Angband User Manual Wiki

[JamesDoyle]

Hi all

I've been playing Angband for quite a while now, and evetually recently got my first completion. I had promised myself that when I had managed that I would attempt to write an up-to-date User manual, pulling together as much of the information that's available in the various help, info and edit files, and filling in gaps and answering questions I had come up with during playing.

A few days ago I discovered this site, and the beginnings of the UserManual wiki; I decided that, as someone else had begun the job, rather than start from scratch I would build on their good work.

I'm currently (re-)writing the pages on character generation, and could do with the following questions being answered:

What are the character's height and weight measured in? I know it doesn't matter, but if there is an answer, I want to put it in.
What are the attributes labelled Status and Maximize?
What is the difference between Fight and Melee?
And a more general one - is there a list somewhere of the various descriptive ratings for the secondary skills such as Stealth: e.g. Fair, Very Good, Legendary, etc..

There'll be more questions as I work my way through the manual but those will do for now; also, if anyone wants to look at the pages and critique my style or point out errors, please do so.

P.S. Two points about the wiki itself - can it include images, and can you do internal links within a page? I can't see mention of such in the HowTo Format page.

[ekolis]

Height I believe is measured in inches, while weight is measured in kilotons. Oops, I thought I was playing Space Empires for a moment; I believe it's measured in pounds

Status means "social status" which is rolled randomly (though I think it's affected by race) and determines your character's default description text (you know, like "You are a child of a Serf and are a credit to the family.") It used to also determine how much gold you start with...

Fight includes only bonuses which apply to both melee and ranged combat, while Melee includes melee-specific bonuses as well.

[JamesDoyle]

Thanks for that!

Hmm, I thought that inches and pounds were most likely, although some of my characters seem to have very odd height/weight combinations!

Status seems to be on a scale of 0-100, is that right? And presumably not linear, so you're much less likely to be royal.

[pav]

Where is that Wiki? It certainly is not part of this website. But I would be happy to link to it.

[Faust]

I believe he's talking about the one on Anderw's site http://rephial.org/wiki/UserManual

[pav]

Aaah! Then it's official

[JamesDoyle]

Ha, sorry, I'd clicked through and hadn't noticed the domain name change!

[takkaria]

I'm currently (re-)writing the pages on character generation, and could do with the following questions being answered:

Can I just ascertain that you are actually rewriting from scratch? If so, there's a chance to get the licencing for the documentation into a better state than it currently is -- I'd like to have it under something less restrictive than the current licence, which counts as non-GPL-compatible...

BTW, it looks like you're doing a great job.

[JamesDoyle]

Well, I had started making some notes on how I wanted to organise a User Manual, and then realised that someone had already made a start, so I'm reorganising and rewriting as I go along, so it's mostly from scratch, but partly from Leon Merrick's work.

Some of it is separating out different threads of info; for example, what a new user wants is the flavour and an explanation of what to do, not to be hit with obscure terms like 'ego item' and 'pseudo ID' in the initial sections of the guide, but those things need to be in somewhere for when they encounter them.

Thanks for compliment by the way!

And now, to avoid double-posting, for my next questions...:

Is Stealth modified by DEX and/or INTelligence?
What is the difference or connection between the Fighting attribute and the Fighting/Melee modifiers
Presumably the attribute is by STR and DEX?
Ditto for the Shooting attribute and modifiers – DEX modified?
Perception, Searching – are these modified by WIS or INTelligence?

[Pete Mack]

Well, I had started making some notes on how I wanted to organise a User Manual, and then realised that someone had already made a start, so I'm reorganising and rewriting as I go along, so it's mostly from scratch, but partly from Leon Merrick's work.

Some of it is separating out different threads of info; for example, what a new user wants is the flavour and an explanation of what to do, not to be hit with obscure terms like 'ego item' and 'pseudo ID' in the initial sections of the guide, but those things need to be in somewhere for when they encounter them.

Thanks for compliment by the way!

And now, to avoid double-posting, for my next questions...:

Is Stealth modified by DEX and/or INTelligence?
No. It's only modified by equipment.

What is the difference or connection between the Fighting attribute and the Fighting/Melee modifiers
Modifiers are just equipment and str/dex bonuses. Fighting (and shooting) attributes are a summary of the actual underlying value, including race & class contribution. Note that fighting bonuses are multiplied by 3 when calculating their effect against opponent AC, which means that !Hero, ?Bless, and !Berserk have a bigger effect than you might guess at first. Also, AC is discounted by 25% when calculating hits and misses.

Presumably the attribute is by STR and DEX?
Yes.

Ditto for the Shooting attribute and modifiers – DEX modified?
Yes. Strength helps too.

Perception, Searching – are these modified by WIS or INTelligence?
No. Just by equipment.

[JamesDoyle]

Thanks Pete. Interesting, I would have thought perception and searching in particular would be improved by appropriate character stats. I'm learning as I go!

[JamesDoyle]

When using the system to generate a character name, where does it grab the syllables from? They look to me like they are elvish elements, possibly from the artifacts; I can't find a file containing them, am I missing it or is it hardcoded somewhere?

[takkaria]

When using the system to generate a character name, where does it grab the syllables from? They look to me like they are elvish elements, possibly from the artifacts; I can't find a file containing them, am I missing it or is it hardcoded somewhere?

Hardcoded. For the complete list, see:

http://dev.rephial.org/trac/browser/trunk/src/randname.c

[JamesDoyle]

Some questions relating to using the stores

Some of my questions here are due to changes from 3.0.6, the version I've been using

It seems the General Store no longer buys from characters; is that true?

The General Store had Word of Recall scrolls when i started a 3.0.9 character - is this a standard item in the GS now? And does that store buy scrolls now?

Is the 'space key to see 2nd page of store inventory' now redundant?

This is much older really, but is there any significance to the colours item names are displayed in? For example, helms, shields, etc., are all brown, and the connection is clear, but staves, ammunition and food are also in brown. Similarly, grey is body armour, but also spikes and digging tools.


And two meta-questions and one comment if Andrew reads this -
can the wiki have sublinks I.e. anchors within a page, not just links to a page)?
is it possible to include images (qwhich would make explanations a lot easier in some parts of the manual
The HowToFormat page refers to being able to do red text, but it doesn't work; it seems to rely on a CSS which isn't present

[Big Al]

Some of my questions here are due to changes from 3.0.6, the version I've been using

It seems the General Store no longer buys from characters; is that true?

True

The General Store had Word of Recall scrolls when i started a 3.0.9 character - is this a standard item in the GS now? And does that store buy scrolls now?

The General Store now *always* stocks the same selection of items. (No more recalling to the town and finding no WoR or arrows or oil, etc...) Every time the store restocks, it always makes sure that there's every item.

Is the 'space key to see 2nd page of store inventory' now redundant?

If you have a small screen and a big store inventory, the space key still scrolls you down a screen's-height-worth of inventory items (though you could do it slightly longer with arrow keys, etc.).

This is much older really, but is there any significance to the colours item names are displayed in? For example, helms, shields, etc., are all brown, and the connection is clear, but staves, ammunition and food are also in brown. Similarly, grey is body armour, but also spikes and digging tools.

There's only sixteen colours in angband and there are more than sixteen different types of items, so there's some duplicate colours. There's no real significance other than grouping certain types of objects together.