A horrific noob's commentated 'band adventures
 

I don't know what I'm doing.

Angband - human warrior

https://youtu.be/h8_mZ52vATE

0:00 - start
2:00 - colors
11:16 - in the dark 'p'
19:48 - town
37:48 - depth 14 - orc/ogre ambush!
54:08 - text on top
55:28 - jellical cuts
1:36:11 - back in town
1:48:31 - depth 15 - druadan mages are mean
2:08:05 - depth 16 - up late with old trees
2:30:22 - Ufthak of Cirith Ungol
2:40:37 - wrap-up & what's next!

Hengband - Cyclops Beastmaster

This is why you don't make a Sexy Beastmaster 'o'

https://youtu.be/-WW5qD_HSoE

0:00 - what "Hengband" means in Japanese!
4:05 - new ASCII features: large view, subwindow controls
17:35 - world map & wilderness
23:45 - PosChengband-style subwindow commands
27:55 - my compiling commands
30:39 - Sexy Beastmaster character creation
35:28 - town, Scrawny Horse named Wobbly, shopping
45:48 - Yeek cave depth 1
56:08 - Wobbly evolves into a Horse!
59:41 - depth 2 & summoning spiders
1:04:31 - a dead-end floor??
1:06:01 - shaft from floor 1 to 3
1:07:11 - my spiders turn on me! 'o'
1:12:21 - Louses kill Wobbly, I don't notice 'o'
1:13:29 - spiders turn on me again!
1:18:40 - Domination fails 'cause beasts hate the Sexy 'o'
1:24:59 - torches running out but no way up!!
1:32:17 - fainting forgetting to eat, didn't notice 'ooo'
1:33:08 - wrap-up & what's next!

Angband - Kobolds with a grape jelly on top, Mushrooms of Terror, and a wyvern!

https://youtu.be/HZ7iTr41Rsg

0:00 - start
1:34 - town - no recharge scrolls 'p'
13:04 - depth 16
15:24 - kobold vault!
19:01 - so that's what grape jellies do 'o'
37:00 - Mushrooms of Terror
40:37 - druid summons...wyvern!
49:47 - wrap-up & what's next!

Geez if I'm going to carry your sorry arse around the least you could do is de lice me.

Yeep! Argh! Thanks for pointing it out, I'm gonna have to NOT let my horrific brain try to come up with names on the fly, apparently it will just plagiarize them without realizing it while thinking it's being cleverly original (horse moving erratically around town and so forth). Ohhhh. Sorry about that!!

And yeah it's not like there's any point anyway since I'm even worse at keeping anyone else alive than I am at keeping my own @ going, which is saying something. At least this horse whose name I swiped from you stuck around a little longer than the last one, who bolted before I even got into the dungeon really...although in retrospect they sure had the right idea. I don't THINK I'd accidentally named THEM after anyone here. ... I think.

Ah no that was "Carrot"... And it sure wouldn't have helped that I accidentally set them to "seek and destroy" after they had probably just momentarily staggered into the edge of the woods around the mouth of the newbie dungeon. .... Okay no, no member by THAT name on this forum, at least.

But egads! Sorry! Terrible, terrible.

No problems, I wasn't offended, I was amused to see my name there. I also enjoyed watching you try to work out why you couldn't control your mount wielding a shield, with the message still sitting up top on the screen :)

Thanks, that's a relief! (But I'm gonna work on watching naming things...) And yeah, who needs to like, read important status messages staring you in the face when you can just flail around instead. ; )

And maybe some day I'll figure out why it doesn't think a whip is a suitable weapon for using from horseback (after STARTING you with a whip and a horse)...and whether or not I was actually attacking with it, or just fists or something. : P

Sexy always starts with a whip. Broad spear is the normal beastmaster weapon, at least in bands based on heng. Its a large to-hit penalty for non-riding weapons

YEAH! Thanks. : ) I was just testing that and found the sexy--whip connection. Hah. So Sexy really IS the wrong way to go for Beastmaster, that was just one more clear warning sign I was too noobish to catch. ; )

Although maybe it would've given me a bonus to Dominate a male cyclops. .P

The real issue is aggravation, so there are certain poweful artifacts a beastmaster should avoid.

Ooh! Good to know. : )

But the Sexy personality already aggravates, so no reason not to use them then (I don't think Aggro stacks in Heng-likes).

Hengband - Barbarian Berserker smashes--but also has mental powers??

https://youtu.be/9fgMYdFj16w

0:00 - character creation
5:00 - stats, equip, town, shopping
15:00 - Yeek cave depth 1
19:59 - Yeek cave depth 2...oops!!
27:19 - Not gonna starve this time! ;_;
32:25 - Depth 1
37:51 - Depth 2
47:39 - Depth 3
55:15 - Depth 4
1:06:15 - Depth 5, brutal power, wrap!

Angband - This floor 17 is a huge, twisting cave!

https://youtu.be/su3XGGQgocI

0:00 - wrong save file 'p'
4:18 - floor 16
5:15 - floor 17
11:35 - invisijerks (dark hounds, etc)
16:18 - umberish hulks
37:18 - crafty forest troll ambush!
41:58 - I may not be able to beat these fleas
49:18 - floor 18
52:38 - teleported--it's a huge twisting cavern!
56:38 - too much good stuff

Hengband - Barbarian Berserker needs food kinda badly!

https://youtu.be/-rCffdgpdLc

0:00 - floor 5, digging
12:03 - floor 6 - Smeagol & potions
23:56 - Opened Core, the uncovered fortress
31:50 - floor 7 - fainting from lack of food & not noticing...
40:13 - floor 8 - Nibelung and..?

I'm glad to see Hengband get some (English) exposure on YT, it and TOME2 were my favorite roguelikes as a teenager.

I had a near-death from hunger in the new Hengband a few weeks ago. I had entered a dungeon (can't remember which, mountains maybe) from the surface, dived down, filled my pack with loot then ate and dropped my food to carry yet more loot. Recalled back to surface and found myself in the middle of nowhere. I got about a third of the way to the nearest town before I became faint.
Nobody I encountered dropped food so I had to chug !CCW until I was merely hungry so I could return to the world map and figure out the exact directions to the town.
I eventually ran out of !CCW (I started with about 80) and had to waste my potions of Healing but I managed to stumble into town and make it to the Inn.

Ooh that's a good tip, I may have some healing potion or other that could tide me over a few extra turns, I'll have to check on that. Depending on how this Recall power works--hm well eh if I can't get it to work I'll probably just starve well before I make it out, but I suppose you never know what sort of fortuitous arrangement of up-shafts may materialize. ; )

Does regular Recall just have a chance to drop you somewhere out in the wilderness, or was there a particular reason that happened?

I think if you enter a dungeon from the wilderness you recall up to its surface location instead of a town, but I'm not 100% sure.

thanks for the uploads! i've subscribed to your youtube channel :cool:

Thanks! That's really encouraging! : D

I recommend Android Berserker in Hengband.

As an Android, your level-ups are based on your equipment, not your XP. You'll have an extremely powerful early game, and your first good pieces of equipment will send you rocketing up to experience level 15, 20, 30, in much less play time.

It's not necessarily easy to actually win, as the Berserker has key weaknesses in the end game (can't easily escape a bad situation). But you can get to the mid-to-end game relatively quickly and experience a TON of content without having a clue what you're doing.

Edit: If you choose the Munchkin personality, it IS pretty easy to win, and it can be done by a reckless, blundering player (me) in 4--6 hours repeatably. I used to do that often :D

Ooh yeah I'm really curious about Android from what I'd read in the help text. Good to read more about it, thanks for mentioning it!

I'm doing random builds currently but wouldn't mind if it came up. ^_^

I did know the basics about Munchkin, which I've been avoiding, from the help--although I didn't imagine it made THAT big a difference, gosh!

I definitely don't have a clue but I'm not in a hurry to win or even get real far. I actually kind of hate beating games. And finishing books, and so on. More about the journey and whatnot I suppose. '_' 'bands having potentially infinite dungeons is probably a great deal of what drew me to them. : D

Angband - ill-advised hydra-summoning and potion chugging! 'O'

https://youtu.be/tJhJB08R_XM

0:00 - start
1:20 - depth 18
5:10 - good Leather Shield of Resistance
24:30 - depth 19
28:40 - Shagrat, the Orc Captain
45:26 - hydras
1:03:13 - an Umber hulk tunnels!
1:04:50 - ill-advised potion chugging 'O'

Mmmmaybe I shouldn't have set off the rune of summoning; probably should'a tried the uh wand of slowness or whatever on the 4-headed hydra it summoned, at least! Probably shouldn't have chugged those three unidentified potions, either. Oh my stats! = ooo

Umber hulks can dig tunnels, that's really cool!

Hengband // Just how deep does the Yeek cave go??

https://youtu.be/otPi3xAh5VI

11th level Barbarian Berserker:

0:00 - Yeek cave depth 8: snagas
12:50 - Town (Outpost)
18:33 - Oh that trident
28:36 - Yeek cave depth 8 (regenerated): nurglings
35:15 - Nami, the Mate
45:51 - Lochaber axe, dual wielding
48:27 - Yeek cave depth 9: gremlins, war bears
51:07 - Pakuman
55:14 - Brodda, the Easterling
56:12 - Lousy, the King of Lice; Leather Jacket
1:03:32 - Yeek cave depth 10: tax collectors
1:14:32 - Yeek cave depth 11: Robin Hood, the Outlaw
1:17:28 - Dailai Dongzhu, the Captain of the Southerners
1:23:38 - Goliath, the king of ant-lion
1:29:08 - Town again
1:36:22 - Yeek cave depth 12: Lagduf, the Snaga
1:43:52 - Aries, the youngest cheetahmen
1:54:32 - Yeek cave depth 13: kamikaze yeeks
1:56:16 - Boldor, King of the Yeeks
2:05:56 - Outpost
2:07:46 - "Dump Witness" quest
2:23:06 - accidental Wilderness
2:25:46 - Angband depth 1
2:27:26 - Outpost: "Old Man Willow Quest"
2:29:36 - wrap!

[There was a lot this time so I'm just gonna whack in my whole YouTube video description write-up...even though I always write way too much in them.]

My "Recall" ability says "MP 10" which turns out to mean that it takes off six or seven HP when I use it; also fails a lot, prob 'cause INT/WIS are 3.

Without being able to read scrolls, or afford store buy-back, left with inventory "feeling" on gear; so far, "{good}" and "{excellent}" items haven't been cursed, so wear/wielding those. Get feels fast on most weap/armor, never(?) on rings. Before I learned this, sold what turned out to be an ego trident (from Smeagol). Ah.

Poison wears off this char really fast! And so many HP, even CCW potions seem insignificant.

Dual-wielding two less enchanted weapons I found farther down in Yeek cave, I'm now doing 280+ damage per round which seems ridiculously overpowered for character level 19!

My female Barb Berz got titled "Rage Prince" at lev 16. Was going to put in a bug that it should be "Rage Princess" for a female but eh that wouldn't fit in the left-hand column there, so...I dunno. There just shouldn't be gender assigned to characters anyway, I think that's what vanilla Angband does now.

Found some "vault"-like spaces that were completely shut-in and had to be dug into, with usually nothing or maybe one small monster inside. Did find some biggish caverns scattered around Yeek cave depth 11, that was a nice variation.

I'd thought Yeek cave (from glancing through source files) only went down 8 floors, but it kept going for a bit. ; )

When first used the Recall ability in town (CL 12, Yeek lev 8), I only had the Yeek cave option. When I did it next (1:36:01 , CL 17, Yeek 12), I had another option: Angband level 1! What causes that to appear? And there's a hint about Angband you can get from the rumor option at the town inn or whatever, I noticed later--that was the first one I got there. Angband itself is located sorta midway east across the continent. Oh and I found when I accidentally wandered SE from town, that if you recall from the wilderness to a dungeon, then back, you go back to that spot in the wilderness, rather than to the last town you were in. Good to know!

Thought my big 3 stats couldn't be drained but CON went from 18/82 to 18/80 from a diseased Nurgling bite.

Oh! My CHR went up two points from wielding that Lochaber Axe--this is the kind of boost I don't get to see because of not having regular IDing access, but I should have been able to spot that on my character sheet (it went down 1 later from a graze busting through a glass door for a silly quest in town 2:13:04; restored it via Potion of Restore Charisma 2:18:24).

The Mayor in Outpost can ID your gear for a price. You will be without *ID* until you get to another town, where the library will offer "Research Item".

Oh wow, thanks! I'll have to check that out! : D

Angband // chopping old forest tree monsters with a +10 Ring of Damage!

Level 26 human warrior:

https://youtu.be/GZDvCtepblg

0:00 - start
6:14 - town (read wrong scroll ; D)
14:34 - +10 Ring of Damage
19:17 - couldn't see this cold vortex??
20:54 - acid ants ughhhhhhh
34:07 - Boldor, King of the Yeeks
46:37 - floor 20
50:21 - old forest trees
58:51 - wrap-up & what's next!

Puzzled as to why I couldn't see that cold vortex until I was within two tiles of it! = o Are they just hard to see?

It's that seemingly inevitable time in the dungeon for acid ants! I suppose I should have backed down the corridor to see if I could lure them into a longer field of fire, but I wasn't confident they would keep coming out after me back there. Well, anyway these "only" took me down by eight AC, pretty light by my past standards; I guess that Shield of Resistance (not to mention the +10 Ring of Damage!) helped! They love spitting on my boots, though. ; P Guhh.

