No-sell

[buzzkill]

Long, argumentative and completely off-topic, what was the topic again?

And, for what must be like the 5th time in this thread alone, "True Angband" is a community consensus.

You realize that's only your opinion, right? It's not a statement of fact and may not even be one of consensus... which is what is often put forth as pseudo-fact in lieu of actual fact.

If you don't like what the current Vanilla is, then make a branch off of whatever version, make your changes, and publish it as the new True Angband.

That's already been done by the current team. That's kinda my point. I much rather they worked on a variant instead and then ported only the truly successful changes back to what is commonly known as V.

Instead almost the exact opposite principal has been exercised. The devs, the only ones who care enough to do the job, put in whatever they like (with some regard to classic Vanilla and community input) and see what sticks, with the promise that truly horrible changes can later be reverted. That just seems ass-backward to me. Angband wasn't broken. It didn't require "change". Though change isn't necessarily bad, it's not necessarily good.

The fact that nobody has done this indicates that the only people who are capable and motivated to make changes are:

1) already on the dev team,
2) already working on their own variants (i.e. not trying to make a new Vanilla), or
3) quit the community in a huff (i.e. Eddie)

1) They are not already on the dev team. While I can't speak to every change made, with the exception of Tak's extensive work on the low level code, I don't know what has been done that has been thoroughly tested and isn't game breaking or a subject of some controversy.

IMO the dev team is comprised of variant maintainers, who prefer to work in vanilla (I would suppose) because the change they want to implement doesn't warrant their own variant... that is no one would play a variant so similar to V, when they could just play V. Putting their changes into V is their way of getting their variant played.

2) They should be working on their own variants, if that where their interest lies. Great uncontroversial code, like UI improvements and bugfixes could always be brought back to V, without V becoming a sandbox for individual maintainers pet interests. Kudos to you for starting your own project, I wish you only success in your quest.

3) Why did Eddie 'quit in a huff'?

The only reason why the dev team version of Angband is labeled as "Vanilla" is because the community calls it that. If the community wanted to declare, say, NPPAngband as the new Vanilla, that would be their prerogative. Nobody is doing this.

True, but just because that's the way things are, it doesn't mean that's way it should be. Call it DevAngband, call the TakBand, the rip the best bits out of it and port them back to classic V. I don't see the game breaking problem with that approach. Things won't change quickly enough? Not necessarily bad.

NPP is one of my favorite variants. The day anyone offers it up as true-Vanilla, despite it's similarities, you'll hear my strenuous objection. I also consider unappreciated DaJ to be a better V than V itself, but I'd object to that name change as well. Titles have meanings. Those titles shouldn't change based upon prerogative, a whim, any more than the content should change and the title remain the same.

Frankly, I'm getting sick of non-coders saying that the dev team should quit.

Never said that. if you can find it, quote it. I don't know that I've ever heard that from anyone, but I don't hang out here as much as I used to. Perhaps I quit in a huff and didn't realize it.

If you don't like what the dev team is doing, then play an earlier version. If you still want new versions, but with different changes? That's your problem. You want a better maintainer? Step up, learn to code, and take over.

I don't play V at all anymore, and if I chose to I shouldn't have to play an antiquated version in order to play what some would consider classic V. The fact that you offer that as a solution is 'proof' that something went wrong.

Plenty of people learned to code by modifying the Angband codebase. ... if you won't do that and you can't provide constructive criticism, then I invite you to go shout your complaints into a hole in the ground, because you'll do much more good that way. The dev team has demonstrated many times in the past that they are willing to listen to constructive criticism. We have threads every bit as big as this one that are debating the minutiae of how some feature ought to work or if it belongs in Vanilla at all. Don't try to pretend they aren't reasonable people.

