My latest dumb idea

[Mikko Lehtinen]

perhaps I'm overshooting it, but what about coffee-break angband?

Try Quickband. It's not exactly coffee-break but near.

I actually feel my own variant, Fay, works well for coffee-breaks. That's when I often play it really. I tend to think of every dungeon level (they're small) as a separate challenge, and you're supposed to try clearing every level in Fay. Usually there's enough challenge to keep you interested in the level (or enough to kill you, ha!).

EDIT: I'd like to add that one of my design ideas for Fay was that it should be a perfect game for a player who only likes to clear two or three dungeon levels a day. I like to keep certain limits in my *band playing because I don't usually like the results after I spend a whole day playing.

[ghengiz]

It could work----Concentratedband to merry foil to Quickband or some such.

perhaps I'm overshooting it, but what about coffee-break angband?

[Malak Darkhunter]

There's a Moria page here that has some pretty detailed spoilers. Seems like you could reconstruct at least the monsters, items and spell lists going off that. A lot of it could be done just by changing the edit files in current V.

Ha,Ha, after many years of playing I only recently learned how to change edit files in the game, and still only know a little bit about it but it is certainly cause for expereiment I would probably use V 3.3.2 codebase as I like that one the most. After I get done with FA I might experiement some more and see what I can cook up, but don't let me discourage anyone from wanting to make a remake of moria, as I'm not a coder and that job could go to someone better qualified, but it should be fairly simple if a lot of work to redo the edit files a bit.

[Nomad]

Ive been waiting forever for a remake of moria.

There's a Moria page here that has some pretty detailed spoilers. Seems like you could reconstruct at least the monsters, items and spell lists going off that. A lot of it could be done just by changing the edit files in current V.

[Malak Darkhunter]

On another note: now would be the perfect time to re-make Moria out of the modern Vanilla. Forget Un. Vanilla is just perfect for this.

I just concentrated FayAngband from 100 levels to 50. It was super easy, and I only had to discard about 5% of content from the game. That's because in a lot of ways Angband is still balanced just like Moria.

The dev team is about to finally fix this. After the monsters are divided more evenly across the 100 levels, remaking Moria is going to become much, much harder!

So we should act now.

Ive been waiting forever for a remake of moria.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

On another note: now would be the perfect time to re-make Moria out of the modern Vanilla. Forget Un. Vanilla is just perfect for this.

I just concentrated FayAngband from 100 levels to 50. It was super easy, and I only had to discard about 5% of content from the game. That's because in a lot of ways Angband is still balanced just like Moria.

The dev team is about to finally fix this. After the monsters are divided more evenly across the 100 levels, remaking Moria is going to become much, much harder!

So we should act now.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I like! I've had a similar dream myself.

My dream is turning Unangband into Unmoria.

Unangband has an excess of everything, much too much for my tastes. I love the design, but I'd need a concentrated version of the game to be able to really enjoy it.

It would be fun to cherry pick the best of the best and turning it into a totally different game. Original Moria races and classes, 50 levels, Balrog at the bottom, smaller than usual levels, strong Tolkien-theme... but all this with full Unangband terrain features and exciting monsters.

I'd have to insert my stair system from Fay because I really can't live with infinite dungeons.

(EDIT: Of course the next Fay is already pretty quite close to what I just wrote. I've already concentrated it to 50 levels and added a lot of terrain features.)

[getter77]

It could work----Concentratedband to merry foil to Quickband or some such.

[nppangband]

That does sound like a game the size and scope of Moria, which I think is a great idea.

[Therem Harth]

Dislike. But I'm a ToME 2 fan so it follows logically. :P

Specifically though, I like:
- ASCII graphics
- Lots of monsters
- Lots of classes
- Lots Of Stuff in general
- Games that are never a repeat of the last one

OTOH, in your idea I like:
- Shallower dungeon. 100 levels of one mostly unthemed dungeon is a tad excessive IMO.
- Pruning of "generalist" classes, e.g. Paladin. But this is because I'd prefer lots of unique classes with their own twists.

As for difficulty, it's a mixed bag. I don't like boredom, but I honestly don't like Angband's instadeath either, as restarting again and again gets boring quickly. (But having Lots Of Stuff makes restarting less of a bore as well.) IMO though one of the key things is to give the player occasional, random rewards, but not make them too frequent - this is part of the reason gambling is addictive, and it applies to Angband too.

