Variant comparison (by my personal taste ;-)

[PaulBlay]

I've had a look at a bunch of variants (or at least description of same) and put together the following rough table of features that I find attractive.

Corrections / additions / suggestions welcome.

             Quests      Wilderness   Interesting   Friendly NPCs Japanese
          (Interesting)                 Town(s)     (Interesting) Version

Animeband      Yes(Y)        No           No?         No?
EyAngband      Yes(?)        No           No          No?
FAangband      No?           Yes          No?         No?
FuryBand       Yes(Y)        Yes          Yes         Yes(Y)
Hengband       Yes(?)        Yes          No?         No?           Yes
NPPAngband     Yes(N?)       No            No         No
Portralis      Yes(Y)        Yes          Yes         Yes(Y)
sCthangband    ?             Yes          ?           ?
ToME           Yes(Y)        Yes          Yes         Yes(Y)
Unangband      Yes(Y?)       Yes          Yes         Yes(Y?)
Z+Angband      Yes(?)        Yes          No?         No

Some explanation.
An 'interesting' quest might be one that
- Has a good/evil choice or consequences
- Furthers the (or a) story
- Requires more thought than 'go to _____ and kill ____'.
Good example: Portralis

An interesting town might be one that
- Is pretty (and probably pre-designed)
- Contains 'flavour' locations (not just stores + home)
- Has hidden or unexpected locations
- You might think "why yes, I would walk across half the continent to see what's in that city".
Good example: Omega

An interesting NPC might be one that
- You can chat up ;-)
- Is a vital plot device
- Provides quests
Good example: Elona

[Narvius]

Not to be rude, but with these preferences I think you picked the wrong genre =S

[Arralen]

Not the wrong genre, but the wrong flavour, and forum, therefore.
Paul, check out JADE, the successor to ADOM .. looks like it will have what you're looking for .. when it gets into a playable state somewhen in the not-so-near future
Don't let yourself be fooled by the "outdated" appearance of that website, as the development of JADE is still going on!

[Bandobras]

Not to be rude, but with these preferences I think you picked the wrong genre =S

Why, there are variants with all Yeses.

I think it's an interesting, difficult and not so unimportant task: to put some rich, flavourful content into Angband (even Vanillia to some extent, e.g. some dynamic in-game documentation and hints) in a way that completely doesn't get in the way on the 100th replay.

Even better, if on the 500th replay you may smile again on a randomly noticed old humorous line or once again feel the dramatic tension of a particular fight (with a unique or as part of a quest), you fought so many times before.

Of course there is content that has to get old, like puzzles, hidden locations or surprises (though an expected, but well-written and randomly appearing surprise may be fun again on the 100th replay, e.g. the Lost Adventurer in O). Then it's important that 1) they don't get in the way 2) new players are not considerably at an disadvantage and tempted to use spoilers or quit altogether.

[PaulBlay]

Not to be rude, but with these preferences I think you picked the wrong genre =S

Are you talking about angband variants or about roguelike in general?
In either case there are games that cover all of the aspects I favour among them.

Not the wrong genre, but the wrong flavour, and forum, therefore.
Paul, check out JADE, the successor to ADOM .. looks like it will have what you're looking for .. when it gets into a playable state somewhen in the not-so-near future
Don't let yourself be fooled by the "outdated" appearance of that website, as the development of JADE is still going on!

"will have" being the operative phrase. One of the major things I look for in games to play is that they actually be available to play :-P

Why, there are variants with all Yeses.

I think it's an interesting, difficult and not so unimportant task: to put some rich, flavourful content into Angband (even Vanillia to some extent, e.g. some dynamic in-game documentation and hints) in a way that completely doesn't get in the way on the 100th replay.

ToME is a good model for such an effort. Separating the module from the engine should make it easier to make variants. I have been looking through code in a number of angband variants with a view to introducing some 'flavour' but the difficulty level is too high for me.

Unfortunately my efforts at experimenting with ToME development came to a halt when I ran into some limits in the engine :-(

[CJNyfalt]

If you want "interesting" towns, you should try Kamband.

[PaulBlay]

If you want "interesting" towns, you should try Kamband.

I'll see if I can get it compiled for Windows. (Actually I've had quite good luck with compiling angband variants)

Right now I'm about to try to compile the Japanese version of Hengband (might be a bit tricky). There's an 'unofficial' 1.7.0 version. 1.6.2 is the latest with an English version available.

[PaulBlay]

I'll see if I can get it compiled for Windows. (Actually I've had quite good luck with compiling angband variants)

My good luck has run out. After some fiddling with the makefile etc. I got stuck on the following error:

Error: 外部シンボル '_init_lua' が未解決（C:\KAMBAND\SRC\INIT2.OBJ が参照）

Approx translation:
Error: Unresolved external symbol '_init_lua' (in C:\KAMBAND\SRC\INIT2.OBJ)

[Donald Jonker]

Right now I'm about to try to compile the Japanese version of Hengband (might be a bit tricky). There's an 'unofficial' 1.7.0 version. 1.6.2 is the latest with an English version available.

Actually, The Fury's infinitely useful Angband Mirror site has compiled English versions of Hengband 1.7.0 available here. You ought to check there first for precompiled versions of any variant version, really.

[PaulBlay]

Actually, The Fury's infinitely useful Angband Mirror site has compiled English versions of Hengband 1.7.0 available here. You ought to check there first for precompiled versions of any variant version, really.

Well the changelog file for Kamband sort of explains why I couldn't get the compile of 2.1 to go smoothly.

I'm using Lua, http://www.lua.org, a small, efficient and highly portable
scripting language. Lua is about 120K when compiled, pure ANSI C code.
It is said to compile on just about any platform that supports
ANSI C.

All necessary code is included with Kamband, but the Makefiles for
non-Unix platforms are not yet written. Sorry, I just don't want
to fiddle with something that I don't understand too well.