How constructive is it to tell someone to "shout your complaints to a hole in the ground"? Jackass. I know your thoughts on the subject as well as you know mine. There's really nothing new here. I respond to a current topic that has come up and this is ultimately the response you give. I get it, we've done this before, and you like the way things washed out last time, so lets not stir the pot anymore. I get it. I'm being non-constructive. I should shut up. Classy. Do you dev guys take turns 'flying off the handle' so that no one of you looks like too unreasonable at any given moment? This is what a non-constructive post looks like. It's quite different than my others. I hope in the future you'll take the time to notice the difference.

I never pretended that the current maintainers aren't reasonable people. I just disagree with the whole dev-team philosophy. I need to remain vocal else the dev-team will simple march on uncontested with what they consider reasonable changes. You, on the other hand, who merely need to remain silent for V progress to continue, can't seem to control yourself, at least not for very long.

[edit] Hey, I'm a "prophet". Believe it.

[DaviddesJ]

Instead almost the exact opposite principal has been exercised. The devs, the only ones who care enough to do the job, put in whatever they like

As someone with no stake at all in this long-running debate, I haven't seen that. They seem to propose stuff (and perhaps put it in the pre-release beta, for testing and evaluation) but the whole point of having a beta version and then a release candidate, is that people can weigh in pro or con before it goes into a release version. If there's a strong consensus against something, I haven't heard them insisting they should still just do "whatever they like".

You don't think Angband should be changed unless it's "broken". Other people think it's good for Angband to evolve over time and get better. This is an irreconcilable conflict. The way to get what you want is to adopt "Classic" Angband yourself, and keep it the same as whatever you think was the perfect non-broken version (2.4 frog-knows?) and make no changes other than compatibility with new systems. But "Classic Angband" would be something different from what "Vanilla Angband" is now. Both can have a place.

[Derakon]

You know what? You're right, I flew off the handle. I got sick of listening to implicit or explicit criticism of people who freely donate vast effort to the community, and got angry. You weren't solely responsible for that, of course -- blame the thread as a whole, as well as the Monster Memory thread. Of course my post was not content-free (and nor was yours), but its tone occasionally got out of hand (as did yours, albeit more subtly).

It would seem that we have the following options:

1) The devs spontaneously agree with you and stop doing anything interesting to Vanilla, ever. Vanilla just gets bugfixes and UI improvements, and all of the actually interesting work is done in variants. This is...never going to happen. The point at which Vanilla gameplay stops changing is the point at which Vanilla itself dies as a going concern. Nobody is going to put in the effort to be a maintainer without getting to be a developer. At least, not without getting paid. The reward of doing all the crap jobs in Vanilla, of finding obscure bugs, fixing broken savefiles, and all that, is that you then get to fiddle with the gameplay as well.

2) The devs propose changes, try things out in betas, see what the community thinks, and some of the changes end up in official Vanilla releases. This is basically what we have today. Sometimes bad changes are added. Usually when that happens, the devs try to fix the changes instead of simply ripping them out entirely. Oftentimes there are disagreements about what is a good change or a bad change; that is where the really big discussions happen, and the devs ultimately have to pick one side or the other. Vanilla keeps moving, even if not everyone agrees on what direction it's moving in.

3) The devs ignore the community and just do what they like. Despite arguments to the contrary, this is not what we have right now. I will say however that many devs are ignoring this thread (and, earlier, the Monster Memory thread) because there seems to be nothing to gain from engaging in the arguments therein. Every time someone brings up that "the devs should be maintainers, not developers" argument, the devs lose interest in listening to that person. And those accusations have been flying pretty hard and fast lately.

[debo]

HUFF

*quits

[DaviddesJ]

BTW, most people probably know this, but if you really value "Classic Angband" the most, there's a current discussion of figuring out how to use a modern codebase to actually support a game that's as close as possible to the classic game. For those who want that, you could help out in one way or another with that project.

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=6258&page=2

[Nick]

HUFF

*quits

nooooooooooo!

[takkaria]

Instead almost the exact opposite principal has been exercised. The devs, the only ones who care enough to do the job, put in whatever they like (with some regard to classic Vanilla and community input) and see what sticks, with the promise that truly horrible changes can later be reverted. That just seems ass-backward to me. Angband wasn't broken. It didn't require "change". Though change isn't necessarily bad, it's not necessarily good.

