Wasn't that involving killing hydras in the wild? Or making alchemist bombs from the skill and selling them for outrageous amounts of money? Anyway it would be stupid to play a comp where winning would rely on abusing game flaws. Better go for something more challenging... like a yeek sorceror for example ;)

Another fun combo is the barehanded Spectre Troll Loremaster...possessing a GWoP....cheap, I know...but can reach clvl 50 quickly enough to make the compo fun.

For challenge purposes, a Maia Swordsmaster might be good...good stats but players have to be able to tough out the innate-aggravation.

It's ToME. I don't think that you can construct a build where abusing game flaws wouldn't be possible.

Don't like flaws, play Sil or even PosChengband (whose maintainer who is known for "balancing" whenever possible) :)

This is the tentative plan for comp 158. Questions? Objections?

Extra Sils in extra turns NOT making one a better compo winner? "Killing Morgoth counts for nothing." I'm not sure if many like those, but rules are rules.

I do approve having only VANILLA Sil 1.2.1 characters on the compo ladder.

Doing otherwise would require you to come up with some kind of conversion factor of Sils (or killing Morgoth) to turns, which is going to be nigh-impossible to get right.

Tell you what: use extra Sils/Morgoth kills as a tiebreaker if two players have the same turncount. ;)

<3

Although it will likely turn out to be a singer speedrun contest.

I second this. Debo to follow with comment.

In the event that two players win with the same turncount, I will leave you guys to figure out the tiebreaking scheme while I run off to buy several lottery tickets.

I, for one, am going to forge a horn of blasting at the earliest opportunity and blast downwards to 1000' as soon as elvishly possible. Eventually the RNG will net me a win!!

I hear that's what the Sil TAS does

FWIW, this might be a chance to update the variant page here on oook to indicate latest info on Sil? (If I knew how would do it myself, etc.)

Happy now?

I honestly was volunteering to help with it if I could, but thank you. The variants page is a pretty valuable resource!

I actually don't know if you can. When I go to the tab I am able to add and edit downloads and releases, but maybe that's because I'm special :)

Does anyone have any experience with xangband? Someone just uploaded a dump a few days ago and before that I had literally never heard of it before. Might be an interesting option for next comp!

http://www.roguebasin.com/index.php?title=XAngband

Its interface is similar to ZAngband with monsters from Tolkien-lore and Japanese stuff.

Suggestion - Any race + Snatcher. And then we can compare with PosChengband's Possessor

I'm thinking Steamband or Sangband for the next comp. Other suggestions? Ideas for builds? I played Steamband a bit but it's another variant where I'm not sure which things are totally busted or not. Sangband usually makes me want to hurl my computer across the room, but people seem to like it.

I've been getting back into FA over the last couple of days because it's been a while since the last FAangband comp...

Has there been a hall of mist comp yet? I keep meaning to try it out again, though I remember dying quite quickly last I tried.

Only one back in 2012.

What about any Yeekband competitions? Rare is the variant that is actually, mostly "done" while also being "mostly done" as far as what it set out to be and do. Few new classes and races into an odd mix of an Angband frozen in time and prodded with a stick and all. The downloads still work too I think...

http://www.gratisgames.webspace.virg.../yeekband.html

Completely forgot this one:
Final Fantasy VII Angband - Final Fantasy VII themed, right...! Definitely a contender for a future competition.

This can be downloaded here:
http://www.ff7citadel.com/downloads/games.shtml

Last I heard, Halls of Mist was just about ready to be updated. Of course, that was about a month or two ago.

I realize it's a bit too soon for another Vanilla comp, but given the number of winners in the last two 3.5 Vanilla comps, I'd suggest doing something more challenging and have a Vanilla comp with no-artifacts. I'd say go with a Human Warrior to raise the difficulty level even a little bit more. But given that we just did a Half-Troll Warrior, maybe people would want something else. Maybe a replay of comp 84, to compare versions.

Ironman forced descend descend-extra-level starting wearing The One Ring, Gorlim, Wormtongue, Calris, and other cursed equipment.

That sounds so fun that I might craft the savefile just for fun regardless of whether it's the comp.

edit: on reflection, it sounds too easy with the immunities from the ring.

I actually gave this a whirl recently - fun, if a little basic.

Oooh, I like this idea!

Hobbit Rogue named Gollum starting with the One Ring would be nice. Easiness would be counterbalanced by permanently aggravating (annihilating the stealth bonuses), and by hard birth options like ironman (birth_force_descend + birth_no_recall), preserve off (birth_no_preserve), and no level feelings (birth_no_feelings). Winner would be lowest turn count, so you would have to balance diving/exploring.

