Re-iterating - plan for comp 99 is V3.2. A savefile with good monster memory and disconnected stairs would be nice. We haven't had a V rogue for a while (last one was a kobold 2 years ago).

stairs please, eee, ee its fair , see~ if u arent liking ~ no using! simple strategy!! (no need tell others how to be) ~!!!!!!!!!!!

That's not how competitions work. If you let people ride scooters in a foot race, then the race becomes about the person willing to buy the fastest scooter. If most of us want to race on foot (or play without stair scumming) then we have to have a rule that there are no scooters/connected stairs.

stairs would make the competition more serious, ee

Just give it up, DOS350. You're not going to convince everyone to turn the competition into a fight over who can abuse stairs the most effectively. And make no mistake, that is precisely what turning on connected stairs would do.

One of the great things about *bands is the way you can make it harder or easier for yourself - so more experienced players can choose harder race/class combinations, or reduce reliance on tactics like anti-summoning corridors and stairscumming. It's not that there's anything wrong with stairscumming - it's just that most people who have played for a while don't find it very interesting.

So having a comp with connected stairs would reward people for playing in a less interesting (to them, for the most part) way. It would be like having a cycle race where it was an advantage to use training wheels, or a writing competition where it helped to write incomprehensibly ... oh, wait ...

V 3.2 and RePos 6.3, the current comp, are almost identical. Maybe try something a little different and then come back to V?

I already have a V3.2 savefile, and I think for a major new version of V it's worth having a few comps anyway.

Next one after will likely be NPP 0.5.1, and then there may even be a new FA release...

i think all these wheel comparisons are bad, i think if it not interest u , dont do it~ if it will turn into stair festival,, then it obv DOES interest u, no? if not then please put on and not use, else giv into the urge, please~ no rage

What would you say if the Olympics decided to allow marathon runners to use bicycles if they wanted to? Sure there might be some happy cyclists, but wouldn't you think that most of the runners would be pretty upset that they'd have to use a bicycle to compete properly? After all, there's no way that a runner on foot could keep up with a cyclist.

Why can't we enjoy an even fight for the best? Why should we allow everyone to abuse connected stairs? What would happen next, Sauron has no spells, a 1d1 attack and 3 hitpoints? Morgoth has 6 hitpoints, 2 1d1 attacks and a phase door spell? All monsters disappear, except for those that can't move, which are given less hitpoints and more EXP? You are fighting a losing battle DOS350 and I offer you(yet again) a settlement.
I, Philip offer you peace on behalf of the oook community in return for these 3 simple things.
1.Clean up your posts(no eeks, ~, all words normally spelled unless there is a reason not to).
2.Stop insisting that stairscumming is allowed in competitions and don't boast about how far you got.
3.Admit stairscumming on posted characters.
If you do not accept, we will not respect your posts or characters, and threads by you may be ignored. You will be less likely to get help on existing characters, simply because of your post quality.

i, dos350 , suggest u stop crying, ~ee

i have only posted one char and i made it known that i scummed to win , and i dont boast.

i really dont see why people think i want easy game, thats false.

i am wanting freedom to choose, ~ just cos there are stairs, doesnt mean u hav to use them, but the same does not apply with disconnected stairs,

so why dont the "pro anti stair crew" just not use stairs, if they are so dirty, u wouldnt want to, right?

and if they arent dirty enough, please just use them, nobody is judging u, and if they are , they are mentally incorrect and bad people IRL, im not joking, please no rage~!

You are willfully ignoring all the strong and pertinent arguments against using connected stairs in a competition. Unless you choose to actually start responding to the arguments people use, you will get precisely zero traction in this thread.

ok heres my thesis:

stairs are optional
if its not about stair scumming , dont do it, it wont become about stair if u dont do it.
they add an element to the game, scumming~ which can improve your char , quickly.
this would make the competitions more competitive and fun, imo~ because the playstyle would be more extreme~

like~ athletes perform better on drugs, so use them!

please, somebody say u get my drift, it is true , u cannot deny~ please no rage, ee

Umm. You are making a comparison to drugs. You mean steroids and stuff? You know that's not allowed in practically any competition, and you have therefore given us something to compare it to. I get your drift, I think that you want everyone to be the best they can, and therefore stairscum, but athletes are not allowed to use drugs because the abilities of the athlete are dependant on the drugs. The athlete is always just as good as the drug he uses. We want to see how good we are, and not how good the drug(stairscumming) is.

but i think it should be a comp of pure angband skill, not some holy quest for playing ethically or something, please no rage

Pure angband skill includes ability to play good with any combination of birth options.

