This will be my (mostly) non-coding-related planning & development thread for my new variant, RubberBand, which will be similar to an updated version of my old variant DaJAngband. Voicing your opinion on my plans is welcome and encouraged because I want to make a variant that other people will like as well.
First order of business: Has the name RubberBand been used for an Angband variant before? It seems like an obvious name to use, so I wanted to make sure it hasn't been used before.
The first thing I'll do with RubberBand, same as I did with DaJAngband, is make a bunch of changes to the monster list. (I can work on that while I get a compile of the Angband source working and just look over the code a bit to see if it's as easy to customize and tweak as the v3.1.x code was (which is what my old variant was based on).
I plan to have separate available monster lists you can play with, and use two birth options to choose which to use:
option: Keep vanilla-ish flavor? YES/NO
option: Use weirder/silly monsters? YES/NO
(NO will be the default for both)
I'll use a VISH flag for monsters that only appear if vanilla-ish is turned on, and another flag for monsters that only appear if vanilla-ish is turned off. Then I'll have a SILLY flag for monsters that will be added either way if you turn on the weird/silly monsters option (but they'll probably fit better tonally if VISH is turned off). Later, these options will affect the way a few other things in the game work as well. This way, you can choose your experience.
The very first change I'll make in the monster list is rename wild dogs back to jackals and making the scruffy town dog non-agressive (or maybe I'll have one mean town dog and one nice town dog). I hate the idea of killing poor cute doggies.
The most noticeable changes in the monster list (for non-VISH mode) will be removing Yeeks, icky things, and a few other boring monsters, and adding several types of fairies, a few magical lizards, magic frogs, magic cats, and more types of golems, worms and demons, etc.
I'll use the following letter symbols (all letters not mentioned here will represent the same monster types as in V) :
'a' - is now all ants, ticks, and beetles. not just ants.
'f' - adds new magic cats, including the unlucky black cat
'i' - dark fairies (will still be icky things instead if VISH is turned on)
'm' - is now the maia (I'll remove most molds, and the few molds I won't remove will use ',' with mushroom patches)
't' - there will be a couple 't's now that appear in the dungeon. I plan to add a flag for a few monsters to be able to appear both in town and in the dungeon, but there will still be a character level check for most of them to appear in town.
'y' - light fairies (will still be yeeks instead is VISH is turned on)
'A' - amphibians, mostly frogs
'K' - knights, horsemen, and other tougher humanoids
'N' - nulx (swamp monsters), and other tentacled horrors (including the Watcher in the Water unique) (probably only when VISH is off)
'X' - several types of minor elementals, which includes xorns
'&' - more major demons (actually most of the current major demons will be '&' and most of the new ones are 'U'.)
(Except for 'i' and 'y', the changes in letter symbols will be for all modes, not just if VISH is turned off.)
Other significant things I plan on doing early in RubberBand development:
- other minor monster stuff: make vortexes and super-breeders less common (and probably put more limits on breeding), make huorns and ents a little deeper, add a few monsters native deeper than dL100
- improve throwing weapons (again, minor tweaks for now. Throwing axes and throwing hammers appear way too deep in V to be useful IMO)
- make a bunch more (mostly minor) tweaks in the gamedata files
- add more room types
- make that option that Grotug suggested to be able to play with much fewer dungeon levels.
- limit the range on some monster spells and breath, along with some other tweaks on monster spells
- allow some monster types to be sometimes EVIL and sometimes not EVIL.
- some monsters that will try to keep their distance from the player preferring to use their ranged attacks
Plans for later on:
- add more terrain features (including boulders, water, ordinary trees, and swamps)
- add some races & classes (races: fairy gnome and living ghoul. classes: alchemist, barbarian, white knight, black knight, tourist, assassin...)
- makes staves wieldable as weapons as well as their magic effect (should I do this for rods as well?)
- teleport control effect as a ring, amulet, on a couple artifacts, and maybe a couple egos (control where you teleport to)
- temporary invisibility as both a player spell and a monster spell.
- monsters that move around before they become aware of the player
- ability for certain monsters to come back from the dead after a few turns (mainly for some skeletons and zombies, but also for certain trolls and magic cats). -Killing a monster for a 2nd time or additional times will a give much reduced XP reward. Also I'll have returning from the dead on an amulet and an artifact or two for the player as well. (Whatever magic items that do this will be destroyed once they've been used of course.)
- ability for some monsters to disguise as other monsters (a high level assassin might disguise himself as a low level apprentice as well as allowing for more shapechanging monster types).
