Making V play more like Sil

[Nick]

I must say, I'm a bit over the "Angband should copy cool feature x from game y" threads, but I guess they're not going to stop any time soon.

In fact, I think Angband should be copying Angry Birds. I mean, the names are kind of similar. You know it makes sense.

[debo]

I must say, I'm a bit over the "Angband should copy cool feature x from game y" threads, but I guess they're not going to stop any time soon.

In fact, I think Angband should be copying Angry Birds. I mean, the names are kind of similar. You know it makes sense.

If I could throw a yeek at an orc with a sling, I would be SO fucking stoked.

[fizzix]

I must say, I'm a bit over the "Angband should copy cool feature x from game y" threads, but I guess they're not going to stop any time soon.

Well the one Sil feature most of us agree would be nice to include is a tutorial. We just need someone (not named fizzix) to write it.

What confuses me is that Angband already does have a Sil-like option, ironman. If ironman is unbalanced or not ideal in some way, it seems like we could improve the ironman gameplay while leaving the normal play-style intact. Of course it's not exactly the same, but it is a much better starting point than regular V.

angband itself has stagnated badly at the half-done stage

I think this is a little harsh. What parts are incomplete? You want more early vaults I know, and we might get close to this by adding the new rooms that Nomad and Gabe wrote up for v4 into 3.5.

Development is slow, mainly because of an overarching conservatism to change, but I would say "stagnated" is a bit overly negative. There has been many real-life distractions for most of the developers this year, but that doesn't mean that things won't pick up next year. I would guess things will be cyclical rather than on a permanent downswing.

[Magnate]

If I could throw a yeek at an orc with a sling, I would be SO fucking stoked.

This. Thanks debo, I've been having a hell of a day at work, and I just burst out laughing. I've always wondered what would be the rationale for introducing a half-giant race to V, and there it is. In your quiver: (n) Two yeeks (2d4) (+0, +0).

[Magnate]

Development is slow, mainly because of an overarching conservatism to change, but I would say "stagnated" is a bit overly negative. There has been many real-life distractions for most of the developers this year, but that doesn't mean that things won't pick up next year. I would guess things will be cyclical rather than on a permanent downswing.

There is a delightful irony here, which I wonder how many other people noticed. Timo describes V development as having "stagnated", which is harsh but, in 2012 at least, somewhat fair. Fizzix outlines the main reason (RL), but also mentions our new post-v4 conservatism. This conservatism is the direct result of furious lobbying against excessive change by a group of players, of whom one of the most vocal was ...

Personally I need to play Sil before weighing in on how many of its features should or shouldn't be incorporated into V. But I fully accept half's basic premise: it would be foolish of us to ignore them [the features] and punish Sil for its success - that way only duff variants would have features ported to V!

[Oramin]

I don't want the change added to Vanilla, but if you want a suggestion of how to implement having nastier monsters appearing on a level to encourage moving along and diving, here's one.

Simply don't have the later generated nastier monsters drop treasure. The reason you're killing them is to get experience and to potentially get loot. If you're on L3 and getting the monsters from L6 but having no chance of loot, you might as well dive. Have them drop fortune cookies (I think this is from one of the many Rogue variants; I don't recall which one) with fortunes which inform the player of what is going on. Sort of like the hints from the shop-keepers.

I repeat, I would prefer that this *not* be added to Vanilla. One of the reasons I liked Angband in the first place is that *I* get to choose the pace.

With Rogue, I had to dive or starve and so was completely reliant on the few drops I would get on any given level; you get lucky or you get dead.

With Larn, I had only 300 Mobuls to get the potion. The time limit worked - for Larn. It made sense in terms of the storyline and it is a much smaller dungeon with (IIRC) persistent level.

With NetHack, I never got much into it simply because it was so strange. Really, why would it occur to people that drawing a name in the dust would have the same effect as a Rune of Protection in Angband?

With Omega, it was fun but I eventually stopped; I believe it was because of bugginess (something which Angband doesn't have).

