Ascii Dreams poll

[Antoine]

Hi all

You might like to vote for your favorite variant (or other roguelike game) at ASCII Dreams.

Don't miss this poll which comes round only once a year! TOME 4 is currently in the lead but Crawl Stone Soup is not far behind.

A.

[LostTemplar]

Nobody likes FAangband

[Antoine]

Nobody likes FAangband

Lots of people like FAangband, they just haven't voted yet! So get on down the polling booth...

A.

[Malak Darkhunter]

FA has my vote.

[andrewdoull]

FayAngband missed the cut because it wasn't announced in the places I use to compile this list.

Feel free to vote for it in the comments though.

[Nick]

Nobody likes FAangband

It's not the quantity, it's the quality

There is ancient Angband wisdom that any players of a variant aside from the maintainer are sheer bonus. FA has 5 forks on github; that's enough of a vote for me.

[buzzkill]

It's not the quantity, it's the quality

Says the man who maintains how many variants?

[Timo Pietilä]

Hi all

You might like to vote for your favorite variant (or other roguelike game) at ASCII Dreams.

Don't miss this poll which comes round only once a year! TOME 4 is currently in the lead but Crawl Stone Soup is not far behind.

A.

Lack of votes for vanilla angband is worrisome. After my vote there is only 26 votes. In the past Angband has been in top few, now it is lagging far behind.

[buzzkill]

FayAngband missed the cut because it wasn't announced in the places I use to compile this list.

Feel free to vote for it in the comments though.

No RePosBand either . At least I got to vote for 2 of the 4 that I wanted to.

[getter77]

Lack of votes for vanilla angband is worrisome. After my vote there is only 26 votes. In the past Angband has been in top few, now it is lagging far behind.

I reckon these things will sway wildly in the years going forward as the Roguelike scene enlivens solidly past the "perceived" stagnation/slow growth.

It is probably worthwhile food for thought for people to consider what factors lead to the eventual top contenders garnering their spots/number of supporters/awareness and see what could be incorporated even just piecemeal.

For Angband, the variants have been the most "visibly"(:gives the yearning eye for all to get done up properly in the dated listings over on Roguebasin: ) lively here in 2011 in terms of public releases and whatnot. Further, many of the relative newcomers popped into the stream of awareness with various flashy/fresh bits, use of A/V assets with video trailers and such, and a full head of steam, ie Dredmor/ToME 4, as opposed to being the latest meticulously placed pieces on top of something long-standing like Vanilla.

Vanilla is clearly livening up around here though, and I'd suspect is on track to make some significant inroads for 2012, if not earlier, as far as this polling and general awareness goes. LambdaRogue will have a very spiffy new release by year's end, Portralis is due to rise from the dead re-Alpha limbo proper come Jan 1, Infra Arcana slyly knocked out a nice version increase with a tileset that should help it garner extra votes, etc.

The winners have much to enjoy when the dust settles, but everybody can stand to sharpen their respective knives after all is said and done---the spotlight may be off of Angband at the moment but that just means few shall suspect the many Phials of Galadriel being duct taped together until it is upon them.

[Timo Pietilä]

I reckon these things will sway wildly in the years going forward as the Roguelike scene enlivens solidly past the "perceived" stagnation/slow growth.

Vanilla is clearly livening up around here though, and I'd suspect is on track to make some significant inroads for 2012, if not earlier, as far as this polling and general awareness goes.

That's what worries me. Angband has been developed enormous speed in last year or two and still that low number of votes. It should have more votes from people from here alone.

Maybe that "fast development" has actually driven people off the game, not the other way around. Also my perception about game development currently is that nothing is getting done for actual game, only to coders new playground the v4. At least I haven't heard that anything in it is even considered for actual game. That leads to perceived stagnation as you so accurately put it.

So: those that know what is happening don't vote because they do not like the current vanilla, and those that don't know what is happening perceive it as stagnate game.

I hope that is a wrong impression.

[Magnate]

Also my perception about game development currently is that nothing is getting done for actual game, only to coders new playground the v4. At least I haven't heard that anything in it is even considered for actual game. That leads to perceived stagnation as you so accurately put it.

People can't have it both ways. v4 was created because there were lots of complaints that V was changing too fast. So V will be changing much more slowly in future - if that's perceived as "stagnation", that's too bad. It's actually what people asked for.

Those who have been paying attention will see that bugfixes are consistently ported from v4 back to V because nobody objects to bugs being fixed. Beyond that, neither V nor v4 has seen much activity in the last couple of months because devs are all busy with RL. Anyone who wants to make uncontroversial changes to V, or make changes to v4 which they want to demonstrate are so popular that they can get ported back to V, is very very welcome to do so. We still, as always, welcome pull requests from additional devs - anyone is welcome to join the devteam at any time.

[Antoine]

I wouldn't read too much into the V vote. It would be higher if there was actually a get-out-the-vote campaign. Younger funkier games tend to do better in the Ascii Dreams poll anyway.

The level of activity here (especially chardumps) may be a better indicator.

A.

[ghengiz]

I wouldn't read too much into the V vote. It would be higher if there was actually a get-out-the-vote campaign.

I found a bit unclear what do you mean by get-out-the-vote campaign

The level of activity here (especially chardumps) may be a better indicator.

A.

Agreed

[getter77]

On vote getting: For example, Dungeons of Dredmor and ToME 4 leverage social media/twitter followers/etc to let people know that the vote even exists and hopes their energized fanbase will head to the site and get counted.

Angband, thus far, lacks that "media" angle that can make some waves to get picked up by Rock, Paper, Shotgun or anywhere else that PC gaming folk a tad outside the mainsteam are apt to pay attention to and gain new bookmarks/twitters/etc to follow based on whatever interesting story.

Part of this is a long-standing perception issue of Angband = Grind same as Nethack = Complex, whereas the lack of updates to the latter, Nethack base at least, counts towards the mystique of it all yet that there HAS been updates to the former never seem to break past the "Grind" perceived aspect as it dwarfs the lot of it.