From gameplay to gamedev

No problem, no harm done. It’s cool to have freedom of speech and I hope it would stay the same at this wonderful forums. 

After all – we all wish good to Angband. There is no enemies, we all on one side, just have different vision on matters.

I’m sorry if my crude English language was offencive, I got two properties – hot temper and straightforwardness – which mixed together sometimes bring troubles. Sorry for that.

But still it’s fun to have this discussion, even if everything predetermined. We all let off steam a bit there, in this topic.. So we could move forward without hidden disrespect. It’s good that we ‘purged’ ourself, put all thougths and feelings to this basket.

I wish good luck with current Angband updates. I’ll still continue to play ‘old’ lore version of the game, but I would continue to look into new updates and would be glad to take new interesting monsters to my variant (or maybe Powerwyrm would include them to PWMA – as my variant is based at PWMA).

This discussion gave to me some new experience and knowledge, I hope that I’m not alone in this positive aquirement and this conversation gave some positive stuff (along with negative, there is no way to deny it) to the community.

Kind regards,
Tangar

The good thing about DnD and other tabletop fantasy RPG universes that they are truly ‘evolving’ – evolving in a good way, becomming richer. As Derakon said before about Moria vs Angband:

‘DnD’ (by this acronym in current discussion I mean not only DnD, but actually all pool of fantasy pen-and-paper role-playing games) also going this way, constantly. It provides more and more content! Each next edition (for example, classic DnD itself got already 5th editions) gives something new. And it’s fun to have new stuff, especially when it make sense!

Not all introducted in new table-top games editions stuff is good, but it’s Angband advantage – to choose what to take; some monsters could make Vanilla Angband lore better, more rich and exiting.

At the same time – Tolkien lore is STATIC. I’m sorry, guy, but Tolkien is dead. He won’t write new stuff and won’t ‘create’ new monsters. His universe is quite brilliant, but it was created long time ago, dozens of years before DnD appeared (not speaking about PC RPG games). Tolkien’s bestiary can not evolve, it’s ‘canonic’ and ‘Tolkien’s heritage’ protect his lore from any changes or ‘evolvement’ – which is pretty silly (as all attempts of copyright forces to restrain other peoples creative).

So while Vanilla Angband is open to new ‘DnD’ (and other pen-n-paper fantasy worlds) influence and take ideas from it – it’s great advantage. Restricting game to pure-Tolkien and wiping DnD stuff from it – not only removes 30 years flavour which everybody get used for, but also makes game more ‘STATIC’!. So when you speak about ‘evolving’ – it’s not evolving, guys, but a building a border; whats Nick doing:

1) wiping DnD stuff 
2) making pure-Tolkien border around what left in there

Yep, it’s new high fence around Angband lore. It’s like stuff which Saruman made to Isengard – from diverse beautiful land with trees – he put everything in ‘order’ by cutting trees down and made his land covered with similar grey stone – the same thing Nick is doing with Angand lore right now.

So despite of some opinions in this thread – I’m not after making Angband static – vice versa! But it should be enrichment, taking all the best from fantasy worlds; not restrictions by one universe. Of course, each new addition should be discussed – how it would fit into the present lore (so we won’t have rockets in Vanilla lol).

Vanilla Angband traditional lore – mixed Universe. It’s pretty special – with the ‘core’ of Tolkien (Nazguls, hobbits, Azog etc) and with RICH DnD flavour around it. And it’s fun to play with such game. It’s not boring as some other ‘pure’ Tolkien games and it’s evolving! Without DnD it would be boring static.

Angand Vanilla is: Tolkien ‘core’ enriched with proper DnD stuff. Dark elves, kobolds, gnomes and other old fellas – fits good in it, there is no need to wipe them!

This is yet another point to add to previous 9 points which in my ‘last word’. So now it’s now 10 reasons to save Vanilla Angband lore.

p.s.
I again wanna repeat quote from my first message in this thread:

There is a dramma at Angband oook forums. Nick (current Angband maintainer) are threatening to ban me for… disagreement with him 🙂 Great community managment, Nick!