The Rod of Illumination was coming in really hand in all those dark rooms--and it recharges so fast! I wonder if it's making the game a little less exciting by revealing all...then again it's probably just that I'm somehow way over-leveled at the moment. A lot of regenerating a floor and playing it twice due to silly trips back to town, I suppose. : P

Had a mini-adventure when I decided to try compiling Umoria in Cygwin! Ran into three things I had to hack to get it to compile/run; the short version--my notes--is this:

~~~~~~~~
had to install cmake

git clone https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria/umoria.git

headers.h
- comment lines 21, 27, 28
- add "#else" as line 22

game_save.cpp
- comment lines 810, 811, 812

cd umoria
cmake .
make

cd umoria
./umoria
~~~~~~~~~~


Longer version:

After installing cmake, cloning the repository to my local drive, and running cmake, the make failed with

headers.h uses one set of includes if your system IDs as Windows, another for Apple and Linux, and then intentionally errors out if it isn't any of those; if I was smart I'd know how to ID Cygwin for it, but instead I just commented the "else...error" out, and made it default to treating everything not Windows like Apple/Linux...which maybe it should have set up to do anyway, but what do I know. : P

So once that's done, the next make error is:

I have no idea what this is or how to fix it properly; but it's another intentional internal error check--making sure the floor tiles are valid, maybe?--so I just commented it out. = P

Update: this is a known game error occurring when compiling with gcc 11, rather than 10: https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria/umoria/issues/44

After that, the game built--but running it just gave this error:

That file existed, so I don't know why it couldn't read it. It appears to be a binary file. Sooo I just commented out the part in main.cpp that checks that file and prints the error. = P

That gets the game running, except you have to click through this in place of the high score screen at the end:

So I commented that error message out in scores.cpp--now the game quits real fast! : D

[Update: Ah! "cmake ." builds the game into a subfolder named "umoria" inside your home/[username]/umoria folder (so umoria/umoria/umoria.exe : pppp)--and the game wants you to cd to that directory before running the .exe--if you do that (and of course don't actually comment out the scores.dat loading stuff in main.cpp and scores.cpp that I was talking about above) the scores work, and other things like the splash screen and "v" version command work. : PP Sooo yeah.]

Ahem. So that was my awful hacking of Umoria. I'd got the source code in the first place because I was thinking maybe I could do something like I did in Hengband to make the door navigation less clunky, ie just auto-succeeding when having to pick a random door lock or something. But I find Umoria's code a lot harder to figure out for this non-programmer--also, it doesn't seem to take AS many clicks as Hengband sometimes did to pick a door lock, and besides, Umoria has lots of other door things that can slow you down, too. But, now that I can play the game in a decent console--without the flashing cursors, screen refreshes, and other garbage I'd been getting in the Windows cmd terminal--they somehow seem to fit with the pace of the game. So I didn't mess with 'em.

Although my left wrist was irritated by the end of my little test play sessions. Maybe I'll have to make the "s" searches auto-succeed. = P [Edit: Oh, the manual suggests that entering "0s" would automate search command mashing, neat!] [Update: "0s" WILL take up 99 turns if it doesn't find anything, however, so that's awkward. So maybe like "11s" if you must.]

Update 11/8/22: the game_save.cpp build error was fixed in July: https://github.com/dungeons-of-moria...d14425755e7ba5

Umoria \\ running this 1987 roguelike--slightly incorrectly--in Cygwin on Windows 11!

Starting a half-elf warrior and running the game from the wrong directory, which broke scores, the splash screen, and the version display, oops! (Updated notes in the post above--after recording this--for less error-filled compiling and running, hurgh.)

https://youtu.be/v-UBXj0-soI

0:00 - start
0:41 - notes on compiling in Cygwin
4:01 - wrong! I broke the scores! 'p'
7:17 - character creation
9:37 - haggling in town
20:37 - 50 feet down in the dungeon
41:33 - 100 feet
1:02:37 - foot-dragging back to town
1:11:26 - selling in town
1:21:52 - Angband comparison
1:24:44 - wrap-up & what's next!

Wow so stairs are always disconnected--even when you go back up to town, where you then have to re-locate the stairway down (1:20:25)!!

Hengband \\ ~ The sea creatures teach me critical lessons = o ~

https://youtu.be/7SZ2u-htfbY

19th level Barbarian Berserker:

0:00 - start
1:35 - Old Man Willow quest
16:35 - Thieves Hideout quest
19:15 - Warg problem quest
40:45 - Water Cave quest
44:26 - New Barbarian Berserker ;_;
1:09:29 - wrap!

Okay well I learned two definite lessons here:

a) Don't take a Danger level 35 quest when you're character level 21, no matter how tuff you think your Barbarian Berserker is!)

b) Barb-Berz's inability to use rods/staves/wands/scrolls leaves them without most of the usual means of escape when running into a scrape! = o

I was gonna try again with the Barb-Berz, because I was having so much fun smashing things, and indeed ground my way to level 7 and depth 4 of the Yeek cave at the end of the episode, but point b) having occurred now to me...I think I'll just roll a new random character next time and try something new! ^_^

Angband \\ Old Man Willow, Mirkwood Spiders, Gorbag, hydras, & a tricky banshee

https://youtu.be/mFhDc0tz52I

Level 27 human warrior at dungeon level 20:

0:00 - start
2:49 - cold hounds
13:52 - Old Man Willow
21:42 - L21: Mirkwood Spiders
37:51 - Gorbag, the Orc Captain
47:05 - town
57:45 - L22 - hydras; banshee trouble
1:02:34 - wrap-up & what's next!

Can't seem to find wand/staff recharge scrolls so I guess just give 'em to a shop and buy 'em back charged back up? And then uh don't accidentally pick them up together with another that has no charges and get the charges suddenly split across the two. = P

Hengband \\ High-Elf Weaponsmith start! But watch that first quest! = oo

https://youtu.be/bbgOEMpc2pY

0:00 - start
2:00 - character creation - random!
7:40 - High-Elf Weaponsmith in Outpost
11:17 - "O" - "Power" menu
11:47 - "M" - Essences & enchanting menu!
21:50 - More "M" essences menus
27:03 - Yeek cave
36:50 - Dr.Volga
42:04 - Greater Hell-Beast
56:14 - Essence extraction & enchantment
1:05:37 - IDing & selling in town
1:22:38 - Dump Witness quest
1:24:48 - restart ;_;
1:30:08 - Yeek cave redux
1:41:30 - Laika, the greatest beast of USSR
2:01:41 - Poltergeist
2:03:54 - Town
2:13:44 - Katana
2:18:34 - wrap-up & what's next!

Oh I forgot to try that "O" key "Judgment" power (11:30) again once I hit level 5.

I was thinking of reporting the inclusion of Hato Poppo, whose description calls him a "natural human," in the Bird category of the monster Knowledge base (1:31:59) as a bug, but I think I enjoy imagining him as a secret bird man.

I generally hate "crafting" in games but this weaponsmithing thing actually seems kind of cool so far. It also seems like something that could just end up way overpowered, but there's a ton I don't know about, like, what are the limits on how many enchantments an item can have, what enchantments can go on what items, and so forth.

I looked back at my previous play of the "Danger level: 5" "Dump Witness" quest https://youtu.be/otPi3xAh5VI?t=7816 , and there is indeed a Cloaker hiding in the middle of the main room--that's a level 13 monster. It didn't kill my Barbarian Berserker because they were a) level 19 and b) had an item of Free Action, so it couldn't paralyze them--but I still don't think it's very cool to ambush a noob with a level 13 monster in a "level 5" quest, and probably the very first quest they take; it was making THIS noob think they just shouldn't try quests anymore; one moment the level 6 weaponsmith was checking out the "items" scattered around the room, no monster in sight in the room, and the next they were dead on the floor, having been ambushed, paralyzed, and killed by the cloaker--a monster over twice their level--in the blink of an eye.

Jeez and that Killer Bee, the monster behind glass in the adjoining room, is level 9. How is this "Danger level 5"??

I've reported this to the Hengband team as an issue to look at: https://github.com/hengband/hengband/issues/2472 . They may just tell me "get good, noob," which is legit; or possibly they *like* teaching the player a harsh lesson at the beginning, to try to teach you to do things I'm too lazy to do, like constantly using detection spells/abilities, or making sure to get an item with Free Action before you do anything at all (although I'm now level 8 and don't think I've seen one yet, drat).

Guess I ain't gonna try that quest again until I get something with Free Action. I suppose I could try shooting the cloaker from across the room with the crossbow I have now...but if it survived that barrage it could still paralyze and kill me. Yeah better get Free Action first.

Update:

Ahah and the developers' reply actually covered "get good, noob," schooling the player, and using a ranged weapon:
So I guess you're supposed to use enemy detection of some sort? Not that my level 6 character had any sort of detection capability yet anyway. I dunno, this whole bit seems like a big turn off--on quests, at least. I wonder if Hengband's random dungeons are going for "die and learn" balance as well--if they are, I may just have to stick to Angband, which has a fairly explicit don't-require-lore mantra, and in recent years (decades?) at least has gone for a "don't just kill the player with something new instantly" approach to balance, which is much closer to my preference.

I think that quest is supposed to teach you that mimics exist and you can discover them from distance by looking - 'l' command would tell you that's not an ordinary cloak, and it'd disappear once you break line of sight (unlike an item). Hengband quests already could be tough for their level - Thieves Quest has 2 Bandits (level 8 in level 5 quest); Sewers has White Crocodile (level 20+, nasty melee), devilfishes (breath attacks); Doom Quest I is far tougher without double fire resist; Mimic's Treasure and Cloning Pits can be very nasty for unprepared players, and Royal Crypt has a deathtrap that could work against endgame characters as well.

EDIT: Also, you can throw torches for significant damage in early game ('v' command). Buy some from General Store (use lantern as light source anyway) and use them deal with those mimics.

I noticed one instance of the line of sight thing in retrospect, playing my recording back, but it wasn't enough to catch my attention at the time. The dev also said you could tell it wasn't an item with "l" or "x," but I don't normally "l" or "x" all the items in a room before I walk over them, which tells me what they are anyway. Do people usually do that?

Anyway now that I know quests are in at least some cases purposefully set up to assassinate the player, I'm just going to avoid them. ; )

You should 'l'/'x' items that are potentially dangerous - Death Swords/Cloakers in early game, Raal's Tomes in midgame. Also, don't stay away from quests - once you know their tricks, they're a great way to boost your character through early game.

Ew, hm. Well the particular problem with this one cloaker is that it's a level 13 monster in a level "5" quest. Not too likely to encounter that kind of severe disparity in a random level, I hope.

I don't really care about boosting my character, I don't actually want to "beat" games I like, I want them to keep going. I'd skip the Morgoth or whoever quest if I could. Not into "die and learn" content, and not that interested in non-procedural content anyway.

It is fine that you don't like quests, they are all easily avoided except the final two. However, a lot of people do like them. My understanding is this:

Quests bring variation to the game -- tired of descending the dungeons, take a break and do a quest or two

Quests offer high risk/reward for the player looking for a quick boost of power -- this reduces tedium of slow progress of just diving

Quests offer interesting challenges. Many are "impossible" the first time you run them but the fixed setting allows for trying new strategies until you eventually learn how to meet the challenge. Personally I enjoy the level 50+ quests in FrogComposband much more than the final two fights. For instance, I recently took a wrong downstair ending up in the Royal Crypt (level 70? quest) with a level 34 character and made it out alive without failing the quest. I din't get the really sweet loot, but still a very memorable moment and great satisfaction.

And the thing is, if quests were tuned to be of "normal" difficulty you would soon do them without looking and devs could just as well replace them with a lottery - enter, get random loot, get out.

"Dump Witness" is a pretty stupid quest. Either you die because you don't know it or shoot a bunch of immobile stuff for free xp and then collect the loot. Most of the other quests are better.

I think it was intended to serve as a 'springboard' for weaker characters that can't do Thieves Quest from the start and have to grind on white worm masses for early game experience.

I haven't found myself having to grind at all in the beginning of Hengband. The one time I went all the way through the Yeek cave beginning dungeon so far, I came out massively over-leveled, having done zero quests.

(Then I went back and did the beginning quests and, since their scripted content didn't scale, found them to be no challenge, with useless rewards. The "lesson" of that first quest was lost entirely, because the cloaker bounced off my level-19-character-with-free-action and died immediately. Free action also made Old Man Willow, another early quest, feel silly. I suppose this is also pointing to the on/off of the free action buff being a bit goofy--but thank goodness; obviously some developer knew that paralyzing the player just sucks.)

Elevated risk and elevated reward for optional side quests is fine. What strikes me as poor game design and an excellent way to ensure that many players quit your game and never come back is giving such a side quest an intentionally misleading difficulty rating, and purposefully setting it up to assassinate the player as a way to "teach" them a lesson--in a permadeath game, no less. This is going to lose you players, as a lot of people will decide they have better ways to spend their time.

You're probably playing melee classes, they can handle pure melee combat in Thieves Quest already; I was talking about more fragile spellcasters. Also, original Angband already had nasty beginner traps - Floating Eyes can para-lock you right on level 1, the dog uniques are very nasty for weaker characters, Hummerhorn swarms can confusion lock you, and going below level 40 without poison resist can get you instakilled by a Drolem/AMHD.

That's good to know! I wasn't sure.

That definitely sounds like a rewarding moment; being a noob I stumble through stuff like that in the random dungeons fairly regularly. ^_^

Speaking of Frog, the reason I'm not playing that game--while sometimes watching expert angband.live players seemingly effortlessly dicing their way through achingly cool-looking Frog maps--is that I found even the beginning newbie dungeon experience to be packed with incredibly wonky game balance among the races, classes, and AI monsters (and what's with all the duplicate staircases in there? : p); it feels like almost no balancing of the huge amount of content in Frog has been attempted, and the player is just expected to know how things work, and what to avoid--either by reading about it in advance or doing a whole lot of learning by dying...which is what I was doing, because I prefer to see a game for myself. Hengband's base game experience so far has been pretty well balanced by comparison--not nearly as well as vanilla Angband's, mind you, but enough to be more or less manageable most of the time--which is maybe another reason why this quest thing stood out like such a sore thumb.

