angband speedrun

[Sphara]

Hi Grotug.

Your constant attempts at getting faster and faster wins made me try the diving game too. It's somewhat a different game when doing it ironman but really not that much.

That option you have NOT on: Know all flavors on birth. I just had to turn it on since ironman players don't have any other way of id'ing it than trying it once. This creates some tactical situations I do not appreciate. Like having to read unknown scrolls on top of the downstairs, potentially losing DeepDescent, RuneofProt scroll.

Keep the speedruns coming, man! You worried about posting a bit too many travel stories here, but I'd say nonsense. This community does not have enough of those.

[Tibarius]

The Mages Guide to Power

I consider myself very experienced in Angband. I posted the player history with many notes about what i did or thought in the game playing experience section, with the same title as this post has.

But i must say 8 hrs - i can't see that as mage. I required almost 17 hours total playing time.

A strong indicator for me that the mage power curve is not steep enough during mid-game. And end-game damage just sux ... not as much as priests, but well.

[Voovus]

But i must say 8 hrs - i can't see that as mage.

I just timed my first game with the new mage, so as to get an idea about what proportion of my life is claimed by Angband (or, if you prefer, what proportion of my Angband life is claimed by the real world). Took 570 minutes, i.e. 9 and a half hours, at what I'd describe as a leisurely pace. So I'd say 8 hours are definitely doable, at least if you're willing to exploit asymmetric LOS.

Tibarius - the main time difference between our runs is that I only spent 2 hours after 4000'.

[AndyS]

Hi Grotug.


Keep the speedruns coming, man! You worried about posting a bit too many travel stories here, but I'd say nonsense.

I'll second that. Very entertaining and educational.

[Evilpotatoe]

As a great speedruns lover (and player), I clearly enjoy the idea of speedrunning Angband.

I don't know the game enough for that (watching efficient runs could help on this), but the insanely random aspect of the game still looks like a serious issue to me (Hello, ring of Dilion ^^)
> Would quickband and/or tinyband be more suited for that ? I only tried them a bit, but IIRC, I could quickly dive to the bosses... and was capped by my lack of stuff. Maybe I just sucked ? Else, it might just be a matter of enabling autoscum and/or improving drop quality at the lowest depth.


IMO, such a challenge would really benefit from a dedicated "variant" (or correct Vanilla configuration ; )
I'd bet a game with finite levels would be more comfortable to play, and especially, to speedrun.
Games like Binding of Isaac, FTL, DoomRL or Slay the spire all have in common the "ironman" aspect of not giving the possibility to scum levels for stuff, and the good thing is... it's actually unnecessary !

From my (Angband noobie... but ardent and perfectionnist speedrunner) point of view, this is more or less what currently lacks in Angband.
This need for scumming can make runs very boring at some point, when you are desesparetely looking for some good stuff which doesn't show up.
One of my recent chars spent a lot of time around DL40/50 without RPoison, and 10 or barely more speed... I still wonder how I managed to not end-up killed by some surprise drolem, or one of those lvl 60/75 uniques in those vaults


The problem, of course, is that the initial game is not designed for this "ironman" setting
> The drop rates (or system) would need tweaks to make things "quite balanced". (Just increasing drop rates ? Giving basic "guaranties" for the most vital bonuses, like some plusses to speed ? Sorting egos and artifacts by tiers ? Etc.)[/I]
> The monster generation would probably need some rework too, and I don't have much inspiration to handle the fact that currently, difficult fight are supposed to be picked only when relevant. (From my experience, in most "rogue-lites", you tend to avoid skipping fights, since rewards are what make you progress)


Of course, actually improving things is always much harder than just spotting flaws and room for improvement, but I love the idea, so I put my two cents in.
(And would be glad to help playtesting such a speedrun-oriented version)

[Pondlife]

Here's a recent Nethack speedrun, which won the game by exploiting the RNG:

https://pellsson.github.io/

Nethack's RNG uses a 32-bit seed, and walking into a wall advances the RNG state without consuming a game turn.

This is a more of a hack than a speedrun I guess, but I thought I'd post it as a similar technique might be applicable to Angband.

[Evilpotatoe]

What a neat hack !

I only played *band, so I'm not familiar with those concepts of ascenscion, wishes and so, but I love the way its done.
There's a goal, there's constraints... and there's intelligence.

Using a couple of 72-core instances as tool for such a simple game is brutally brillant.


Of course, tool-assisted-exploit might not be exactly what people would expect from a speedrun... but it's just another category ;p

[Derakon]

If you liked that, you should read the plans for a NetHack tool-assisted speedrun. The difference between this and the realtime speedrun that Pondlife linked is that the TAS arranges everything to minute perfection, so for example it can choose exactly the RNG seed it wants by determining the system clock at the time the run starts, and it can cheat to know where everything in the game is by directly examining the game's memory.

Last I heard, the TAS is currently stalled out trying to figure out how to win the game within 3 turns of when the class quest unlocks (which is a mandatory step for completing the game, and happens 2000 turns into the game), instead of within 5 turns. But the linked article covers a lot of really delightful shenanigans during those 2000 turns of waiting.