Enough of what..? Enough of discussion and freedom of speach on Angband forums?

Of course they are. Nick, you’ve won this ‘dispute’ from the beginning. I said about it in several posts in this thread – I’m among minority and this discussion won’t change anything:

The goal of this discussion is to show that there are people who cares about Vanilla and it’s lore and to spread the truth, not to change your mind (it was clear from the beginning that it’s impossible).

Yep, I’ve read your answers and they sounds like ‘to mill the wind’. You just repeat your mantra. In my ‘last word‘ I said everything which I wanted and I become silent as I promised – because there was nothing to add.

And now, month past from my ‘last word’ and for that time more people came there, people who share my point of view and do not agree with you.. So now I have to say something again. And I hoped for constructive dialogue, but you and your adepts just want shut me up. Very good way of communication, sir.

This is a lie and you know it. I’ve answered to it there: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos…0&postcount=38

Yep, krakens are from TomeNET, based at old Vanilla version which also got some more DnD monsters from other variants. And krakens should be at Angband, it’s not only mine POV. Devs should enrich game’s lore, not delete parts of it. But with your ‘tolkien’-purification I doubt krakens or other cool stuff would ever appear..

Considering kobolds: you are going to butcher them a bit later, together with gnomes:

What could I say. It’s very “productive” approach lol You are truly the community hero.. Some time ago, before you started the butchering I’ve left this message:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tangar  Nick, it’s great to see how you ‘observing’ & ‘scouting’ at different ‘battlefields’  I’m learning a lot from how you look at things, trying to be unaffected and to look from the point of view of the game itself, impersonal; and at the same time being open to community. Really cool approach for maintaining the project. Respect! // sorry for offtopic

Now I see that I was mistaken. It’s alright. Mistakes makes us stronger, we should learn stuff from them.. 

Oh, so nice words, thank you very much to make everything clear (about your personality) DD 

… But actually I shouldn’t use ‘DD’ smiles right now – it’s not funny, but pretty sad… Very disappointing (without sarcasm)..

Ok, lets take a look. Which reason to ban me? That I’m not worshipping you? Good point!

There wasn’t any effect. Actually there is no effect from anyone. You are doing what you planned long time ago, alone. You implement ‘minor’ stuff which other people suggest to you to have ‘visibility’ that you listen people. But really it doesn’t important to you, you have you own design (FFAngband -> Vanilla) and you follow it.

As I said in the beginning, > month ago:

I have a discussion in this thread only to show that there are still exist people who cares about Vanilla and it’s lore. And look – there are such people. Even among your ‘majority’ – there are a lot of “it’s sad that dark elves are gone”. Do you care about it? Nope – you have ‘a plan’ and made decision for all people long time ago: most of the community do not care about lore so it wasn’t really hard to implement your ‘idea’. And a few who cares – you do not care about them. You got the PLAN!

They won’t be considered only by you. Also after some time there would be another maintainer and I hope that your ‘lore’ changes would be reverted…

I still don’t understand why you want to ruin V-lore so much. You’ve created FAAngband – pure-Tolkien variant. Why not to continue work with it if you hate DnD lore? Why to mess Vanilla lore? 

You said that I got ‘remarkable display of arrogance’. But maybe it’s your problem? Nobody asked to touch Vanilla lore. You are famous for creating the most ‘heavy’-lore (FAAngand) variant and now bring your Tolkien obsession to V ‘for the greater good’, no matter what. Remarkable display of arrogance, I’ll say.

