Angband and the roguelike community

[takkaria]

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.

Actually, those problems have been fixed now. But your general point that the frontend hasn't changed is totally valid. Few of the devs run Windows - the windows binary is often cross-compiled and packaged from a Linux installation!

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.

I think most of the devs actually run OS X, with Linux coming in second. We put a lot of effort into making sure Angband runs on multiple platforms so it's really unlikely we'd write code that only worked on one platform. Most of the devs write very little code that is platform-dependent, either.

[raithe]

I thought that problem with the fonts was still active. I see it's fixed in V now, though it remains in all the recent variants I've tried.

Nice to hear cross compatibility is a priority. I guess this is another of those instances where people's opinions of V are colored by variants. (Which would be another of those Angband's greastest strengths are sometimes it weakness as well)

[Mondkalb]

I always have been very fond of the TK Angband. I stil have an older version which was a combined Angband/ZAngband package. Besides the isometrical versions there are also subwindows which can show graphics. It has a paperdoll equipment window. It has mouse support.
Also, it has a window with tipps.
Overall I think it is way more accessible than modern angband.





There has been a discussion on this already:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=1638

I believe, it was called Omniband and there is a thread about the newest version:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=2062

[fph]

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.

Thanks for the answer! That seems a good idea, but how do you plan to fit them all in one menu if I may ask? End-game mages and priests have around 60 spells if I compute correctly.

[buzzkill]

Thanks for the answer! That seems a good idea, but how do you plan to fit them all in one menu if I may ask? End-game mages and priests have around 60 spells if I compute correctly.

Devs could build capability for the player to "inscribe" (or otherwise attach a notation to) individual spells within their spellbooks. This will allow the player to divide spells into groupings as the they see fit. This will in essence break the individual spells down into several favorites lists. So, @1 might bring up a list of offensive spells, @2 might be utility spells, @3 could be healing. @0 would be the default, full list of spells. Perhaps one could also designate @-, I'm never going cast this spell so never show it to be again. Then these lists could be tied to hot keys...

Re: inscriptions. All functional inscriptions, such as the litany of gibberish commonly used on spellbooks (and also on other stuff) by many great players, should be hidden. Inscriptions should never be visible on the inventory or equipment screens. They should only be accessed through an special inscriptions menu, where all known items and current inscriptions are displayed. The only inscriptions visible on the equip/invent screen should be flavorful ones, like naming your ordinary wooden club "Grond".

[fizzix]

Thanks for the answer! That seems a good idea, but how do you plan to fit them all in one menu if I may ask? End-game mages and priests have around 60 spells if I compute correctly.

26 lowercase letters 26 uppercase letters. Seems like that should be enough for all the spells.

I'd actually like a limitation of how many spells can be memorized, so that there's some choice in the matter.

[Derakon]

I'd actually like a limitation of how many spells can be memorized, so that there's some choice in the matter.

How are you going to do that without forcing players who don't have the spellbooks memorized* to make uninformed decisions? I could see something like "You can learn 5 out of the 8 spells in this book" possibly working because it keeps things constrained, but I can't think of a way to have "You can learn 40 spells and there are 52 throughout the game" work when you only find out about some of them after plowing through a dozen mages at least.

We'd also have to fix the redundant-spells problem. Why would anyone ever learn Cure Moderate Wounds or Lesser Recharging? But fixing this without either making spellcasters too good (lots of useful spells) or making the spellbooks awfully empty (simply remove the redundant spells) or reducing the number of spellbooks (reducing inventory pressure) sounds hard.

Mm, though one thing you could do is have "learned" and "memorized" be separate concepts. Memorized spells could be cast without access to a book and possibly with lower cost / reduced failure rate. Though, again, that reduces inventory pressure. If we were to do something like this, then you would have to be able to "un-memorize" spells at will.

* Including knowing the actual utility of each spell, not just "this looks useful"

[Nick]

How are you going to do that without forcing players who don't have the spellbooks memorized* to make uninformed decisions? I could see something like "You can learn 5 out of the 8 spells in this book" possibly working because it keeps things constrained, but I can't think of a way to have "You can learn 40 spells and there are 52 throughout the game" work when you only find out about some of them after plowing through a dozen mages at least.

You could make spells forgettable - although that would have the potential for silliness with remembering a spell when you needed it and then forgetting it again. There might be a way to make it work, though.

[takkaria]

We'd also have to fix the redundant-spells problem. Why would anyone ever learn Cure Moderate Wounds or Lesser Recharging? But fixing this without either making spellcasters too good (lots of useful spells) or making the spellbooks awfully empty (simply remove the redundant spells) or reducing the number of spellbooks (reducing inventory pressure) sounds hard.

How about reducing the number of items that casters can carry to compensate for emptier books?

[ekolis]

You could make spells forgettable - although that would have the potential for silliness with remembering a spell when you needed it and then forgetting it again. There might be a way to make it work, though.

Perhaps there could be a cost for forgetting a spell? Say, a loss of 1 point of INT/WIS, which can be restored using potions of restore stat? It seems kind of counterintuitive that it would cost INT/WIS to forget a spell, but if you think about it a bit it makes sense in a sort of backwards way - when you become stupider, you tend to forget things!

[fizzix]

You could make spells forgettable - although that would have the potential for silliness with remembering a spell when you needed it and then forgetting it again. There might be a way to make it work, though.

DCSS does this by allowing you to forget spells in two possible ways. The first way is to use a "scroll of amnesia" The second option is to use a book that has the spell in it, destroying the book.

I'm not sure this is the appropriate method for us.

[Derakon]

Honestly all of this sounds like a really gamey way to make limiting the spells you can learn not be a horrible play experience. Why do we need to limit the spells you can learn?

[mrrstark]

Instead of forgetting etc. scaling spell effects with player level/stats/power/something seems like it'd be a better way to consolidate the spell list so you don't have so many spells that are just scaled variants of each other.

i.e. Cure x/y/z wounds -> Cure Wounds (XdY * scaleFactor(int, wis, clevel))

It'd have tons of system-wide effects though...

[buzzkill]

Honestly all of this sounds like a really gamey way to make limiting the spells you can learn not be a horrible play experience. Why do we need to limit the spells you can learn?

For the same reason we limit inventory slots, not that IGARA either way. Magik iz foor luzers.

[Nick]

Roguelike Starter Bundle v1.0 looks pretty cool - and nicely up to date, it includes Angband 3.5 and Sil 1.2.