- maybe add possibility for shops in the dungeon
Almost all of these changes I mentioned are things I had in DaJAngband, so RubberBand will mostly be an updated (and hopefully cleaner) version of DaJAngband.
First order of business: Has the name RubberBand been used for an Angband variant before? It seems like an obvious name to use, so I wanted to make sure it hasn't been used before.
The first thing I'll do with RubberBand, same as I did with DaJAngband, is make a bunch of changes to the monster list. (I can work on that while I get a compile of the Angband source working and just look over the code a bit to see if it's as easy to customize and tweak as the v3.1.x code was (which is what my old variant was based on).
I plan to have separate available monster lists you can play with, and use two birth options to choose which to use:
option: Keep vanilla-ish flavor? YES/NO
option: Use weirder/silly monsters? YES/NO
(NO will be the default for both)
I'll use a VISH flag for monsters that only appear if vanilla-ish is turned on, and another flag for monsters that only appear if vanilla-ish is turned off. Then I'll have a SILLY flag for monsters that will be added either way if you turn on the weird/silly monsters option (but they'll probably fit better tonally if VISH is turned off). Later, these options will affect the way a few other things in the game work as well. This way, you can choose your experience.
The very first change I'll make in the monster list is rename wild dogs back to jackals and making the scruffy town dog non-agressive (or maybe I'll have one mean town dog and one nice town dog). I hate the idea of killing poor cute doggies.
The most noticeable changes in the monster list (for non-VISH mode) will be removing Yeeks, icky things, and a few other boring monsters, and adding several types of fairies, a few magical lizards, magic frogs, magic cats, and more types of golems, worms and demons, etc.
I'll use the following letter symbols (all letters not mentioned here will represent the same monster types as in V) :
'a' - is now all ants, ticks, and beetles. not just ants.
'f' - adds new magic cats, including the unlucky black cat
'i' - dark fairies (will still be icky things instead if VISH is turned on)
'm' - is now the maia (I'll remove most molds, and the few molds I won't remove will use ',' with mushroom patches)
't' - there will be a couple 't's now that appear in the dungeon. I plan to add a flag for a few monsters to be able to appear both in town and in the dungeon, but there will still be a character level check for most of them to appear in town.
'y' - light fairies (will still be yeeks instead is VISH is turned on)
'A' - amphibians, mostly frogs
'K' - knights, horsemen, and other tougher humanoids
'N' - nulx (swamp monsters), and other tentacled horrors (including the Watcher in the Water unique) (probably only when VISH is off)
'X' - several types of minor elementals, which includes xorns
'&' - more major demons (actually most of the current major demons will be '&' and most of the new ones are 'U'.)
(Except for 'i' and 'y', the changes in letter symbols will be for all modes, not just if VISH is turned off.)
Other significant things I plan on doing early in RubberBand development:
- other minor monster stuff: make vortexes and super-breeders less common (and probably put more limits on breeding), make huorns and ents a little deeper, add a few monsters native deeper than dL100
- improve throwing weapons (again, minor tweaks for now. Throwing axes and throwing hammers appear way too deep in V to be useful IMO)
- make a bunch more (mostly minor) tweaks in the gamedata files
- add more room types
- make that option that Grotug suggested to be able to play with much fewer dungeon levels.
- limit the range on some monster spells and breath, along with some other tweaks on monster spells
- allow some monster types to be sometimes EVIL and sometimes not EVIL.
- some monsters that will try to keep their distance from the player preferring to use their ranged attacks
Plans for later on:
- add more terrain features (including boulders, water, ordinary trees, and swamps)
- add some races & classes (races: fairy gnome and living ghoul. classes: alchemist, barbarian, white knight, black knight, tourist, assassin...)
- makes staves wieldable as weapons as well as their magic effect (should I do this for rods as well?)
- teleport control effect as a ring, amulet, on a couple artifacts, and maybe a couple egos (control where you teleport to)
- temporary invisibility as both a player spell and a monster spell.
- monsters that move around before they become aware of the player
- ability for certain monsters to come back from the dead after a few turns (mainly for some skeletons and zombies, but also for certain trolls and magic cats). -Killing a monster for a 2nd time or additional times will a give much reduced XP reward. Also I'll have returning from the dead on an amulet and an artifact or two for the player as well. (Whatever magic items that do this will be destroyed once they've been used of course.)
- ability for some monsters to disguise as other monsters (a high level assassin might disguise himself as a low level apprentice as well as allowing for more shapechanging monster types).
- maybe add possibility for shops in the dungeon
Almost all of these changes I mentioned are things I had in DaJAngband, so RubberBand will mostly be an updated (and hopefully cleaner) version of DaJAngband.
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