Ah, I see. Yeah, the random class selection I've been doing so far has given me all fighter-category characters. I suspect I'm going to do far worse with spellcasters because of my impatience, but it'll be interesting to find that out. ; )

I knew about some of that and that's why I qualified my earlier comparison to vanilla Angband with "in recent years." I've also played some Rogue and UMoria, which of course were even more cruel. Hengband is an old enough variant that it inherited some of the older, meaner stuff, and the devs seem to have stuck to that more ruthless attitude. Which is fine, I just wasn't sure what their current design intent was for the quests; I'm glad I found out before I got really far into a character and then got them whacked in some intentionally murderous quest.

Keep in mind Hengband is maintained by Japanese community, and the devs don't have much contact with vanilla Angband developers. Those nasty quests originated back from Zangband; at least Dump Witness is very early game, Royal Crypt can be a deathtrap for endgame characters.

Yeah, and I'm not surprised they aren't interested in changing it at this point. (I think they should and that it would help the game's audience grow--but developers and fans become set in their ways like anyone else, and I'm not going to argue with them over it.) The dev who responded to me on this issue was the remaining one of the four official Hengband team members with whom I had yet to interact; I was surprised by how excellent this member's English is--really remarkable, and, as usual, puts my "I speak American" self to shame. ; )

"Don't have much contact with vanilla Angband developers" isn't quite accurate: backwardsEric has been helping out there pretty regularly--not on game balance, though.

Zangband is an interesting example of a game that kind of wrecked itself, at least as far as I can tell from reading about it now, and poking through its remaining web site and versions. At its height it was the hottest thing going in 'band-land, apparently, and had its own development team cranking out content--far more than Angband was, at the time. And variants like Hengband branching off, etc. But then they got really ambitious and replaced their small, fixed map wilderness with a completely procedurally generated wilderness--with no map view, clusters of boringly similar towns, and no obvious way to tell the level of the land into which you may wander, short of running into a dreadfully overpowered random monster--which appears to have been a big turn-off.

I might still be trying to play it except that the dungeon floor generation is either a) really plain and boring--early Angband style, I suppose or b) some really different styles but sometimes really hideous things like these sort of open levels with rows of houses or outbuildings flanked by hedges, which are just an awful, ugly slog. I hope those either came along *after* Hengband forked from it, or that Hengband didn't keep them. ; )

Angband // Got my first-ever artifact from an ambush by two Numenorean uniques!

Level 27 human warrior at dungeon level 22:

https://youtu.be/4fGANn_Kj3w

0:00 - start & young blue dragon?!?
5:47 - druadan mages = ppp
12:37 - oh just a quylthulg
20:23 - everybody breathes on me
25:43 - "Elec" = "Lightning" resistance?
29:06 - Two Numenorean uniques!
39:15 - whotta haul! 'o' And my first artifact!
54:06 - wrap-up & what's next!

I think that was the first non-baby dragon I've ever fought, that was a nice welcome back to the game. ^_^

18:56 - I mean, with hitting Return in between each direction entry ; )

The character sheet calls it "Elec" resistance but items call it resistance to "Lightning"? 'p' (If the idea was not to confuse it with "Light" resistance on the character sheet, shouldn't it just be called "Electricity" in item descriptions?)

Those Numenoreans (or Númenóreans, if you must : P) were pretty wild! Uh Angamaite ("Angamaitë" :P) of Umbar and Sangahyando of Umbar:

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Angamait%C3%AB
https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Sangahyando

The phat l00ts!!

And uh yeah Numenoreans are one of Tolkien's types of old super-men, like Aragorn was a Dunedain ("Dúnedain" :p) one of the non-evil kind. : P

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/N%C3%BAmen%C3%B3reans

And then there's well what these were

https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Black_N...men%C3%B3reans

: PP

I guess I probably won't get to fight Aragorn.

Hengband \\ High-Elf Weaponsmith: 95% Judgment failure ; P

Level 8 High-Elf Weaponsmith @ Yeek cave Lev 5

https://youtu.be/2D4wNE-HxUw

Sophomore outing with a High-Elf Weaponsmith, character level 8, still in the noob dungeon, and it had been a month or so since I played which apparently means I forgot the buttons to use for basic game functions! ]_[ Also I don't really know how weaponsmithing works still, I tried their "Judgment" power gained at level 5 and found I have a 95% failure rate with it (it's basically "Identify"), and I didn't find any magic weapons so I didn't get any weapon smithing juice to work with--and I got one magic armor thing but then wasn't sure if I should use the essences I extracted. Basically I played really really lame! I did at least gain a few levels, get a few levels down in the noob dungeon, and found a decent magic crossbow in a shop. : P

Oh and I got a rod of trap detection or revealing or whatever weird word they called it--can finally clear a big hole in those "x" marks on the map. ^_^

0:00 - start
2:31 - Trying Judgment, Yeek cave Lev 5
12:17 - can't remember basic functions 'p'
16:28 - okay onward sheesh
30:52 - Yeek cave Lev 6
32:36 - extracting essences from {good} armor
35:09 - Rod of Trap Location
46:53 - Yeek cave Lev 7, statue of Ufthak
49:06 - Wis doesn't raise Judgment success rate 'p'
59:49 - junking it up in town
1:14:29 - wrap-up & what's next!

I don't know if there's anything I could have done with that "Wooden Statue of Ufthak of Cirith Ungol"; Ufthak is a unique NPC--on the town's wanted list, as it happens (1:12:39)--but unlike say the little figurines you can throw to create a pet, this statue's description didn't say it does that (just said it was smiling, or something). And it weighed 20 lbs. : P Wasn't worth too much in the store, either, so I dunno--maybe it was just a statue?

Not sure why auto-destroy didn't take out that Filthy Rag (turned out to be [1, -1]--not sure if that's normal for filthy rags : P), but if that happens again I'll have to add them to the auto-destroy list. = p

Since playing I've looked up what little info there seems to be on weaponsmithing; it's simpler than I thought it would be, so that clears up some confusion I had; going to play again as soon as possible, and I'll show the weaponsmithing documentation and try some armor enchanting!

I really didn't need to use Judgment that much; the "just hold it in inventory for a little while" auto-appraisal could handle most of that junk I was finding: ie, if it's just {average}, it isn't magic. : P And like the Weaponsmith's enchanting powers, Judgment only works on weapons and armor.

Judgment depends on INT stat; if it's too low, you'll have a large failure rate.

Statues are pure flavor items, as far as I know.

Thanks! Dang it. Well, INT was my next guess after raising my WIS, my lowest stat, from 9 didn't help the 95% failure rate. But I mean, "Judgment," "judge," sounds like you'd want wisdom, right? Of course, the one sentence about it in the game documentation doesn't mention any stat it might rely on. My INT isn't even THAT low, it's 12. This is a fighter sub-class, for Pete's sake! Garhghl barghle

Hengband \\ High-Elf Weaponsmith: Basic weapon & armor enchanting!

level 10 High-Elf Weaponsmith at Lev 7 of the Yeek cave noob dungeon

https://youtu.be/FgbvdxWyHso

0:00 - start in town
1:40 - Weaponsmith help documentation
6:30 - enchanting Cord Armour
9:10 - Yeek cave Lev 7, wooden statue of Imhotep 'p'
21:10 - enchanting Katana
30:20 - Mughash the Kobold Lord
38:07 - more enchanting Katana
48:01 - selling loot in town
1:04:11 - buying magic cloak, gauntlets, {Fi} ring
1:09:31 - wrap-up & what's next!

At my current level 10, and through 12 I THINK, my max enchant value on weapons and armor seems to be +7. According to this thread http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8249 , in Hengband descendant variant PosChengband, the max enchant at level 50 is +20, so maybe it's the same for Hengband. And it seems you can only add a single property to items; you can always remove them and use those essences on a different item, though (?).

Enchanting armor not only improves their second stat, the magic AC bonus--it also improves the first stat, their base--non-magical--AC; both obey the same level max. I suppose it probably means that later on, when you've got access to armor type with base AC higher than your enchant maximum, enchanting them will convey a reduced benefit, since you won't be getting +1 to both stats per enchant.

Enchant bonus cap at level 50 is +15; and I don't think enchant armor boosts base AC in base Hengband. Also, removing essences won't give you those essences back - it just makes the item smithable again.

Oh huh, well that would be a downer; it also doesn't make much sense since they're just magic items, and normally you can suck essences out of magic items. Well, I'll have to try it at some point.

OOPS yeah you're right, it didn't raise the armor base AC, I confused it after the fact with the two numbers going up on weapons, not armor, yikes = P ; ).

I guess +20 sounded a bit much, but well dang.

There are two ways you can 'remove' essences:

-"Extracting" essence removes all magic properties from the item and gives you appropriate essences (I assume that would include any essences you used to enchant that item) - but you don't get back all of your essence you used smithing that item; I don't think you'll be able to re-apply without using extra essence.
-"Removing" essence removes any modifications you made to the item (aside from damage/accuracy/armor bonuses), making it smithable again while still retaining its pre-smithing properties, but doesn't give back any essences

Ah yeah I was wondering if it was something more like that in the first case; I suppose that would be what I would expect.

"Removing" not returning essences is a bit of a downer, I guess it explains the name at least. ; )

Angband \\ {Human Warrior} Lorgan "summons some friends"! = ooo

https://youtu.be/5wXjLmeVU7w

Level 27 human warrior at dungeon level 22. After a few floors, things got real vs a unique EIGHT levels above me, who could summon both ME and assistants of nearly his own level!

Plus surprising loot: A ring of digging! A +40 cloak!! A helmet with telepathy!!

0:00 - L22
7:40 - Phase Door around a strength loss dart trap 'p'
10:47 - L23 - winding cave 'p', more traps 'p'
23:00 - Rod of Detection
32:32 - L24, Meat & Honey-cake
47:30 - Ring of Digging
52:40 - Staff of Destruction = oo
1:05:20 - Khim, Son of Mim & his Brigandine of Resistance
1:19:21 - L25 ("nervous") & back to town
1:30:51 - Rod of Hold Monster 'p'
1:34:14 - Lugdush, the Uruk & his +40 Cloak of Gilinach!!
1:51:26 - black oozes are hard to see?
1:57:38 - Lorgan, Chief of the Easterlings -- & his minions!!
2:36:07 - Steel Helm of Helote (telepathy!) & Wand of Teleport Other
2:39:06 - L26 & back to town
2:51:16 - Light Crossbow of the Haradrim

Wearing the Ring of Digging let me tunnel as if I had a pick or shovel, at a fraction of the weight. Still, it takes an inventory slot...so I guess I'll just keep relying on Phase Door for those hopefully rare times I may have to skip past a bad trap.

I'm surprised I'm spotting just about every trap! It's a lot different from Hengband where I think my Weaponsmith almost always runs into them blindly.

The Rod of Hold Monster turned out to be a bust--it would hold tough enemies...for a turn or so. ; P

A +40 cloak!!!! = ooo It raised my AC from 129 to 165!!!

I was level 28 when I got bushwhacked--summoned, blinded, and surrounded--by the (I saw once I got my vision back, when I was almost dead--thank goodness I had some good curing potions--oh yeah and those cured the blindness, I forgot they did that : ) level 36 Lorgan; and he, over the course of a long and roving battle, summoned multiple level 30+ critters! And kept moving me into inconvenient positions with his summon ability. I guess that's what Phase Door's for, though--that, and a lot of Speed and Cure potions. Wish I knew how to tell how long the Slow Monster was lasting on them.

I guess that young multi-hued dragon he summoned was "only" level 30. The level 35 wereworm turned out to be a total wimp, and the level 34 troll priests didn't seem to do much. That invisible level 34 blinding "shade" was a bit of a pain though, and the level 27 vampire (I think) did drain my XP--but only by 200 or so, huh. The level 34 "Eog golem" was the real brick; that guy took forever to wear down; didn't hit much, but when it did: ouch!

That Steel Helm of Helote has telepathy (as well as a Light beam, Acid & Fire resist, and good armor)! Which made the enemy-sensing of the Rod of Detection near obsolete, I think, since it seems to be able to monitor any intelligent creatures (not something real dumb like a gelatinous cube or whatever) nearby constantly, rather than single pings. I guess I can see why telepathy is always so talked about!

I wish the descriptions of ranged weapons included a clear explanation of what all their numbers mean. At least this "Light Crossbow of the Haradrim (x4) (+14, +12) {+4, +1}" explains its two ADDITIONAL numbers (which are actually in pointy brackets rather than wiggly brackets): the +4 is "shooting speed" and the +1 is "shooting power" which means eh I don't know. (And I had thought the x4 was speed or something? Oy. Now I dunno what that is.) Now that I look, my regular bolts fired from this thing are doing even more damage/round than my silly light-weapon-exploit rapier: 84.8 vs the rapier's 83.7--and a "turn" is 1.4 of these crossbow shots or 2.3 rapier "blows," apparently.

Clear as day! ; )

At the end I realized the medium-lightish blue I've been using for the text color is now not bright enough for my eyes--which have recovered a bit from recent months of photo-sensitivity caused by bad lighting and sleeping--so I'll have it at a very light gray shade next time--a bit brighter than what I've been using in Hengband (which I'll also have raised to this "EF" shade).

Hengband \\ High-Elf Weaponsmith: orc trash stack crash in the newbie dungeon!

