New Verison of NPPAngband version 050 to be released in about a week

[nppangband]

Hi everybody,

I think it has been 4-5 years since the last official NPPAngband release. This next version has been a long time coming. This has partly been due to real life slowing down development (particularly for me), partly because Diego and I didn't realize what a massive undertaking it would be to finish everything we wanted to accomplish, and mostly because the changes we made kept leading to new ideas and new possibilities. Even while I was sidetracked, Diego just kept right on developing, releasing beta versions and "work in progress" versions without us thinking of cutting things off and making an official release. Between the two of us, he really deserves almost all of the credit for this version

There are probably enough changes to justify 3-4 releases. It all started with incorporating the UNAngband Terrain features (the dungeon is now full of hundred of different types of terrain, such as sand, ice, water, forest, lava, mud, etc...), and different races, classes and monster will have various combat advantages or disadvantages based on the terrain they are in. Then we added an effects layer to the dungeon (the classic Angband dungeon has three layers, the floor, the objects, and the monsters/player), and all changes to any of them are instantaneous and permanent. The effects layer allows for things to happen to the dungeon, players, spells, and monsters over time. Then we made a new character class, the druid class, that is a combination of the mage/priest spellsets based almost entirely on nature (spells based on fire, acid, cold, light, etc). We changed the spellsets of the mage (whose combat spells are now based monstly on super-natural forces rather than elemental forces (fire, acid, etc...), and we threw in some fun, new spells for the priest as well. The ranger now uses the Druid spellset rather than the mage spellbooks. There are hundreds of other changes to the game as well (no more hydra pits/nests, I promise. That was one of my biggest mistakes ever). Anssi Ramela also helped out by creating about 25 new mid-level to high level monsters as well and crating lots of spells for all threee classes.

The new NPP web site is http://forum.nppangband.org (thanks to Kurt Tannert for hosting this), and my new e-mail is nppangbanddev@verizon.net.

One problem is that, due to me moving, and the crash of the computer where I kept all of my NPP records and files, I don't have a complete chagelist. I am going to do my best to make a list, but what I won't have is a complete list of everybody who contributed to this version. There have been at least a dozen people who have sent to me either bug fixes, some code and features that improved the game, new graphics tiles, etc. I usually credit them in the changelist, and would like do so again. So if you have contributed something to NPPAngband in the last 4 years or so, please remind me know so I can properly recognize your efforts.

A virtually complete version of the game is available at the website now. I am adding some new colors to the game (I don't remember if we went from 16 to 32 in NPP 040 or 050), but it is going up to around 40 now. I just want to make it so the inventory list displays the contents of the quiver if there is room on the screen, and then it will be released. It is currently stable and has been tested pretty thoroughly (thank again to the many people who have playtested NPP over the years, you all are the best).

For those who choose to play this version, please just don't try to walk into lava or boiling mud without the proper equipment. You won't fare any better in the game than you would in real life.

-Jeff

[Pete Mack]

Congrats, Jeff!

[andrewdoull]

Congrats to see you still here!

[Magnate]

Welcome back.

[getter77]

Who doesn't love a mega-release? Sounds awesome and I do believe this will be my first venture at NPPAngband in the coming times.

[ekolis]

Just expect a lot of complaints about various, ahem, pet peeves, which have been addressed in later versions of Vanilla

But yeah, glad to see this variant coming back to life

[nppangband]

That will be my next challenge....to catch up on everything that has happened in Vanilla, and make the coding changes necessary to have NPP be under the same GPL licesense that [V] is now.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by nppangband

That will be my next challenge....to catch up on everything that has happened in Vanilla, and make the coding changes necessary to have NPP be under the same GPL licesense that [V] is now.

And it is a challenge - V is being energetically developed at the moment. I am certainly struggling to keep up - so FA actually has a number of simplified implementations of V features. For that reason, and because a lot of the other code will be familiar to you (there was a time there where every new FA release had a bunch of stolen NPP features ), you might find it a useful resource.

[Pete Mack]

Originally Posted by nppangband

That will be my next challenge....to catch up on everything that has happened in Vanilla, and make the coding changes necessary to have NPP be under the same GPL licesense that [V] is now.

@Nick
Since you've been borrowing code, what are the new V features most worth borrowing? I only know the ones I actually worked on.

@Jeff
You might find it easier to borrow from FA also because its file structure is closer to the original than V is now.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

@Nick
Since you've been borrowing code, what are the new V features most worth borrowing? I only know the ones I actually worked on.

Item list, ID-by-use (although I've done my own version of that), GPL, a bunch of small fixes. I think I've got my basic squelching from V now (with modifications). Pretty much all the z-* files. Pref-file handling. Plus there's a bunch of new stuff that I'm trying to work out whether to put in or not.