How many people play Angband?

[nppangband]

?? IMO the decline in numbers of people playing Angband (or indeed any roguelike) has much much more to do with the rise of the X-box/PS3 and its associated eye-candy twitch gaming than any of the above.

That too. But there are some pretty good RFPs on there as well. I must say I enjoyed Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Mass Effect, and I am looking forward to playing Skyrim.

Most people who would like Angband are probably playing WoW.

[Therem Harth]

?? IMO the decline in numbers of people playing Angband (or indeed any roguelike) has much much more to do with the rise of the X-box/PS3 and its associated eye-candy twitch gaming than any of the above.

I'd expect people who like Angband to mostly dislike twitchy FPS games, though that could be projection of my personal bias; I happen to hate FPS games.

I think the biggest barrier is probably the steep learning curve. This is the Steve Jobs era, and people just don't want to memorize 40-50 commands to play a game anymore.

I never found Angband's learning curve to be that steep; the commands are at least pretty intuitive, which is more than can be said about certain *ahem* other roguelikes.

[Magnate]

I'd expect people who like Angband to mostly dislike twitchy FPS games

I agree with you, but the point I was making is that in popular consciousness "gaming" == Call of Duty (or whatever). I don't think most people are aware that there are challenging and immersive games that cost nothing, take less than 2GB of disk space and use ASCII (or tiles).

[d_m]

In my opinion there are a lot of small UI, complexity issues that keep a lot of people from playing Angband. I have a bunch of friends who play Angband (or variants, e.g. TOME) somewhat but many of them have a hard time remembering all the different commands, when they should do what, etc.

I wouldn't want to simplify strategy, but there's no reason that a new player should need to learn (a)im (A)ctivate (u)se (z)ap (F)ire (G)ain (q)uaff (r)ead (E)at etc. for what is essentially one idea "use the item to gain an effect, whatever that means for this item". Ideally there would be one command (mapped to a convenient key) which does these, in addition to the precise versions.

Established players benefit from choosing the narrowest command (and thus being prompted with only the wands, for instance) but IMO most new players would rather see all the items (and for that matter, many new players would prefer to start with an item and then say "use" rather than going verb/noun).

EDIT: I also think that monster and item lists should be on by default for new players. These are hugely helpful for people trying to remember what a red p is.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think it is probably more than that. I have found out there are many players who simply download the game and play without being active in any on-line discussions or logging onto .oook. Over the years I have met several of people who play Angband & variants casually.

I just Tuesday met one person that says that "he is trying not to play" angband (too hooked) that doesn't write here. I think people writing here is only tiny fraction of entire angband player base.

[nppangband]

I agree with you, but the point I was making is that in popular consciousness "gaming" == Call of Duty (or whatever). I don't think most people are aware that there are challenging and immersive games that cost nothing, take less than 2GB of disk space and use ASCII (or tiles).

On that very subject, here is a cool story on the NPP forums about a year ago. Angband does have a great "word of mouth" reputation.

[Magnate]

On that very subject, here is a cool story on the NPP forums about a year ago. Angband does have a great "word of mouth" reputation.

Did you mean to put a link in there somewhere?

[nppangband]

Did you mean to put a link in there somewhere?

:::::seardhing for a decent excuse, but knowing there is none:::::

http://forum.nppangband.org/viewtopic.php?id=966

[fph]

In my opinion there are a lot of small UI, complexity issues that keep a lot of people from playing Angband. [...] I wouldn't want to simplify strategy, but there's no reason that a new player should need to learn (a)im (A)ctivate (u)se (z)ap (F)ire (G)ain (q)uaff (r)ead (E)at etc. [...] (and for that matter, many new players would prefer to start with an item and then say "use" rather than going verb/noun). [...] I also think that monster and item lists should be on by default for new players.

I agree with every single word you wrote.

[Derakon]

We were talking about unified use keys a decade ago. What happened to all that?