Level 12 High-Elf Weaponsmith at Lev 8 of the Yeek cave:

https://youtu.be/FweA3q53egU

The game froze after a big fight on Lev 9 and I had to restart! = o (I've reported the bug to the Hengband team and sent them my recovery save files, I don't suppose those will give them enough data to debug it, though.)

0:00 - start
2:30 - Yeek cave Lev 8
16:59 - Yeek cave Lev 9
19:10 - Lagduf, the Snaga, & horde
25:59 - freeze!
31:09 - restoration
32:09 - Lev 8 again...
36:03 - Muzgash, the Snaga, & horde
43:33 - weapon extracting & enchanting
58:33 - armor extracting & enchanting
1:01:43 - Outpost - shopping
1:11:53 - extracting old armor, enchanting new armor
1:15:29 - Lev 9 again...
1:27:27 - Yeek cave Lev 10 (messy!)
1:35:50 - Brodda, the Easterling
1:42:57 - Outpost

At the end I said I'd play Angband next time, but I think maybe I'll keep playing Hengband--because I'm really getting antsy to see a non-Yeek cave, non-Angband dungeon! The variety of races and classes are kind of fun to mess with and all, but the Yeek cave is too easy to be that fun, and what I've seen of Hengband's version of the Angband dungeon is just Angband with kludgier floor generation--and the "quests" proved to be death traps--so the make or break for me in Hengband may be whether playing the OTHER dungeons is compelling. (Starting to think this is unlikely, since the real genius of Moria/Angband is the self-balancing nature of the single, down-makes-harder, infinitely replayable dungeon, whereas breaking the game up into multiple dungeons necessarily breaks, to at least for some time and to some degree before you get re-acclimated in the next dungeon, that self-balancing. And I've yet to find that sort of compelling experience in Hengband's Yeek cave and "Angband" dungeon.) (Also, that crash was kind of a downer.)

Was actually using a Rod of Trap Location this time--after embarrassingly forgetting once and getting my Dex drained : PPP--so that was kind of interesting, it's sort of fun to zap the Rod and clear out all those detection "x" marks from the map.

So like.....what do you think the purpose of having dungeons and quests is?
Do you really think characters that can instantly go to dlvl 60 aren't going to be able to dive like crazy as a ""self-balancing"" act?

I haven't been to many of them in Hengband, so I don't really know. To guess, probably for variety of gameplay and scenery, and possibly to provide different or faster ways to increase your character's power. I know that a couple of the quests are there to teach players a specific gameplay lesson, possibly by killing them the first time.

I've wondered if there are other reasons, such as specific story or item progressions threaded through multiple areas, but I haven't gotten far enough to see anything like that.

I've been told that the quests are optional, but that they can give good rewards. A couple of the quests I've seen had fun looks and themes.

I had thought I'd read that you still "beat" Hengband by retrieving the item from the boss at the bottom of a 100-floor Angband dungeon, but come to think of it I'm not so sure about that, or that you can just go straight through Angband itself.
I've never been to dungeon level 60 in any 'band so this question is definitely over my head--I didn't know that there are characters that can instantly go to dungeon level 60, for instance. I don't know the progression levels of the various dungeons, races, classes, items, towns, etc, and I have no idea where or how far any characters can dive. All I meant to say was that, as a noob, when I start going through a new dungeon with a new character, it takes me a level or two, if the dungeon progression is steady, to get an idea of where my character stands in relation to the dungeon's difficulty; so if I go to a new dungeon, it will take me another level or two to re-orient myself.

I've tended to play very slowly so far, and up until yesterday, when I got impatient to see SOME other dungeon, it hadn't even occurred to me to try skipping past stuff, aside from the quests. Now though I can definitely at least see the point of skipping at least some of the Yeek Cave, with which I've become bored through repetition. But I'm still too much of a noob to know where I can jump ahead to with any character; I skipped the bottom of the Yeek Cave and got myself killed--by a particularly foolish mix of stubbornness and negligence--in the first (?) level of the Orc Cave.

Ah hm well so yeah, maybe I can see how multiple dungeons enable a faster form of power diving--or maybe even just getting to gameplay you find more enjoyable?

The multi-dungeon 'bands I've tried so far haven't offered much obvious guidance on where to go (except maybe FAangband?); but then, I couldn't even get past the newbie burrow in Frog, so what do I know?

For myself, one thing I'm thinking is that maybe sticking to Vanilla for a while will put me in a better position to appreciate WHY--language support aside--the popular variants do the things they do. Maybe I have to get a little sick of Vanilla before I can really start to appreciate that. Currently, as a horrific noob who hasn't gotten very far in anything, it's hard for me to see aside from well they have some cute alternate powers and dungeon colors.

Update: Ah I see, I hadn't noticed before that the Orc cave, which says "level 10" on the surface map, actually starts at floor "Lev 10." Maybe there would be less re-orientation necessary than I'd thought. Although there are different encounter types in the different dungeon themes--big crowd of orcs on Lev 10 of Orc cave, for instance--so I dunno. And I think one significant mistake I made was interpreting the "level" number on dungeons on the Surface map as character level, whereas it looks like it's probably more like dungeon level--so I jumped from dungeon level 5 in Yeek cave to dungeon level 10 in Orc cave, silly me. Yeek cave is too easy though so it actually would have been all right I think, if I'd retreated sensibly.

Hengband. Starting with my level 16 High-Elf Weaponsmith at level 11 of the newbie Yeek cave, not watching my health and dying like a fool (might've helped if the low health warning was in red like in vanilla Angband, but that's just an excuse; I'm really not heads up enough to have the skip-more options set like I do 'p'; oh well and in Vanilla the arrows would have been visibly animated, I suppose that might've clued me in), rolling a new random character--a Half-Giant Mirror-Master--and skipping out of the Yeek cave at character level 10 to try at least SOME new dungeon...

https://youtu.be/IzhDCwkMhgI

0:00 - start (Outpost)
1:44 - Yeek cave Lev 11
3:24 - The Quiver slots 'o'
9:17 - Gremlins eat all my food 'oooo'
19:57 - Yeek cave Lev 12
26:47 - Outpost, more food
35:57 - new Yeek cave Lev 12
36:57 - the huge dark room
46:37 - Servants of Glaaki and gear curses
50:17 - Yeek cave Lev 13
1:00:36 - just ignore those arrows...
1:03:14 - rolling a Half-Giant Mirror-Master
1:14:21 - Yeek cave Lev 1
1:22:07 - making a bolt macro
1:27:37 - Yeek cave Lev 3
1:36:43 - Yeek cave Lev 4
1:44:03 - town
1:51:20 - Yeek 4 again
1:57:57 - Yeek cave Lev 5
2:07:57 - Outpost, stocking up for wilderness
2:12:47 - Hunter's office, prize
2:13:14 - Surface & Wilderness
2:15:11 - Orc cave Lev 10
2:19:51 - here be orcs
2:27:25 - wrap-up & what's next!

Mirror-Master sounded pretty different from the description, and it was nice just to get spells in a menu and not have to bother with spell books, but the low level spells at least were all pretty much generic-style mage things: detection, bolt, teleports, light. Except that last, level 10 one, "Robe of Dust"--couldn't tell what that "Mirr" status did. Magic armor of some kind? Wish the spells had help text.

Did have fun insta-zapping people with my macro'd light bolts, though! Maybe playing mage classes won't be so bad!

I pretty much always die when I'm rushing around trying to get somewhere else. Maybe that's why I'm doing better in Vanilla--only one dungeon, so there's no where else to be. (I guess maybe it's a little more randomized, too, since the single dungeon doesn't have a specific theme.)

Also I'm going to have to learn how to retreat for real as a mage and not stubbornly faff about.

Also I'd thought the "level" indication on the dungeon entrances on the Surface map was character level, but given that Orc cave is labeled "level 10" and the first floor in there is "Lev 10," I guess their map label is actually dungeon floor level, so I jumped from Yeek cave "Lev 5" to Orc cave "Lev 10." Yeek cave is way too easy though so I probably could'a managed okay in Orc cave if I'd retreated sensibly.

Anyway, trying to sort of make my mind up or compare or whatever between Hengband and Angband was kind of driving me crazy. Now that I've at least seen a different style dungeon in Hengband, I feel like I'm good for a while there, and I'll settle down to focus on some Angband adventuring.

Angband \\ Level 28 human warrior vs confusing key combinations!

Ran into trouble with a few key-combination commands, eventually got them sorted:

- CTRL+H (aka ^h) in Angband's roguelike keyset is "tunnel west"; but I'm playing under Cygwin, and in Cygwin, CTRL+H is a shortcut for Backspace--and it looks like somehow, I'd managed to erase what I think is the default keymap for CTRL+H in Angband, "+4" ("+" is the "alter grid" command, which includes tunneling, and "4" is "west" on the numeric keypad); so the real solution here is keymapping "+4" back onto CTRL+H (in this session I ended up doing the sillier thing of keymapping "+4" onto Backspace, so CTRL+H does Backspace but Backspace does "+4" ; ) : P)

- I found fancy new Bolts of Wounding for my crossbow, but to make them fire with the auto-fire key, I had to set them as the "default" ammo; and to do THAT, you have to inscribe the non-vanilla ammo with "@t0"--for the roguelike keyset--or "@f0"--for the regular keyset

https://youtu.be/FIXaUkS9UGA

0:00 - start
2:10 - L26 - orcs
22:36 - CTRL+H (tunnel west) problem
38:35 - CTRL+H fixed 'p'
39:55 - abyss worm mass creepiness
48:39 - L27 - vampires
1:10:55 - default ammo problem
1:24:46 - default ammo problem fixed 'p'

Oh man that Potion of Dexterity I can't quite afford in the store. : P Think I'm going to buy a pick and do a bit of fund-raising next time...

The description of the abyss worm mass mentions "It is invisible and rarely detected by telepathy" and "It shrouds its surroundings in darkness." A real recipe for creepiness! = oo Plus, SOMETHING in that same area was draining my XP, I suppose that was probably the worms, too. = ooooo

Found a Rod of Disable Traps, keen. : )

Was able to raise the armor bonus of my telepathy-granting, laser-shooting (I'd forgotten about that part) Steel Helm of Helote from +13 to +14 (1:16:05) with a Scroll of Enchant Armor--well, 2: the first attempt failed. Not sure what the max enchant is; this 2010 thread on Angband 3.1.2 says the "theoretical cap" is +15: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3894 .

(In Angband 2.8.2, 1998, the "practical limit" was apparently +10: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.game.../c/8HE2EpXyH3A .)

The practical limit is still +10; you were extremely lucky to get +14 on the 2nd try.

That is true at least for classes without the spell; if you have that, you can make a macro and spam it in town to get +15 - which is hardly worth it for AC but might be considered for + damage on weapons.

Ah, so the distinction between "theoretical cap" and "practical limit" is important. Good to know, thanks! ^ _^

https://youtu.be/VtDbnQ2BxHs

0:00 - buying a pick to get $ for Pot. of Dex
6:34 - L28 - giant tan bats 'pp' in a barrack? prison?
34:48 - Dextrous! Better L28
47:08 - necromancers
57:38 - disenchanted by Mim & Ibun, Son of Mim
1:08:49 - emperor wight & crew
1:29:19 - tossing old junk 'p'

At one point I was complaining that ESC didn't back out from the Quiver to Inventory, when I had switched to Quiver with | from Inventory; but | is the universal command for opening the Quiver, which is a top-level exploration menu, like (I)nventory and (E)quipment, so, I gotta wrap my head around that. ; )

That shardstorm in the wight's crew was kinda ridiculous! All that bleeding. : P

Got a nifty new shield (extra resists and +4 strength!) and one of those "set of Caestus" gloves that gives hit and dam bonuses.

With those and two +10 dam rings, I seem to have pretty good damage output from my 3.7 attacks/turn rapier. A dagger would give me 3.8 attacks per turn, though... Maybe some time I'll have to try enchanting one up and see how it compares.

Too many monster types now to fit in my monster list subwindow, I'm gonna have to reduce the font size. ; )

https://youtu.be/BFGF4f_-ULA

0:00 - start
1:15 - L29 - ogres & hounds
10:15 - Elfstone?
12:19 - plasma vortex
17:29 - Elfstone stats
26:19 - L28, then new L29
29:26 - oops too close to a vampire
31:29 - wrap!

First time I've seen an Angband level this tiny! So tiny it didn't even have a down staircase! = o And first time I've seen an "Elfstone" (amulet). Quite the stat and armor buffs on it!

Messed around with my customized colors since the previous episode; this medium gray text is definitely working better for my eyeballs than the near-white text was. B)

Which version of Angband were you playing? It looked like there was two unexplored ends of corridors (one a little bit below the center of the map and another near the center of the right edge) which may have held down staircases, but there's been previous reports of missing down staircases on this type of level.

Aw drat you're right, I'm used to spotting unexplored areas by missing wall #s rather than missing floor dots, and that doesn't work in these tight grids! = o

Anyway, the extended version number is on the title screen @ 0:10: 4.2.4-63-81ef15325d35c0911eb3d3cc382dc24ac1876228, which means I'd last synced and built from this June 18th commit: https://github.com/angband/angband/c...2dc24ac1876228

Level 29 human warrior:

https://youtu.be/9i3vVWQF78Y

0:00 - start - L29
30:01 - L30
38:13 - nrulings
46:31 - Ignore shortcut bug

"Etten" is definitely the Tolkien spelling (which confused me as I was more familiar with D&D's "ettin"). I don't think Tolkien ever used "catoblepas" though... ^ _^

"Nrulings" are apparently from Oangband (Nick is a big fan ; ) http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showpos...7&postcount=36 ; not sure what inspired the name itself.

