What happened to Angband?

[Nightmarjoo]

So I haven't played angband in a really long time (my last posts here was in january, but I don't think I played the game then, my posts before then were in july and that sounds about right), but it being summer I have a surplus of time on my hands. And what better way to throw away time into the wind than to play Angband?

So I go to my bookmarked nightly page and download the most recent nightly (may 24). I open it up, and it's so weird! Permament walls are an ugly red instead of an ugly brown (I think I like the brown better), and they're those hideous blocks instead of #s, I want my #s back!, the font is different (I tried using the font I'd used in previous angband versions, but for some reason it looks completely different in this new angband), there's no visual option to get rid of the light/dark dots that show torchlight (I never liked that visual feature, I prefer empty tiles and white .s), macros are called keymaps now, I can't set my options aside from birth before I create my character (obviously not a big deal, but why remove that ability?), also it seems like there are many fewer options than before? I can't think of any options I miss off the top of my head, but why were they removed? Shouldn't more choice be preferrable? No selling and starting with gold/no equip is neat, but could I atleast start with a torch and a ration of food? My uniques are now proper coloured again (yay) atleast. Use the last set of randarts seems kind of silly, you can scum for an artifact set with some really imbalanced randarts and then guarantee their use in your every character: kind of defeats the purpose of making them random. Oh also the level feelings are different now, is there a page that details what they mean?

What else has changed, and why? Seems like a lot more has changed in this block of time than used to. I don't want to just keep using my favourite old version, cuz I like the new features, but this new version seems to take stuff out of my hands, sort of a regression.

Is there a page which details all the changes between release version and the nightly?

[Timo Pietilä]

What else has changed, and why? Seems like a lot more has changed in this block of time than used to.

One of the main changes you didn't list is dungeon generation. Dungeons are now small compared to 3.2.0, and there are "maze" -levels which are like large vaults (not much bigger than that) but are not actually vaults. There are also cavern-levels which I like somewhat, but they are difficult to play strategically, so I would prefer a bit less of them. I don't think cavern or maze can have vaults or pits, so they tend to end up being rather boring.

[myshkin]

What else has changed, and why? Seems like a lot more has changed in this block of time than used to. I don't want to just keep using my favourite old version, cuz I like the new features, but this new version seems to take stuff out of my hands, sort of a regression.

Note that the nightlies page says, "This is almost certainly a work in progress and may be unbalanced, broken, prone to crashes or what have you..." Development has indeed been fairly rapid since 3.2.0, and documentation is lagging behind for some of the changes. 3.3.0 is on the horizon, though, and I expect that will get sorted out soon. Contributions are always welcome!

Is there a page which details all the changes between release version and the nightly?

Not completely, but changes.txt in the distribution is up to date as of 19 May 2011.

[Magnate]

There are indeed a huge number of changes. Those since 3.2.0 are captured in the current nightly's changes.txt file. Changes in 3.2.0 are listed exhaustively in its changes.txt file.

[tony]

ooo! Reading some of those changes is making me excited to see this new release!

[Magnate]

ooo! Reading some of those changes is making me excited to see this new release!

Shouldn't be long now - we are hoping to make an announcement about a feature freeze this weekend, which would mean a month of testing and fixing before 3.3.0 is released.

[kaypy]

Permament walls are an ugly red instead of an ugly brown
they're those hideous blocks instead of #s, I want my #s back!
there's no visual option to get rid of the light/dark dots that show torchlight (I never liked that visual feature, I prefer empty tiles and white .s),

In the nightly that just went up, the various feature graphics can be modified under the knowledge menu, although admittedly the UI kinda of sucks (I was happy just to get something working-ish at the time) and the documentation is non-existent... The torchlight is now integrated into the rest of the graphics system, so you can set torchlit, lit, and dark colors/tiles for all features independently

[Derakon]

Regarding options: if you can't remember what options went away, then they weren't important. Like the guy whose wife throws out all his old stuff, then says "Any item you can remember from that pile, we'll go out and buy a new one." And he never does remember any of it.

There is a cost to having lots of options: it makes maintaining the game harder. The code gets cluttered with cruft and there's a lot more combinations to take into account. This is also why Takkaria's sig is what it is.

[Jazerus]

I also find the blocks to be really hideous compared to the hashes - fortunately, it's an extremely easy fix. If you're on Windows, delete font-win.prf in Angband/lib/pref. For a mac, similarly, delete font-mac.prf.

There's not much practical difference between keymaps and macros, other than that I believe keymaps are slightly more flexible and don't clear -more- prompts by themselves.

[Chud]

I liked the option for coloring @ as hit points get low... but I suspect it's moved rather than disappeared, and I've merely lost it. I admit to not having looked very hard yet.

[Timo Pietilä]

Regarding options: if you can't remember what options went away, then they weren't important.

One option I miss is ability to remove labels in equipment listings. I can't see the bonuses in some of my equipment anymore because the lines are too long.

[myshkin]

I liked the option for coloring @ as hit points get low... but I suspect it's moved rather than disappeared, and I've merely lost it. I admit to not having looked very hard yet.

Look for "Color: Player color indicates % hit points" in the Interface and display options page.

[CJNyfalt]

Regarding options: if you can't remember what options went away, then they weren't important. Like the guy whose wife throws out all his old stuff, then says "Any item you can remember from that pile, we'll go out and buy a new one." And he never does remember any of it.

There is a cost to having lots of options: it makes maintaining the game harder. The code gets cluttered with cruft and there's a lot more combinations to take into account. This is also why Takkaria's sig is what it is.

And in-game options is nothing compared to compile-time options (#ifdefs) which are a pain and something I try remove when possible.

[kaypy]

There's not much practical difference between keymaps and macros, other than that I believe keymaps are slightly more flexible and don't clear -more- prompts by themselves.

There is a big difference in that macros will run during other commands, while keymaps will only fire when at the players turn prompt.

The effect being that macros were good for remapping your keyboard, while keymaps were good for defining batch commands. These days I just tend to remap keys at an OS level whenever I want to play Angband...

[andrewdoull]

The effect being that macros were good for remapping your keyboard, while keymaps were good for defining batch commands. These days I just tend to remap keys at an OS level whenever I want to play Angband...

So macros allow you to map keys, and keymaps let you set up macros...

Perhaps swapping the names would have helped somewhat.