(Steam) Is it dead?

[Taqq]

I just fell in love with Steamband recently. This is the most amazing variant I have yet played. I love the books, the skill-trees, and just about everything else about it. Oh, and the implants!

Is it ever going to be updated, made bigger, made better?

I wish I was a coder! I want to see multiple cities, maybe with tube-transport between them, or maybe trains?

Monsters from more sources (the new book "Baltimore", by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, has a *great* variety of possible enemies, and even race/class ideas.)

The comments I have seen about this variant threw me off for a couple years, I thought that it would be too difficult to learn. It's not really *that* different, and I became acclimated to the differences a lot easier than I did with ToME and Fury. I have yet to play ToME in depth, despite attempting it a few times in the past few years.

Kudos to the maintainers for an amazing variant.

-Taqq.

[pav]

The Steamband maintainer is not reading these forums, so your best bet is to repeat your questions in email to valis@oook.cz

[Psi]

He has also just updated the homepage: http://angband.oook.cz/steamband/ to state that Steam is not dead

[dionysian]

i'm currently alpha testing the latest steam for valis... it's not open for public beta testing yet, but it's definitely not dead

[danvan]

Out of interest, are the various *bands becoming more unifed in their menu + mouse handling code? i.e. are they becoming more suitable for portable devices?

I stopped playing *bands due to lack of time, but then recently discovered the excellent PocketPC port of FAAngband (which really helps with the daily commute - thanks Psi and Nick!). Steam looks really interesting, is there any chance it is going to inherit some of the "portable friendly" changes in V and FA (and therefore be easier to port)?

Is this likely?
Cheers
Dan

[Nick]

Out of interest, are the various *bands becoming more unifed in their menu + mouse handling code? i.e. are they becoming more suitable for portable devices?

There is now excellent menu code written by pete mack, which should propagate through the variants soon - I have it in FA now. It still needs to be extended to spellcasting and item selection. I am currently doing a patch to Vanilla which will give almost complete mouse-playability. I should think that once this stuff gets into vanilla, it will be reasonably easy for other variants to include it.

I stopped playing *bands due to lack of time, but then recently discovered the excellent PocketPC port of FAAngband (which really helps with the daily commute - thanks Psi and Nick!).

Cool I'm hoping to get FA030 working for the PocketPC some time, but you might have to make do with 023 for a while.

[andrewdoull]

Cool I'm hoping to get FA030 working for the PocketPC some time, but you might have to make do with 023 for a while.

I take it you saw the overwhelming demand for a DS version...

Andrew

[Nick]

I take it you saw the overwhelming demand for a DS version...

I have now. A DS port is on my list of things to do if no-one else does them first

[Orillian]

I've played angband for as many years as it's been around, played Moria back in my school days and stepped over to Angband at v 1. I even submitted patches for the game way back then! I spent many hours sending e-mails back and forth with Robert at that time. I've been playing an old version from 97 v2.8.2 up till a couple weeks ago when I picked up the latest release. It's been very nice to see all the new content and changes that have happed in the last while! The fact that the community has survived so much change in the last 10 years is super.

I recently picked up a DS for myself, the wife was getting mad with me stealing hers and Angband on the DS was what actually got me looking again, and why I downloaded the latest release. :P Now say good buy to even more hours as I play through checking out all the changes. UnAngband with it's unique level creation options is gonna get a bit of interest from me as well.

Anyways sorry to rant away! Just nice to start getting back into the community again.

O.