I'd forgotten, you can look around square by square with "x" and then "o"--so those light colored, unmappable walls of the nruling den are described as "a permanent wall"; they look just like the unbreakable wall that surrounds each dungeon floor, but you can't examine that one. You can also find them under the "Walls" group in the Knowledge browser ("~"), which tells me I know of three kinds of wall: the light-colored permanent wall, red "lava," and the usual purple (in my customized color set; the default is gray) "granite wall."

backwardsEric already looked into the item detail window's "Ignore" shortcut bug, and turns out it's specific to the "roguelike" keyset, which I use, and it was indeed a result of the fix made to a minor aesthetic bug I'd reported earlier concerning the display of the results of a keymap query--so yeah the Ignore bug is kind of my fault, in a way. ; D

Level 30 human warrior:

https://youtu.be/Kd79DJ01ZhI

0:00 - start - L30
6:23 - Beorn, the Shape-changer
21:49 - L31 - ghouls & vibration hounds
31:03 - Main Gauche of *Slay Undead*
38:57 - L32
42:25 - oops it was a Rod of Recall 'p'
43:11 - town
50:31 - Long Bow of Lothlorien

10:09 - Oh I see, Beorn did shape change into a bear, and his title changed

Finally found a melee weapon that should be a little better than my plain rapier, once I get the to-hit enchantment up a bit!

As a noob I'm confused about the difference between bow and crossbows. As far as I can tell (not far), in general crossbows are a lot heavier, but do a little more damage, and have less chance of their missiles breaking? ??

I wish it was easier to see the damage output of a missile weapon; unlike a melee weapon where you can just look at its details, to see a missile weapon's damage you have to equip it, then drill down to a specific piece of ammo for it in your quiver--quite a pain, especially if you're trying to compare it with another missile weapon and can't remember all the numbers and so have to keep equipping and quiver-diving back and forth; and you can't get a damage over time number at all for it if the weapon is in a shop, or you don't have any ammo for it.

Couldn't a missile weapon show damage per turn or round or whatever =p inflicted by its most basic ammo, or something, just to give the player some idea? Missile weapons also seem to have like twice as many numbers on them as melee weapons, and there's shooting power and some kind of multiplier and who knows what else, it's very confusing. = P

And finding that Rod of Recall, at first I was happy thinking oh cool now I don't have to bother with Word of Recall scrolls anymore, but then I remembered that I buy like 4 scrolls at a time because I'm paranoid that some could get stolen and then I'd be stuck having to take the long hike out of the dungeon, and if I just had the Rod well that would maybe be stolen easier.

But does stuff aside from money even get stolen anymore in Angband? Now I can't definitely remember any items being stolen. Maybe some consumables? I know certain things can get damaged in certain ways, like scrolls can be destroyed by fire--but the Rod says it can't be damaged by lightning.

So...would this Rod of Recall be secure if I carried it around? Could it get stolen or destroyed? I would REALLY like to ditch the darn scrolls but I just don't know! = o

Level 31 human warrior:

https://youtu.be/CtAfypZdlms

0:00 - start - town
7:07 - L32 - mature black dragon
18:08 - (health drained by killer red beetle bite)
22:07 - Draebor, the Imp
27:44 - teleported to L33 by the Imp! 'p'
28:14 - Necklace of Calanc
43:05 - mature red dragon
52:05 - town - potions of Healing, Strength
57:55 - can't shop-recharge Staff of Slow Monsters 'p'
58:52 - potion of dragon breath
1:01:16 - scroll of recharging

Decided to ditch the scrolls for the Staff of Recall, and to go with the crossbow over the bow. : )

D-ohhh that Draebor! Teleported away when I had him on the ropes, then came back and teleported ME away--down a whole floor! = P And had a bit of a time finding a staircase back up--things were kind of getting serious on that L33, I think there was maybe an honest-to-goodness vault down there--but I got back and now I will (I hope! This worked when I had to ditch to town and go back to get Gollum once) hunt him down!

The protections from blindness and confusion on that Necklace of Calanc are really tempting. Its con bonus doesn't match the dex AND con buffs of my Elfstone, though. Dang.

Didn't notice at the time but it was a killer red beetle bite that drained my strength. Didn't know they could do that. = oo And that drop from 18/60 to 18/50 lowered my DPR by 20, man.

Felt like it had been a while since I had found any new scrolls and potions (including a potion of Strength!). And finally realized the "(unseen)" on shop items meant I hadn't learned them yet, so I can see what they are in the shop but not the "color" you'd know them by if they were a new item type you found in the dungeon--interesting how you can see their color title as you buy them, and then the learning kicks in and you see them in your inventory under their actual ID.

https://youtu.be/uBepmRS_iTw

0:00 - start - town
2:20 - L32
8:20 - an olog and gang
29:21 - L33
31:21 - troll chieftain (L40)

Oh shoot I guess I never did find Draebor the Imp. : P And I forgot to drink that dexterity potion I put in my bag! And I forgot I need to save that Scroll of Enchant Weapon to Hit for my new Main Gauche!

Maybe I was distracted by having to hit "B" (the move-down-left key) with my other hand on this new split keyboard. I sort of got used to that by the end but at the expense of slowing down a bit, and losing the lovely feeling of command you have with a roguelike, where you feel like everything is right at your fingertips.

I think next time I'll go back to my old keyboard for the game; after all, I switched it out because it was too narrow for typing comfortably, but you aren't really typing while playing, so I could move the keyboard slightly to the right so I wouldn't have to stretch my right hand over to reach the keys--that was straining my shoulder while typing, see. I tend to keep my left hovering out wide over the Tab key anyway, so that should be fine.

Oh, I stopped with just 71 XP left for hitting character level 32! ^ _^

https://youtu.be/ZtBo7GXm-lA

0:00 - L33
10:03 - didn't even notice this L38 "abyss spider" 'p'
18:15 - town
25:05 - I need +$4K for that Potion of Dexterity!
28:15 - lich (on L34)
42:22 - the potion is gone ;_;
45:37 - squint-eyed rogue steals my Rod of Recall 'p'

I looked it up after recording, and it's "litch." : P

Also after recording, I finally realized that I can solve my split keyboard problem simply by using the game's Keymap option menu to move the roguelike keyset's movement key maps to the right by one key each, so the traditional roguelike HJKL becomes JKL: -- and since the diagonal movement keys radiate from the left-most of that set of four, that puts down-left movement on the N key which, unlike the former key, B, IS on the right-hand side of the split keyboard along with all the other movement keys, enabling moving @ around the map with just the right hand, as it should.

It also means my right hand now has the same resting position for playing Angband as it does for typing--so it'll no longer be confused for a while when I try going back to doing other stuff on the computer after I've been playing Angband. ; )

Sweet! Why in heck didn't I think of this like a year ago. : P

When I found the Rod of Recall a few episodes back I'd hemmed and hawed about switching to it from the cumbersome ol' Word of Recall scrolls, concerned that it could be stolen and then I'd be down on the dungeon without a scroll, as it were--but then I couldn't think of any actual incident of someone stealing an item like that in the dungeon, so I went with it. Now it HAS been stolen--in town. And I was able to get it back very quickly. ARE there dungeon monsters who steal such things? There were back in the Moria days (@ROGUElove was always having his paladin's spell book stolen), but I don't know that that happens in modern Angband. Well...possibly some day I'll be in for a long trudge back to town. 'o'

Yes, there are, though there aren't many. Rogues and brigands are the ones that you'll find first. High dexterity reduces the chance of something being stolen (a dexterity of 18 protects against 10% of thefts; 18/150 or above is the cutoff for complete protection).

That's good to know. = oo I guess. ;_; Dangit, I guess I have to go back to scrolls. Maybe I'd better keep my eye out for a second rod and just carry two around, and run back to town as soon as one gets swiped.

(Oh hm and googling is telling me the stat max is 18/220, which was something else I'd been wondering about (but stat potions alone only raise it as high as 18/100, which actually is noted in the online manual).)

Thanks for the info! = D

Still had to set up my Shift and CTRL keymaps for that one-to-the-right change to fit the roguelike movement keys on the right side of the split keyboard (it's a Microsoft "Sculpt" keyboard), and ran into a couple CTRL key conflicts there--and implemented some really hacky keymap workarounds that are probably going to end up messing with me in practice 'p':

- Some CTRL keys functioned like Tab (^i--Angband hard-coded command), Enter (^m--Angband hard-coded command), or Backspace (^h--Cygwin terminal option, needed for Backspace to work correctly in Angband's text fields)
- tunnel up-right should be ^i but ^i is Tab in Angband and if I try keymapping something to ^i it kills my auto-shot key, so I put tunnel up-right on the key next to it instead, ^o; that kills the default "show previous message" button but I don't use that command 'p'
- tunnel right would be ^; but there is no such input, I guess--nothing at all happens when I press that, anyway--so I put it on the other side: ^h 'p'
- Enter is now functioning like tunnel down-right and Backspace like tunnel right but I haven't been using those keys outside of text entry, which still seems to work okay, so I guess it's all right 'p'
- moved I (Inspect) and i (inventory--had managed to forget about that one...) to Y and y
- killed the "Take notes" key (:, now my move east key), but I don't use that one

So yeah kinda messy, eesh. Fortunately--maybe--I don't currently do much tunneling; mostly just clearing the occasional rubble patch.

Why *are* ^i and ^m hard-coded to Tab and Enter, anyway?

It's tied to the layout of ASCII encoding and (I'm guessing here) the way teletypes (and the terminals and terminal emulators that followed them) work. To get one of the control codes (0 to 31 in ASCII) which didn't have a dedicated key on the keyboard, one would hit ctrl + key. Behind the scenes, that would take the code for key and blank out the most significant 3 bits (equivalent to a bitwise-and with 0x1f or subtracting 64 from the code for an uppercase letter or 96 from the code for a lowercase letter) to get the control code. So,

I (0x49 hexadecimal or 73 decimal in ASCII) or i (0x69 hexadecimal or 105 decimal in ASCII) -> horizontal tab (0x09 hexadecimal or 9 decimal in ASCII)

M (0x4d hexadecimal or 77 decimal in ASCII) or m (0x6d hexadecimal or 109 decimal in ASCII) -> carriage return (0x0d hexadecimal or 13 decimal in ASCII)

G (0x47 hexadecimal or 71 decimal in ASCII) or g (0x67 hexadecimal or 103 decimal in ASCII) -> audible bell (0x07 hexadecimal or 7 decimal in ASCII)

Man! It's interesting that the old VI keys, which became the "roguelike" keys, fit right between G, I, and M! Did they need to avoid those CTRL key clashes for text editing? That would explain why the key position is shifted one over from the standard right-hand typing position, I suppose.

Update: I tried looking this up, and as far as I can tell from VI editor key reference guides like https://www.atmos.albany.edu/daes/at...heat_sheet.pdf , they did use ^h for backing up one character in "input" mode, so I suppose there's some correspondence there, but maybe that could have just as well have been on ^j if things had been shifted over one to match standard typing hand position. Nothing assigned to ^j or ^k. ^l redraws the screen, which maybe didn't necessarily need to line up with the right navigation key, I wouldn't have thought.

So it doesn't seem like our roguelike keys neatly fit in between those ASCII CTRL mappings in VI for that particular purpose--and oh I guess it wouldn't have mattered there for I and M anyhow, since VI didn't use diagonal movement keys. Oh well so much for that theory. ; _)

And there's a ^g! ("Display current line number and file information.")

Vi commands are* hjkl for local movement. (It is bimodal between edit mode and command modes.) Caps and control are rogue (and later) generalizations. And yeah, they are still useful for touch-typists who eschew the numpad.

* no 'were' anout it--vi is still widely used--it's even an Android and OSX app. They actually go back to some mid-to-late-70s era glass screen terminal, currently in use only at Unix museums.

Great, let's get more VI users into Angband. = D

It’s compatible with Nethack, which is perhaps more useful.

Since ^h is backspace and ^j is line feed, I suspect the choice of home-row keys for vi (or perhaps ed — I don’t know how navigation worked in ed) was deliberate to match them.

Well as long as they end up playing the roguelike keyset in Angband so more people besides me will report roguelike keyset issues. ^ _^

Oh that makes sense. That key list I dug up for VI omitted ^j... Ah, this one has it: https://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Tech/vi.html

https://youtu.be/1CC-Y2c5sRU

0:00 - town - back to Recall scrolls ;_;
9:01 - L34 - stone giants, serpents, mages
14:35 - keymap kerfuffle
27:30 - reset to default Roguelike keys 'p'
35:09 - The Ant Queen
45:33 - L35 & wrap!

Back to Word of Recall scrolls (one got toasted by The Ant Queen's giant fire ants! 'o') until I can find another Rod of, and eventually, back to the default Roguelike keyset: my shifted-one-right keymap attempt ended up failing because a) I'd forgotten m and M are sorta needed (magic and Map) shortcuts, and those were being stomped by my down-right movement key; and more immediately, b) m is a toggle option in x (eXamine) lookaround mode, which stomps my keymap, so I couldn't look down-right!

(Is "lookaround mode toggle option stomps movement key keymap" a bug? I can see why you might want a submenu option to stomp a keymap in a lot of submenus, where you can't engage in normal gameplay, but in lookaround mode, you still need to use the movement keys.)