You could start a character, generate the One Ring, equip it, and then generate and throw away every other artifact. A bit tedious to set up, but effectively you'd get an "artifactless except the One Ring" game.

Play as Feanor the Elf Warrior (or maybe Elf Paladin?) in a forced-descent, no-town, no-item-stacking, monsters-learn-from-experience game. That's about as hard as I can think to make it using the Vanilla option set, given that he starts with the One.

New V version is out... good candidate for next comp no? And this time something like a force_descent hobbit ranger (randarts on)...

3.5.1 will definitely be the next comp. I'm very open to character suggestions :)

The last Vanilla dude we did was a hobbit, but he started with the one ring so it wasn't much like playing a normal game at all.

The Angband 3.5.1 compo should feature a Pixie for a change...

Edit:
Wait, are Pixies in the official Angband 3.5.1 release? I thought they were in a certain devel version of Angband 3.5....

Alternative option:
Half-Troll Ranger!!

No pixies in Vanilla.

Half-troll mage. :) We haven't done one of those in awhile.

Pixies are suggested for a future release according to the trac database. For 3.5.1, I was suggesting ranger because it's the race that has been played the oldest (comp #128). HT mage is fun too...

If someone wants to come up with a 3.5.1 comp character, I am open to savefile submissions. I agree that it would be nice to have a 'harder' comp this time around (with some of the sillier difficulty options turned on.)

We have 3ish days until the next competition.

My idea is a Half-Orc Rogue named Slink. Forced descend, no preserve, disconnected stairs. Savefile attached, I think.

Randarts ? Its about the only option that matters to me, dont want to find no Caspanion no more :/

Here's my idea, taken directly from http://www.penancecomic.com/2007/06/21/2-18-penance.

Leon is a human ranger. He has broken the rules of his community. For his penance, he was told to go 5000ft down the fortress of Angband and slay Morgoth. And since he was going to take the task too lightly, the gods decided that no artifacts would cross his path during that task.

Another idea, taken from http://www.penancecomic.com/2007/07/31/3-5-say-it.

Lucky is a half troll mage. He has an interesting background story (see previous link).

Savefiles attached. Both characters are force descent/no selling, with tougher monsters enabled (ai_learn). Leon also has artifacts disabled. I think both characters would be fun to play.

Those both sound fun too. I don't think I've ever had a no artifact game, at least not one that got far.

I ended up going with PowerWyrm's Leon. (We hadn't done a ranger in a while.)

Thank you for your contribution, though! :)

You're welcome. I ended up playing slink myself and decided that no preserve is just a death wish waiting to happen.

We haven't done a true NPP competition in about a billion years. Any objections to that being next? Also happy to take savefile proposals.

How about an NPP-Angband Human Warrior?

Please let me know if you need anything. I was going to suggest a Dunadan Ranger starting with Anduril. Human warrior should also be quite good.

I think human warrior is the way to go. We haven't ever done one of those.

Me thinks Compo 172 should be on CthAngband 5.0.0. :)

I was hoping the timing would work out for this! The comp start will probably be a couple days late (I'm traveling right now, and I suspect that building a new release like this for non-windows will probably have a few snags) -- however, if anyone wants to give a go at creating a savefile, I'd welcome suggestions.

4.0beta next plz

Ranger of some sort might be good, to get good coverage of spells, melee, shooting and bad pseudo-ID :)

Yes, I imagine grid bugs are particularly susceptible to ranged attacks.

Betacomp it is! We have some more weird ones I'd like to try, but it'll be good to play something new and broken instead of old and broken for the next one :)

That would be great! The "Sauron and artifacts appearing only once unless reset by closing and reopening" bug is the only really major one I can think of that would need to be fixed before a comp. Oh, and the turncount used for the ladder. Those two bugs and a comp should work.

But please, not another "Leon". That was painful! :)

I believe Pav has fixed that one.

Yay! There goes my RL productivity for the next month!

Oh well, I only work in payroll. It's not like people really mind being paid late. Do they?

Hey, MattB, should we lobby for a fists only comp? :D Seriously, though, we should lobby Nick to fix/change fists to have glove bonus damage from acid, flames, etc., branded fists, and possibility of critical hits.

I'm all for fists of flame - not for the extra damage, after all, it's only 1 extra damage per blow, but because it's cool!
Critical hits doesn't make as much sense for me though.

I'm in favor of a little bit of critical hit possibility for a couple reasons. 1) To reflect getting in a liver or kidney shot, gouging out an eye, breaking a bone, etc. and 2) just because the same damage number every time the fist lands just gets boring. Not that it would make must difference in the damage, since the critical from any single blow from a fist wouldn't add up to much. I'm imagining a mechanic like the fist being counted as weighing say 5 lbs (from the momentum) for purposes of calculating a critical hit.

