old angband and modern angband comparison

[Malak Darkhunter]

So ive been playing pc angband 1.4 angband again and thought it would be interesting to compare the old version to the new version and what seems different. Ive got right now a level 32 high elf(Gil-Galad) and currently at dl38. The first major notice is how considerably stupid the monsters are, orc pits are easily fooled into following character behind walls, so you can in effect fight a couple run in opposite direction and the hord folkows you down the opposite halkway, giving player time to rest, this makes game easier. Also their seems to be generaly more piwerful items dropped at earlier levels, i fiund the star of elendil by dl 30, and chaos dragon scail mail and a few artifacts. Ego items dropped at about same rate as v 3.4. There seems to be about a 50/50 chance between good items and cursed items. Some cursed items are unique (boots of great mass) which slows character, i find this aspect thrilling and dangerous. Stores are similar but with different prices.Now character generation is a little more interesting, i like seeing high elf prince/king in background generation. Dwarves with glowing red eyes pretty cool, this has been carried over from moria. Their is no easy object inspection the game literaly tells you nothing about your items. Artifacts books are very common by dl30. Dangerous uniques can appear a little earlier i found kavalax on d l38. Other than that monster depth is pretty close to modern angband. Their are many groups of hounds yet they dont breathe nearly as much, this is alright to me. The targeting code seems kind of buggy to me, i cant get it to work properly. Overall game is easier to outsmart weakness in monster ai, i will report more as i go deeper.

[Malak Darkhunter]

To further add to this, in pc angband 1.4 rogues are a major pain, they steal lots of gold, I had over 200,000 in my pocket and each time 1 of them touched to steal gold he stole over 9000 gp! And killing them dosen't get your money back as in modern V. On the plus side monsters dropped more money than current V, so at Dl 30 it's easy to rack up gold, the average is about 300gp a pile. Some spectator's dropped a couple 15,000gp gems! Ancient Dragons Drop much more. The problem with 1.4 is the need to lure monsters into rooms, once a space is used up in 1.4 the item drops disappears, this is prevalent all the through the versions to 2.7.8, an annoying bug, but doable in this older version, in modern vanilla luring monsters into rooms would quickly get you killed.

[Nick]

Comparison or competition? Because we could do that.

[Timo Pietilä]

The problem with 1.4 is the need to lure monsters into rooms, once a space is used up in 1.4 the item drops disappears, this is prevalent all the through the versions to 2.7.8, an annoying bug, but doable in this older version, in modern vanilla luring monsters into rooms would quickly get you killed.

Items not stacking is not a bug, it is a feature in old angband. It is how the game has been designed. You can still turn stacking off in 3.4 if you wish (birth_no_stacking).

Boots of great mass I don't remember. Must have been quite rare.

Phial, Star and Arkenstone are all quite a lot earlier items in old vanilla, Phial can appear in dlvl 1 quite often.

[Derakon]

Phial, Star and Arkenstone are all quite a lot earlier items in old vanilla, Phial can appear in dlvl 1 quite often.

My warriors in prior versions fully expected to find the Phial by 500' at the latest; I assumed it would be available to use to light up rooms. These days my warriors have to rely on Rods of Illumination instead. But at least the rods stack nicely now -- in the old days every time you zapped one, it'd unstack.

[Timo Pietilä]

My warriors in prior versions fully expected to find the Phial by 500' at the latest; I assumed it would be available to use to light up rooms. These days my warriors have to rely on Rods of Illumination instead. But at least the rods stack nicely now -- in the old days every time you zapped one, it'd unstack.

Same with wands, identical charges stacked, zap one and you have two stacks. Staves didn't stack even with identical charges.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Comparison or competition? Because we could do that.

I wanted to report on how different the gameplay is from then and now, there is probably many players who havent played the old versions, its interesting to see what has changed over the years besides from what is read from the change list.

By the way competition would be cool, Timo might even join in for that one.

[Timo Pietilä]

By the way competition would be cool, Timo might even join in for that one.

I have actually played quite a few competition chars, but I find "turncount win" rather boring way to play so I always fail to reach anywhere close to winning turncount. For me the journey is far more important than the destination. I also don't play as much anymore so playing one char thru takes forever now (like months, not days).

[Monkay]

Does anyone know what the earliest version of Vanilla is compatible with Mac OS X?

[Derakon]

I used to play MacAngband 1.0 (I think that's what it was called), in what was probably System 8 or System 9. I bet you could run that under Rosetta. It was equivalent to the first public release of Angband, which elsewhere was known as 2.4 frog-knows.

I don't have that any more though. And if you don't have Rosetta, you'd probably have better luck tracking down a Windows build and running it in VirtualBox or some other virtualization or dual-boot setup.

[myshkin]

nic.funet.fi still has some of the various MacAngband releases available, including 1.0.

The other approach is to port 2.4.frog-knows gameplay to the modern UI. I know at least a couple people would very much appreciate having that work done.

[Malak Darkhunter]

So I made it down to about DL40, defeated Kavalax, many Ancient Dragons, and several uniques, was feeling pretty tough and then stormed in an ancient multi-hued dragon, who quickly breathed me into the nether world.....

Overall very fun will try to get deeper on next trip, Amnesia became very annoying as I had to constantly re-identify my equipment, If I had a magic class with identify it wouldn't be a problem, but for a warrior it was.

The game is harder in aspect of having to have inherent knowledge of game artifacts and ego's and having to sometimes look up spoiler files to figure out exactly what you have resistances for, but the game is easier in the aspect of no monster fear makes enemies easier to destroy without running away from you to heal. Monster Ai(Pathfinding) is easy to exploit. I think object generation feels very much like V 3.4 without curses. Modern Smart monsters in V 3.4 makes modern V in my opinion harder.