After 3.5 I'm out of the 'maintaining V' game. I want 3.5 to be as polished and bug-free as possible to leave future coders the best possible starting point but past that, whatever.

IMO the dev team is comprised of variant maintainers, who prefer to work in vanilla (I would suppose) because the change they want to implement doesn't warrant their own variant... that is no one would play a variant so similar to V, when they could just play V. Putting their changes into V is their way of getting their variant played.

2) They should be working on their own variants, if that where their interest lies. Great uncontroversial code, like UI improvements and bugfixes could always be brought back to V, without V becoming a sandbox for individual maintainers pet interests. Kudos to you for starting your own project, I wish you only success in your quest.

I have to say that I'm not the least bit interested in making my own variant. I am/was mostly interested in code and UI fixes. You're right, though, that a significant motivation to work on V is that there is already a playerbase.

And you're also right that a lot of changes have been controversial and a lot of stuff isn't as well-balanced and well-tested as it would ideally be. Maybe the direction I want to see the game go in isn't really one that is very compatible with Angband. Removing stat-restore potions and replacing them with level-up stat restore is one example; it's basically a new mechanic in the game (that when you level up something happens), added to attempt to remove some boredom and to make an existing mechanic (stat drain) matter more. The attempt at removing TMJ might have been hamfisted, but I never promised anyone that I was a great player; I'm not. I don't have a great sense of balance and I've always relied on others who do to correct stuff.

Back when rr9 retired there was a bunch of off-r.g.r.a emails about who wanted to be the maintainer. As we know, someone was chosen who didn't actually do anything with the game and there were endless posts asking when something was going to happen...

I don't want to make excuses for times when the game has been way out of balance, because obviously it has. There's loads of stuff in V now that is neither in its original form nor in a finished form. I'm thinking about ID, stat-restore potions, caverns/labyrinths, curses, probably numerous other stuff (maybe artifact power levels?) that I'm sure others will be happy to point out. These were all genuine attempts to fix what seemed like gameplay problems in V; not to go off and create a variant, but to work with existing mechanics in a way that hopefully enhanced the game we/I inherited. You might not think these were gameplay problems or you might want other solutions. I definitely don't feel able to finish off those features but I also would hate to just go back to gameplay as it was 6 years ago. *ID* scrolls were never a fun idea. ID by use made the game a lot less tedious and a lot less about identifying boring items early on. Curses were predictable and tedious while also being, effectively, a penalty for trying things out - an extra cost for getting removed over and above the Identify scrolls you would have to buy for most items.

I mean, crap, you might not like what has happened to the game for a while. I myself have a sense that it's in limbo. I would love for someone to come forward and work out this stuff in a way that satisfies more people.

I fear this is getting overly rambly. In short, I don't feel like I have the skills and motivation necessary to continue working on Angband; I feel disheartened by the fact I've spent six years on and off, working on something that feels half-baked. I feel like I can neither follow where the mechanics already in Angband lead me or leave it where it is. If someone wants to step forward to maintain V 3.5 after it's released with a vision to fixing whatever gameplay they feel is broken, you've got my go-ahead, honestly.

EDIT: So when re-reading it I worry this just sounds like a self-pitying rant, but that's not really what I wanted it to be.

[Timo Pietilä]

And, for what must be like the 5th time in this thread alone, "True Angband" is a community consensus.

That's what it should ideally be. Problem is that it really isn't.

If you don't like what the current Vanilla is, then make a branch off of whatever version, make your changes, and publish it as the new True Angband.

That's just arrogant. We are not all coders and/or have time to do that.

Frankly, I'm getting sick of non-coders saying that the dev team should quit.

I think reason why some non-coders say that is evident from the start of this message: community involvement is too low on decision making.

Who cares if some bit is coded some way or other, community doesn't really care about that. What community cares is the game, how you play it, what it does and how it does it (not in code-level, but how you perceive it when you play it).