By the end I didn't screw up using my split-B key to move down-left about three times in a row, so maybe I can manage this split keyboard okay without it getting me killed too often. = oo

I was rampaging around in multiple versions of the game from the same save file while trying to gauge input and sound delay in the SDL2 front-end. Did get killed in the I think standard Windows version being zapped three times quick by a shaman's Cause Critical Wounds or something while not paying attention. ; ) And only noticed afterwards from the screenshot of where I finally stopped, to continue from normally in the MSYS2-compiled version, that I'd just happened to end my rampage just short of waking a certain

https://smbhax.com/stuff/misc/ang_sdl2s.jpg

ancient multi-hued dragon: just a level 53 monster on dungeon level 36! = oo (After somebody dropped me down a floor (or two?) during my delay-testing rampage, and other somebody or others drained my clevel from 33 to 32. ; )

Sooo... Prrobably gonna run away here. = oo

Well, yeah from a creature 20 levels higher I guess. But maybe what I think I know about AMHDs is out of date: in RogueLOVE's old YouTube Moria play-through, AMHDs could kill the player in one poison gas breath attack--there was no resistance to it back then. There is now in Angband though? I have Poison resistance with my shield. Would that apply?

Probably wouldn't save me much from a 21 level difference I suppose. ^) ^

@Shockbolt's beholders are cute ^ _^

https://dlcn7yodlhcnn.cloudfront.net...509a36f1d.jpeg

https://youtu.be/HoSvVNSILf4

0:00 - start
1:02 - standard Windows version
1:35 - tilesets
9:43 - WSL Ubuntu SDL2 version
24:43 - Cygwin/X SDL2 version
36:48 - MSYS2 updater demo
42:46 - MSYS2 SDL2 version
47:35 - L36 - ancient multi-hued dragon = o
1:02:55 - town - enchanting a staff and armor
1:17:21 - new L36
1:21:31 - ogres
1:24:26 - a summoning chest & Nar the dwarf
1:30:08 - boots of speed & an artifact dagger
1:35:50 - impact hounds & force breath

Accidentally teleported myself back to town--gotta get those !r inscriptions going! : P--but well that's one way to make sure I don't run back into the amhd I suppose. =p Given that I've been using an enchanted rapier to this point, the artifact dagger I found is a nice step up. : )

a) the Dagger 'Brangolf' (1d4) (+9,+18)
Taken from a chest found at 1800 feet (level 36)

Provides resistance to Lightning, Fire, Cold.
Provides protection from fear, confusion.
Cannot be harmed by Acid.
Grants the ability to see invisible things.

Combat info:
4.7 blows/round.
With +0 STR and +2 DEX you would get 5.0 blows
Average damage/round: 245.6.
Average thrown damage: 63.3.

https://youtu.be/abDcOJWnlLo

0:00 - start
3:20 - about the latest MSYS2 code fixes
10:59 - moving status to the sidebar
37:04 - rubble tile hack
53:53 - drank a dumb potion 'p'
1:00:41 - L36
1:07:52 - ^c 'p'
1:17:38 - trapper
1:31:24 - Defender rapier
1:51:24 - a really weird secret corridor
2:00:25 - long tunnel + nexus hounds ;_;
2:32:05 - reading last Enchant scroll changes target item key assignment
2:59:01 - loot & buffs

Master vampires and white wraiths for Halloween. : ]

Ah one thing I missed about the Rapier (Defender) was its AC boost: +2, I guess?

Oh, ammo details say "average damage/round" not "/shot" so I guess it ISN'T necessary or correct to look up shots/round in the Character sheet and multiply that by the avg damage shown in the ammo details--so this bow ISN'T doing 40% or whatever less damage than the old crossbow. Sweet. (I guess I could test that but it's a pain and I don't want to. :P) I find it delightfully amusing that the DEX bonus on my newly adapted missile weapon gives me a huge melee damage boost. ^ D^ MAN those DEX boosts really do shoot melee damage up something fierce, crrrraaaayzay. : D

Also, a katana feels cooler than using a little ol' dagger or whatever--and finally I have melee weapon options larger than those little knives I'd been using up to this point because their attack speed trumped everything else.

After a hideously long period of shuffling things around and scratching my head, I've now got protection or whatever from blindness, confusion, and traps (immunity!)! Along with fear (I get from from being a level 30+ fighter anyway), paralysis of course, and I think most of the usual resists. Now if only I had a good piece of gear that gave nexus protection; happened across those nexus resist store boots by chance but I would prefer not to have to lug them around...I guess we'll see how many more nexus breathers I run across. Darn those hounds in that long tunnel!!! ; D

Actually I guess what I really want is teleport protection--darn those mages, too! : PP

backwardsEric gave me a tip on preventing myself from risking killing my character when accidentally hitting ^c instead of ^x (Save): save a blank (or otherwise harmless) keymap over it! : )

(I'd use the "pre" tag to post the ASCII, but unlike "code," it seems to double-space everything. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.)

Hand got irritated hitting keys repeatedly for lock pick and search checks in Umoria--it doesn't auto-repeat until success like Angband; you can do like "11s" or "11o" to repeat a fixed number of times, but that's still more typing : p--so I commented their failure checks out of my src/player.cpp. And to save myself another frequent extra key-press, I made a blank "Rest for how long?" entry do the same as entering an asterisk, ie rest until reaching full mana & health. Lines changed:

204 added "|| !rest_str[0]" to rest duration input check
682-684 removed search failure
1229-1238 removed now-unused lock-picking skill
1244, 1249, 1254-1261 removed door failure
1280, 1287-1289 removed chest failure

After some mucking about, made Umoria inventory lists auto-open and auto-close by messing with src/ui_inventory.cpp:

377, 399 commented out conditional to auto-show Take off item list
396, 398, 400 commented out ifs (but not else) to auto-show Drop item list
426, 428 commented out conditional to auto-show Wear/Wield item list
644 added global "bool ui_inv_done = false;" to track use of Take off/Drop/Wear/Wield
673 added two lines below for successful Take off command:
terminalRestoreScreen();
ui_inv_done = true;
728 added two lines below for successful Wear command:
terminalRestoreScreen();
ui_inv_done = true;
838 added two lines below for successful Drop command:
terminalRestoreScreen();
ui_inv_done = true;
1065 changed if to else if, added two new lines above:
if (ui_inv_done == true) {
command = ESCAPE;
1095 added "ui_inv_done == false &&" to the if condition for the old terminalRestoreScreen();
1097 changed } to
} else if (ui_inv_done == true) {
ui_inv_done = false;
}
1182 added two new lines below this one to auto-show the other item lists (Quaff, Read, etc):
menuActive = true;
terminalSaveScreen();

See also post 93 in this thread, auto-opening spell lists: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...4&postcount=93

Wielding a mace I'd forgotten I'd never ID'd from long ago on the dungeon floor and which, of course, turned out to be cursed--and me a poor clvl 10-ish Half-Elf Warrior who hadn't been mining and didn't have enough cash left for a remove curse scroll (eventually found a Remove Curse staff but didn't have the brainpower stats to make it work ; D)--marked the start of a formidable run of Poor Life Choices in Umoria:

- Testing UI tweaks in town, carelessly read an un-ID'd scroll that turned out to be Aggravate Monster
- Further UI testing included hundreds of turns of resting to increase my hunger so I could test eating without being too full : P
- That done, went about selling my disposable belongings to try to afford that Remove Curse scroll. Didn't quite get enough cash ;_:
- Meanwhile, and more more townspeople began appearing, with the tougher types attacking me
- Crowd eventually surrounded me coming out of a shop; after a protracted battle in which their numbers kept replenishing and they were at least two-deep around me, on the verge of being torn to pieces I resorted to using my one Phase Door scroll followed by Recall, and running around town until being mercifully yanked down to the peace and quiet of the dungeon
- 300 feet down, things seemed fine at first but I'd used all my missiles up (they sure to get lost a lot) in my previous plunge, and my remaining Recall scroll (darn things are $$!) got destroyed fighting hand-to-hand against monsters with item-destructive effects somewhere along the way, probably burned up in what turned out to be a lengthy battle against flamey breeder things of some type
- Rot monsters got the last ration I had had left after the hunger message UI testing and not thinking I needed more 'cause I had Recall if I got really hungry, right? Nottttt smart no.
- Looking for stairs out. Terrible luck finding them or is this just Umoria-normal?? Start skipping fights and even items laying around as increasing panic sets in.
- Trip over a strength-draining trap...multiple times without thinking. More times after thinking oh hey wait there IS a disarm command in Umoria, right? And of course it pushes you into the trap on failure, which I kept doing. Really not thinking straight.
- 250 feet. Weak.
- 200 feet, finally. Fainting spells begin, so gently at first. Where can the stairs BE.
- Weaker still. Struggling to stay conscious. Fleeing from rats.
- No food. No stairs. Can't stay awa

Umoria -- NOT having bump to open doors does feel like it fits the pace of Umoria--or at least, doesn't stand out as unduly slow there. But I thought I'd try it--and it is nice and smooth--so:

Bump to open doors:

player_move.cpp
526 replaced line (closed door warning) w/ "openClosedDoor(coord);"

player.cpp
1240 removed "static" before "void openClosedDoor(Coord_t coord) {"

player.h
229 added new line below this one
void openClosedDoor(Coord_t coord);

Umoria

- Removed player character gender

welcome.txt (in /data)
removed "a gender" from "you must specify"

character.cpp
267-290 commented out characterSetGender function
300-303 changed "male_" to "char_"
304-309 commented lines
354 changed 5 to 4
461-463 commented out giving F chars 50 extra starting gold 'ppp'
477 commented line

character.h
19-22 changed "male_" to "char_"
23-26 commented lines

data_player.cpp
89, 94, 99, 104, 109, 114, 119, 124 commented last four numbers of each line

game_death.cpp
28, 29, 95-97 commented "King" winner rank title for male
31, 98 changed now-default winner rank title from "Queen" to "Ruler"

game_files.cpp
206 commented line
207 changed " Weight%8s %6d", colon," to ""%38s Weight%8s %6d", blank, colon,"

game_save.cpp
159 commented line
571 commented line

player.cpp
33-35 commented playerIsMale function
37-39 commented playerSetGender function
41-46 commented playerGetGenderLabel function
1660, 1661 commented "King" max rank title for male
1663 changed now default max rank title from "Queen" to "Ruler"

player.h
51 commented line
191 commented line
192 commented line

scores.cpp
14-19 commented highScoreGenderLabel function
43 replaced "highScoreGenderLabel()" with "'X'"
212 changed "%-19.19s %c %-10.10s" to "%-19.19s %-10.10s"
216 commented line
227 replaced "Sex Race" w/ " Race" (two leading spaces)

ui.cpp
468, 477 commented lines
469, 478 changed "5,"s to "4,"s

(That character.cpp thing was

)

Umoria

Spell list auto-open (goes with item list auto-open, post 89 in this thread http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...8&postcount=89) :

spells.cpp
15 changed "%c-%c, *=List, <ESCAPE>" to "%c-%c, <ESCAPE>"
18 commented line
21 added:
terminalSaveScreen();
23 added:
displaySpellsList(spell_ids, number_of_choices, false, first_spell);
65-71, 86, 88 commented lines

Quick list of Moria versions and variants sites I've found:

https://umoria.org/ - official

http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/unix/games/moria/ - pre-2000 vers & variants

https://beej.us/moria/files/ - 2006 mirror of funet archive

https://www.nongnu.org/gmoria/ - Gmoria
https://sites.google.com/site/donnierussellii/moria - SDLMoria
https://andrew.cool/moria - Umoria Color (C++ port of Colour Umoria)
https://github.com/HunterZ/umoria/releases - Unicode Windows port of DOS Umoria 5.6
https://blog.slor.net/2016/11/a-nati...-of-moria.html - Wmoria

Umoria

- Any key clears -more- prompts:

ui_io.cpp
271-272, 274 commented line
273 comment "key = ", leaving just "getKeyInput();"

https://youtu.be/_HfDVIOHa1Q

Going back to the GCU (ASCII) front end of Angband, compiled in Cygwin--but I also wanted sound, so worked out how to do SDL2 sound with ASCII through Cygwin.

The first widely distributed version of Angband, version 2.4.Frog-knows, and specifically the 1.1 version of the PC (DOS) port of that, which I was running here through DOSBox (free from https://www.dosbox.com) , can be downloaded from the official Angband site's "Releases" section at https://rephial.org/release/2.4.fk -- except that the PC version 1.1 link is currently typoed to 1.2 there, so you have to alter it manually to https://github.com/angband/angband/r...ngband-1.1.zip

The HunterZ Windows port of DOS Umoria 5.6 is https://github.com/HunterZ/umoria

The John Harris (rodneylives) article in which he talks about Frog-knows and other past Angband versions is https://setsideb.com/play-angband-version-history/

(And the podcast in which an episode with him was often one of the best is http://www.roguelikeradio.com/ .)

- FORGOT backwardsEric told me (and further FORGOT this discussion took place on the Angband github page for software issue 5542, not the forum) that overriding the ^c suicide key with a blank keymap won't work in the GCU front end

- FORGOT the capitalization fix for CTRL characters (ie the game now showing CTRL plus the "d" key as "^d," not "^D") was a recent fix and so isn't in the downloaded 4.2.4 Windows front end version still available as the latest on rephial.org, with which I was testing at one point here and confusing myself mightily 'p'

0:00 - messing with tiles (MSYS2 SDL2)
9:39 - GCU block walls (Cygwin)
13:24 - checkerboard walls (2.4.Frog-knows DOS 1.1)
17:09 - my Umoria tweaks (Cygwin)
28:40 - HunterZ Umoria 5.6 DOS to Windows port
42:02 - sound in GCU Angband (Cygwin)
50:08 - monochrome option in DOS Frog-knows
55:25 - GCU ^c death key keymap confusion & save-scumming 'p'
1:23:24 - L37 - giant fire ants
1:42:25 - still confused about GCU ^c and keymaps ; P

After being hopelessly confused about the ^c thing during the recording, I looked up Angband's code on the ^c suicide key, and it is NOT a function of my Cygwin terminal that's killing the character, it's the game, sort of simulating an old-style ^c terminal break function or something. That seems dangerous and pointless to me, at least in Windows where you've got Task Manager to kill processes if you really need to do that, so I've disarmed this bizarre suicide function in my local Angband version by commenting out one line of code.

disarm redundant (in Windows) ^c suicide key:

ui-signals.c
121 comment line

https://youtu.be/qEltYRa2EVU

Setting up and running Angband version 2.4.Frog-knows, and specifically the 1.1 version of the PC (DOS) port of that, through DOSBox:

0:00 - start
2:05 - DOSBox Options
5:00 - running the game
7:38 - fullresolution option
11:40 - monochrome game option

My DOSBox Options file (*.conf) settings: to get fullscreen (ALT+Enter) Frog-knows scaled up a bit on my 1080p screen and sharp rather than blurry:

fullresolution=desktop
scaler=normal2x forced

That leaves it black-bordered from its doubled 480p--to 960p--at my 1080p fullscreen, but sharp, and the checkerboard patterns of those nifty DOS wall blocks intact.