There is angband tradition to consider that faster win is better win, and connected stairs in vanilla ruin this, turning fast win attempt into terribly boring stairscumming run.

u can win faster by stair scumming, and with a better char, imo~ ee

edit

and , connected stair is not only for scum, sometimes u want use stair~ without intention to scum

We're talking about the competition, so what about a competition about real time, and not turns? We could either have the game note the time elapsed, or something like that. It would be an interesting change. Perhaps something quite hard, like O, or something of similar difficulty.

It has been done - maybe Cheng, we haven't had one of those yet.

Yeah, I guess that it's easier if there aren't any things that would have to be changed, but I'd really prefer something less wierd. It is time for Chengband though, and that appears to be the best option.

Extreme case would be simple rule, that one who post winner first wins the competition.

Yeah, that's what I suggested some time ago, and I believe I was met with the statement that half of oook would lose their jobs. But still a nice idea.

Any idea on the next competition?

Nick is brewing a rather nice idea for No.100, stay tuned. :)

Any thoughts for 101?

How about #104?
Has it been decided which variant it'll be?
Not familiar with some variants, and it'd be nice to have a heads up in case I need to do a bit of reading

I'm intending FayAngband, and need to get moving on it.

Could you do a Shadow-Fairy Mage in O sometime? If not Mage, then maybe Rogue, or possibly assasin. Hell, even druid could be funny.

Yes. I've been leaving O until I get the interface updated, but I think that was a bad idea...

There will also be a quick Quick comp some time soon (probably during the current one), and I want to do an FA comp when I'm reasonably sure that 1.2 is mostly bugfree.

Other suggestions (and savefiles!) welcome.

EDIT: A quick check tells me that mage, ranger and necro are the classes not yet used in an O comp. So mage is a good idea, although necro is tempting...

Hilarious! That's worse than my obsession with Z+ chaos warriors.

Yeah, but I kinda assumed that you didn't like necros all that much now. I also thought that Shadowfairy Mage had no plays on the ladder and could thus be cool. I think it's playable, I got to clevel 15 or so before dying to a system crash, easier than Necro I assume.

Next comp really should be Chengband. Someone want to send me a savefile?

I'd like to book in a Quick Dunedain Sage for about #108 or so - will provide a savefile closer to the date

A.

We can fit in a Quick comp any time at the same time another one is on - so send the savefile whenever you like.

sorry but this game was too brutal for me, i dont know if ill try again,.........

is chengband good?

wat about just hengband!~!, dos350 can send save file

I haven't tried Cheng, but it is newish and we haven't had a comp for it.

Would very much like to try Cheng, but am hoping that it'll be available to us os x users..

I'm mainly playing Chengband and i think it very challenging. If someone starts a competition, i'm going to play! :)

Ask Chris about a safe file as he is the maintainer and knows a lot of interesting race/class combinations.

IDEA: Let's have a comp using a character that gains actual HP when she levels up!

(Shaking head at a mass grave filled with Tinkers Bell that weren't even worth posting)

While I appreciate the efforts, I'm still sad that there's no Cheng I can play. Ah well.

If we're up for another QuickBand comp, I think that a sage would give lots of interesting choices.

Competition 108 was a Quickband Dunadan Sage -- it must have flown under your radar.

Yeah, sorry about that - I ran it at the same time as the V comp, and that was a bad idea.

The current plan is to have an FA competition next (a last hurrah for the current FA wilderness - I'll put that up soonish), followed by Vanilla again, which should be about when 3.3.1 is out.

<knock> <knock>... anybody home?

Naughty buzzkill! You forgot to close your <knock/> tags!

Wouldn't that be </knock>?
It's a good thing I've got ~360 days till next Christmas to make amends.

I was using the short syntax introduced in... was it HTML4? or 3? :)

Yes, yes, master, give your slave a few minutes...

Any opinions on what to follow the epic Sil comp with? Failing any suggestions, I'll just do V3.3.2, probably a priest.

Perhaps a Quickband berserker? I'll just copypaste from my character dump: Quickband berserkers are native to ice, resistant to fear and gain Rage Points in battle, which they can keep for a temporary speed bonus or spend to use their spellbook equivalents. However, they aggravate monsters and can neither use scrolls nor wands nor staves. Some shop services mitigate this, but they are very expensive. The lack of means of instant escape is perhaps the biggest challenge.