Shoryureppa!!!

You mean here comes your RL productivity! The RL stands for "rogue-like" ;)

Heres an idea: Poschengband Munchkin fastest turns win. Could be intense!

Betacomp should be up in the next 24 hours. Prepare yourselves!

I guess it will be a while before the next FA comp, but when the time rolls around again my suggestion, for what it's worth, is to make it as specifically FA as possible. So,
- Wilderness rather than dungeon.
- A non-V class. Necromancer this time was a good choice. All FA classes have been done at some stage, although some haven't been done for a long time.
- A non-V race? This is less important than class, in my opinion, but just for variety it would be nice.
- Thrall mode. This is really what makes FA unique, so it's a pity that there's only ever been one thrall mode comp: the crazy thrall ironman comp won by Psi back in 2009. To make this viable one would need to choose a very stealthy race/class combination, which is only partly consistent with the previous two points. Thrall mode should really be combined with disconnected stairs. I know that sounds brutal, but otherwise the early game becomes an exercise in stairscumming, and stairscumming is boring. Fleeing for your life, on the other hand, is exhilarating.

I'd be game to try this. What race do you suggest?

I think Dark-Elf Assassin would work.

Dark-elf would be good, since they are the stealthiest race and are FA-specific, although heavily based on O's shadow fairy. They are quite fragile, but all thrall characters are fragile. In principle any class of dark-elf is playable, but people are likely to get bored very quickly of any class which doesn't have high stealth or access to the unlight specialty. Assassins and rogues have both. I think either would work well. FA rogues are quite different from V rogues, by the way. V assassins are, of course, not a thing.

The early game in thrall mode is, not surprisingly, quite different from non-thrall mode. To prevent people from getting really frustrated I should probably put together some sort of guide for thralls and post it a separate thread. Other thrall addicts can add their own advice there.

Not sure about the Dark-Elf bit, but Assassin is definitely one of the more entertaining classes in FA. Indeed, it's probably my favorite!

In a regular game dark elves are something of a challenge race. In thrall mode the situation is more complicated. They have a tougher end game, because they never seem to have enough hitpoints, but the early game is much easier, due to their high stealth. In the midgame the two effects sort of balance out. I'd say they're a good choice for the competition, because you'll have a lot of people with little or no experience of thrall mode, and they are likely to get bored quickly if their first twenty or so characters die before reaching town.

If there is any intention of having the next competition on PosChengband 3.5.0, DON'T base it on Draconians (since they're buggy in 3.5.0). Instead, let's consider having a competition with 3.5.0 Golem Rage-Mages. Any takers? We have yet to get a Rage-Mage winner on the ladder at all.

Next competition is probably Animeband. Poscheng 3.5.x will be after that (we just recently did a poscheng competition.)

I'm going to suggest having a few V comps with different game settings - this can be done easily by having a changed constants.txt file that people can download and stick in their user directory while they're playing the comp.

My first idea is a "reduced size" game - forced descent, stair_skip set to 2 so only 50 levels, dungeon dimensions to 44x132 instead of 66x198, max view and missile ranges down to 10 (or even less) instead of 20.

Opinions?

Nick, you are a sadist! :D

Sounds good, I'm on!

Make that ironman artifactless half troll mage and I'm in ;)

If someone provides and tests the file, I'm game.

If you're using this constants.txt on OS X do you need to drop it in some obscure subdirectory of the application package, or does it go in your angband application data directory? Or some other mysterious place? Basically what I'm saying is I really don't want to write the instructions for this on every platform :)

You'd have to right-click on the program, select "View Package Contents", then go to Contents/Resources/gamedata and drop the file there, I think.

Yes, that corresponds to my first guess. :) RIP

The user directory is lib\user i the Angband folder on Windows, the user's Documents/Angband on OSX, and ~/.angband/Angband on Linux. The same place things like character dumps and screenshots show up.

Note that the fact that this doesn't need to go in the gamedata directory is a feature of 4.0.x, first noted in the 4.0.0 announcement post - it is easy to mess with game data, because there's a fairly easy place where modified data files can be put.

The reason I am pointing this out at length and as if you people are idiots is not (of course) because I think you are idiots, but because I want this to become part of everyone's knowledge about the game. So expect to see this speech a bit :)

EDIT: debo, I'll get you an edited constants file and a savefile soon - I'm thinking something fairly robust like a Dwarf Paladin

That's way better.

That's neat, but what happens if e.g. a future version of Angband changes the game data files? Are the data files versioned somehow?

I should probably catch up with the changes that have been made to the game in the last ~year at some point, or else my status as a sage is going to be lost. :) I've been busy with other projects...

