The future of Oangband?

[CJNyfalt]

So, I am back, and I am up for some tinkering with the Oangband code.
I am naturally asking if someone is interested receiving patches for it? Or, should I just keep my changes local?
I am not interested in maintaining it, but if people are up for a team-based approach then I am interested.

[camlost]

My recollection was that Nick (FAAngband author) was backporting his changes to Oangband.

[CJNyfalt]

My recollection was that Nick (FAAngband author) was backporting his changes to Oangband.

I got that impression too, but is he willing to take over as maintainer?

[CJNyfalt]

I am watching a video about Git, and it looks that it might be the solution to the problem.

[Nick]

Here is the github repository that I was going to use to move O110u to AngbandBase. Feel free to fork it, or set up your own repository with either 110 or 110u, and do whatever you feel is appropriate.

As far as I'm concerned, I would be delighted if O had a proper maintainer - I have really just been keeping the seat warm. Now you just have to fight it out with Bahman

[Philip]

As far as I'm concerned, I would be delighted if O had a proper maintainer - I have really just been keeping the seat warm. Now you just have to fight it out with Bahman

Hmm. Bahman doesn't want the seat, so I think it's free. Not that there are many non-UI changes that I can think of that would be good in O.

[CJNyfalt]

Here is the github repository that I was going to use to move O110u to AngbandBase. Feel free to fork it, or set up your own repository with either 110 or 110u, and do whatever you feel is appropriate.

Well, I decided to create an Oangband github repo from 1.1.0. It can be found here:

https://github.com/CJNyfalt/Oangband

in case someone is interested. No changes yet.

[Magnate]

Well, I decided to create an Oangband github repo from 1.1.0. It can be found here:

https://github.com/CJNyfalt/Oangband

in case someone is interested. No changes yet.

Thank you. I think this is awesome. With all of you, Nick and Bahman being not-maintainers, it's sure to develop brilliantly ;-)

[CJNyfalt]

I have now added those local changes that I felt was most useful and acceptable to the general public. So if someone is interested, take a look.
Here is the list:

Oangband 1.1.0 tweaked version
==============================

This is the list of changes from vanilla Oangband 1.1.0.

Gameplay changes
================
- Improved infravision to allow it to see walls and stuff but not take actions
that require light.
- Weak pseudo-id can now detect average items.

User interface
==============
- Highlight spell stat when choosing a character.
- Added x11-settings.prf support to main-x11.
- Show the effects of Clarity and Atheletics a bit better in character screen.
- Show the power of beguiling spells in spellbooks (slow, sleep,
confusion and fear), to encourage their use.
- Inscribe drops from uniques.
- Added monster list window.

Coding changes
==============
- Clean up X11 stuff on exit.
- Added missing depcomp.
- Removed files modified by autobuild system from repository.
- Fixed warning in acinclude.m4.
- Slight clean ups in birth.c.
- Sliggt clean ups in main-x11.c.

I still have some local changes I haven't added, but they messes with play balance, so I will probably have to branch for those.

I will probably take a look at AngbandBase stuff to merge in next.

[CJNyfalt]

Here is the github repository that I was going to use to move O110u to AngbandBase. Feel free to fork it, or set up your own repository with either 110 or 110u, and do whatever you feel is appropriate.

As far as I'm concerned, I would be delighted if O had a proper maintainer - I have really just been keeping the seat warm. Now you just have to fight it out with Bahman

I am not interested in being maintainer, but I am interested to keep O updated and in sharing my changes to it. That is the good thing with git, everyone can have their own version and share code.

As for 110u, well, it is missing one of the killer feature in 110, so I stuck to 110.

[Bahman Rabii]

I am not interested in being maintainer, but I am interested to keep O updated and in sharing my changes to it. That is the good thing with git, everyone can have their own version and share code.

As for 110u, well, it is missing one of the killer feature in 110, so I stuck to 110.

Hi. I just noticed this thread. Thanks for setting up the repo.

I am totally comfortable with having an "official" Oangband modernization repo, where interested players can port in UI improvements and code upgrades. I don't have much time to develop, but I can gate-keep and declare / version releases. Do people think this would be useful?