Ok, so you could read Takkaaria mind, apparently. Good job. But the thing is: 

At the end I wanna add that among this forum there are people that simply fear to have disagreement with you, Nick. I don’t wanna tell the names, cause it would be bad act on their privacy, but it’s old and respectable members of community. The name of this topic “Nick is going to butcher the game” is a quote from discord chat with one of them, it’s not my words (but I agree with them). This people say very harsh words about stuff you are doing with V (much more hursh then stuff I’m saying). But at this forum they do not critisize you. Why? Now I think I understand. I’m kinda ‘new’ at this forum, but this people are there for years and they knew you better, than I am. They wasn’t as naive as I am:

Quote:

Originally Posted by tangar  trying to be unaffected and to look from the point of view of the game itself, impersonal// sorry for offtopic

They knew that everything depends on you and if they would argue – you would ‘ban’ then / ignore their suggestions / won’t give access to development process, like you did it to me right now.

Now I see how stuff works there. At last. Thanks for an enlightenment.

a) it’s my last word (like before execution) – my last message about this topic.

b) this thread got in it a lot of interesting opinions, but it lacks of proper analysis and facts (except Takkaria’s answers). I myself want to propose some; to combine my main ideas from past messages in paragraphs, so it would be easier to see the whole picture.

c) it would be fun to see a proper answer to this (last) message. What is a proper answer? It’s an answer with facts and specifics, without common words. I write there particular paragraphs – 1, 2, 3, 4… Proper answer is to take this paragraphs and provide an opinion based at facts and evidence; if you are not agree with particular paragraphs – you should explain why you are not agree and to provide logical arguments towards your position.

d) I do not expect that something would be changed because: 
– Angband got authoritarian dev system (it’s not a defect, I’m also using such managment when I play in MMORPG and create guilds; it’s good for small-scale operation).
– I’m among minority.. But even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth (Gandhi).

So it’s just my last words with some facts (which could be wrong, please take a go to prove it):

1) Angband as the heritage.

– Angband could be considered as ‘Rogue 3’ (while ‘Moria’ is ‘Rogue 2’).
– Angband got it’s own unique world and lore, which is focused in it’s bestiary. 
– Angband lore based at mixed fantasy universe, mainly DnD which consist of greek, norsa, Tolkien etc
– As Angband got ~40 years history (counting from ‘Rogue 1’) and it’s lore should be threated with huge respect.

2) Monsters knowledge as the only persistent gameplay factor.

– Angband as all rlgs is RNG-based game.
– It’s gameplay learning curve is heavely based at it’s monsters knowledge – as it’s one of the few factors which is static.
– Not rebalancing, but removing/renaming/revamping monsters is a mistake as it destroy knowledge of thousands Angband players which they accumulated during long years. 
– We are (community) too old to learn this changes (or at least to have fun from such learning). It’s good to continue development and make game more interesting, but devs should add new monsters for this reason, without removing old ones. I’m not 14 y.o. boy to have time to re-learn monsters’ names after each revamp. Renaming monsters – is like destroying players’ brain cells.

3) Angband as an educational game.

Multi-lore universe gives Angband an unique advantage to be a educational game. Each monster got a description which often contain poetic and beautiful quotes from the books which players could start reading after playing the game.

4) With new monstrers Angband loosing it’s compatibility.

Technically it would become almost impossible for old versions of Angband and it’s variant to be up-to-date with ‘new Angband’. The end of continuity.

5) Angband already took everything it could from Tolkien lore.

– All Tolkien’s lore which is possible to extract from his works was already extracted and added to Angband in past years. 
– Most of stuff which is currently renamed/revamped is kinda pulled out of thin air (or other ‘a’ place) and not well-known even by Tolkien fans. This looks like strained effort to replace stuff with ‘at least something’.
– There are always would be stuff which Tolkien doesn’t have and which Angband players love (eyes, krakens etc) which leads to a lot of subjectivety in assessment – which monsters should stay and which should go.

6) No one asked to change Angband lore.

– I didn’t find players requests considering changes in current Angband lore. Of course, most of the players do not really care about it, they are mostly neutral.. and they trusting maintainers. But even in this topic there some opinions that players miss old monsters.
– It looks that this revamp of Angband lore is an initiative of one person which is kinda ‘forced’ it by his authority. No one asked for it (no offence meant, just a fact).

