Optional wilderness as birth option

[Carnivean]

I haven't tried an Angband variant yet, because aside from this forum I find it a little confusing to figure out what variant offers what.

The reason I offered PWMangband is that it's probably the closest to V. It is designed to be multiplayer and in real time, but there's an option to play it single player and turn based.

[PowerWyrm]

PWMangband now has all the goodies from V, and a wilderness.

Wait for the new 1.1.12 version, it will have a brand new wilderness with Middle-Earth metamap, well known locations and multiple dungeons. For now, it's just a post apocalyptic field of irradiated ruins.

[PowerWyrm]

And when it is playable with OS, then I'll go for it.

Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac and I have no idea how to code or compile with OSX

[droof]

Okay, I'm convinced. I'll give them all a try building a character to level 30 to get a feel for every variant. With a backlog of zangband, tome2, faangband, poschangband and pwmangband I'll be playing for a month ^^

The Middle-Earth metamap for the next PWMangband sounds great, but what does that mean more specifically?

[Patashu]

Well, if you know the right cheese you can get level 30 characters in ToME2 and Poschengband and maybe some of those other variants in just an hour of playtime

[PowerWyrm]

The Middle-Earth metamap for the next PWMangband sounds great, but what does that mean more specifically?

It means it's gonna look a lot like ToME2. Instead of starting in the "Town" which holds the main dungeon and having a completely random/empty/boring wilderness, you will start in a specific town (say for example "Hobbiton" in the Shire), move to other places which will have side dungeons and finally reach the base town which will have the "Angband" dungeon.

[droof]

Yup, that sounds great. I look forward to playing with the Middle-Earth map. Will the world map be static designed or have random bits too?

Going back to wilderness and currently available options in Angband, the dungeons of Angband are pretty packed with walls. Most of the rooms and vaults in the text files have interesting shapes, but still packed rooms. Some of the largest vaults are more spacious.

What would happen if I added much more spacious large rooms to room_template.txt for more interesting explorable spaces without the fear of dangerous monsters like vaults have? What is the largest room size Angband supports and does it affect the chance a room shows up in early dungeon levels?

[AnonymousHero]

It means it's gonna look a lot like ToME2. Instead of starting in the "Town" which holds the main dungeon and having a completely random/empty/boring wilderness, you will start in a specific town (say for example "Hobbiton" in the Shire), move to other places which will have side dungeons and finally reach the base town which will have the "Angband" dungeon.

Incidentally, Theme (the T2 module) has a more faithful rendition of the ME overland map than ToME 2 itself does. (Image)

EDIT: I should add that the licensing is a bit murky, so probably best to not actually use that data file...

[PowerWyrm]

Yup, that sounds great. I look forward to playing with the Middle-Earth map. Will the world map be static designed or have random bits too?

Well the map will be static, but each sector will be randomly generated, using the current MAngband wilderness generator.

[PowerWyrm]

Incidentally, Theme (the T2 module) has a more faithful rendition of the ME overland map than ToME 2 itself does. (Image)

EDIT: I should add that the licensing is a bit murky, so probably best to not actually use that data file...

For the map I simply took this picture (http://donsmaps.com/middleearthmap.html), opened it in GIMP with a 10x7 grid (to obtain a map with 87x87 sectors), and used the resulting terrain (ice, mountain, plains...) to compose my map.

[Grotug]

I'm also looking forward to 1.1.12. Sounds good!

[droof]

I've really been enjoying ToME2 for a couple of days. Dying a lot, like really a lot. Even within minutes of the first quest, which is probably my fastest character death in my limited roguelike experience. Still, I enjoy the game a lot. I also tried ToME4, but it forces a tileset and I miss the great clear overview smaller ASCII provides. I mean, Shockbolt's tiles look fantastic and I wish I used that more often, but the zoomed in camera as a result I enjoy less. And the smaller the tiles become, with any tileset, the more I struggle with tile clarity. For me ASCII looks very distinct even when set to tiny and I don't ever have use the Map command then.

ToME2 has the wilderness and colorful dungeons I wished to see in Angband. Thank you variants! Since ToME2 development has stopped a couple of years ago, why hasn't Angband borrowed a few ToME color themes to make it more attractive in ASCII? Like the houses with red roofs or the green/brown dungeon theme as a variation on pure white levels? Not enough likes there?

Anyway, I think this variant has some of the best looking color ASCII graphics I've ever seen that makes it more attractive to play for me. I hope there's more variation to discover (didn't get that far yet) and that the Mangband 1.1.12 release captures some of that theming magic.

[Estie]

Ive been playing ToME2 a lot, and while I really like many of the features, wilderness is actually not among them. After a while playing, theres 3 kinds of wilderness situation: 1. a specific spot for fast levelling, 2. overland travel which messes you up if you havent sufficient food/light and nothing else and 3. specific spot for other things like hunting bunnies. Nowhere does overland lead to interesting exploration or tactical combat like the dungeon.

[AnonymousHero]

Since ToME2 development has stopped a couple of years ago

It's ambling along very slowly, but it's not quite dead yet. Whether you regard my fork as "legitimate" is up to you. I can say that most game play changes so far have been quite small -- off-hand I can only recall two exceptions, namely the semi-recent removal of all traps (uninteresting mechanic) and the removal of Alchemy (hopelessly broken).

Ive been playing ToME2 a lot, and while I really like many of the features, wilderness is actually not among them. After a while playing, theres 3 kinds of wilderness situation: 1. a specific spot for fast levelling, 2. overland travel which messes you up if you havent sufficient food/light and nothing else and 3. specific spot for other things like hunting bunnies. Nowhere does overland lead to interesting exploration or tactical combat like the dungeon.

It's not much, but there are the random ambushes + one non-random one. It also just feels more natural to me than the FA method of connecting the dungeons using a graph (as in Graph Theory).

(The random ambushes are a lot more relevant in Theme where you need to be higher-level to avoid them. That and, IIRC there are a few areas where they cannot be avoided altogether regardless of character level.)

[Mondkalb]

It's not much, but there are the random ambushes + one non-random one. It also just feels more natural to me than the FA method of connecting the dungeons using a graph (as in Graph Theory).

I like the wilderness levels in Faangband very much (maybe even more in the current default condensed version) and I think they are quite thematic..