And you can enter your "mount c" command at the bottom of the Options file so you don't have to re-enter it each time you run DOSBox; like

mount c [full path to your dos programs, like c:\mydos or wherever you're putting your stuff]

~~

Once in the game, pressing "=" opens the Options screen, where I turned the "monochrome" option on.

I'm still a roguelike noob, and also don't really know what I'm talking about. I liked the look of a couple DOS Moria/Angband ports I happened to see, and wanted to find out where it came from.

https://youtu.be/Rhd7yHUC6Ac

0:00 - start
2:05 - Rogue
22:50 - "! Supervisor Key (fake DOS)"
29:10 - Koeneke, Wilson, Kneller
59:02 - PC-Moria 4.873
1:13:17 - the checkerboard block (177 - Medium Shade)
1:36:23 - Castle Adventure
1:47:21 - Umoria 5.4c
2:09:26 - Umoria 5.5
2:18:53 - Umoria 5.5.2
2:33:11 - Umoria 5.2.2 386
2:39:35 - Umoria 5.7.15 (Windows terminal)
2:43:11 - Umoria 5.6 msvc3 (Windows terminal)
2:50:51 - Cutler, Astrand, Marsh, Hill, Teague
2:58:40 - Angband 2.4.Frog-knows 1.1
3:19:05 - PC Angband 1.2
3:56:59 - PC Angband 1.31
4:19:35 - PC Angband 1.4
4:42:39 - Angband 2.7.4
5:16:48 - Angband 2.8.0
5:47:38 - Angband 2.9.0
6:10:00 - Angband 3.0.6
6:18:40 - Angband 4.2.4-162x ASCII (Cygwin GCU)
6:22:59 - Angband 4.2.4-162x tiles (MSYS2 SDL2)
6:24:19 - frognose

(Angband 4.2.4-162x built from more recent untagged source code, and with a slightly customized title screen.)

~~~~

I downloaded the following files from the following places for this:

- DOSBox from https://www.dosbox.com

- PC-Moria 4.873 from https://www.myabandonware.com/game/moria-27f

- Umoria 5.4, 5.5, and 5.5.2 DOS versions and various source files from http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/unix/games/moria/ (operated by "CSC, the Finnish IT center for science"--Finnish government)

- Moria 5.5.2 386, aka the DJGPP port ("DJGPP is a 32-bit, protected-mode compiler, which means that programs compiled under it require an 80386 or higher to run"), from https://archive.org/details/m552-386

- Umoria 5.6 Windows port from https://github.com/HunterZ/umoria/releases

- Various Umoria source files from https://umoria.org/highlights/

- Angband DOS versions and various source files from https://rephial.org/release

- Current Angband from https://github.com/angband/angband/

- The 1984 DOS freeware game Castle Adventure from https://dosgames.com/game/castle-adventure/

^^ Those are free software. This one cost a couple bucks:

- Rogue - 1985 DOS Epyx 1.49 version from https://store.steampowered.com/app/1443430/Rogue/

~~~~
~~~~

Rogue

Steam installs Epyx's 1985 DOS Rogue port version 1.49 in a custom DOSBox arrangement; the config settings left it blurry on my display and anyway I wanted to be able to run it from the same DOS prompt as other games, so I collected the various files from where Steam had installed them, and made my own set-up for them. One tricky part is that there's no unified way to start a new game and restore a previously saved game from the same Windows shortcut; you may need to do like Steam partially did and set up separate start and restore shortcuts, using an appropriate Rogue command-line option--probably "/r"--for one of them; here's a Rogue command option list with definitions, from a copy of the old PC manual I found at https://britzl.github.io/roguearchiv...ual/manual.htm

rogue - Starts a new game.
rogue /r - Automatically restarts a saved game using the file name rogue.sav on the rogue disk.
rogue /s - Displays the current rankings in the Guildmasters Hall of Fame without having to start a game.
rogue /bw - If you have a color graphics card and are using a black and white monitor, starting a new game of ROGUE with this option will improve the clarity of the screen.
rogue (file name) - Restarts a new game using a game saved in (file name).

"/bw" didn't seem to work on mine.

DOS Rogue's "!" or F10 "Supervisor Key" hides the game with a fake DOS screen; type "rogue" to get back to the game once the boss leaves ; ].


Did the "Supervisor Key" become a bit of a running joke in Moria and PC Angband? "!" in DOS versions of Moria pops up the DOS shell, with "type 'exit' to resume your game" at the top; in PC Angband, it prompts a dry retort: "Sorry, Angband doesn't leave enough free memory for a subshell." ; D

After PC Angband, though, any such joke may have been lost: in Angband 2.7.4, "!" is used to write in-game macros, and in 2.8.0 it does not appear to have its own game function. There could be a hint of a revival from at least 2.9.0 on, but the new, functional DOS-specific game option menu that "!" brings up there is presented with an entirely straight face. : =|

~~~~
~~~~

Moria

For Moria, I ran I think all the non-variant DOS versions I could find (and a couple related games):

- PC-Moria 4.873 - 1988
DOS port from Wilson's Unix code by Don G. Kneller: no Options menu, no [number][command] repeat input, no auto-rest, no Shift-W; default keyboard config is on non-roguelike setting ("MORIA" rather than "ROGUE"; a later DOS port says "VMS" was the other setting(?)--or is it just anything other than "ROGUE"?); can change char for walls (and floors) in Kneller's MORIA.CNF config file--but doesn't change char for SECRET doors (later versions do), so easy exploit to spot secret doors just by changing rest of walls to something else; ^r redraws screen (somehow this breaks after this for a long time, at least as far as DOSBox is concerned); relatively slow character saving and loading; no [executable] -h command line descriptions (not until Angband Frog-knows)--not sure there are any command line options

- Umoria 5.4 color - 1991
David J. Grabiner takes over as Moria maintainer from James E. Wilson, "making only minor changes"; Justin Martin Anderson adds DOS color, probably after an official monochrome DOS port by Grabiner (the official Mac version had had 8-color support since at least version 5.2.0; the official Amiga version had 4-color support by at least version 5.4.0); 5.4 has the last still-extant DOS support note until support for DOS and other old systems is officially removed in 2016's version 5.7.0; despite saying so in ? command list, ^r does NOT redraw screen like 4.873 did (does not work again until PC Angband 1.3)

- Umoria 5.5 - 1992 (Grabiner)

- Umoria 5.5.2 - 1994
Grabiner's releases ended with 5.5.2 in mid-'94; DOS port by Roland Roberts

- Moria 5.5.2 386 - 1994?
DOS port by Ben Shadwick; Grabiner names this version as "the executable for the PC" in his FAQ; high CPU usage in DOSbox

- UMoria 5.6 msvc3 - 2015
Windows terminal port of 2008 Umoria by Ben Shadwick with "enhancements from the MS-DOS ports," most obviously a Unicode approximation of the DOS checkerboard block; some minor graphical glitches

~~~~

Robert A. Koeneke enrolled in engineering courses at the University of Oklahoma "around 1980 or 81," and one night while hanging out with some sysadmins in the engineering lab, on a DEC UNIX minicomputer--which despite the name was the size of a very large refrigerator, fronted with four spooled tapes--got hooked on playing the original Rogue. But the DEC minicomputer in the department where he got a job was a VAX running VMS, and "no games were available for it at that time," so he decided to write his own. The developers of Rogue had not released the source code for their game, so Koeneke wrote the best clone he could of what he remembered of it, in BASIC, on the VAX/VMS minicomputer. He named it "Moria" after the deep dwarven mines in novelist J.R.R. Tolkien's "Middle-Earth" fantasy world.

A year later--'83 or so--when he started taking a course on Pascal, its functions gave him more ideas for a Rogue-like game, so he started writing another Moria: not an exact Rogue clone, this time, but his own new game. Other UO students got hooked on HIS game, and he challenged them to beat it, and himself to prevent them from beating it. In '85, he started sending his Pascal VAX/VMS source code to other universities. His last release, 4.7, came "around 1986 - 87": "my last official release"; other UO students continued Moria through v4.8 after Koeneke left for the commercial world.

Koeneke was establishing the development pattern for the Moria & Angband DOS period: students working in a university computer lab release well-received game version, are encouraged to make more; when they leave, repeat with others.

The pattern could jump between schools: James E. Wilson, at the University of California, Berkeley, got the Moria 4.8 source, and ported it to Unix C as "Umoria," numbering the first official release in 1987 version 4.85. Wilson said of why he ported it "I did not have access to a VMS machine, and both the Pascal and Assembler code would not work with Unix because of many uses of VMS extensions. Since C was a more common language for Unix anyways, I decided to just convert the whole thing to C."

Wilson's "history" file included with his versions of the game lauds Don Kneller's "PC-Moria 4.873" DOS port--but not Kneller's slightly earlier PC-Moria 4.83, which Wilson calls "extremely buggy" and "unplayable"; Wilson recommends PC-Moria 4.873 over a perhaps slightly earlier "PC-Moria 4.00+," described as "a port of the Moria 4.8 Pascal sources to the IBM-PC by John W. DeBoskey," which he calls "faithful" but "unfortunately" having "quite a few bugs."

Of how the game spread, Wilson said "I started work on Umoria in February 1987. I somehow acquired play testers in April. I don't recall exactly how, but I was at a university, so maybe they saw me playing it on a public terminal and asked for a copy. The game slowly spread around the Berkeley area. By November, the game was in good enough shape that I could post it to comp.sources.games."

I haven't been able to find DeBoskey's version anywhere; interestingly, it's the only Moria branch Wilson lists as not derived from his Unix port. And while his "history" describes various post-Moria-4.8 Unix and VAX/VMS lines, and an Amiga version, Kneller and DeBoskey's are the only two DOS branches mentioned.

Wilson adopted Kneller's DOS port into his own set-up: although no compiled Wilson DOS ports seem to have survived, starting in the next available Umoria source code, 5.2.0, there would be an extensive multi-platform structure in the code base that was not there in 4.87, with explicit support for various platforms: Unix, DOS (present in some form since at least 5.0 in '89, which mentions a save tweak for MSDOS; a change in January 1990's version 5.0.10 may have broken the DOS version; a month later, 5.0.16 notes a change to "get MSDOS version working again," as well as "add files from binary PC-Moria distribution"), Atari ST, Mac, VMS, and by at least 5.4, Amiga; Kneller is credited in many of the DOS-related Umoria 5.2.x+ source files, with 5.x DOS update credit to Wilson; Kneller's DOS .CNF config file and options continue to be used, with some Wilson updates; all later Moria/Angband DOS ports use Kneller's visual template and checkerboard walls--which perhaps not coincidentally were used for passageway graphics in the 1984 and 1985 DOS versions of Rogue.


~~~

In 1984, one of the original designers of the 1980 game that had so hooked Koeneke, Rogue, had co-founded Artificial Intelligence Design Systems to sell a commercial, DOS version of Rogue. They struggled to break even, but later that year, game developer/publisher Epyx contacted them, and struck a deal under which Epyx began distributing a repackaged version of their DOS port of Rogue in 1985. The '84 AI Design version--from what I can see in screenshots and YouTube videos, anyway--and the '85 Epyx version--at least, the 1.49 version now available for on Steam--both use for their hallways the same DOS checkerboard block that Kneller would use for Moria's walls in '88.

That checkerboard block is part of what Wikipedia calls "Code page 437," "the character set of the original IBM PC": "The set includes all printable ASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacritics), Greek letters, icons, and line-drawing symbols. It is sometimes referred to as the 'OEM font' or 'high ASCII', or as 'extended ASCII' (one of many mutually incompatible ASCII extensions)."

Kneller made it easy to change the block character--or "Medium Shade," as Wikipedia's CP437 chart labels it--used for Moria's walls, and the dot character used for open floor spaces, to different characters from the 256-character CP437 set: enter the numeric ID for whichever character you want in the appropriate spot in the moria.cnf DOS config text file (angband.cnf in the early Angband DOS ports). The default config line is

GRAPHICS 177 249

with 177 being the block, 249 the dot. In CP437, character 176 is a more sparse dot pattern, 178 a thicker one, and 219 a solid block, while 250 is a slightly smaller dot. So changing the default GRAPHICS values in the .cnf to for instance

GRAPHICS 178 250

would give you heavier-looking walls and lighter floors. If you remove the "GRAPHICS" line altogether, the game reverts to using standard "#" signs and periods instead. A handy debugging feature: if you type a line incorrectly in the .cnf, the game will flash a warning about it, with the line number, at runtime.

Wikipedia notes that "some APIs will not print some code points, in particular the range 0-31 and the code at 127. Instead, they will interpret them as control characters" and indeed, the few I tested yielded various behaviors:

- In PC Moria, middot 7 and eighth note 14 rendered as "^G" and "^N"
- In Frog-knows, 7 and 14 rendered as nothing and an eighth note, respectively

Tripping through the listing of "adventure" games on dosgames.com, I noticed another game using, like Rogue, one of those DOS checkerboard blocks to represent worked stone structures in 1984, prior to PC Moria: freeware game "Castle Adventure," written by then-14-year-old Kevin Bales, used the block for its titular castle's walls.

