How many people play Angband?

[Derakon]

FA has precisely this feature, in addition to mouse selection being possible (although testing shows me it currently crashes the game ... that's what I get for updating my codebase ... mutter ..)

D'oh.

I should play more FA, but I really don't like wilderness. Sorry!

[Nick]

I should play more FA, but I really don't like wilderness. Sorry!

If you're interested in seeing the UI etc features that I have/had, FA 1.1 with the dungeon-only birth option might be not too painful.

[fizzix]

So I am completely not a fan of more unified commands. The reason is, Angband has a very useful inscription index. The index is obscure and opaque to new players, but once you get the hang of it, it's very powerful, and greatly reduces the time it takes to do common actions. Using "a1" for aim wand of light is much better than having to figure out what slot your wand is in after the generic use. Right now I can be carrying both wands and rods of light, have one a1 and the other z1, and choose the correct one without thinking. That would not be possible if all items used the same command. I'd very quickly run out of digits.

[Derakon]

I don't think anyone suggested removing the existing item-use commands just because unified-use exists.

Under the scheme I suggested (which apparently FAAngband already has), newbies would largely use items by going to the inventory and selecting an item. This would bring up information on the item (per 'I'nspect), and then say e.g.

Would you like to 
(a)im
(d)rop
(v)olley (throw)
(k)runch (squelch)

This nicely teaches the newbie what the verb-specific commands are, so they can use them in the future instead of going through the inventory interface.

[Timo Pietilä]

I do like the suggestion to allow for "item-verb" instead of "verb-item". Make it more like the shopkeeping interface:

That's extremely unintuitive to me, so if you are going to change that, please keep both as option. I would much rather have verb-item in shops too. Doing other way around is like trying to talk Yoda -style all of time.

[Magnate]

That's extremely unintuitive to me, so if you are going to change that, please keep both as option. I would much rather have verb-item in shops too. Doing other way around is like trying to talk Yoda -style all of time.

+1. If we're having an open season on options, I vote for this one alongside "show all damage numbers" etc.

[pav]

We get about 100 users who use the app each day, 400 who use it each week and 1200 who us it each month. User retention is pretty low. A lot of people run it a couple times and then not again. I'm not quite sure how to read the retained user graph, but it looks like the number of retained users has been growing recently. Up from about 10 at the end of last year to 53 in August. They define a retained user as someone who uses the app twice in a week.

I find playing on a pure touchphone unbearably painful, so I definitely count into the download-and-try-once demographics.

[Derakon]

+1. If we're having an open season on options, I vote for this one alongside "show all damage numbers" etc.

This wouldn't so much be an option as an alternate standard way of doing things. Currently the inventory display is noninteractive -- it just lists everything in your inventory. Making it so you could select items and use them from the inventory display doesn't preclude allowing you to select a verb directly from the main game.

[nppangband]

This wouldn't so much be an option as an alternate standard way of doing things. Currently the inventory display is noninteractive -- it just lists everything in your inventory. Making it so you could select items and use them from the inventory display doesn't preclude allowing you to select a verb directly from the main game.

That's my intent, anyway. I don't plan on removing any keyboard commands. I just want to make the inventory or equipment lists interactive, to be able to click on an object and get a list of buttons with all of the available commands for that item. In looking at the FAAngband 1.6 code I am almost positive it already does much of this.

[d_m]

Yes. To be clear, I don't mean removing the old commands, just making them optional. Things like macros are great when players want them, but they aren't a substitute for a friendly UI. I consider the specific commands like (z)ap the same way--they are nice when you know them, and they are nice for macros, but there is not reason a beginner should need to learn them.

My goal is not to remove commands to annoy people, but to limit the number of keys that a new player must remember in order to play effectively. Ideally this wouldn't require very many commands to be removed in order to free up some "space".

[takkaria]

Even though I'd like to know this information, I'm not really a fan of 'spying' on users even in a seemingly innocuous way. What I'd be ok with is logging the number of times Angband is downloaded from rephial. That'll give us a feel for the number of new or updating players, and that's useful.

Generally we get over 1000 downloads each month, but I haven't been collecting stats recently.

[fph]

All "modern" graphical role-playing games (ŕ la Baldur's Gate) that I have played have item-verb and "quick-use slots" instead of inscriptions.

[buzzkill]

... and "quick-use slots" instead of inscriptions.

... which I'd imagine are a lot like 'hot keys' (ala ToME 4).

[APWhite]

About 8 yrs ago, I was visiting my nephew and he was telling me about a new game he was playing and how much his brothers and dad enjoyed it. Turns out it was Angband. He was pretty excited to show me that there was a screensaver version of the game too.

"A screensaver too?" I asked. "That's so cool."

I had to laugh. He had no idea.

[Napsterbater]

About 8 yrs ago, I was visiting my nephew and he was telling me about a new game he was playing and how much his brothers and dad enjoyed it. Turns out it was Angband. He was pretty excited to show me that there was a screensaver version of the game too.

"A screensaver too?" I asked. "That's so cool."

I had to laugh. He had no idea.

That is super cool!