Beleriand status

[Gauss]

Found https://github.com/NickMcConnell/Beleriand and my hype wnet over 1000.
Suddenly i noticed that the latest commit was from 2013. Did you leave the project Nick?
Also what where the major goals of this unreleased variant? Was it an FAangband evolution?

[Mondkalb]

There is more: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=6062

I sincerely hope Nick will be done with Vanilla in the not too far future and will then still be motivated to go on with Beleriand.

[Nick]

I have plans...

[Mondkalb]

I knew it!

[Gauss]

Then i'm hyped again. Make sure to keep us informed on your progress Nick.

[HugoVirtuoso]

I spoke to Nick on angband.live on this topic for a bit. AFAIK, he will work more on Beleriand after Angband v4.2 is released.

[DrWho42]

exciting news!

[Nick]

After considerable effort, I have now got back to the situation of 8 years ago. The very uninformative home page is here.

This is not yet a game. It has progressed enough that I can say the method of saving and reloading of dungeon and wilderness (including monsters, objects and the player) works, and the game can be closed and re-opened and loads the savefile correctly. But my intention is for the game to look absolutely nothing like its current form - in particular pretty much all the gameplay is going to be gutted and replaced with something more like Sil, and I don't really have a clear picture of what you might call a win condition. The foundation of the game is the map, and so getting that working the way I want it is top priority.

My broad plan from here is:

1. Get wilderness generation working. This involves getting the individual types working (forest, plain, etc), and then adding rivers and roads which are handled separately. Also I'll need to properly add in landmarks besides the gates of Angband.
2. Work out how characters are going to work. The general idea is redo races, replace classes with a Sil-like skill tree, and then try to make that balanced, all with a planned new stat system.
3. Completely overhaul the monster and object lists.
4. Start thinking about how a game is played, including tasks and how to actually move around this ridiculous world.

The code repository will be updated from time to time, but this is a big task and progress is likely to be slow and irregular. My sincere thanks to everyone who has contributed to Angband and FA, as this is all built on top of that effort. I hope that one day this becomes something worth playing

[HugoVirtuoso]

Behold! Of course, after now Angband 4.2.3 and FAAngband 2.0.0, here comes Beleriand!

[EugeneLesnov]

Oh, I'm so excited
Your work is really appreciated

[getter77]

Looking forward to what comes in due time and course.

[EugeneLesnov]

The foundation of the game is the map

I wisely started with a map..(c) J.R.R. Tolkien

and I don't really have a clear picture of what you might call a win condition

There is something to think about here..
I'm going to speculate a little, if you please
Also, I'm going to take as a basis the maximum closeness to Tolkien's lore.

There are 6 major battles of Beleriand:

1. The First Battle was fought before the Noldor arrived, and was fought by the Sindar, Laiquendi, and Dwarves of the Blue Mountains.
2. The Dagor-nuin-Giliath, or Battle-under-Stars, fought by the Noldor following Fëanor and his Seven Sons.
3. The Dagor Aglareb, or Glorious Battle, which led to the Siege of Angband.
4. The Dagor Bragollach, or Battle of Sudden Flame, in which Ard-galen burned and many Noldor, including King Fingolfin, were slain.
5. The Nirnaeth Arnoediad or Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in which the Union of Maedhros was utterly broken by Morgoth.
6. The War of Wrath, which defeated Morgoth, ended the First Age of Arda, and destroyed most of Beleriand.

For me personally, Beleriand is associated with the War of Wrath, so..It seems that the ultimate goal should not be to kill Morgoth.
As a result of War of Wrath, Morgoth was sent as prisoner to Aman, where Mandos judged him, and the Dark Lord was "executed".

The main quest probably should not be to kill Morgoth as I said above, but it could be to help the allied forces against Morgoth's armies.

In accordance with the principle of "Divide and Conquer", let's divide this quest into subquests like:

* Destroy Balrogs
* Slain Ancalagon the Black
* Kill some orc commanders
* Descend into the Angband dungeon
* Weaken Morgoth to bound him with chain Angainor (Gameplay feature of using quest items?)

As we know, the devastation caused the war left Beleriand mostly destroyed. We can use this fact for gameplay purposes..After each subquest, part of the map may "disappear" as a result of the war (It might be randomized?).

According to "The Tale of Years" War of Wrath lasted for more than four decades (F.A. 545 - 587). It seems natural that some territories changed hands.
To make the war feel "real", we can divide the large map into "zones" that might be occupied by allied forces, might be neutral or might be under the control of the enemies.
This will give us a basis for calculating the "danger" level for the current zone the player is in.

Sorry if this seems sketchy. I just wanted to start brainstorming...Maybe some ideas might come in handy.

[Mondkalb]

[Nick]

I'm going to speculate a little, if you please

I am far from decided, but you've hit fairly close to my current plans.

The plan is to set the game after the third kinslaying, with all the major elven strongholds destroyed and the land overrun by servants of Morgoth. So there should be a feeling of walking through the broken remains of everything the Noldor and the Sindar had created.

I also plan to have a fixed timeline, so if the character survives long enough the Valinorean host should arrive in preparation for the War of Wrath. I'm leaning toward that being the end of the game, but am not sure what the player should be trying to achieve by then.

I'm just trusting that I can make it up as I go along

[EugeneLesnov]

Oh, sounds amazing. May the bless of Valar be with you

P.S. To be honest, I'm burning with impatience