7) Splitting community. (coming from previous one)

– As lore changes do not really bother most of the players there were no need to make them.
– At the same time for some players, who takes the game seriously – it’s very painful changes and it’s split’s community (this topic is good example; there are a lot of personal offencive words – words not about particular facts of this discussion, but about personal properties. Bad sign).

7) Pure-Tolkien games is a danger of copyright.

Angband was a ‘loosely’ Tolkien-based game. Current lore revamp makes it quite ‘strongly’ focused. This is the least important factor imho, but it still exist.

8) Nostalgia.

As I said in #2 – we are not young. Among Angband and roguelike community in general are not too much new players in this stupid age when modern graphics overcome the gameplay.

And each of us have a lot of stories about Angband monsters – funny and exiting stories. We love this monsters. We love Angband LORE.

ANGBAND LORE – EXIST.

Not much players realise that. But actually everyone got it’s in their hearts. Lore is this stories and memories. Removing traditional lore from the game, this monsters which everyone know – it’s a position that “Angband do not posses it’s own lore”. But it’s there. It was there.

Good bye.

Aesthetics – beautiful and right term. But why there shouldn’t be a discussion about it? Let’s take Vincent van Gogh.. A ‘majority’ didn’t understand his works aesthetics for a long time. And when ‘they’ finally managed to comprehend – it was to late, he was dead. I’m an artist myself and I see an Angband as a masterpiece in a certain way. When I see it’s destruction I can’t just stay beside and watch on it. Even if I’m the only one who understand it’s aesthetics. Who knows, maybe ‘they’ would understand it later, but it would be too late?..

I just have another POV on Angband in terms of gamedesign and actually cultural phenomena. I see V-Angband as the étalon (reference, standard, model) which is very close to perfection because it’s being actively developed over ~30 years and which is based at gamedesign concepts of Moria and Rogue which gives yet another 10 yeards to this concept – Angband is closer than eg Nethack to ‘original’ Rogue and we actually could call Angband as Rogue III (Moria is Rogue II).

So we could say that Angband has 40 years gamedesign in total. 40 years of gameplay and lore evolution. A lot of classic vanilla monsters went through it and I feel them as a thing close to perfection which we, of course, should enrich and rebalance, but being very cautions and respectable to the heritage. “One Does Not Simply Walk into Mordor”.. lol this discussion remind me of Council of Elrond..

Considering criticism:

But:

And:

😀

But I understand that I’m a minority there and as I said in my past post – I’ve stopped struggle for Vanilla lore. I won’t participate in monster/race discussions further except this thread.

It was pretty obvious to see such reaction at my past message, so I’m not offended. It’s just a good proof of the concept about why there are no negative feedback on lore destruction, but vice versa, from:

And an insults from fanboys make people go to #1:

There are always people who do not have anything to say about topic of the discussion and their the only argument is to ‘go personal’. Enjoy yourself! 8)

I played TomeNET ~4 years which is basically multiplayer vanilla with whistles and bells. As I do not play in party, I always play solo – my gameplay experience is very close to Angband singleplayer (but with real-time which makes game much harder). And now I work/play at Tangaria which is based on PWMAngband which is much, much closer to vanilla then TomeNET; all PWMA gamedata is just a copy of V-Angband with a few additions.. And if TomeNET is based at old Angband, PWMA based at modern core.

And before that I played Moria and Rogue. So I know where this staff came from. Btw, speaking about Moria – a few years ago I’ve wrote an article to popular Russian game magazine which had a name: “Roguelike: where do Diablo’s ears stick out”: http://igroglaz.com/game-magazine/roguelike-history, to popularize rlg genre.

So I know Angband lore and spirit firsthand. I know monsters which you delete from the game. I know a lot of their properties by heart as while you play in real-time – you can not look in spoilers.

And I’m not just playing the game, I’m streaming – communicating with viewers, reading their comments at the same time when I play real-time Angband. It’s pretty special experience which require some skills (yep, I’m not too humble when someone occuse me being incompetent).

But it doesn’t matter – the most important that I love Vanilla World. I learned A LOT from it.

