Which do you think is the best version of Angband?

[Malak Darkhunter]

If you are looking for 2.8.3/2.9.0 era with the current UI you are looking for, NPP offers something close with the right birth options turned off.

Just play a game of the current NPP 0.5.3 with no quests, no store services, no themed levels, no extra artifacts, no player ghosts. You still have 4gai and many, many minor changes, but it isn't too far off from 2.8.3 gameplay.

i really enjoyed npp 0.3.4 to 0.4.0, i think it was also becuase you had a dos/ibm version, i like playing full screen in dosox, most of the newer versions don't though so I find myself playing older version nowdays as my *permanent* game if you will and playing the most stable looking development versions of vanilla when they come out. Right now I have played 3.3.2 several times, but i do have a copy of npp 0.5.3

I have been playing the older versions for curiosities sake from frog-knows, The version that is Angband for me is 2.7.8 , now 2.8.3 is very close so that's why I voted on that. it's also bacuse I can play it in Dos mode full screen.

[ehuangsan]

Frog-knows, only because of the hilarity in polymorphing a filthy street urchin into something like a Great Storm Wyrm...and then trying to figure out wtf to do about it.

You can level up characters very quickly because of that, or die very quickly.

[nppangband]

Unless you have gone back closer to vanilla angband NPP much further away from F-K than current vanilla. Older NPP are maybe somewhat close to vanilla angband, but not the last one that I played.

Agreed it is definitely nothing like frog knows.

I am trying to say NPP with a certain set of birth options is probably the closest thing out there to meet people's desire to combine Angband 2.8.3 gameplay with the current Angband UI. Agreed it is not an exact match either. Most of the NPP changes can be disabled with birth options.

The only major change that would remain is 4gai. Which admittedly changes alot, but I can't think of any closer match unless somebody wants to spend months coding and combining the two versions.

One big exception: the UNAngband terrain would be a major change. But that is actually a good idea for a birth option as well. I will add that in hte next couple weeks.

If you played NPP with the default birth options, than it would be nothing like Angband 2.8.3. IIRC, you last played about 5 years ago?

[Antoine]

One big exception: the UNAngband terrain would be a major change. But that is actually a good idea for a birth option as well. I will add that in hte next couple weeks.

Great idea. I think some players are put off NPP by the terrains (which others like of course).

A.

[JohnCW9]

The last angband verion I played enough to post was 3.09 Since then I have mostly played varirants,

[Belgen]

3.0.9b.

[Max Stats]

I'm with sethos. Speed is too valuable to occur on items with other useful properties.

There goes Ringil, then.

[PowerDiver]

So, if you could get 2.9.3 with squelch that would be your favorite? Or is there something in 3.0.6 that makes it better with squelch than 2.9.3?

The problem is that I do not remember it clearly any more. My guess is 2.9.3 with squelch, but that is based on a vague memory I do not trust.

I always change the code, as far back as removing haggling from Moria. I am familiar with the 3.0 code, so even if 2.9 is a bit better I might still play 3.0 because I think it would be easier for me to make changes to it.

[PowerDiver]

Is this an extension of your 3.0.9e release?

No, it is nothing like that. 309e was a major undertaking, where I did a lot of serious work.

For what I play now, I just made easy small changes to 309 to address the biggest faults that were addressed in 3.1. ID-by-use is a big deal, but *ID on walkover is a couple of lines. The green dots for trap detection radius were too much work, so I just made detections cover the entire dungeon. I wrote better squelch [easy], but never coded the unsquelch UI [hard], so one cannot afford to ever make a mistake squelching stuff. It is definitely not suitable to release.

[Malak Darkhunter]

The thing i'm curious about though, is how many of todays active players have played the older versions of angband? It is certainly different and harder without the item descriptions, and less forgivable in the begining, I like 2.7.8, but is a lot slower game compared to V 3.3.2, which can be more fun because you can get to artifact level and stat gain pretty quick, wheras in the older versions you have to slowly scum and develop your character, newer players are probably turned off by this.

[dos350]

312v2 > , please no rage~

[Therem Harth]

I like 3.2.0. ID by use is great, and it's the last version to still have stat restore potions.

[Boogs]

I got hooked during the long reign of 2.8.2 and 2.8.3. i find it ironic that the closest i ever came to a win was in 2.8.2 with a warrior. man that's a lot of character deaths. I like the way things are shaping up with the current development minus the store interface changes =P. I kind of lost interest when there where no more dos releases and the graphical tileset was made the default.

[HallucinationMushroom]

I jumped from Moria to Angband around 2.9.3 and played to 3.0.6, but I'd be hard pressed to tell you any differences I noticed from these versions. I vote 3.0.6 because it has more artifacts than 2.9.3.

As an aside, I stopped keeping up with Vanilla because I actually started to notice visible changes after 3.0.6, and I just assumed since I was on board for 5 or so straight years of mysterious invisible incremental updates that it would never change and assumed updates were for keeping up with operating systems and boring stuff and what-not. It didn't occur to me that it was an ever evolving game.

To mirror some previous comments about npp, I recall after winning 0.4.1 that I thought, "cool, this is what angband would be like if it were to evolve."

[LostTemplar]

One of good old versions is the best. At some point, when bugs were already fixed, but "improvements" had not yet been started.