Or a Quickband half-elf: They find more and better treasure but often have OOD encounters.

Here's an idea: Has there ever been a comp using Vanilla where the goal was to kill not only Morgoth but also every other unique? Might be an interesting wrinkle.

Actually, yes. An NPP comp a while ago had the winner criteria based first on whether Morgy was killed, then on how many uniques were killed.

Hunting down all the uniques is painfully boring (i've done it once...and only once). That being said, I wouldn't mind comps with shorter or different goals, something like:

Kill 1000 orcs is a nice goal IMHO.

And you're required to listen to this song while doing it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVcYsT9WPcs

I'm surprised by this -- the times that I've won, I've always made it a point to kill all the uniques because, well, they were there, and I also figured they'd have good drops. But I looked at my character for comp 119 and sure enough, not many of the items I use came from uniques. Do most people just avoid the tough uniques and *destruct* them when they get summoned at the final battle? No wonder I'm so slow by comparison!

It's certainly what I do. There's too many "I'd rather Morgoth not summon this guy" uniques out there for it to be worth my time to actually prevent him from summoning them, so I just deal with it when he does.

This doesn't necessarily work equally well in all variants. I believe that NPP assumes you're going to kill all the uniques before fighting Sauron. But NPP's spellcasting is considerably more intelligent than Vanilla's (to the point that when fighting enemy spellcasters with healing spells, you basically have to drain their entire mana pool before you can actually kill them).

It isn't quite assumed, but it does offer a distinct tactical advantage. With all uniques killed when Morgoth or Sauron cast "summon uniques" nothing appears, they are charged the mana and their turn is wasted. IIRC in older vanilla versions with all uniques killed greater undead are summoned instead, so it was preferable to allow several low-level uniques to live before the final battle.

That's still the case. I must say I rather like your alternative. Especially once we put in monster mana (any year now).

Just do what I did: fork from NPPAngband (one of the 2004 versions or later) instead of Vanilla, it already has the 4GAI built in!

So, next competition soon - any suggestions?

I'm thinking Sil - any other ideas or suggestions for a Sil comp?

Might wanna check when next Sil version is due out... I think it's supposed to be fairly soon. I think it would be cool to have a comp to celebrate the new release.

Yep, half has confirmed that. We will be spoilt for choice (Sil, Halls of Mist, Angband 3.4) soon, but I'm taking requests for this one.

I've always wanted to play QuickBand. Just sayin' :)

Sounds like a plan. Race/Class? Savefiles? Antoine? Bueller?

Oh! OK. Well let's make it a decent character, I dont want one of your crappy random stats specials.

If you can wait til tonight I'll send a savefile. Or someone else might get in first.

A.

No hurry, the current one still has a few days to run (which gives myshkin longer to wrestle with his conscience...).

I await your pleasure, your Majesty.

Yeah! lol....on the crappy random stats specials:)

Funny, that's what my other half always says

A.

I vote half-troll berserker :)

It's a fun class but comp #109 was berserker. TBD...

A.

Oh great lord of all things whatsoever to do with Angband competitions, I shall forthwith email you a savefile for a fairly normal Gnome Mage.

Usual sort of victory conditions should be fine I reckon.

Much obliged for the comp!
A.

There are two possibilities:

1. Angband 3.4 is out in the next three days, in which case that will be the next competition
2. It isn't, in which case the next competition will be Sil 1.1

In case 1, the following competitions will be Sil, then Halls of Mist.

In case 2, there are two possibilities:

1. Angband 3.4 is out before the end of the Sil competition, in which case that will be the next competition
2. It isn't, in which case the next competition will be Halls of Mist

In case a, the following competition will be Halls of Mist.

In case b, there are two possibilities:

1. Angband 3.4 is out before the end of the Halls of Mist competition, in which case that will be the next competition
2. It isn't, in which case SOMETHING ELSE WILL HAPPEN

I hope that is clear.

Pyrel competition!

Definitely - with the rankings of the amount of elapsed real time spent bludgeoning a defenceless Morgoth before realising that hp don't decrement yet and going off to watch telly.

P.S. In all seriousness, 3.4.0 should be out Real Soon Now. Honest.

I would like to apologize for requesting the Quickband competition and then not participating :) I didn't know Sil 1.1 was coming off the presses!!