[Antoine]

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the idea. If anything, I always like more choices and variety, and combinatorial diversity. What you're proposing sounds to me like D&D 4e...

Fair enough - you seem more like a Chengband guy - by the way I always read your ladder dumps with interest.

A.

[ghengiz]

about the original idea: great one!

+1 to Djabanete's suggestions on shorter game time and basic monster names, although perhaps at most two or three subclasses sounds fine (e.g. cold/fire/lightning breathing dragons)

proposed classes: warrior, mage, rogue, priest (more or less like the first diablo)

my programming skills are not that much, but I'd love to playtest it

[Malak Darkhunter]

I've always liked the idea of removing "hordes" of monsters and monster pits and replacing that with smaller but stronger escorts.
My vote for classes would be a simpler version:
Fighter, Mage, priest, assassin, swordmage, champion

The swordmage being the multiclass fighter Mage, and the champion being the fighter/priest

[Djabanete]

It sounds terrific. I'm not entirely sold on the big tiles but in general I like your thinking. However, I think such a minimalist design would benefit from shorter game time than Vanilla and razor-sharp balance design.

IMO, instead of 4 classes, having 6 or so spell realms would be better, with each player choosing 2 realms at the start.

As far as working on it... well, I'd playtest it
And I enjoy theorycrafting, I'm not sure whether that counts as "working."

"10 egos" --- you mean total, or per equipment slot? 10 total means 1 or 2 per slot, which seems pretty bland. I'm guessing actually you meant for weapons, with smaller numbers for other slots.

I always thought a cool idea for a 4-class system would be the following: 6 or so spell realms, 4 classes. Warrior: weapon fighter. Warrior-mage: second-tier weapon fighter with one magic realm. Mage: Caster with 2 magic realms. High-Mage: expert caster in 1 realm.

Also I always thought it would be cool if instead of having lots of different kinds of each monster, it was dialed back to basic monster types. "Lich". "Hydra". "Troll". "Beholder". "Nazgul". etc etc.

50 monsters isn't much. Omissions of the top of my head are all forms of insects and jellies. Also drolems and golems. And snakes. And Mind Flayers.

Dragon
Behemoth
Titan
Lich
Vampire

Nazgul
Cyclops
Shambling Mound
Xorn
Gryphon

Nightmare
Mummy
Giant Rat
Kobold
Goblin

Salamander
Umber Hulk
Invisible Stalker
Barrow Wight
Hobgoblin

Orc
Unicorn
Ent
Winged Horror
Angel

Balrog
Gelugon
Bile Demon
Hezrou
Lemure

Giant
Troll
Beholder
Quylthulg
Djinn

Yeek
Zombie
Animated Skeleton
Mimic
Sorceror

Mystic
Death Knight
Enchantress
Ghoul
Wyvern

Hydra
Catoblepas
Hellhound
Wolf
Tiger

20 consumables?

Potions:

Healing (small heal)
Extra Healing (big heal)
Curing (small heal + status issues)
Life (full heal + status issues)
Rejuvenation (big heal + big mana heal)

Energy (full mana heal)
Berserk Strength (small heal + berserk)
Resistance (temporary resistance)
Restoration (restore all stats)
Detonations (hand grenade)


Scrolls:

Phase Door (short teleport)
Teleportation (long teleport)
Enchant Weapon (both hit and dam)
Enchant Armor
Genocide

Identify
Detect Treasure (money + items)
Magic Mapping
Remove Curse
Ammunition (creates ammo for whatever launcher you're equipping)

10 traps

Traps:

Pit
Poison arrow trap
Teleport trap
Trap door
Explosive rune

Giant Pendulum Blade trap
Giant Circular Saw trap
Summon monster trap
Alarm (haste monsters in LOS + aggravate)
Tiger cage trap (Tiger cage drops from ceiling, breaks on your head, tiger lands next to you)

[HallucinationMushroom]

I'm probably way off target (as usual), but this sounds like a bridge between Moria and Angband. A throwback -- a nod to the early days, but with cherry picked extras from Angband included. Like color! Moria with color, occasional vaults, better stocked stores, more than 2 uniques and a few artifacts, some vaults -- is an intriguing idea to me, at least.

Edit: lol, Malak beat me to the Moria reference.