I was Tolkien maniac for a long time. I didn’t read much fantasy exept him, I’ve continued to read LOTR again and again. But after playing Angband (TomeNET) – I’ve met there a lot of monsters which I didn’t recognize. I’ve read their description and I opened new books and new fantasy universes and worlds for myself. This is USEFUL, educational element of the game which you destroying right now. Even having Medusa giving some new lore to ‘modern’ gamers who do not really read a lot of books, but watching movies.

Vanilla had HUGE advantage towards strict-universe games cause there you got a lot of different mythology. Devs should enhance this direction for the game – it gives players new knowledge. Having a lot of Tolkien is cool thing too, but purging everything else and making it pure-Tolkien game is a mistake.

It was interesting to read the feedback Oo

I donno why some other folk with whom I discussed this matters in Discord are silent.. I suppose there could be two reasons:

1) people who do not like what’s going on – do not participate in Angband forum discussions anymore.. Why?

Because they do not see any way to stop this butchering. The only man who could stop Angband’s lore destruction is Nick or next maintainer who (hopefully) may consider to revert this monsters/races changes. At the same time I really do not want to see anyone else as maintainer, Nick is really genious in terms of gameplay mechanics (traps, ID, curses etc). Nick please don’t go away! (my poor Russian soul: you love and hate him at the same time).

And now I understand this ‘out-of-forum’ people. I myself after reading this thread feel that it’s really pointless for me to participate in V-discussions anymore; it’s pointless to try and save certain monsters from destruction, it won’t save V. I do not want to dramatize, but just look at this new execution list and say goodbye to Angband which you know and to your memories:

I wanna note again – this is just another tiny drop of Vanilla blood.. There already were a lot of changes like this. Nick is doing a very smart thing (as I said before – he is a great leader and knows the stuff) – he makes ‘butchering’ in tiny portions so community won’t notice the whole picture and won’t react to it. Everything is going according The Dark Lords plan 8)…

2) there are people who participate the discussions on this forums, but silent in this particular one. Why? Because they are too.. gentle. This is very good virtue of human, but not in all conditions. 

Some people do not speak what they think because it’s ‘western’ politcorrect bahaviour. This is a very interesting issue and I wanna share some thoughts about it because it’s not the first time when I note this: if some ‘western’ people do not agree with something – they are just keep silence (I mean highly cultured people; for example, ones who play intellectual roguelike games like Angband).

On contrary Russian people (even roguelike players) are very straight-forward and sometimes you could think that they are even offencive. We do not have political correctness in our culture and we tell what we think. It’s truth that in some cases it produces bad bahaviour (like someone could start harassment and swearing). But sometimes such properties gives an advantage – you could get real, fair feedback from such people – without politically correct behaviour which is harmful in certain conditions… Everyone are kind and loyal to Nick (and me too, I love this man), but there should be a difference between being kind to person and to give a real and clear feedback on his actions.

This ‘gentleness’ makes people who do not agree – just to be silent so they won’t offend beloved person / won’t go agains it’s supporters.

So the picture is: people who like what’s Nick doing are supporting him on this forum (obviously). But people who do not agree – are silent (again, I know such people as I’ve spoken to them via Discord). 

Does it matter really? No. Just an interesting observation. I suppose most of the V-players would support anything what Nick’s doing, like lemmings.. and if he would say “Jump from the cliff, fools!”.. they would jump 😉 And minority of the community are looking at this picture from the distance, being sad and silent.

—

Now I wanna write a note considering comments like “you are free to have your own variant with old monsters” or “you could use monster.txt from past version”.

The problem is: vanilla is the Core. It’s the exemplar. A lot of non-Lore, good gameplay changes upcoming there. A lot of new monsters are going to appear. How to be up-to-date with new versions now? After this revamp, ‘new Angband’ monsters would not be compatible to real ‘vanilla Angband’ (sorry, but I’m going to call Angband with new Lore as ‘new Angband‘, not ‘Vanilla’). It would be _very hard_ to be up-to-date and look into ‘new Angband’ config files while there are so much monsters deleted/renamed/changed compare to ‘Vanilla’. I know what I’m speaking about as I’m currently working with Angband gamedata customization a lot.

