Why aren't you playing Unangband?

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Bodkin

I'm already a fan, but I'm currently not playing that much.

Con:
It still has some annoying bugs, such as that unholy "magic bag of items" whose primary function seems to be to crash the game, or else permanently destroy an inventory slot.

I've never had any problems with magical bags. Could you file a bug report and email me an affected save file?

What platform are you running on?

[camlost]

Why am I not playing UnAngband? Good question. Mostly, I really like S already, so there's only a small incentive to switch. The other end of that is that my perception of UnAngband is that there is a lot of changes, which means it will take longer to become accustomed to, which doesn't work as well compared to when I'm just looking for a distraction. NPP, Quick, FA, and O are all pretty easy to pick up without investing too much time and energy. Of course, I haven't even d/l a current version of Un, so maybe I'm selling it short.

[Matthias]

Unangband, the raw gem...
Did you know that you can increase the damage of fire branded arrows by throwing a flask of oil onto the target?

Un is full of them, little details that give, in theory, the game a kind of life that is nowhere to be found in any *band. Too bad there are way way too many of them , so it is ultra hard to get into the game. I have played 5 or 6 characters to level35 and I still don't know which of the 3 or 4 instances of Bree I have to avoid at nights at all costs.

Too many options, too many things to look out for, resulting in playing takes forever. Especially with the new monster generation you can't just clear a level. Doing so might take an hour of careful planing. That is: If the features allow you to. Features... I don't like them in NPP where they are a minor danger/annoyance. And Un is so overfull of them, even lacking a normal dungeon more or less all the game. Did anyone ever try to play in those water dungeons?!? Seriously... Or those chasm ones? I guess one could disable the campaign, but that would take away half of what makes Un special, so I'd rather not do that. The campaign itself is a great idea... It is huge, I bet half of the levels have never seen an @.

So what does Unangband need?

Playtesters:
Many of them. I can talk about how charging is too weak deeper down, with noone else playing, I could be right or just not good enough.

Get rid of the annoyances:
Allow going back the route you have taken for two ingame hours (say backtrack own footsteps) in all but a very few cases (entering lonely mountain should stay the way it is ...).

Get someone to draw a map of the campaign. Not the autogenerated one that, I think, Pete made, but a jpg one with descriptions. Heavy spoilers.

Offer some goodies:
Heng's Big home is a nice start. There is way more stuff I want to store than those 24 places can hold. Further, allow all ego item melee branding combos. Allow branding of Magic items. Remove penalties from ego boots. Yes this makes the game easier. The game is hard, it needs rewards to make it worth going for. Take Heng again as an example... Scrolls of Artifact creating... where are those in Un.. Scrolls of Magic item creating could be available too, and not deeper then ?acq.
The perfect variant, in my eyes is challenging to the max, but still very fast to play and very rewarding. In Heng there are two uniques that can actually stop the time! In Un, the generation of only deep monsters should be challenge enough alone...

Yes I know you hate color coded recall screens, but with all the new things, a well readable monster/feature recall is necessary to speed up the gameplay.

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Matthias

Unangband, the raw gem...

As always, I appreciate your insights. I'm going to talk about your specific comments in another threat - as its likely to take over what it supposed to be a quick comment thread.

[TJA]

For me, this was a valueable reading.
It did increase my interest in Unangbang.

[coyo7e]

Yes, I'd never heard of Unangband before, I've been playing Dungeon Crawl lately, but it's pretty unforgiving and has a lot of screwy artifacts and stuff. I was surfing around to DL the original Angband or Zangband, and stumbled onto this forum, and the descriptions of cool stuff like dipping arrows and other weirdness really excited me!

...Are there any online resources with class/race info, etc? The in-game helpfiles seem pretty far out of date, and I really am clueless about what some of the stats and classes are for/can do. What's size matter for, what's an artificer, is there any difference in the different "basic" (ie, all +0, 100% exp) races of men, except flavor-wise?

[Madoka]

For me, it's just too many variants with the band designation. I looked thorugh the Favorites Variants thread and tried several. I liked Hengband the most out of the three I had tried, and ended up on Entroband.

Just luck of the draw to begin with really. But now I really like the features of Entroband. If Un is similar I'd certainly give it a spin.

Oh, one other reason is that I'm on Vista, and Entroband is the only band that shows blocks for walls, which I prefer. Not a deal breaker certainly, but it is just another reason I stopped looking at variants after Entro.

[petebull]

The poll is missing an option:
- the berlios server don't respond

I'll try again

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by petebull

The poll is missing an option:
- the berlios server don't respond

I'll try again

You're right. Berlios is intermittently rubbish. Pav has offered to take over hosting, and I keep meaning to take him up on it. However, the bug tracking on Berlios is (semi) useful, and I'll probably end up hosting it myself when we end up heading back to the antipodes in a few months.

[Daven_26d1]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

Key points of difference from Sangband:
* Dungeon is more interesting, with more dungeon features than any other variant.

This gets me interested, but do you mean more feature tiles or more unusual rooms, or both?

* Possibly a harder game than Sangband.

Possibly? Can you give me a bit more on this? I *love* the more challenging variants/features. I'm not really bothered about being able to win a game, I just want to have to think carefully nearly every single turn inside the dungeon.

TBF, I'll probably give UnAngband a shot next seeing as how you're the only maintainer asking people why its not being played, I kinda feel sorry for you!

If a lack of players is likely to stop development of the project, that would be a shame. Come on peeps, play the guys game!

EDIT - I just read Matthias' post - throwing oil on a target to improve fire hit damage! Little features like that are a big winner for me. I love V for what now seems like simplicity, so in a variant I guess I thrive on complexity.