Does anyone still play MAngband?

[cccfire]

I’ve been trying to get back into MAngband but with the housing reset and no other players, it’s a little lonely at times , so I was wondering if anybody still frequented MAngband cuz it was how I was first exposed to Angband in general and it’d be great to play with other people

[CyclopsSlayer]

The PWMangband fork seems to be actively developed, but not sure about players.

[Gwarl]

Mangband is alive and well

https://mangband.org/servers

Someone is online right now as I post this.

Despite the activity of development, I'm not sure that PWMangband attracts players.

If you just want to be sociable while playing angband you can also try http://angband.live but this is just online single player angband, not mangband

[Borg]

Im thinking about starting new Multiplayer Angband from Angband 3.0.6 as Im used
to that code base. Proper Client-Server architecture (not screen updates like in MAngband). World tick and movement also will be different, world progress only when any
of players moves, instead constant tick rate. This will allow to have single player touch
where you can think about movemement. Delay between any command will be 300ms to avoid flooding.
Still few things need to be considered like world update, (absolute vs incremental), world syncing on join, details on monster movement vs player (range? target?).

[Pete Mack]

@Borg--
Yeah, the tick rate leads to weird play. What you want is single-player mode when there is one player in LOS, and at least one player getting a turn (with a timeout for the others) whent there are two or more in LOS. Players only get one turn (at most) per game turn.
And finally, play is blocked when a player opens a menu instead of the map. This is what drove me from Mangband--you could die without even seeing your attackers.

[tangar]

@Borg--
play is blocked when a player opens a menu instead of the map. This is what drove me from Mangband--you could die without even seeing your attackers.

you shouldn't open menus in dangerous places in Mang/TomeNET/PWMA. There is a macro system - you have to put all your actions (eg drink heal pots, cast fireball to closest target, use phase door scroll) on macro keys (f1-f12 etc) then you would never need to open menus except to drop something (in tomenet you dont need to open menues even - there is 'last object' option) So you push one key - it make certain actions (hotkeys, like in all online games, eg WoW)

Another approach - to play with a lot of windows, so you could see your inventory all the time. But I prefer to play in 2 windows, eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3JZ9gcwgd8

Im thinking about starting new Multiplayer Angband from Angband 3.0.6 as Im used
to that code base. Proper Client-Server architecture (not screen updates like in MAngband). World tick and movement also will be different, world progress only when any
of players moves, instead constant tick rate. This will allow to have single player touch
where you can think about movemement. Delay between any command will be 300ms to avoid flooding.
Still few things need to be considered like world update, (absolute vs incremental), world syncing on join, details on monster movement vs player (range? target?).

There is a lot of stuff done in TomeNET, MAng, PWMA done over past years. And there are plans for future, eg network code optimization.. Actually I hope we could combine 'online roguelikes devs' effors to work at the same game 'core' (as all three are based at Mangband and open-source, there are a lot of compatibility). I'll make a presentation with such suggestion in september, when I'll (hopefully) would present tangaria (custom world variant based at PWMA). So if you are into online rogueliking - maybe there would be possibility for joint work

[Flambard]

Im thinking about starting new Multiplayer Angband from Angband 3.0.6 as Im used
to that code base. Proper Client-Server architecture (not screen updates like in MAngband). World tick and movement also will be different, world progress only when any
of players moves, instead constant tick rate. This will allow to have single player touch
where you can think about movemement. Delay between any command will be 300ms to avoid flooding.
Still few things need to be considered like world update, (absolute vs incremental), world syncing on join, details on monster movement vs player (range? target?).

Not to discourage you, but I would recommend going off MAngband codebase nonetheless. It's mostly Angband 3.0.X + multiplayer stuff. Even if you want to change the 'screen update' mechanism, it would just be a rather simple protocol update, and if you want to change how the time work, you'd just have to edit some ~3 functions (the dungeon loop thingy). Lots of work went into handling connecting/disconnecting clients, writing netcode that works properly on all modern platforms, etc, I think it would be a waste to throw it all away.

As for `tick rate`, we now support 'time-bubbles', which slow down time, so you can make tactical decisions, similar to classic Angband. It's not completely turn-based, obviously, but you can probably tinker with that to get what you need.

[Borg]

I already done a bit work on MAngband. Unfortunatelly I see the codebase
hard to work with... Still, for example, I am not able to fix monster recall
thing. Code around it is very fuzzy. Also, targeting works very suboptimal
due to using arrays and not linked lists + hash + static IDs.