That’s why this isn’t a ‘vanilla Angband’ anymore. ‘New Angband’ monster list won’t be compatible to previous versions and variants. I want to emphasize: this is not about physical compatibility (gamedata configs are the same), but about monsters compatibility – you can not compare two monster.txt files properly (old and new one) to make your version of the game up-to-date – if they got so much differences between monsters and their names.

If before that changes, Vanilla was a place from where you take stuff for old game versions or another variant – ‘new Angband’ would be itself variant-like game. This is very bad for Angbands’ evolution.

There were loads of new awesome stuff came in Angband: new ID, traps, curses, new light effects etc. All this enhancement of the gameplay made Angband a bit different, but the better game overall. I know some guys (eg in Discord) who like old gameplay mechanics more, buy most of players enjoying evolution of the gameplay mechanics (and I’m among them).

But currently there are coming changes to monsters and races (game’s lore actually) which are NOT liked by a lot of players. This changes pushed by huge Nick’s authority, which he absolutely deserved by his work on the game. But what is more important: Nick’s authority or Angband itself?

What made me to write this post? New LORE-based changes in Angband:

This is just a small drop. If it was the only changes in games LORE – I won’t created this thread. But it’s a long lasting job on game’s lore transformation. Loads of monsters changed depths (eg all nazguls now >75 lvl monsters.. poor Uvatha), renamed, revamped.. NOT rebalanced, but revamped 🙁

So the question now – could we save vanilla Angand from destroying? 

Why monsters are lore?

Overall I liked a lot of stuff Nick’s doing, but all past monster revamp is really bad – when he just throw away monsters which were with us FOR YEARS. I understand that Nick got his own vision on the game, but it feels like a destroying the game which we knew. New version would certainly be not an oldschool classic Angband anymore, it’s a new variant. I do not know why other players are silent or only approving Nick’s changes to monsters.. It can not be that I’m the only one who can’t bear it. I know some people who also said that “Nick is going to butcher the game” and they do not like this stuff. Why are you silent, guys?

Certain stuff shouldn’t be changed. Angband doesn’t have ‘lore’ like some other RPG’s which got a static map and a rich storyline. The only ‘lore’ and ‘spirit’ of this game is concluded in monsters. Monsters in Angband – it’s LORE, A WORLD. It’s a CORE of the game. It should be preserved and threated with huge respect. It should be great cautious to put our dirty fingers at any of classic monsters, which loved by thousands of players.

Traps mechanics – alright. They were boring with trap detection. Curses.. Yeah – it was annoying not to be able to drop stuff. ID system.. New one made gameplay more rich. All this stuff is an enhancement of gameplay, but the game itself stayed the same. Because it had a) roguelike concept and b) WORLD (lore)

With changing WORLD you change the game. It’s becoming not an ‘Angband’, but something different. It’s not right to do this to ~30 year old game. People loved and KNOW the monsters. They recognize them by tiny sight and they understand what to expect from them because they played Angband for years.

I’ve created this separate topic, cause if I’ll just a reply to ‘feature/monster’ topic, it would be quickly buried by Nick’s supporters messages. I myself got HUGE respect to Nick, his work and his personality, he is great leader. But game design, coding and game’s lore is different areas of responsibility. Maybe there should be different persons in charge for this particular game component. Let’s Nick would be lead gamedesigner and coder, but someone else would take lore-based decisions in their hand – some of Angband veterans. Or even create a ‘council’ of veterants – like 3-5 past V-maintainers who would vote for LORE-based changes.

What else could I add.. I have my own variant which would preserve classic stuff in it. I won’t ever touch any respectable monster, because I’m in love with them. I know each and everyone there. Of course, monster’s itself should be rebalanced sometimes, but their LORE – names and depth where you find them – wouldn’t be changed. It shouldn’t be changed. It’s a core of the game.