If someone wants to become a real maintainer, I am happy to talk and see if our visions are compatible enough to hand over Oangband in name, or to do a fork.

By the way, what is the missing feature in 110u?

For what it's worth, in the unlikely event that I start working actively, Oangband is FAR from done. There are a huge number of fundamental gameplay improvements still waiting to happen. Some would require heavy refactoring, some would not. My gameplay priorities:
- Further improvement to AI. This would really want a cleaner internal API for the AI module. Add cooldowns to monsters spells; and make the monsters even smarter.
- Further reductions in tedium. Even fewer, even better drops. Remove the incentive to grind for consumables. Further rework stat gain.
- Extend the idea of archery spells with more combat magic.
- Give more nifty tricks to Warriors, but without losing the pure fighter feel. Possibly by implementing combat techniques as activations or side effects for weapons and/or armor. Also with more warrior-friendly sources of shapeshifting.
- Make the early game a little more forgiving. Ramp up late game difficulty.
- Solve the big-three balance breaking abilities: Banishment, Teleport-Away, Destruction.
- Reduce the role of speed. Add in more "specialized speed" for casting, combat, and archery. Somehow make this smoother and less confusing than it currently is (i.e. specialized speed to affect cooldowns rather than
- Add cooldowns to many player abilities and rebalance around them.
- Add good things from Angband: gain/lose potions, new identify semantics, no_sell as default
- Generally rebalance artifact weapons. Some are way too general (*cough* Ulmo *cough*) and I would like to make sure each class always have different favorites.
- Reduce damage spikiness in the late game, and restrict high-end healing.

Fixes to things I was never really happy with:
- Set items. Maybe ditch them.
- Variable weapon dice. These are great, but they need to interact better with squelching and pseudo-id.
- The Ent player race. I don't know... they are super cool, and yet they feel weird.
- Druids are too good at too many things. Maybe move martial arts to the specialty list for them, rather than default?
- Remove some of the more boring specialities and develop/balance/add the ones that really affect gameplay.

[CJNyfalt]

Hi. I just noticed this thread. Thanks for setting up the repo.

I am totally comfortable with having an "official" Oangband modernization repo, where interested players can port in UI improvements and code upgrades. I don't have much time to develop, but I can gate-keep and declare / version releases. Do people think this would be useful?

Yes, it would be useful if you would set up a github account, fork, and review my changes. I will avoid pushing more changes to github until you feel ready.

My issue is that I don't trust myself to keep O true to its vision, so having someone else audit and add stamps of approval would be a relief.

By the way, what is the missing feature in 110u?

Multiple savefile handling, a feature I will never give up.

EDIT:
What is your feeling about removing trap-doors, tele-level monster attacks and forget attacks?

[CJNyfalt]

BTW, how well does the Oangband Windows port work? Is there any need for the dos ports anymore?

[CJNyfalt]

Update:

I created an oangband organization and moved the main repository there, this allows me to push to my own fork and allows me to add people to the project.

So, the new link is:

https://github.com/oangband/Oangband

EDIT:
I added Nick and takkaria to the project with pull rights since they have showed interest by watching.
I would also add Bahman as owner once he gets registered on github.

[Nick]

I added Nick and takkaria to the project with pull rights since they have showed interest by watching.
I would also add Bahman as owner once he gets registered on github.

Cool.

Here is some of the stuff I said when releasing 110u:

New interface features include new menus, full mouse capability, graphics (including double and triple tile), knowledge screens and visuals editor, squelch, notes, FA-style character dumps and NPP extended colours.

There are two small gameplay changes: 1) Unlight has been changed to the FA version, because I knew Bahman was not happy with how it was in O, and I believe the FA version was roughly as he had intended it to work, and 2) I have added a small device mode (ie max projection and vision distances halved) basically because it was as easy to put in as leave out.

Bugfixes include an issue with runes of protection, corrected store tables and a couple of terrain behaviour fixes. The doubling of items in shops has been fixed too, as a side effect of Bahman's savefile loading system being removed; I did this because I wanted simplest possible porting to as many places as possible, and messing around with filehandling didn't seem like it would help.

I think at least some of that would be good to add.