Angband and the roguelike community

[Timo Pietilä]

Um, the short answer is no and yes, but that's misleading.

I suspect that in practice it's going to be really difficult to get sufficient control without using a keyboard; even with various cutdowns that can be done on item-handling commands, for example, there are still rather a lot of genuinely different commands

Large touch-screen like in tablets give a lot of freedom for commands, much more than mouse-control. You can use entire screen as input interface. You would need to do some sort of transparency or "mouse gestures" -type commands, command menus and stuff though. Not same as keyboard, but can be done.

[MattB]

using some combination of buttons/gestures/accelerometer/voice input/whatever.

Oooh, voice commands! I hadn't thought of that.
Might make you look a bit weird on the train though...

"Aim-annihilation-Vecna. Aim-annihilation-Vecna. Aim-annihilation-Vecna. Phase door. Phase door. PHASE DOOR!! Aargh! Teleleport Self. Bugger. Teleport Other - Dracolisk. Teleport Other - Great wrym of many colours. Teleport Other - Great wyrm of chaos. Sod it. Teleport self. NOOOOO!!! Hit Vecna. Hit Vecna. Hit Vecna. Quaff-Healing. Hit Vecna. Teleport Self. Hit Great wyrm of law. Teleport Self. Teleport Self. Teleport Self..............Sh*t."

[LostTemplar]

"Aim-annihilation-Vecna. Aim-annihilation-Vecna. Aim-annihilation-Vecna. Phase door. Phase door. PHASE DOOR!! Aargh! Teleleport Self. Bugger. Teleport Other - Dracolisk. Teleport Other - Great wrym of many colours. Teleport Other - Great wyrm of chaos. Sod it. Teleport self. NOOOOO!!! Hit Vecna. Hit Vecna. Hit Vecna. Quaff-Healing. Hit Vecna. Teleport Self. Hit Great wyrm of law. Teleport Self. Teleport Self. Teleport Self..............Sh*t."

This combined with auto-explore discussions, can lead to AI-band or borg-band variant, where character is controlled by AI in real time, and player only dives it a general, not detailed commands.

[brownbear]

Didn't want to start a new thread and a bit OT, but why was the change made to make Charisma not affect store prices anymore? And racial preferences, sales, etc.

I remember years ago when you would get better deals or get cursed out because you were a troll shopping in an elven shop. That was quite entertaining!

[getter77]

As somebody who sticks up for *BAND country (even on a RL Radio episode IIRC..) and generally is an ever-present nuisance in the Roguelike community on the whole---yeah, the peak is not yet in sight and there's plenty more enriching to do...the NPP stuff mentioned as coming above and any other U/I and control improvements are key.

Gotta be bold and not labor under artificial constraints---steal every good general idea and improvement from other variants/Roguelikes and aspire to have ever-more and better stuff to be stolen from by others. Flavor and personality aplenty are also key, and all manner of stylistic flourishes should be employed whenever possible to deepen that impact.

There's no reason Angband need be yoked to a (mistaken) preconception that it is ever-dusty and dusted in the same vein as Nethack---the Forever Grind to the Forever Obtuse. It takes time to change an image around, but with bold steps going forward on top of instances of meteoric rise like Sil---it can be done. Perhaps we will finally see the rise of homage/successor projects to Angband moreso? Even Nethack now has the likes of Diggr, PRIME, and Incavead trying to take that core and succeed it unto something else and something more.

[raithe]

From my perspective Angband has a few problems that need addressing. These are kind of at random so just bear with me.

1) Silly(Yeeks), or duplicated (molds/jellies why both?), monsters. The monster list seems bloated simply because it can be. It needs streamlining and a serious overall rethink with regards to both thematic quality, and whether a given monster actually adds anything unique to gameplay. This applies to a lot of other content/balance issues as well.

2) Scope (goes with above) On the one hand Angband's massive scope (huge dungeon, massive lists of stuff, critters etc) is a strength, but it's also a weakness. It's a lot to balance properly and it's difficult to avoid repetitive gameplay with so much there and so little variance in it. Now I don't know the solution to this one as changing it changes what Angband IS in a lot of ways, but it's there none the less.

3) Confusing playstyle for new players, a lot of things that veterans think are simple are actually extremely counter-intuitive. Most roguelikes function completely differently in regards to progression, clocks, weapon balance etc. Not to say this bad in itself, but there is nothing that explains this anywhere in the help files to new players. If you come from other games you think that gradually clearing each level is the normal way to play a roguelike, or any other RPG for that matter. No one creates a character, buys a dagger and heads off to the nearest den of creatures 10 levels higher than them, you'd get slaughtered. But that's exactly what Angband expects you to do. That's fine, but the change in style needs to be noted somewhere other than forums.

