Net Angband: alpha testing

[fizzix]

I play occasionally, although I get confused playing more than one character at once...

The colors really throw me off too.

[thapper]

Thanks! But if I'm the only one playing then feel free to take it down as you need.

[d_m]

I hadn't had time to work on it much and I didn't think anyone was playing it so I took it down.

It's back up now. Have fun!

[thapper]

Hi,

It seems Net Angband has been down for a while, it is intenional? As I mentioned earlier I like the concept so I would like to see it up again, but when it is down my productivity at work has a better chance to be high, so...

[d_m]

I've been playing a reasonably successful character using NetAngband. Last night I got overconfident and dies as usual. Is there any way that I can get the character dump (I made one on the death screen)?

Hi!

I have been meaning to build a better interface to NetAngband, including a way to download dumps and also a way to do a one-time export of a character from NetAngband to a savefile (in case someone wants to start playing locally). But I haven't had a ton of time... the usual story.

If you give me the username you've been using I can email you the dump. My email address is my username at plastic-idolatry dot com.

[thapper]

I've been playing a reasonably successful character using NetAngband. Last night I got overconfident and dies as usual. Is there any way that I can get the character dump (I made one on the death screen)?

I really like NetAngband, somehow the slow pace (due to the delays) made me more careful, and the opportunity to access the game from anywhere is great.

[d_m]

Has anyone been playing NetAngband lately. It's been unbearably lagging and sometimes hangs completely for me. It seems to be since the recent update. Is anyone else having similar problems?

Huh, that sucks.

The connection it's on was getting saturated during the day (eastern time) but just got upgraded from 3MB/s (two T-1s) to 10MB/s (fiber) last Thursday. I would have hoped these issues would have disappeared then (we are no longer saturating that pipe).

I haven't noticed that server having serious lag at any real times (although admittedly I am not the best test case). If you could note the date and time of one of these episodes that might help, although I'm not sure how much I can do (my server is hosted at work... other than point out network problems I don't have a lot of authority to fiddle with things).

[RogerN]

I've experienced some very bad pockets of lag, but it's not continuous. It's playable. When it's bad, though, it's really bad - five to ten seconds to register a key press.

[buzzkill]

Has anyone been playing NetAngband lately. It's been unbearably lagging and sometimes hangs completely for me. It seems to be since the recent update. Is anyone else having similar problems?

[buzzkill]

Please try again and let me know if it works.

Back to normal.

[d_m]

I logged in and it prompted me to start a new character rather than starting up with my old (still alive) one. If you can't reactivate/reinstate it for some reason, that's no problem, just email me the save at [EMAIL REDACTED]. I hope I didn't screw it up.

You didn't mess anything up. I forgot that on the new server the "webband" user has a different UID, so 1050.buzzkill needed to become 1004.buzzkill.

Please try again and let me know if it works.

[buzzkill]

I logged in and it prompted me to start a new character rather than starting up with my old (still alive) one. If you can't reactivate/reinstate it for some reason, that's no problem, just email me the save at [deleted]. I hope I didn't screw it up.

[RogerN]

Haven't played yet, but the economy idea sounds intriguing... kinda reminds me of the old-school BBS "door games"!

This is somewhat off-topic, but I used to *love* TradeWars. I even purchased one of the TradeWars helper terminals which could automate trading routes, automate exploration, display graphical maps of the universe, locate good trading pairs, etc... You might think that's cheating, but since *everyone* on the BBS also used it, it really just removed some of the tedium from the game

All this talk of economy reminds me of the Kingdom of Loathing, which is a comedic in-browser RPG. There are several thousand players who participate in the game's Mall, which allows anyone to sell just about any item at any price (although whether someone will buy the item at that price is another matter entirely).

The result is that you end up with two different classes of items in the mall.

The first type of item is the dirt cheap, oversupplied item. These are items which are found in greater quantities than you ever need, even when you're not looking for them. Consequently, even though these items are useful, the prices at the mall are the absolute lowest the game will allow. Everyone is trying to dump these items for any price they can get.

The second type of item is the extremely high-demand item. These items are extremely useful and purchased in large quantities by almost everyone. What's interesting (and somewhat intuitive) is that the prices for these items tend to hover just below what you would spend trying to obtain the item for yourself (you have a finite # of turns per day, so there's a cost associated with obtaining items even if you don't use consumables). Many players optimize their equipment for the sole purpose of obtaining these items as efficiently as possible, and it's nearly impossible to compete with their prices in the mall. They make a small profit by selling large volumes of these items to less well-developed characters who can't obtain the items as efficiently.

What's also interesting is how quickly prices fluctuate due to game changes. Prices can fluctuate pretty quickly when new items are added or when drop frequencies are changed. I lost a small fortune, in fact, when my #1 cash cow (Breathetastic Premium Canned Air) was effectively made obsolete by the addition of Twinkly Wads. Prices eventually dropped 50% for my precious canned air.

Oh, and for the record, I'm opposed to demand-based pricing in Angband

[d_m]

Alright, it's back up.

Apologies again.

[d_m]

Sorry!

My work has been insane. I was forced to upgrade the server to new hardware and haven't restored the database yet.

If I don't get it back up soon feel free to harass me and I can email out a savefile.