Angaband is RNG-based game; I mean when each dungeon levels is created – we do not know what to expect there. The only things which we expect – is certain monsters. Each one is good known and got it’s own special place. You won’t meet Nazguls at -50, you know it and it’s one of small static things in absolutely RNG game. The only thing which we have is lore and our knowledge of it. Please don’t take it away.

The right way – is to add new stuff and to enhance the game, not to cut it’s parts. How come that I’m as a huge Tolkien fan (damm I even runned in the forests with wooden sword in real life) – do not like current Angband tolkienization? Because it’s a conflict of interests – Tolkien lore VS Angband lore. Sorry, but Angband is not a fanfic Tolkien website to bend it like this. In Angband ‘game’ it’s lore and traditions more precious then Tolkien heritage. Nick doesn’t feel like this it seems 🙁 But even Gandalf was mistaken a lot of times. Let’s go back…

Just a tiny example of customization which is already possible within current system:

name:& Flask~ of Whisky
graphics:,:y
type:food
properties:0:5:100
alloc:40:0 to 50
effect:NOURISH
dice:500
effect:TIMED_INC:CONFUSED
dice:8+1d8
effect:TIMED_INC:BOLD
dice:30+1d20
effect:RESTORE_STAT:CON
effect:RESTORE_STAT:STR
effect:DRAIN_STAT:INT
dice:1
effect:DRAIN_STAT:WIS
dice:1
effect:RANDOM
dice:2
effect:TIMED_INC_NO_RES:PARALYZED
dice:11+1d8
effect:TIMED_INC:BLIND
dice:11+1d8
effect:TIMED_INC:IMAGE
dice:11+1d8
effect:TIMED_INC:AMNESIA
dice:11+1d8
effect:TIMED_INC:POISONED
dice:8+1d8
effect:TIMED_INC:SLOW
dice:11+1d11
effect:RANDOM
dice:6
msg_self:*Hic... Hic...*
desc:It pretty strong and could raise your spirits.

This is just a laugh, a small test for Tangaria, but it’s already makes some interesting changes:

1) drinking Whisky restore STR/CON (important for newbie players who attacked wrong monster in melee and have -5 speed for example and can’t continue playing), but could make you stupid OR less wise (logical lol). 
2) it makes you bold (@ Tangaria it’s pretty useful, eg to fight VS Maggot who is living at -50 and could ‘fear’ you sometimes)
3) it makes you confused (you drunk lol)
4) it produce certain random effects (drinking booze in magical world should be more interesting than in real life)
5) it nourishing.. and in Tangaria it’s very important as you can not buy food in the shops. Whiskey also could found only during adventures.

Why I posting this? Just to show that working toward enhancing customization is important. So having:

Would really open ‘third’ eye in Angband development.

The question is:

What is easier: to hardcode new objects’ properties or to add them in object.txt ?

For example:

You have 50 objects, something like this tiny Whiskey flask, which you wish to customize with some ‘checks’. What would you prefer – to hardcode it or to have them all in one place in object.txt?

And what about adding 51 object? 52? 153?

Having objects customization in one place – it’s how it should be to move forward. Forward towards roguelike way – which is different from modern graphic RPGs with faceroll 3-buttons gameplay.

Why Angband implement new objects very rare? Answer is simple – because there are low possibility of such items customization. Monsters – ok, work is going on. Classes too. Their gamedesign potential are very high already and Angband using it’s 5% (or even less), so there are loads of space left for their development. Monsters and classes got loads of properties and very high ‘degree of freedom’ as monsters are controlled by AI and classes are enhanced by players bahaviour.

But for objects, which got the only way to act – when you use them – there are lack of options. Enhancing this particular direction would bring game to the next level.

In general, game balance is more important than realism. Of course it’s great to make stuff to make sense.. But if there is a choice between following precise realworld medieval experience and making game less balanced – hell to realism. This is magic world which has it’s own magic physical laws.