One of the good features of Vanilla Angband is that it lets the players choose how fast or slow they want to dive. Please don't take that away.

[Derakon]

As the comments here indicate, there are a lot of different features that different players feel are "core Angband" features, which they thus don't want changed. I'd wager about 50% of the suggestions you could make for changes to any given aspect of the game would have that kind of reation -- "What? No! X is how Angband should be!" Obviously this constrains what the Vanilla devteam is allowed to accomplish. This kind of thing happens when your game has been around for over two decades!

I do find it doubly amusing that Timo complains of Vanilla development having stagnated...within a week of a new version having been released. Oh well!

While it's clear that Vanilla does have problems -- for example, the power curve for the player is very non-smooth, for a number of reasons (nonlinear stat utility, experience level plateaus, etc.) -- it's very difficult to say how to fix these problems without changing the "core Angband" experience. Everyone has an idea, and everyone's idea would be vehemently opposed by at least 25% of the rest of the community.

[LostTemplar]

Angband already does have a Sil-like option, ironman.

Huge mistake IMHO. Ironman is COOL while Sil is not so, how dare you even compare them. Seriously ironman is nothing to do with Sil time limit, it is simply visit every level once
(nice, and logical) versus dive like hell to have more time to scum dlvl 19.
Btw I had never try to play Sil slowly and thus never hit this limit, I just see effects in Sil ladder.

What is so ugly with hard limits IMHO is that they force people to try to stretch them instead then just go faster (or what the limit is). Also it resilt in all winners have the same value of what_you_limit.

Maybe limits make game better but they definitely make reading dumps boring.

[emulord]

Personally, I found the time limit in Sil offensive. There are plenty of reasons to dive without being ham-handedly forced to. Purple molds draining Con, needing better equipment, experience gain from enemies plateuing, tail-risk probabilities catching up with you.

If I want to spend extra time on a level to kill a unique (dangerous fight), or use a forge (danger of enemies coming down the stairs), or farm worms (running out of food/light), the risks are inherent, and shouldnt be coupled with being forced to descend also.

Although a Ironman mode in the style of Halls of Mist would be pretty cool. Ironman+town = Bronzeman? Like how no-recall was called Tinman on the MAngband servers.

[Derakon]

For what it's worth, the way I'd personally handle trying to force the player off of a level after awhile (assuming that's a design goal to begin with) would be to have an explicit "alert level", which is how aware the dungeon denizens are of your presence. This would be displayed to the player (e.g. "Alert: 2" for a bit after you enter the level) and would influence monster spawn rate and monster native depth on a semi-exponential basis. Alert levels would be decreased (but not necessarily fully reset) by going to deeper levels. They would increase when the player kills monsters, picks up items, and slowly with time.

Thus, the more you do on a given level, the more the local "monster ecosystem" gets angry at you, causing more numerous and powerful guards to show up to try to evict you. If you want to hang out at a given depth, you're welcome to do so, but eventually it'll get too hot for you to handle and you'll know why.

[fizzix]

Although a Ironman mode in the style of Halls of Mist would be pretty cool. Ironman+town = Bronzeman?

Basically my idea is to split the "only one instance of each floor aspect" to "access to town aspect"

"birth_no_recall" would mean that word of recall spells/scrolls do nothing.

"birth_no_upstairs" means that upstairs do not work/exist, and downstairs always take you to max_depth+1. TL always goes down and alter reality doesn't work. Probably have to also prevent recall from level 99/100 until Sauron/Morgoth are dead.

Using both together replicates current ironman play. Using the second option would give a weaker version, call it bronzeman or tinman or whatever. Using just birth_no_recall would also work, but it's probably not a game anyone really wants to play.