No they're not - the user is also responsible for making sure any data files they put in their user directory don't break the game :)

Anyone up for a PWMAngband comp next? It could use the new turn-based mode to make it easier. I'd see something different compared to the usual fighter or spellcaster, a summoner maybe.

Is there a central server people could play on?

Using the turn-based mode, you don't need a central server. Everyone plays his own single player game on his own local server, like a regular Angband game. Instead of providing a savefile, I would provide both server + character savefiles and server option file. This should be enough to make everyone start from the same point.

So, I think we talked about this once and IMO for your average human this wasn't really that simple.

Basically: I'm willing to try it, but I'm not willing to run tech support on it :) If you want to run point on helping people get set up, I'm happy to create the comp.

It's quite simple I think. The only drawback of PWMAngband is that it's only designed for Windows, so if you want to play under Linux you have to use Wine. I'll release Beta 2 tonight with a couple fixes, then I'll set up the starting zip file with guidelines.

Awesome! Thank you.

Ok here we go:

- download latest PWMAngband binaries (it should say version 1.1.11 beta 2) at http://powerwyrm.monsite-orange.fr (or use the direct link here: http://1drv.ms/1R4XR19)
- unzip the file somewhere
- get the attached file (rydia.zip)
- replace mangband.cfg and mangclient.ini at the root of the directory
- copy "account", "Admin", "Rydia" and "server" in /lib/user/save
- run mangband.exe
- launch mangclient.exe
- and that's it...

Character: Rydia, Human Summoner. She's hot and dominating.

From the help file:

A Summoner is the weakest of all classes you may choose. They have pathetic
stats, no fighting abilities, and little spells to kill enemies with magic.
However, all these weaknesses don't trouble them much, because they can
summon creatures to help them in battle, and still gain some experience from
their kills. Summoners use wisdom to cast spells and summon allies, and to
determine how many of them they can control and how effectively they can
control them.

To compensate for the weakness of the class, the character starts with a Whip of Flame (and I felt it was appropriate). If you play the starting character and you die, you have two ways of playing another character: you can simply relaunch the client (mangclient.exe), choose the deceased character, choose to reroll the same character and use the quickstart mode (in that case you won't start with the Whip of Flame); or you can ctrl-c the server, copy the original "Rydia" and "server" files again in /lib/user/save, relaunch mangband.exe and mangclient.exe and choose the starting character again.

Here are the main server options that were set in the configuration file:
- ALLOW_RANDOM_ARTIFACTS = true (random artifacts)
- LIMIT_STAIRS = 1 (non-connected stairs)
- NO_GHOST = true (permanent death)
- TOWN_WALL = true (no wilderness)
- BASE_MONSTERS = true and EXTRA_MONSTERS = true (PWMAngband monsters)
- PRESERVE_ARTIFACTS = 1 (preserve on, but artifacts are lost if left behind)
- TURN_BASED = true (turn-based mode)
- LIMITED_ESP = true (Angband-like telepathy)

Birth options are the same as default Angband options (this means no selling is on).

This will make a really challenging game, but I'm confident that there will be wins (or close calls). Just look at the last comp ;)

I guess this is what happens when I let other people design the comp characters.



Cool, I'll write this up and post the comp within the next 24 hours.

What's wrong with that? :)

Dammit, just found out I goofed big time with the summoning effect. When you play a summoner, all summons are friendly, not only player summons as it should be. Makes the game amusing (monsters summoning stuff that turns against them), but really unbalanced. I'll release a beta 3 tonight with the fix (it's just a matter of replacing monster_spell.txt in /lib/gamedata).

Wizard down to dlvl 100, watch Morgoth summon Ringwraiths, win?

Otherwise, we would have a humongous player-aligned parade against the big boss at the end.

Well I've ninja-fixed beta 2 instead of releasing a beta 3. Binaries now contain the fixed version of monster spells text file and monsters will summon hostile monsters again.

I rather like the idea of summons being possibly hostile to the summoner, especially the more powerful they are. You'd have to make it so the summoner would turn hostile to its summons once they attacked...

Good thing no PWMAngband comp has started yet... Just found another game breaking bug while playtesting: artifacts left behind on a level were not reset, so you couldn't find them again; basically, it was like playing with preserve off. This has now be fixed, and I'll update the binaries tonight with another quick fix. Since it's just a matter of replacing the exe file, I won't release a new beta for this one.

My laziness is a virtue :)

Well it's fixed now. I decided to release a beta 3, since I had already updated the version locally. So now everything should be fine for some heavy summoning...

Will definitely post it this wknd

Skppng vwls t pst qckly