I know that this will be a lot of work, but not in netcode itself but within angband code. Its very old code, mostly on arrays with noone uses today.
It is ok in turn based but things get bad when we start to play with networking.

Also, I mailed you about MAngband 2 times, got zero response.
Such attitude always makes me not to get involved.

Here is part of my git log for mingw branch:
ce782fa Allow bigger aux windows.
96e0a4a Reverted PATH_SEP for Win32. It might cause issues.
c7555d7 Fixed path_temp() on Windows.
c943c0f Added choice between metaserver and entering server manually.
c5ecb8e Added back color palette adjusting support for Windows.
9ef4a6b More fixes for Mingw32 build.
fee2e64 Added support for Mingw compiler.

[tangar]

Also, I mailed you about MAngband 2 times, got zero response.
Such attitude always makes me not to get involved.

Damn!

Recently when I've told Flambard about your post at forum, he said:

[11:52] flambard: hmm, I think I've got an email form him once
[11:52] flambard: but when I replied my mail bounced, telling me there's no such account on that server :/

It seems that you, guys, had a little technical problem with communication. So let's give it a chance and try to get into contact again? We've discussed a lot of new stuff recently at Mangband discord channel. Please, you are welcome to join there! https://discord.gg/U5B65Rh

[Borg]

Mail bounced? Unless you are hosting it on some shitty spamming hoster
it should NOT happen. I run 2 MTAs. So please, logs.. or it didnt happen.
I checked logs on 2 servers and didnt saw anything..

Sorry guys, I dont use discord.. I prefer IRC as this is true open communication
platform.

[Flambard]

Mail bounced? Unless you are hosting it on some shitty spamming hoster
it should NOT happen. I run 2 MTAs. So please, logs.. or it didnt happen.
I checked logs on 2 servers and didnt saw anything..

Sorry guys, I dont use discord.. I prefer IRC as this is true open communication
platform.

Re-reading the message from my MTA, it looks like it could've been a problem on my end,

<raspberrypi>: Helo command rejected: Host not found (in reply to RCPT TO
command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; raspberrypi
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: E6FDE210B2
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; <REDACTED>
Arrival-Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2019 10:06:19 +0100 (BST)

<REDACTED>

Action: failed
Status: 4.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; rx300-4.nsn.uu3.net
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 450 <raspberrypi>: Helo command rejected: Host not found

More importantly, the actual message was

Hi,

thanks for letting me now.

Could you please share your findings in a patch form? Also, as far as I recall,
mingw builds did work without custom makefiles/.h files, via the autoconf/automake
build process, did that went wrong?

The monster recall bug is probably platform-independant and affects all the versions

As far as IRC goes, we used to hang out there, and although all the developers shared your attitude to it, it was nigh impossible to get any actual players to join... But I'll be happy to hang out on some IRC channel, perhaps our #mangband on freenode is still alive, but feel free to suggest anything.

The dev. process is certainly not dead, and we're certainly very interested in patches.

Oh, and yeah, the Angband array thing is a PITA to work with, but not rewriting that whole thing allowed us to port things form V with (relative) ease.

[tangar]

The problem of IRC that it shows anyone your IP, so it's not good in terms of privacy. Of course there is proxy, vps etc.. But it's not very conveniently.

There is a 'bridge' option - https://github.com/reactiflux/discord-irc

I've even tried it, it works But you need to start it at server. Maybe this could be an option? So discord and irc users could have the same chat.

I suppose it would be fun to use old mangband irc if it exist (if not, Flambard, please could you create new one?)

[Flambard]

I've just joined #mangband and #mangband-dev @ irc.freenode.net, there's even a ghost player hanging out (probably via a bouncer), which is cool

We also used to have a bouncer, but I don't think it's alive anymore, so I'll be there via my actual internet connection, meaning, there'll be some downtimes

Nevertheless, I'm there and am happy to talk

[Borg]

tanger: wow man, you are very paranoid... What is your concern about
IP thingie? It was a norm in 90's on IRC...
You can always use VPS or whatever
to shell/bounce your connection to IRC.

[tangar]

It's specific of my work as videoblogger I hate when people recognize me on the streets and it's sometimes happens. So for me it's better to stay in the shadow

Discord is very useful thing, much better then skype or any other messenger. You could use it via browser, just add bookmark to the page at open at with. I didn't use desktop version of discord ever, always in browser - lightweight, no ads, good quality voice chat