At the same time it shouldn’t be too non-realistic. We have to find compromise between realism and game balance.. I mean – we shouldn’t be too tedious in trying to match precise values to real-life.

Current weight is ok in terms of lore/realism to me. Imho the problem is to rebalance different weapon in early/mid/end game; so heavy weapons would be more useful for early-mid game. How come that dagger is more ‘dangerous’ weapon then bastard sword? It’s actually makes less sense and more important than ‘realism weight problem’.

Comment to ook discussion: could Angband be considered as ‘game engine’?

I played for years in TomeNET which is based at very old version of MAngband (which is based at ancient version of Angband), and it didn’t had ‘game engine’ component in it. Modern Angband is very different!

Considering ‘configuration’ aspect:
In contrast to ‘regular’ graphic-based games (eg modern RRG genre), roguelike genre ‘game engine’ is supposed to be configuration based. As the foundation of the roguelike game is to ‘assemble’ RNG dungeons, put there random objects and give player to deal with them – and it’s all depends on certain formulas and constants. When we change such parameters in configuration – we change the most important part of the game; actually roguelike game could be considered as a ‘mathematical model’.

Thats why current Angband gamedata configuration provide loads times more possibilities in game design than any existent _default_ (out-of-box) ‘modern RPG’ game engine, like Unity etc. of course, this fact mainly based at roguelikish RNG-based gamedesign, but still 🙂

And of course to implement some unusual staff you have to code.. But anyway right now you could do AMAZING things with current ‘game engine’ 😀 I enjoy working with it!

There is an interesting discussion @ oook about water. My 0.02$:

I like this idea. TomeNET got pretty cool water system and even ‘swimming’ skill. They got:

– aquatic monsters which can spawn only at ‘water’ tiles; they can pursue player even in ‘shallow’ water, but can’t leave it to surface
– swimming in deep water give a chance for scrolls & other items to be destroyed; water resistance items or tarpaulin (tool slot) protect from it.
– eventually you could die (drown) if you are tired and bad at swimming :E
– ‘swimming’ skill & racial parameter; It would be fun to have it in Angband (like ‘Digging’) eg makes hobbit swim not really good ^^
– you can not create walls on deep water; not all stuff could be summoned on deep water
– there is fresh and salt water. You could fill bottle; eg with salt water and use this potions to throw to the enemies or ‘clean’ your stomach Continue reading →

Right now @ oook forums there is a big discussion considering upcomming races/classes changes. As I’m working at new races design for ‘Tangaria‘, thought about this matters too, so my 0.02 $

Firstly I wanna note that I’m really enjoying the way how Angband developing. It’s feels like ‘Golden Age‘ of this game; all past changes like ID, traps, curses.. new light systems & etc – it’s definitely move toward the right direction.. But.. Such race changes.. It feels a bit like a developing new Angband variant, than enhancing V; sorry to say this, with all huge respect to beautiful dev team.

I was quite sad when heard that kobolds are go away soon; they feels very ‘native’ to Angband atmosphere even if they are not canonic to Tolkien. But Tolkien himself left a lot of space for other creatures in his World, who knows who lived to the far south east, in some dark caves? Kobolds sounds like a creatures who wouldn’t like to be found and used by other races in their wars, small and stealthy, they mind their own business. Continue reading →

Let’s remember Frodo who went to Mordor from Lothlorien. He got limited supplies and he should be causious with them. It was fun 😀

There is a big discussion @ oook considering food in Angband. I wanna share some my thoughts about this topic:

1) Food is a resource which slowly depleted (the same as light); it works differently in compare to other sources, like HP (which depleted very fast, but only during the battle).

2) With such long-term resources there should be rare occasions which brings ‘crysis’ to it. There are RNG events which could drain this resource at once: mobs EAT_FOOD, traps; and also draining it’s more slowly – curses, wearing powerful items (magical rings in Nethack). The more different events like this – the better (I mean diversity). Some of them should be higly unpredicted. Continue reading →