Poschengband 7.1.1?

[pisastrish]

I'm coming back to angband variants after not having played in a couple years (after poschengband stopped being updated), but when I looked for the most recent update of poschengband, I found this site, which has Poschengband 7.1.1 uploaded on October 2 2019. I haven't seen any discussion of it though, so I wanted to make sure it was real and not a virus. Is that the creator's actual site?

[CyclopsSlayer]

Curious, no idea where that stands in the hierarchy. No idea if that is 'chris' back again.

These days Composband and Frogcomposband spun off out of the old Poschangband seem the most popular.

[MITZE]

While I don't know if that's the site (I don't have the URL saved from way back when, so I don't have anything to compare it to), the layout is awful similar to what I remember of it.

Also, the old posts (the ones several years) at least look legit.

[Nick]

Yep, that's it

[Letheka]

From comparing the source archive to the previous PCB release, if it's malware or a virus, someone put in an awful lot of work to make it look like a legitimate update. Pretty major changes to the world map and game progression, more Tolkien and less Zelazny, source code restructuring, a monk rework, etc.

[getter77]

Quite a surprise---always nice to see such manifest.

[Gwarl]

Oh wow awesome stuff.

[wobbly]

Well I played it for about 10 minutes without my computer blowing up, so presumably safe. Also in true angband maintainer style he hasn't updated the help files yet.

[Gwarl]

Up on angband live. Played for about the same 10 mins as wobbly, things have changed but I don't have impressions yet (except that wilderness terrain generation is much easier on the eye).

[debo]

Up on angband live. Played for about the same 10 mins as wobbly, things have changed but I don't have impressions yet (except that wilderness terrain generation is much easier on the eye).

Comp time?!?!?!

[Gwarl]

Comp time?!?!?!

We're doing all the new V classes one by one with two weeks each. We've done Warrior, Priest and Mage and are in the middle of Rogue, with Necromancer scheduled in time for Halloween.

Maybe next year?

[Aszazin]

This looks so great!

Finally a new PCB!

Exploring dungeon level 7 right now. I don't know what happened to PCB, but I really like it a lot!

[ster]

It's shit, i'm the guy who won it first so I should know.
On the good side the randarts that function as stronger versions of ego items are great on both the "absolutely fucking busted" side and the "cool and thematic" side, and monsters following you up stairs has lead to some interesting tactical situations. M

On the bad side is how much of the spirit of poschengband has been lost. Forced progression. No way to skip the early levels, not even dragons in the wilderness. Having to slowly find the stairs on every floor of every (large) dungeon. The too-tedious-to-explore-slowly wilderness that's also just about capable of killing you with world 2 dracolisks or world 3 sky drakes. Wacky bullshit like tonberries and anime monsters are slowly being phased out entirely despite being iconic. Making AC even more important for whatever reason because of the monster damage averaging and criticals, even though it was more or less considered a "god stat" among elite players already. Chris fucking complained that healing staves were too available, so you get showered in welfare healing staves now instead. Not a single quest to break up the monotony of slowly and safely grinding to DL100, not a single exploit or broken character fixed since two years ago. Money situation regressed to pre-PCB levels - I had to buy out the black market to unload the 3 million I had endgame instead of a token bad reforge or gamble shop for consumables. The death of birth options, both difficulty based like interesting_rooms and ironman_nightmare and no_wilderness, as well as easy_lore.
Removing easy_lore is a special mix of stupidity and spite, to me. You're too stupid to realise that anyone worth their salt will play with r_info open and too spiteful to provide access to it ingame. (There's a tedium tax on waiting for psuedo-ID before 35, sure, but I have no problems with the removal of easy_ID otherwise even if I wanted to tear my hair out before autopsuedo). The list goes on, this is my fourth edit to add more to it even.

If Chris wants to show his face again and explain himself instead of posting this under a psuedononymous sockpuppet account because he's already ashamed of the two years he spent creating this garbage, he can be my guest.

[Gwarl]

Removing easy_lore is a special mix of stupidity and spite, to me.

and was also a 7.0.0 change

[Bostock]

I'm hesitant to speak, as I speak too much in general, but I'll take the risk.

A game whose sole fanbase is its developer can take any direction the developer likes while still pleasing its entire fanbase.

Once a developer is determined to have a fanbase for their game beyond themselves, they give up some control…

I feel like Chris is refusing to make this decision and is trying to have his cake and eat it too.