen.

I'm also a little concerned about any "dumbing down", I applaud any effort which reduces the learning curve...but still provides the depth that promotes replay...but thats really hard. For the same reason I'm against implemented changes like this:
#596 Make monster XP and native depth always known, even without kills
#39 (Bring back player ghosts (may not make it for 3.1))

I don't like to think I'm dumbing down the game or reducing replay value. Reducing the learning curve is something I want to do in terms of UI, which if anything increases replay value. I also wish to reduce tedium; a game which requires or even just encourages tedium to play just isn't that fun IMO, and I tend to think that in removing it I'm actually increasing replay value. YMMV.

On your specific points:

I consider XP and native depth to be essential information you need to decide whether you should attack a monster or not. In particular, this comes from believing that a player should not have to get in a fight and die from something before learning that that monster is dangerous, which is needlessly frustrating IMO. I'd like to encourage a style of play which involves avoidance of threats rather than a ploughing into them.

Also, you have a problem with bringing back player ghosts? They were part of Angband at the beginning... Maybe you take 'player ghost' to mean some kind of cheat-death option? It's not. It's where dead characters get turned into monsters for future characters to fight at some point. It was taken out in 2.7.x at some point, but before then was there from the start.

[Rizwan]

I consider XP and native depth to be essential information you need to decide whether you should attack a monster or not. In particular, this comes from believing that a player should not have to get in a fight and die from something before learning that that monster is dangerous, which is needlessly frustrating IMO. I'd like to encourage a style of play which involves avoidance of threats rather than a ploughing into them.

IMO monster XP, native depth and hitpoints are all essential information but you should not get them for free. Use a rod of divining or whatever or fight them first to get that information. A player should not get into a fight without knowing their opponent in the first place. and if while fighting you see that you are not doing any significant damage you should leave.

So after having ID a monster the monster hitpoint * could be replaced by numbers? Say like 20/20? And be extra careful when encountering a new unID monster.

[takkaria]

IMO monster XP, native depth and hitpoints are all essential information but you should not get them for free. Use a rod of divining or whatever or fight them first to get that information. A player should not get into a fight without knowing their opponent in the first place. and if while fighting you see that you are not doing any significant damage you should leave.

So after having ID a monster the monster hitpoint * could be replaced by numbers? Say like 20/20? And be extra careful when encountering a new unID monster.

"A player should not get into a fight without knowing their opponent in the first place." Assuming the old model, then players should not get into any fights at all, since they never know their opponent before first fighting them. It's not like I'm making available blow and spell info without some fighting, but I'm just trying to encourage a game where you can choose to avoid monsters you haven't fought yet with some degree of intelligence.

[buzzkill]

I wouldn't mind seeing a rare magic item or obscure class/race ability (maybe a human ability) that would display monster HP as 46/92 instead of *****. Stars shouldn't change to numbers until a successful hit occurs of the monster is otherwise probed.

[tigpup]

[quote=takkaria; I'm just trying to encourage a game where you can choose to avoid monsters you haven't fought yet with some degree of intelligence.[/quote]

Providing that "degree of intelligence" isn't browsing spoiler or edit files, I completely agree with you here.

IMHO, "haven't fought yet" should be built into each game.

For me (and it may well be just me), boredom comes from knowing what's easy/hard/special etc and what's not. That's why I scum levels. The unknown is what makes me play with randarts.

I would love to enter a new level, detect and see a Dagger (13D2) guarded by an Ancient Pink Dragon and 10 Snow Trolls in a 5x6 Knox Vault surrounded by Bubbling traps.

-Neil

[buzzkill]

I would love to enter a new level, detect and see a Dagger (13D2) guarded by an Ancient Pink Dragon and 10 Snow Trolls in a 5x6 Knox Vault surrounded by Bubbling traps.

Has anyone ever written a program than randomizes monster attributes in the edit file. In essence, all new, unknown monsters. That the the lowly snaga may very well breathe on you, or drain XP, or fly. It might be something fun to try every once in a while.

[Zane314]

Has anyone ever written a program than randomizes monster attributes in the edit file. In essence, all new, unknown monsters. That the the lowly snaga may very well breathe on you, or drain XP, or fly. It might be something fun to try every once in a while.

I am considering giving this a shot in a month or two when my schedule winds down (assuming nobody can think of anybody who's done it previously). Will probably make it a variant because of balance issues that will need to be redone to help people from dying to monsters that never could breathe massive damage before.

[buzzkill]

I am considering giving this a shot in a month or two when my schedule winds down (assuming nobody can think of anybody who's done it previously). Will probably make it a variant because of balance issues that will need to be redone to help people from dying to monsters that never could breathe massive damage before.

Balance, schmalance. I think you'll drive yourself crazy try to balance it and turn it into a variant. My idea was really much simpler.

1. Back up your Angband directory.
2. Run the program, and scramble the monster attributes.
3. Enter the dungeon and encounter all new monsters.

No doubt, some monsters will be ridiculously over or under powered and likely to appear way out of depth, with irrational XP awards.

Here's what I feel the scrambler should do. Keep in mind I know very little knowledge of the inner workings of Angband or C.

Segregate the uniques from the normal monsters.
Based on input from the user, let's say a scale of 1 (hardly any changes) to 100 (everything most likely changed), start randomly trading attributes from one monster/monster type or unique to another.
Afterword, try to calculate a loosely appropriate native DL and XP award.
Reconstruct and replace the edit file.

Not a variant, just a stupid diversion. But, do what you like with it.

[bron]

This discussion probably deserves a separate thread .. regarding "randomizing" the monsters: I think this would be too hard to do and maintain balance, but I think a sorta halfway idea would be good: display a monster using the correct character, but don't distinguish exactly what it is until the player has either fought it a few times, probed it, or bought the special "Takkaria's Field Guide to Angband's Flora and Fauna" at a cost of something like (monster_level ^ 2) *per* *monster*.

Thus you encounter an "h", and when you look at it, the description is just "some type of humaniod you don't recognize, probably about level 10 in strength, moving at normal speed". After you fight one, the description changes to "average sized humaniod known to use curses", and eventually "dark elven priest".