Favourite *band variant

[NotMorgoth]

Has to be Sangband for me; I never had much patience with class-based character systems, and although Sang does have classes (to a certain extent), it's refreshing that you start out classless and your skill choices determine your class rather than vice versa.

Also I like the fact that despite having an interesting and fairly complex character system, it has a basic single town/dungeon. I don't really like variants with lots of wilderness areas, towns and complicated quests.

[Roch]

V and Tome were my first, and I still have fond memories of each. TOME for the creative classes and open-ended feel; the lost soul is a fun challenge. Through the competitions I've tried a few more variants -- Steam was impressive and a lot of fun to play after a steep learning curve.

[Arralen]

1. UnAngband (whenever it actually works ..)
2. FAAngband
3. Tome/Theme
4. Hengband

[Dark]

1: Daaj. It's got all my favourite features from vanilla, such as the auto targiting, monster and item lists, pluss some very nice monster descriptions and (especially), that option for no sale of items, ---- which I personally really like.

2: Faangband. It's rather hard in places even playing as a Maia, and I often find myself getting completely lost in the world because the text map isn't too comprehensible, however I love the many areas to explore, items to find, and most of all it's accuracy to the Silmarillion. Also it's the graphically easiest varient for me to play.

3: Vanilla. Harder than either of the first two, without the Faangband graphics, but very nice with all the features.

Sinse I'm getting a 32 inch plasma screen soon, that should hopefully make graphical size less of a concern, and let me try out some of the other varients. In particular, I look forward to playing Tome, ---- and some of the varients with extra quests aside from giving Morgoth the what for.

[PaulBlay]

without the Faangband graphics

So what are the Faangband graphics like and would it be possible to make use of them in Vanilla Angband?

[Nick]

So what are the Faangband graphics like and would it be possible to make use of them in Vanilla Angband?

They're actually from Un originally. Basically it allows double (4x area) and triple (9x area) size tiles; if you also use bigtile, that's 8x and 18x. I believe there are better ways of doing this (Leon Marrick had something cleaner for Sangband, IIRC), but this does work quite well.

Here are some pictures.

[PaulBlay]

Here are some pictures.

That is nice. The standard sized tiles are, frankly, too small to be easily distinguishable on my monitor so it would be good to have an alternative.

The one problem I have is that 'bigtile' doesn't seem to work well for me (at least in JBand) the right half of the tile isn't displayed until the window is refreshed.

[Nick]

The one problem I have is that 'bigtile' doesn't seem to work well for me (at least in JBand) the right half of the tile isn't displayed until the window is refreshed.

You can try moving the following line in z-term.c:

          /* 2nd byte of bigtile */
          if ((na == 255) && (nc == -1)) continue;

from before the

	  /* Flush */
	  if (fn)
	    {
               ..
           }

to after it; this fixed pretty much all my refresh problems, I think.

[PaulBlay]

to after it; this fixed pretty much all my refresh problems, I think.

Thanks for the suggestion, but it didn't work. The tiles display correctly when (a) you, or a monster, walk through them or (b) (usually) when the current panel changes.

I'll ticket it as a fairly low priority for now as there other things more important for my target audience (e.g. translating ;-)

[Dark]

I find it interesting that due to monitor size people can have similar graphical issues to myself with my lack of working eyeballs.

Thus far, I need a contrasting tile set, --- such as the old tiles, as large as possible. The best tile size I seem to get out of a standard varient is 12 x 24 (any larger and strange things happen to my screen reader when reading in game text), and this is usually okay for environments with dark backgrounds such as dungeons, but less so fo brighter environments such as grass, in these circumstances, larger characters help significantly.

This is why I rather like Daaj or vanilla as they are purely dungeon based, have the old tiles tile set, and just involve the dungeon itself, and why Faangband is fun, ---- if tough.

I'm also waiting for updates to Unangband (which may have happened in the time sinse I was last hear), and Oanband, sinse both involve the double and tripple tile modes, ---- pluss are slightly easier than other varients, ---- lol!

When I upgrade my monitor, I'm actually really looking forward to trying some of the varients with quests such as Zanband as well.

[Psi]

I'm also waiting for updates to Unangband (which may have happened in the time sinse I was last hear), and Oanband, sinse both involve the double and tripple tile modes, ---- pluss are slightly easier than other varients, ---- lol!

That's the first time I've heard OAngband being described as one of the easier variants - still goes down as the toughest I've played.

[andrewdoull]

I'm also waiting for updates to Unangband (which may have happened in the time sinse I was last hear)

Are you using a screen reader? If so, I'd be interested in hearing if the monlist modes help you at all. Particularly the auto_monlist and/or easy_monlist options.

Andrew

[buzzkill]

I'm also waiting for updates to Unangband (which may have happened in the time sinse I was last hear), and Oanband, sinse both involve the double and tripple tile modes, ---- plus are slightly easier than other variants, ---- lol!

Due to current competition, I once again looked into tweaking the Un graphics. As it stands now, without even something as basic as the walls displaying properly, I find it unplayable. However, the 800+ (!!!) terrain types quickly scared me off. Andrew, are all of the terrains used in the standard game, or are many of them only used in campaign mode? Why so many different, yet seemingly identical, wall types?

[Dark]

Are you using a screen reader? If so, I'd be interested in hearing if the monlist modes help you at all. Particularly the auto_monlist and/or easy_monlist options.

Andrew

Yes, I'm using a screen reader to read all the in game text, and I certainly do make frequent use of the monster list options in other varients, ---- in fact that's one thing i miss in varients such as Oanband.

The lists are a nice way of suplimenting my general lack of field of vision.

If you've expanded the list options in Unangband, I'll be interested to try them out. In fact now that I see Unangband has been fully updated to the latest versionk, it's probably time I spent some quality time with it.

I did try it briefly before, but missed some of the extra options (including lists), and found a couple of things in the game not to be currently working at that point.

I'll give the complete version a go though and let you know what I think.

[bio_hazard]

1) ToME (2.3)
2) Vanilla

of course, this may be due to the fact that these are the only two I've tried so far. I've been curious about the others and this thread might finally make me try some of them.

I made a post in the ToME subforum already, but it probably would be worth repeating here. A ToME 3 developer has thrown down a gauntlet

"If a month goes by and we have a hundred people saying they'd play, I propose we put ourselves to work and make it happen.

If a month goes by and we have fewer than ten people saying they'd play, I propose we formally announce that T3 is finished and put this chapter of our lives to a close."

So far the tally is at about 20 in a couple of days... If anyone wants to see a finished ToME 3 module, adding a quick "I'll play it" to that thread would possibly help this come to be.