You, and I'm talking about entire team, need to be more open of what you are planning to do. Before you do it. Anything considering gameplay changes should be open to discussion.

Also for community, less saying "this is crazy" without suggestion how to improve it or explanation why you perceive it as "crazy" is in order. Cool minds prevail.

I personally stopped reading v4 and development forums because first I don't see as vanilla-related (it is a variant) and second was just talking about coding which is just plain boring to me. Maybe new forum topic "future of vanilla" is in order.

[AnonymousHero]

That's just arrogant. We are not all coders and/or have time to do that.

No, what's arrogant is expecting people to work for free on whatever you (or "the community", a nebulous stakeholder if ever I saw one) want. If you cannot code or don't have time you must either: a) convince someone (who is working for free) that it's worth implementing whatever changes you have in mind, or b) pay someone to do the work.

If you're extremely conservative and just want Angband to be left alone, you can also play old versions. If you want UI updates without rule/engine updates, you can backport them or have someone backport them for you. Alternatively help out (monetarily or coding-wise) in getting an Engine/UI split completed so that backporting effort either becomes unnecessary or minimal.

Expecting anything else is unrealistic and reeks of entitlement.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Non-coders who are worried about game balance could make changes to edit files, and then make their changed files available to the community. If enough people like the changed item prices, monster hitpoints, etc., they should be incorporated into Vanilla.

EDIT: Selling prices and gold drops can't be modified in the edit files (I think). Would it be possible to add these, for the benefit of modders? It would be real nice to see some JLE-style patches pop up (instead of pointless arguing).

[Timo Pietilä]

No, what's arrogant is expecting people to work for free on whatever you (or "the community", a nebulous stakeholder if ever I saw one) want. If you cannot code or don't have time you must either: a) convince someone (who is working for free) that it's worth implementing whatever changes you have in mind

a) is OK to me. Arrogant was to propose that this is not an option.

[AnonymousHero]

Non-coders who are worried about game balance could make changes to edit files, and then make their changed files available to the community. If enough people like the changed item prices, monster hitpoints, etc., they should be incorporated into Vanilla.

EDIT: Selling prices and gold drops can't be modified in the edit files (I think). Would it be possible to add these, for the benefit of modders? It would be real nice to see some JLE-style patches pop up (instead of pointless arguing).

I believe prices are in the edit files (fourth column on "W" lines in object.txt).

It's a good overall point -- I believe Pyrel will greatly increase the extent of "moddability" without code changes, although the "edit files" will perhaps become a little more complex. It will incidentally also remove the re-compilation barrier.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I believe prices are in the edit files (fourth column on "W" lines in object.txt).

Yes, of course! That would work for people who have no-selling on. I was somehow still in the world of selling as default.

(You can't tweak the balance between selling and buying prices in edit files. If you increase prices, selling becomes more important compared to money drops.)

[Derakon]

I note that the sales price of equipment depends on the stats of the gear ("value-based pricing" or something like that), which makes it harder to tweak. But consumables, wands, etc. all ought to be tweakable by the edit files as far as I'm aware.

Pyrel's goals as far as modifiability are basically:

1) Just about every in-game behavior is configurable. For example, the effect of a Wand of Magic Missile wouldn't be "magic missile", it would be "fire a bolt, damage = magic device * 2d6, element = mana". The effect of getting hit by a gravity attack is "phase target; slow target; stun target" instead of "apply gravity effect". And so on.
2) Where effects can't be fully-described in edit files (e.g. exactly what "fire a bolt" means), there's an easily-found function in the code that defines exactly what the effect is, and you can find that function by searching for the string that refers to it in the edit file.
3) Consequently, adding unique new behaviors (say, conic breath attacks) is just a matter of writing the appropriate new function and assigning a string to it; it can then be used in the edit files.

Of course, Pyrel is still a long ways from completion at current development rates (i.e. nobody's working on it right now...).

[AnonymousHero]

Of course, Pyrel is still a long ways from completion at current development rates (i.e. nobody's working on it right now...).

Sigh... If only I had the time... .