4) Outdated UI. I know there's a lot of discussion about this, but here is my take on it. Mouse play, this is IMPORTANT. A lot of us who have played roguelikes for years like the keyboard, but a streamlined, mouse driven UI in the age of tablets and laptops with no numpad IS the future. The keyboard can stay there, no reason to ditch it, but the primary focus should be on a modern interface. V has made some strides toward this but its still very clunky: requiring lots of steps to do common things, and not being clear when & where you can and can't click and what will happen when you do. OmnibandTK was probably the cleanest best mouse interface *bands had and it's still light years from modern UI design. Same goes for the online help, there's lots of info there but it needs to be more contextual driven.

5) The whole Auto-explore thing. I agree that it shouldn't be needed, but there are things to learn here, bits to be snagged and folded in. It's widely popular for a reason after all; and while most tout the feature as a whole it's actually some of it's sub-routines they find so handy, not the explore itself. (whether they realize it or not.)
Proper pathfinding is a big one, which folds back into mouse UI as well. It speeds gameplay and eliminates keystrokes without sacrificing ANYTHING.
Along with that the ability to quickly find things already known like stairs is super handy.
Even moreso on a game like Angband that has such a HORRIBLE map function. Unless you have a huge monitor the map is ugly and near useless. This another case where TK far outshines V.

6) Platform priorities, I know most *band devs run Linux and that's fine but most people, don't. Linux has never had a high market share and it looks like it never will. Heck even mobile OS's probably outweigh Linux in market share now. Thusly it's important for Anband to focus on development for viable platforms if it wants to be a viable software.

That's my opinion, take it for what you will.

[takkaria]

1) Silly(Yeeks), or duplicated (molds/jellies why both?), monsters. The monster list seems bloated simply because it can be. It needs streamlining and a serious overall rethink with regards to both thematic quality, and whether a given monster actually adds anything unique to gameplay. This applies to a lot of other content/balance issues as well.

Hard to argue with this.

6) Platform priorities, I know most *band devs run Linux and that's fine but most people, don't. Linux has never had a high market share and it looks like it never will. Heck even mobile OS's probably outweigh Linux in market share now. Thusly it's important for Anband to focus on development for viable platforms if it wants to be a viable software.

Who said anything about Angband being viable software?

[Nick]

1) Silly(Yeeks), or duplicated (molds/jellies why both?), monsters.

I would like to see this handled mostly by improving, rather than removing, monsters. I would argue that most monsters should be a challenge to some race/class/equipment combination at their native depth - although you do want a few you can just steamroll.

3) Confusing playstyle for new players, a lot of things that veterans think are simple are actually extremely counter-intuitive.

Ideal solution here is a Sil-style tutorial.

4) Outdated UI.

5) The whole Auto-explore thing.

6) Platform priorities

One of the priorities of the (now current!) restructure is to allow UI to be modified more easily and sensibly, and in fact for whole new UIs to be written. I'm hoping that will help in the fixing of these.

2) Scope (goes with above) On the one hand Angband's massive scope (huge dungeon, massive lists of stuff, critters etc) is a strength, but it's also a weakness. It's a lot to balance properly and it's difficult to avoid repetitive gameplay with so much there and so little variance in it. Now I don't know the solution to this one as changing it changes what Angband IS in a lot of ways, but it's there none the less.

This is an ongoing process, and fairly subtle. I want to get a good feel for how 3.5 is playing (note - competition soon!) before making any gameplay changes, but this is certainly firmly in mind.

[LostTemplar]

This

Ideal solution here is a Sil-style tutorial.

will barely help.
Angband has a lot of cool thing in the UI e.g. multiple windows, key maps, inscription, squelch etc. However cool these features were exploited by devs for ages making current angband hard to play without them. This is bad. Really. We should not force new player to use any advanced stuff, game should be comfortable to play without inscriptions, squelch, just in one window, etc.

[Derakon]

This will barely help.
Angband has a lot of cool thing in the UI e.g. multiple windows, key maps, inscription, squelch etc. However cool these features were exploited by devs for ages making current angband hard to play without them. This is bad. Really. We should not force new player to use any advanced stuff, game should be comfortable to play without inscriptions, squelch, just in one window, etc.