I do like the suggestion to allow for "item-verb" instead of "verb-item". Make it more like the shopkeeping interface:
* Bring up inventory
* Type letter of item
* Get list of possible actions with that item (e.g. browse/cast/drop/throw/squelch for spellbooks).
* Choose option from list, proceed as usual.

Similarly with equipment, though your options would largely be limited to unwielding and activating.

Heck, you could merge this with the 'I'nspect command, so the player not only knows what to do with the item, but also what precisely it will do.

One notable thing this would do is help newbies figure out the quiver. The first instinct on finding a new item type is to see what the valid interactions are with it, which would reveal that you can wield ammo. It'd also expose obscure interactions (like browsing / gaining spells, refilling lamps, and I'd say spiking doors but IIRC spikes are gone).

Of course, all of the old verb-item interactions can stick around; if nothing else they're vital for setting up keymaps. This is mostly a more friendly way to expose those verbs to the new player, as opposed to looking up the help every time they want to zap a rod.

[Nomad]

I wouldn't want to simplify strategy, but there's no reason that a new player should need to learn (a)im (A)ctivate (u)se (z)ap (F)ire (G)ain (q)uaff (r)ead (E)at etc. for what is essentially one idea "use the item to gain an effect, whatever that means for this item". Ideally there would be one command (mapped to a convenient key) which does these, in addition to the precise versions.

You know, one thing I discovered switching back from Angband to playing Nethack for a while was how incredibly annoying it was to gofrom Angband's system of using the same (w)ield/(t)ake off commands for everything to having three completely separate command sets for wielding and removing different types of equipment.

I feel like you could unify certain commands like read/Browse, Eat/quaff, and aim/use/zap in the same way that (m)agic and (p)ray are interchangable. That way people accustomed to the old system could still hit the keys that they're used to (and inscribe things with shortcuts that work for a specific letter) but newbies could just learn the basic 'read' or 'aim' command and use it for multiple item types.

[d_m]

I feel like you could unify certain commands like read/Browse, Eat/quaff, and aim/use/zap in the same way that (m)agic and (p)ray are interchangable. That way people accustomed to the old system could still hit the keys that they're used to (and inscribe things with shortcuts that work for a specific letter) but newbies could just learn the basic 'read' or 'aim' command and use it for multiple item types.

Definitely. Many of us have the current commands stuck in our brains and just ripping the old commands out would hurt a lot. But having something that new players could use instead would be great.

I agree with the comment about integrating it with a preexisting command like (i)nventory, (I)nspect, or similar.

[Magnate]

We were talking about unified use keys a decade ago. What happened to all that?

It's still on the to-do list, waiting for someone to do it: http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/51

[Nick]

We were talking about unified use keys a decade ago. What happened to all that?

I do like the suggestion to allow for "item-verb" instead of "verb-item". Make it more like the shopkeeping interface:
* Bring up inventory
* Type letter of item
* Get list of possible actions with that item (e.g. browse/cast/drop/throw/squelch for spellbooks).
* Choose option from list, proceed as usual.

OK, it's happening again...

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 ..)

Maybe I'll actually make good on my promise to port some of my features to Vanilla this time.

[nppangband]

It's still on the to-do list, waiting for someone to do it: http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/51

I plan on doing something like this in the mouse-support commit I am working on, and also a step powards noun-verb item management.

It will work like this:

There will be a button at the bottom of the screen called "items" or something like that. It will open a two column menu. The main categories will be equipment, inventory, floor, and home (the latter two only if applicable). From there, you will be able to select any item. And the buttons on the bottom will become all of the possible commands for that item (wield, takeoff, drop, destroy, squelch settings, inscribe, uninscribe, inspect, quaff, read, zap, fire, throw, browse, etc......depending on the object type.)

It should help the beginner with the steep learning curve by being able to access many commands with a couple mouseclicks , and the advanced player should appreciate being able to quickly through their equipment, inventory and a huge stack of items on the floor or their home inventory and decide what to keep and what to throw away.