For what it's worth, the way I'd personally handle trying to force the player off of a level after awhile (assuming that's a design goal to begin with) would be to have an explicit "alert level", which is how aware the dungeon denizens are of your presence. This would be displayed to the player (e.g. "Alert: 2" for a bit after you enter the level) and would influence monster spawn rate and monster native depth on a semi-exponential basis. Alert levels would be decreased (but not necessarily fully reset) by going to deeper levels. They would increase when the player kills monsters, picks up items, and slowly with time.

I have the opposite opinion of you (2 devs, 3 opinions). I want the player to leave the level because there's nothing left to do on this level. You aren't going to hang out on a level that is devoid of monsters/items. I'd prefer a complete elimination of spawned monsters rather than an increase in danger/density. Furthermore, instead of upping the danger on repeat levels, I'd rather create emptier and emptier levels each time they get visited. However, I don't think this is worth it in the long run and I'd rather focusing on improving ironman options for players who want to be pushed deeper.

[Magnate]

Basically my idea is to split the "only one instance of each floor aspect" to "access to town aspect"

"birth_no_recall" would mean that word of recall spells/scrolls do nothing.

"birth_no_upstairs" means that upstairs do not work/exist, and downstairs always take you to max_depth+1. TL always goes down and alter reality doesn't work. Probably have to also prevent recall from level 99/100 until Sauron/Morgoth are dead.

Using both together replicates current ironman play. Using the second option would give a weaker version, call it bronzeman or tinman or whatever. Using just birth_no_recall would also work, but it's probably not a game anyone really wants to play.



I have the opposite opinion of you (2 devs, 3 opinions). I want the player to leave the level because there's nothing left to do on this level. You aren't going to hang out on a level that is devoid of monsters/items. I'd prefer a complete elimination of spawned monsters rather than an increase in danger/density. Furthermore, instead of upping the danger on repeat levels, I'd rather create emptier and emptier levels each time they get visited. However, I don't think this is worth it in the long run and I'd rather focusing on improving ironman options for players who want to be pushed deeper.

Now I begin to see your journey towards persistent levels. Have you played DCSS? It does this very well - levels get empty and boring, but with the occasional really dangerous spawn so you can't assume safety.

I think I like your twin ironman options. In fact I think using birth_no_recall alone would be quite popular, for the reason Timo articulated: it's a completely free form of ironman (gasman? plasmaman?) where you can repeat levels as often as you like, you just can't return to town. (Fine detail about whether dl1 would contain an up stair notwithstanding.) So with a mere two birth options we create four completely different games. I like that.

[emulord]

Id think dlvl 1 should have <, mainly because of the additional birth option "restrict the use of home/shops".

So it is *possible* to < all the way to town if your stats are wrecked from stat drainers or such. It just wouldnt be very fun or good play.

So here are the ironman options
1. No <
2. No recall
3. No stores

1&2 is current ironman, 2 is Mangband-style tinman, 1 is Halls of Mist,
Now for the weirder combinations: 2&3 is Tinman without the temptation of marathoning back to town, 1&3 is basically Ironman, except recall is a escape, 3 is basically Tinman except recall is a escape, 123 is Ironman except you cant buy things at the start.

[Magnate]

Id think dlvl 1 should have <, mainly because of the additional birth option "restrict the use of home/shops".

So it is *possible* to < all the way to town if your stats are wrecked from stat drainers or such. It just wouldnt be very fun or good play.

So here are the ironman options
1. No <
2. No recall
3. No stores

1&2 is current ironman, 2 is Mangband-style tinman, 1 is Halls of Mist,
Now for the weirder combinations: 2&3 is Tinman without the temptation of marathoning back to town, 1&3 is basically Ironman, except recall is a escape, 3 is basically Tinman except recall is a escape, 123 is Ironman except you cant buy things at the start.

My instinctive reaction to that is "too complicated". I've never known anybody use birth_no_stores without also playing ironman; it seems a truly pointless option.

[buzzkill]

Anyway, my point was that angband should stay angband, and not try to go to any other direction.

or... Angband should have stayed Angband. Angband should be the most stable RL with the oldest ruleset and the best UI (but I don't want to fight about it, not here).