A Few New Player Questions

[Scampada]

You should be taking some game turns to pick locked doors, even though the real time delay is infinitesimal. As for lockpicks, I guess the thinking is that if they existed, you would HAVE to carry them. So everybody would. So what would be the point?

No, I wouldn't have if I wouldn't want to pick locks. Not all of doors are locked.
In addition to this, they would be very, very tiny. Say a 0.1 lb of weight? yeah, they would take a slot and the slots are limited, but... Don't you remember how this was solved in Nethack? There was boxes. So one could have additional slots in his inventory. Isn't it cool?

Jamming and bashing used to exist, but were removed for reasons of tediousness. If you want to play with them, you can download one of the v3.3 versions from rephial.org and see what you think.

But 3.3 will lack many of the 4.0 good sides, for sure!
Without locked doors and hardness of opening them the game appears to be a bit... arcadeous. Just slash'em'up or something... No intrigues "what is lying behind that door?", no hard efforts trying to open it, no finding a key...

I take your point though, that some monsters get through locked doors too easily. I suppose you would expect a sneaky hobbit (a burgler maybe?) to pick a lock in seconds and a massive Mumak to walk through one without even noticing, but a human acolyte? A firefly?

This also makes the game "arcadeous". What are they for, the doors, then? If jamming them is tedious then remove them at all. Opening the doors is tedious!
Really, in that stage I see no sense in these doors.

Angband has COOL UI.
Nethack has cool gameplay (and very non-friendly interface). A bit cooler then Angband 4.0, I regret to say

Plus, is it possible to modify the game or wait for an official release with appropriate changes... I would like to see currently available cool interface along with non-single-dungeon gameplay. ZAngband offers open spaces, but lacks many cool stuff that are present in Angband 4. I'm not even speaking of UI...
ADOM offers them too, but it is not possible to play it. Its movement is very slow down and I can't help it. It has even cooler gameplay than Angband, though. All those talents, backstabs. There aren't any dependencies in Angband between which item I'm using and which stats I have? Except of Strength or Dexterity, or something maybe. I mean exactly item-regarding stats. Affinity with bows, affinity with swords... all that glitz. One can play half a game with a dagger and then abruptly buy a super-battle-axe and nothing changes except of damage points.

By the way. Why all the merchants refuse to pay me in gold for everything? They agree to get an item when I press 's' (sell) but all these items are marked as '0 au'. I'm just giving them stuff.

[MattB]

Really, in that stage I see no sense in these doors.

They're very important for line of sight.

[MattB]

Plus, is it possible to modify the game or wait for an official release with appropriate changes... I would like to see currently available cool interface along with non-single-dungeon gameplay. ZAngband offers open spaces, but lacks many cool stuff that are present in Angband 4. I'm not even speaking of UI...

Have you tried FAangband?
It has more of the stuff you seem to be after than Vanilla.

[Scampada]

They're very important for line of sight.

And that's all. That's why Angband 4 is looking as arcade for me

[Scampada]

Have you tried FAangband?
It has more of the stuff you seem to be after than Vanilla.

Is it based on latest versions of Angband? I don't want just removing it: it has one of the coolest roguelike UI.

If it was possible to mix them like modules... Say, Angband 4 UI and something...

[Scampada]

It's possible to make two gameplay modes in Angband... Say, slash'em mode and expert mode which provides unopenable heavy locked doors, bashing them is much heavier and depends strongly on race, class and strength... Add boxes (packs) to inventory... and all that stuff.

What some people count as tedious, other people like as good stuff.

[Mondkalb]

---snip---
By the way. Why all the merchants refuse to pay me in gold for everything? They agree to get an item when I press 's' (sell) but all these items are marked as '0 au'. I'm just giving them stuff.

That is the new default "no selling" option. You can change it in the "=" menu, but it is a birth option and only works with a new character.

[Scampada]

That is the new default "no selling" option. You can change it in the "=" menu, but it is a birth option and only works with a new character.

Well... that's stranger and stranger

No trade + no door locking. o_O

[AnonymousHero]

It's possible to make two gameplay modes in Angband... Say, slash'em mode and expert mode which provides unopenable heavy locked doors, bashing them is much heavier and depends strongly on race, class and strength... Add boxes (packs) to inventory... and all that stuff.

Well, techincally almost anything is possible, but it requires someone to do the work. (Or getting the developers to agree to your vision of the game should be.)

I don't see Angband moving towards a move Nethack'y gameplay any time soon -- nor ever, really. Angband is Angband and it's never been that much about item interactions and such.

