Angband 3.4.0

The Angband team released a new version this past Friday, September 14. The last major release (3.3.0) was in July 2011, and there were 2 bugfix releases since. The team has also been working on a v4 release, but there’s no word on when it will be ready.

This new release has quite a few changes, most notably a new resizeable tileset (64×64) by Shockbolt, an artist who also designed ones for the ToME4 roguelike game (look him up at the deviantArt website). These are enabled by default when you start the game, along with the additional windows for information display.  (The only other tileset I like is the one by David Gervais). Other changes include new monster pits and nests, torches now radius 1 light, slight changes to prices and monsters, more consistency for enchant/disenchant, consumables now stack as 40, no weakly cursed items, and lots more.

The tileset looks great, and has different pictures for each race/class/gender combination. It starts out set to 6×3 in the Options>Graphics>Tile Multiplier list and I suggest that you stay with 6×3 or 4×2, or 8×4 if you like them larger.

I’ve created 6 new characters and shall be posting about their successes (and failures) as the weeks go by:

Morgaine, the Dunedan Warrior

Werdna, the Gnome Mage (showing how Detect Traps appears)

Amli, the Dwarven Priest (in the Town)

Sile, the Kobold Rogue (about to learn a spell)

Amilon, the Hobbit Ranger (showing the character screen)

and

Percival the Half-Orc Paladin

(I only really noticed in this release, but Paladins get their spells in the same order every time, unlike priests.)

Some gameplay notes:

Cutpurses are quite annoying early, because if you are a melee character you usually cannot kill them in one hit. Get several in a row and your gold will be depleted rather rapidly.

ALWAYS Tunnel into quartz squares. Most of the time my characters can do it without a pick, and the gold you get will somewhat make up for the annoying cutpurse thieves.

Cave spiders are deadly when you are low level. As are louses (for a different reason). Never get into a room with them, you’ll very quickly be surrounded and then keep getting bitten faster than you can heal and kill them. In hallways they are much easier to handle. (spiders tend to travel in groups, so although they don’t “breed explosively” they can be quite dangerous)

what “breeds explosively” usually means

Try to avoid grey mushroom patches unless you’re in a big empty room. Their confusion (by spores) lasts fairly long, the safest way to remove it is to just Rest, which is not really possible if other enemies are within sight.

If you return to town and can’t see most of it, you arrived at night. Beware, many cutpurse and rogue types are in town at this time.

Upcoming:

There are indications that several variants have new releases coming soon – Sil, UnAngband, and FayAngband. Along with Quickband, I’ll be discussing them in future postings.

Angband commands

EDIT: Immediately after posting this, I found that Angband just got an update from version 3.3.2 to 3.4.0. I doubt that commands are different, but keep in mind that all my discussions AFTER this will be based upon Angband 3.4.0.

One aspect of Angband that initially threw me for a loop is the commands. Some are obvious, but there are many that are just different enough from the ones I use in Nethack that a review of them is worthwhile. Within the game, there are two ways to read information about the game: either press the “?” to bring up a group of subjects to look at in more detail,

or else press the Enter key (if you are looking for a command).

Each of those lines will bring up a list of related commands. For instance, setting the cursor at “Information” and hitting Enter gives you

Here is a list of most relevant commands, just keep in mind that the link in the beginning to “Thangoradrim.net” is broken and won’t work.

Inscriptions, macros, and keymaps:

Angband has the ability to let you set up complex commands to activate with a single keypress. I can’t really do better describing how to do this than the official manual, so here’s the link to the relevant page. Although it does warn you that it’s outdated, the information is still applicable.

Useful early playing tips:

Even if you don’t set up macros, learn to use the ‘ key to target nearby monsters with spells or missiles. The rooms in Angband can get pretty large even in the early game, and moving to a straight line of sight lets the monsters move closer (when they are awake).

You can “T”unnel without a shovel, but it takes more time. Differently colored squares mean magma or quartz, which will yield ore when dug out. As you go deeper, more valuable metals can be found.