I can't think of any changes to the game that make the advanced stuff you mentioned any more required*. If we'd had extra term windows and keymaps and squelch back in the 2.4 days we'd've used them and been thankful for them. Such things were created to solve problems the game has without changing how the game itself plays, because so many people in the Angband community are "purists".

* Well, I guess allowing items to stack in tiles makes squelch more necessary.

[Malak Darkhunter]

From my perspective Angband has a few problems that need addressing. These are kind of at random so just bear with me.


6) Platform priorities, I know most *band devs run Linux and that's fine but most people, don't. Linux has never had a high market share and it looks like it never will. Heck even mobile OS's probably outweigh Linux in market share now. Thusly it's important for Anband to focus on development for viable platforms if it wants to be a viable software.

That's my opinion, take it for what you will.

Actualy Ubuntu Linux is moving to commercial capabilities..there is now computer companies such as Dell that are now selling Ubuntu Linux platforms as their operating system, they even have developed a Cell phone that uses Ubuntu Linix and can switch and be an anfroid platform as well, there are millions of linux users worldwide, and it is growing..I honestly think microsoft will fall.

but to be honest I have kind of felt for about the last decade that things where developed more for windows users, most. Most compiled packages are for windows, and a lot of development has went to fixes for different windows operating systems over the years..at first it was unix,pc,amiga, and then Ibm-dos...I liked Dos for angbanding. Nowdays it seems to be predominatley Windows, and then Mac and Linux...take for instance their isn't even an pre-compiled Linux version of 3.5 yet, the Ubuntu repositories only have angband 3.2, which is now kinda old, I honestly haven't seen that many Linux version's of angband or variants around lately, unless you do the work and compile it yourself...that being said can someone compile a angband 3.5 for Linux and make it availiable as download? I still haven't figured out how compile this thing myself.

[LostTemplar]

I can't think of any changes to the game that make the advanced stuff you mentioned any more required*.

On this forum I have seen many messages like "why improve item generation if anyone use squelch anyway", or why improve UI if anyone uses keymap. Many good suggestions were rejected with such arguments.

There are two possible approaches to such advanced functionality

It is really advanced and optional and UI need major improvement and redesign.

Or it is basic and in this case, it should be used by out-of-box angband, e.g. default config with autoinscribed books, keymap for spells, nicely configured multiple windows, etc. should be included along with good and visible help, how to modify stuff. It is mangatory that when player first start Angband he sees all this functionality. Otherwise many people would simply not start it second time.

[raithe]

I agree with the Templar. It's like having to have the monster list because of OSD (Off Screen Death). That's kind of a slimy gotcha to begin, but roguelikes are known for that kind of thing. But if the reaction is simply to add in something to the UI which makes it null, then why have it at all?

@Malak
Microsoft may well fail but it won't be Linux replacing it. Not so long as the *nix community insists on clinging to 40 year old software (like vi), and writing documentation that only people with comp sci degrees can read. It's shares aren't growing check usage graphs around the net, it's hovered steady around 5% for the last decade. Oh sure servers and business platforms use it, always have, and they don't show up on stat graphs. Because they are dedicated platforms that don't run any other software, not a good argument for targeting for game development.

That said, the windows port is still basically the same as it's been forever. There are even still bugs in it that have been there since day one that have known workarounds if not fixes. Like bitmap fonts which don't get released on close, causing display glitches when there's been code for ages to make using system fonts possible.

My point isn't to kill the nix binaries or focus solely on windows. In fact I never said windows, I said viable platformS, plural. My concern was that most of the interface redisgn talk focus has been on things like QT and GTk, which while they CAN be easily ported to other systems, frequently aren't written in such a way as to be conducive to this. All too often Linux developers write code in a Linux fashion, meaning tons of dependencies, and other practices that make portability a problem either in building or in end use. Mostly the result of, I'll make it run in Linux then port it later code which wasn't cross platform enough from the start. Not to slam any of the devs here, just want to make sure its kept in mind.

[fph]

default config with autoinscribed books, keymap for spells.

To revamp an old suggestion: most modern games have replaced macros and inscriptions with quick-use slots. The average 2014 computer player would find those more intuitive than {@m1@G1@b1!s!d!k!v} on their spellbook.

[takkaria]

To revamp an old suggestion: most modern games have replaced macros and inscriptions with quick-use slots. The average 2014 computer player would find those more intuitive than {@m1@G1@b1!s!d!k!v} on their spellbook.

On the IRC dev channel, were discussing making the 'cast' command show a list of all the spells you have access to instead of making you choose a spellbook first, too.