What some people count as tedious, other people like as good stuff.

Indeed, which is why you should find the game that works best for you.

[Scampada]

If only I found a fork or Angband-like UI and extended gameplay - that would be the best option.

[Mondkalb]

If only I found a fork or Angband-like UI and extended gameplay - that would be the best option.

Do you know FAangband?
It is focused on Tolkien's "First Age" mythology as described in "The Silmarillion" and stripped of all characters and items from the later works (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings).
There are some different races and classes and a magic system with four classes instead of the two in vanilla.
Lots of new items come in from the ancient times as well as some additional skills for the various classes.
FAangband has lots of different wilderness levels, featuring the vast landscapes from grassy plains and thick woods to swamps and deserts. Also, the actual terrain the player and monsters are standing on may modify their ability to move and to hide.
There are four lesser dungeons at some famous places with lesser guardians and the main dungeon with Morgoth.
At last, FAangband has several towns instead of only one, some of them with only three shops, some with more.

http://angband.oook.cz/faangband/

FAangband decends from Oangband:

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=First_Age_Angband

[Scampada]

Thanks! I'm building it already and will give it a try.

I think it's OK! It has the same UI as vanilla Ang. Cool stuff! *bands live.

[Derakon]

Angband and NetHack are very different games. NetHack is sort-of a "simulationist" type of game -- there's a ton of different systems and tools and commands and items that all have weird little niche uses, and the game is in large part about knowing what items do what, which ones are worth keeping / stashing, and which weird interactions are helpful. NetHack is in a way kind of like an old "adventure" game (like King's Quest or Monkey Island) with a combat engine.

Angband is not that type of game. It's much more of a tactical combat game with significant inventory constraints. Angband explicitly doesn't have containers that you can stash things in, because you're supposed to be making difficult decisions about what items are most useful. It also doesn't have permanent levels because we don't want the player to be constantly running back and forth to get the "right items" from their stash for whatever challenge they're facing on a new level. The basic gameplay of Angband is "I have a limited set of tools I can carry with me, and must face a wide variety of monsters and terrain with those tools." Deciding what to bring and therefore which challenges will be easy and which ones hard is central to Angband's difficulty.

I'm not saying that NetHack is bad, nor that there's nothing Angband can learn from other roguelikes. But Angband is not going to have a tool that can only be applied in one specific scenario. Lockpicks to open doors (or iron spikes to jam them) are needlessly specific. If you could come up with a more generically-useful item that can also be used to make doors more interesting at a tactical level, then sure, that could be worth considering.

Incidentally, monsters have to make multiple attempts to open doors. If you have telepathy, then you can see them trying to open or break down doors, and failing many times over before they succeed. It is of course a probabilistic system, though, so sometimes they succeed quickly and sometimes it takes longer. In either case, though, it can seem to happen quickly because the player is taking many turns doing other things while the monsters singlemindedly work on their doors.

[Scampada]

Haha!

No selling
Shopkeepers will never pay you for items you sell... blah blah blah... To balance out income in the game, gold found will be increased.

So, that's exactly why I have 40000 AU after a day of playing without knowing where to tap them out! not because I'm clever & lucky, yeah

[Scampada]

Angband is not that type of game. It's much more of a tactical combat game with significant inventory constraints. Angband explicitly doesn't have containers that you can stash things in, because you're supposed to be making difficult decisions about what items are most useful. It also doesn't have permanent levels because we don't want the player to be constantly running back and forth to get the "right items" from their stash for whatever challenge they're facing on a new level. The basic gameplay of Angband is "I have a limited set of tools I can carry with me, and must face a wide variety of monsters and terrain with those tools." Deciding what to bring and therefore which challenges will be easy and which ones hard is central to Angband's difficulty.

But what kind of tactics can we speak of if I can not flee a hobbit that runs like a behemoth crushing doors in his way?

Incidentally, monsters have to make multiple attempts to open doors. If you have telepathy, then you can see them trying to open or break down doors, and failing many times over before they succeed. It is of course a probabilistic system, though, so sometimes they succeed quickly and sometimes it takes longer. In either case, though, it can seem to happen quickly because the player is taking many turns doing other things while the monsters singlemindedly work on their doors.

How many turns does it cost to make a single step? I'm running away of a ...say, hobbit, then see a door. It's only one or two cells between us separated by door. I close it and lock it and keep running, and as I make one or two steps away of the door it opens with a slam-bang clatter and there is the hobbit in the door opening...