When the way is blocked: if it’s rubble in a hallway, just “T”unnel past it. If it’s a hall, try “s”earching for a secret door; Angband seems to have a higher success rate for that than Nethack does, and secret doors are never locked. Sometimes a door is stuck, in which case you can “B”ash it open or use a spell to open it. Bashing will stun/paralyze you for a few turns but doesn’t seem to hurt you.

Beware of traps, which can be detected by mage spell and disarmed by rogues or rangers (or spell, I think).

Mushrooms are a bit like potions – they come in different flavors, not all are beneficial, and you can sell them to some shops (which will identify them).

One of Angband’s unique features is that you can restart dead characters at level 1, as if they were newly created with the same name. Such characters will have a “monster memory” file that lets you gradually get information about the creatures you encountered with the previous version of the character. To read the information your character has learned, press the “~” key and select the section you want to see:

main knowledge menu

and to learn about monsters, just select the correct type and press Enter. Here’s what my mage knows about white snakes:

You learn more the more of any type you kill.

Shops in Angband play an important role; here’s the manual page about the Town and its shops. If you follow the links at the bottom of the page, there are additional helpful instructions for beginners on various topics.

First Impressions of UnNethack

UnNetHack has a blog, a main website, and some public servers to play it online. Patric Mueller is the developer and he also has created Nethack-de, a German translation of Nethack.

One of the first things you’ll notice when firing up the game is that it offers a tutorial. No other variant of Nethack does this. Throughout the early game, either at specific turn points, or when something happens in the game, you get an explanation of what you can do, or find out about the environment around you.

Even if you don’t use the tutorial, you sometimes get hint scrolls during the game.

Only three roles are available if you choose the tutorial. I like the fact that they are your standard fighter/mage/archer archetypes, so you can choose the style of play you love while you learn. They also happen to be among the easier roles to play.

Also, the game allows you to issue context sensitive commands from inventory, like Nitrohack does. This is actually more useful here, since as far as I know UnNetHack does not display your inventory on the sidebar.

According to the Nethack wiki, some of the main differences are:

– the vampire player race, limited to the roles of barbarian, rogue, ranger, or wizard.

– some added monsters, items, and artifact changes.

– some patches, mostly to enable colors in menus and status lines, which improves the user interface.

– like Nitrohack, stairs leading to special levels are colored yellow.

– major changes in the Gehennom dungeon levels.

– dragons have significant differences from vanilla.

Also, if you like cavemen or rangers, they might start with a cat (in vanilla they can only have dogs).

So my first vampire character died, letting me discover that the page identifying your possessions encloses unknown info in brackets, and lets you know how many charges are on wands. Interesting.

Also, your “Final Attributes” screen gives more info, such as alignment status, monster difficulty level, and hunger level.

(I restarted the game with a ranger, a role I hadn’t really tried before. The following 3 pictures are from that character.)

One very useful feature is the “dungeon overview”, seen by pressing Ctrl-o. Notable features will be listed so you know where to return if, say, you want to drop some items on the nearest altar but forgot where it is.

Of course, UnNetHack just has to make Sokoban a little more difficult. It accomplishes that by not only flipping/mirroring levels, but using some from Slash’EM. Like this one… (the third [and last] puzzle I got).

[9/14/12 EDIT: In comments, the creator of UnNetHack reminded me to point out that unlike vanilla, there are only 3 levels of Sokoban (not 4), and you have a choice of three prizes to choose from instead of just two. That is probably to make up for the increased difficulty in each level]

Luckily I managed to solve the entire thing, and escaped with an amulet of reflection. Went back upstairs and entered the Gnomish Mines. I made my way to Minetown and discovered that UnNetHack pulls a special trick on occasion. (Sporkhack does the same, from what I understand).

Unfortunately, I didn’t survive too much longer after that. I was fairly low on ammo, was losing hp, and didn’t make sure to equip a helmet. So when I read a scroll of earth in desperation…

UnNethack is definitely an enjoyable variant and I’ll keep playing it. This ranger has done better than any other character I’ve been working on.