~~~~

Grabiner's Moria FAQ, which he reposted to both Moria newsgroups -- rec.games .moria and its successor, rec.games .roguelike.moria (remove the spaces) at intervals through 2010, says that versions back through 5.3--the end of Wilson's run, in March 1991--were "essentially identical" to his last release, 5.5.2, which he continued to refer to as "the current version" even in his last posting of the FAQ to the newsgroup in 2010--which was after 5.6.0 was out, with various maintenance fixes and an update to the Umoria sharing license--changes by him and Rene Weber. Umoria has, in effect, been in maintenance mode since Wilson's departure in '91:

Grabiner made two minor updates in '92, none in '93--the year Angband came out--and two in '94; then a gap to some fixes in 2000-01, another gap to 5.6--a 2008 license change--and another gap to 5.7.0 in 2016, a substantial code clean-up, adding support for Windows and macOS, and removing support for old systems, including DOS. Regular maintenance updates have continued in the dungeons-of-moria repository on github since 2017.

~~~~
~~~~

Angband

Ran all the early Angband DOS ports; after that I skipped between the many available in rephial.org/release, so the things I note may have appeared first in versions between the few I looked at:

- Angband 2.4.Frog-knows 1.1 - April 1993
DOS port by Charles Teague; color off toggle (through at least 2.7.4); beginning of Teague's clear WHATS.NEW documentation; "g"et command but doesn't tell you what you're standing on, so less efficient than y/n pickup prompt; if color on, uses colored checkerboard block for mineral seams (through 1.4)--but old % signs if color off; terse angband -h command line descriptions

- PC Angband 1.2 - May 1993
Teague; beginning of his gameplay/balance changes

- PC Angband 1.3 - August 1993
Teague; Precision targeting from Moria 5.5 variant Morgul; after PC-Moria, ^r finally works to redraw screen again!; verbose angband -h command line descriptions

- PC Angband 1.4 - 1994
Teague; finally works out "g"et command first telling you what item you're standing on, so it becomes worthwhile; confusing splitting of messages across multiple lines

- Angband 2.7.4 - 1995
First post-Teague DOS version currently documented/available; the official DOS version of Ben Harrison's (UPenn) "first stable release": he credits features from PC Angband 1.4, Umoria 5.5, and PC Angband 1.31 variant FAngband (by David G. Kahane; per the tangaria.com/variants table, other variants deriving from PC Angband include BAngband and QAngband); vastly expanded in-game option menus, including menu to reassign ASCII chars on the fly--although it can't save them?; bug where map walls are not drawn if using checkerboard blocks rather than "#"; DOS config file changed from angband.cnf to A_IBM.TXT, entirely reformatted from Kneller's MORIA.CNF; macros and apparently user prf pref support--but no manual in-game loading/saving them?; starts player off w/ CLev4 "Whomper" paladin with artifact gear; no readme, minimal documentation--Harrison never much for writing up changelists, claims too many changes to document efficiently; vastly reorganized file structure; torchlight color; like the Umoria 5.5.2 386 port, the versions from here on out have high CPU usage in DOSbox; uses "%" for mineral seams even if color on

- Angband 2.8.0 - 1996
Ben Harrison official DOS version; somewhat glitchy: map checkerboard block drawing problem remains, -more- prompts and monster health bar may still be in color with color turned off in Options--and everything is bright white! ;P; now has "repeat obvious commands" for automatic door-opening etc; other checkerboard block denotes mineral seams, for a smoother look in monochrome than the old %; ibm prf files replace DOS config file

- Angband 2.9.0 - 2000
Robert Rühlmann official DOS version - 2.9.0 was his 1st release; has graphics and a taller screen display with built-in subwindows and multi-res options (can turn off graphics & subwindows with "-mibm" command line option); can randomize character generation options; birth options; ! DOS options menu; ? command list replaced with help doc menu--can't find a concise in-game command list; color toggle option is gone

- Angband 3.0.6 - 2005
Robert Rühlmann - his last release and last Angband DOS release

~~~~

In 1990, University of Warwick, England students Alex Cutler & Andy Astrand began expanding Umoria 5.2.1's Unix C code. Students Sean Marsh and Geoff Hill, with others, continued the work after Cutler and Astrand graduated. They gave their version, dubbed "Angband," a wide release in April 1993, with a simultaneous DOS port by Charles F. Teague II, who had been working on it at UMass Boston for several months thanks to alpha Unix versions sent by Marsh. Teague's DOS port kept the checkerboard block walls, config file, and probably lots more, DOS-wise, of Kneller's PC-Moria, and added color via code adapted from the color Umoria 5.4 DOS port, with permission from its author Justin Martin Anderson. Nine days later Teague uploaded a self-extracting bugfix DOS version, ang11exe.exe, to his preferred distribution site, the ksu.edu ftp server.

(The KSU FTP had, or would have by December 1993, at least, its own "Archive Manager for Moria and Angband": KSU engineering student Karl S. Hagen. Angband maintainer Ben Harrison would later refer to the KSU FTP as "the 'official' Angband site." Hagen graduated from KSU--or was expecting too--in 1995, but still posted about the "Angband KSU FTP site" in December 1996, calling it "pretty much automated.")

(I haven't run them, but hunting through source code and release notes, it looks like the Unix versions of Angband widely released in 1993 and 1994 did not have color; color based on the color added to DOS Umoria 5.4 was added specifically just to the DOS ports of the first versions of Angband. Release notes for non-DOS versions do not mention screen colors until Angband 2.7.0, in 1995, whose changelist notes: "Macintosh and X11 support (and soon IBM), with colour." The changelist of the next version, 2.7.1, mentions adding color to torch light, without specifying a platform. The next-earliest non-DOS source code still available to examine today, version 2.7.4, contains color support for any platform capable of handling it; as in Teague's earlier DOS versions--possibly not added until his 1.1 bugfix version, as he notes there people on monochrome monitors were having trouble seeing dark gray monsters--and until somewhere between 2.8.0 and 2.9.0, when it was removed, the in-game options include a color on/off toggle, defaulting to color being on.)

Teague started adding his own features, and balance and gameplay changes, to the game with his next release, uploaded as "ang12exe.exe" in May 1993; the print out from its in-game "V" (Version) command calls this line of updates "PC Angband" and gives their numbered ftp file names, but does not assign specific names to his releases. His August 1993 release, a quick bugfix to version 3 of that same month (Angband's site does not have version 3 available), uses the name PC Angband 1.31.

For 8+ months after Frog-knows, DOS, through PC Angband, was the epicenter of Angband development. Besides making more and more balance and game changes of his own, Teague was also incorporating more code from past and present versions of Moria, as well as more key additions from Moria variants: targeting code from Morgul, and the "auto-roller" character generation option from Druid.

With Sean Marsh out of contact after the release of Frog-knows, Charles Swiger at Carnegie Mellon University took up the mantle of Angband Unix development, releasing versions starting with Angband 2.5.0-beta in December 1993. There are no recorded Swiger DOS releases; a 1996 reply by Swiger to a newsgroup post by Koeneke asking about Angband said "I believe that you could build 2.5.x under DOS, but almost all DOS players went with Charles F. Teague's PC Angband 1.4 instead, since it had color and performed better under MS-DOS' memory limitations."

Teague released one more DOS version, PC Angband 1.4, in March 1994, saying "That's all for now, folks"; he added that he intended to continue working on Angband, but his releases would slow until "someone out there invents a 36-hour day." He had been working a day job since at least January. He did not reappear in the newsgroups.

With Teague's departure, there was no further official DOS development until a year later, when Ben Harrison, as Wilson had with Moria, made a vast code overhaul of Angband and established wide multi-platform support. Skimming only lightly across Harrison's numerous DOS version releases left me with an impression of fitful progress, perhaps due to the appearance of some new, possibly DOS-specific visual glitches, and a lack of regular release notes.

After Harrison, maintainer Robert Rühlmann seems to have had an affinity for Windows, DOS, and Mac: those are the three versions of his builds that he compiled and released himself through his thangorodrim.net (viewable now via archive.org), and the first and third screenshots on his screenshots page there are of DOS versions: the first's caption includes "2.8.3 MS-DOS version with my new graphics and terminal code," the fourth is a smaller shot of a Windows version, and the second is a contributed, smaller shot of Amiga ZAngband. The finale of the Angband DOS ports was a tremendous expansion of menu, graphics and sound options under Rühlmann--except for the color toggle, which was removed, making color fully mandatory.

~~~~~
~~~~~

In writing this I used information from umoria.org, rephial.org, John Harris' Moria and Angband articles on his setsideb.com blog, Wikipedia's Code page 437, Rogue, Moria, and Angband articles, newsgroup posts on the aforementioned Moria groups and rec.games .roguelike.angband (remove the space) by Sean Marsh, David J. Grabiner, Ben Shadwick, Ben Harrison, Karl S. Hagen, Geoff Hill, Robert Alan Koeneke, Charles Swiger*, James E. Wilson, Charles F. Teague II, and David G. Kahane, Ben Shadwick's HunterZ github, Rühlmann's thangorodrim.net via archive.org, the Angband Variants Table by Tangar Igroglaz, mentioned earlier, and from files in the releases I downloaded from the sites listed at the top.

* Swiger also posted as "Chuck Swiger" and "Charles William Swiger."

~~~

Notes on running some of these DOS ports now:

- The Moria 5.5.2-386 DOS port and the Angband 2.7.4 through 3.0.6 DOS ports chew up a lot of CPU in DOSBox--at least one of those Angband ports also mentioned being compiled for 386 processors, so maybe whatever that involves just forces a lot more work out of DOSBox
- Renaming the containing directory of PC-Moria 4.873 will prevent it from being able to load a previous save file (but it can run without one)
- The Frog-knows DOS aka PC Angband 1.1 and 1.2 README.PC files say the user should create a subdirectory called "bones" before running the game; this would be for storing dead characters to bring back to attack later characters as Frog-knows' "ghosts": there's a "/lib/bones" in 2.7.4, and the 2.8.0 readme notes dead characters were stored for later haunting purposes in /lib/bone in that version, for instance. I wonder if Teague just forgot to ship an empty "bones" directory with Frog-knows and the 1.1 DOS update...but then why didn't he include one in DOS 1.2? (Or did he, but later recompilations have omitted it?) His PC Angband 1.31 and 1.4 do come with pre-made empty "BONES" directories.

Of the bones files themselves, Teague posted that a player could even write their own, as "bones files are just text files, with 4 lines in them": "Just makeup a name, put it in the 1st line; pick a number of HPs, put it in the 2nd line; pick a race, figure out the number for it, put it in the 3rd/4th line (sorry, I forget); pick a class, figure out the proper number, and put it in the other 4th/3rd line. Then name the file to the dungeon level where this fictional ghost died. (1000' = 20th lv, so filename is '20', 50' = 1st lv, so filename is '1', etc)."

Angband's player ghosts were removed with version 2.7.7 (thanks to John Harris' "Angband version history" article on setsideb.com for pointing that out; the build notes on rephial.org seemingly redundantly also note ghosts were removed in the next version, 2.7.8, so I hadn't looked back further) as Harrison deemed them "a total hack"; a ghost return under rewritten code was promised for 2.8.0, but did not materialize. As of 4.2.4, player ghosts have not returned.

Hm...

https://paleface.net/z/db/1412/06_frogk_dos11.png

https://paleface.net/z/db/1412/09_wichfrog.jpg

https://youtu.be/knjqA6ILGJI

Playing a Dunedain warrior in the DOS port of the first widely distributed version of Angband, 2.4.Frog-knows 1.1, in DOSBox!

0:00 - 50 ft (heading up)
6:48 - town - helm, cloak, gauntlet, boots
26:40 - 50 ft (heading down)
41:06 - 100 ft
54:26 - 150 ft
1:07:55 - town - lantern, shield

Here's that deleted LotR movie clip with that lady telling Aragorn what a "Doo-nuh-dign" is--with pronunciation--while he grins smugly: https://youtu.be/1g75laLtd_k?t=303

The Frog-knows ANGBAND.DOC says this of the Dunedain:

Their stats and skills in Frog-knows:

Apparently in Frog-knows--build notes say this wasn't changed until PC Angband 1.4--the stat maxes for all races and classes are the same, so chugging lots of stat potions will in theory level that side of the playing field eventually, if you play a character long enough.

I tend to play pretty slowly, so uhhh I don't know how exactly that means this will balance out. I'll probably die stupidly at some point, anyway. ''D But for now, make mine Doo-nuh-dign!

Oh, ANGBAND.DOC also says
I'd thought maybe it wasn't but supposedly it is so anyway the idea is good, let's just assume it's working correctly. : D (Because I tried looking up how the EXP change works in the source code and it looks like it's original old Koeneke Moria code and anyhow it's way over my head. ; D)

I learned to sell items to the proper shop in order to make money! : D

Found a bow and some arrows, haven't used 'em yet though. : P In Frog-knows, you just throw ("Throw/Fire" or whatever it's called) the arrows while having the bow equipped. Also you can swap your weapon to an extra Swap slot with X, so I guess I'll use the bow that way. (Alternatively you could use it with say a digging tool...but I wanna use a bow, anyway I seem to be able to do my small amounts of wall $ excavation okay with my sword so eh. ; )