What Are We Doing?

[Nick]

I'm feeling philosophical this morning, so you all have to suffer.

There's been a lot of discussion recently (well, forever really) about what direction Angband is going, whether changes are good or bed, etc etc. Various gameplay topics can be argued back and forth, but here is a short list of things that IMHO sum up the spirit of takkaria's maintainership:

1. Portability. If you've got a powerful enough device, you should be able to play Angband on it. Lots of work on specifics to do here (iOS is the obvious example), but the game engine is being pushed in the right direction.
2. Modularity, adaptibility. Someone wanting to contribute to development shouldn't have to learn the entire codebase. This is work in progress, but important for making the game possible to change. There have been huge changes in code to make it easier to add new object/monster/player properties. Obviously this is a double-edged sword (so to speak...), but on the whole it makes the discussion about what's desirable rather than what's possible.
3. Don't break it. It needs to still be Angband. Obviously not everyone is completely happy with every change, but most people are mostly happy most of the time.
4. Fun. Fun to play, fun to work on, fun to talk about.

[Magnate]

IMO you missed takk's most important achievement - collaboration. He's successfully broken the "one geek to rule them all" approach, where a single maintainer has to review (or write) every single change that gets made to the code. IMO that is mostly responsible for the pace and breadth of development over the past 3-4 years.

Your first two points are spot on, but (again IMO) there is still an incredibly long way to go on both. After the drubbing of my impact on game balance, I'm focusing on the modularity bit - trying to move data out to list- files (and ultimately edit files), and sorting out header files etc. I have already got defines.h down to about half its original size, and most of the rest should end up in cave.h ...

[takkaria]

I'm feeling philosophical this morning, so you all have to suffer.

There's been a lot of discussion recently (well, forever really) about what direction Angband is going, whether changes are good or bed, etc etc. Various gameplay topics can be argued back and forth, but here is a short list of things that IMHO sum up the spirit of takkaria's maintainership:

1. Portability. If you've got a powerful enough device, you should be able to play Angband on it. Lots of work on specifics to do here (iOS is the obvious example), but the game engine is being pushed in the right direction.
2. Modularity, adaptibility. Someone wanting to contribute to development shouldn't have to learn the entire codebase. This is work in progress, but important for making the game possible to change. There have been huge changes in code to make it easier to add new object/monster/player properties. Obviously this is a double-edged sword (so to speak...), but on the whole it makes the discussion about what's desirable rather than what's possible.
3. Don't break it. It needs to still be Angband. Obviously not everyone is completely happy with every change, but most people are mostly happy most of the time.
4. Fun. Fun to play, fun to work on, fun to talk about.

They're pretty much the things I set out to do (remember develop or maintain?). As ever, I was wildly optimistic about the timeframe in which things would happen back then, but all the key points are there. Nice to know that things have been working out in the "right" direction from someone else's POV...

[dos350]

heres wat is pro the , ~ the game is great ok, make it hightech or watever but its good to go, anyway , ty~ plz no rage!~ keep up good work ,, eeeeeeeeeeeee