I object! HP does decrement...you just can't deal more than 27 damage per turn, and Morgoth always goes 4 times faster than you do, and he has 20k hitpoints. And there's no in-game stats, nor character dumps, so we'd all be on the honor system. :)

We could link to a 3.4 build right now. The only thing left to do is update the rephial page. Theoretically, a 3.4 competition could be started before the rephial page gets up to speed, since we can link to the download directly on the competition page. As soon as the webpage gets updated, I'll make the announcement in the forums.

Halls of Mist next. Any suggestions for character type?

The new mana system isn't necessarily balanced yet. I'd stay away from pure spellcasters. A Spellsword would be a safer choice. You'd still get to play with the new mana system.

I suggest Human Spellsword.

I think it would be most fun if everybody rolled their own characters. High STR for a two-handed sword and charge attacks? Or DEX 14 for three blows with a Broad Sword?

Or maybe you should instead try a spellcasting/wand blasting build with high Memory and Presence? With only 11 STR and 9 DEX you get two blows with a Long Sword, which is not half bad...

That's a good idea. I almost feel as if someone has suggested it to me before, perhaps in a PM :rolleyes:

To create a better basis for a competition (rather than roll your own), how about supplying three different characters, roughly as outlined by Mikko, with three different names. We can them just jam them all into the same comp ladder.

Why would that be preferable to rolling your own? All character have exactly 66 points in stats anyway.

Because I have no interest in character creation being part of the comp (and it traditionally isn't). If an advantage is to be gained at character creation, I'm going to miss out, because I'm just not at all into allocating stats and/or re-rolling.

I also get annoyed when characters start in town and I have to shop them before entering the dungeon, so maybe it's just me.

Okay. Me, I like rolling characters and killing town people. I don't think the advantages in stat allocation are huge.

Let's have a quick vote. My vote doesn't count, because I'm not planning to play in the comp myself. Roll your own, or three pre-generated characters to choose from?

If more people like pre-generated characters that have already cleared the town and bought equipment, I'll send them to Nick tomorrow after announcing the bugfix release. Ties are resolved by a coin flip.

I don't know if I'll play in the competition, but I wanted to mention a reason to have three or even just one pre-generated character: unless, you've changed it, I think different characters with the same stats will get different numbers of hitpoints on levelling, but with the same savefile you'll get the same numbers.

I admit I've never understood the attraction of this mechanic. It seems like a substantial component of character power level is fixed at the start but also opaque to the player until they have used the savefile.

Thanks for this insight! Eytan had added an option for "generate hitpoints randomly". I'll switch it permanently off in tomorrow's bugfix release. I don't like it either.

I'd rather do my own shopping, not a big deal but a preference; but I definitely would want a pre-rolled char w/ savefile for a comp.

I just sent Nick three Human Spellsword savefiles. All the dangerous town people are still alive, and the player gets to do some shopping with 50 gp.

Received; new comp should be up on the weekend. So still time for a new Sil winner :)

Current plan for upcoming competitions is

1. FAangband 1.3.1 (probably Easterling or Dark-Elf Ranger, opinions welcome) followed by
2. NPPAngband 0.6.0 (just in time for Christmas, and I think Jeff has presents).

I'd be more tempted by the former, I think - Easterling is an underplayed race (only 5 chardumps) and an Easterling Ranger is a challenge without being near-impossible (Hobbit Priest, anyone?). By contrast, a Dark-Elf Ranger just feels a bit like a vanilla assassin with better shooting than usual...

I've an idea for a competition. Vanilla mage or ranger, with the game modified so that there's no targeting interface. You'd have to choose a direction for spells or arrows, just like in the Moria days. That might result in some interesting tactical play -- or maybe it would be just dumb.

Obvious choices seem to me to be

• Neoband, if it's ready
• Halls of Mist 1.3.2
• Angband 3.4.1 (with or without Mikko's dumb idea ;))

Any preferences, or other suggestions?

Halls of Mist still needs some balancing. Better wait until the next version.

Next comp is planned to be V3.0.6, so people can compare and contrast with 3.4.1. But it will be waiting until my current computer issues are sorted out (I'm hoping a day or two).

Ever thought of making a PWMAngband comp? I realize it would be hard to set up, because it's only designed for Windows (so Linux users would have to use WinE), and requires a separate server... but it would be fun to see how Angbanders would do with a realtime variant.

We could try. You can do character dumps, right?

The next comp is planned to be NPPMoria, so how about after that?

Or how about before? RL put my NPPMoria development to a screeching halt about three weeks ago. I am about ready to start up again and finish it off, but I don't think it is ready for a Comp.

How about a quick interim V?
I reckon I'm ready for my first comp, but I've only played V and FAangband.