angband speedrun

[Pete Mack]

Eh, there are two kinds of risks: calculated and blunders. Speed runs encourage the latter.

Originally Posted by Derakon

It teaches very risky habits, I would say. It's all in what you're optimizing for, after all. This would be very much an opposite to the old "try to win with every character, try to mitigate every risk" strategy of the 90's and early 2000's.

[Grotug]

Originally Posted by Derakon

It teaches very risky habits, I would say. It's all in what you're optimizing for, after all. This would be very much an opposite to the old "try to win with every character, try to mitigate every risk" strategy of the 90's and early 2000's.

I like OP's proposition. I find taking a lot of risks and burning through @s is a more fun way to play Angband than the "90s" way of playing Derakon alludes to. One of the things I really like about Angband is risk management. I believe it is a major reason I am able to complete quick games; by taking relatively "low" risks. For me a 10% chance of dying late in the game is not that high a risk. While I try to avoid taking them late, I will from time to time if I feel the pay off is worth it. I often take greater risks pre DL50 (the deeper I go, the smaller the risks I am willing to take). I take lots of high risks in the first 20 DLs. While I understand others will avoid taking 10% chance of death risk at all costs. Sometimes I feel my experiences in Angband inform my risk management in real life: if I speed here, there is an x chance a cop will be nearby, so I am willing to go 20mph over the speed limit. If I eat this morsel of food that fell on the floor (employing the 3 second rule) there is an x chance I will get sick.

Surely taking no risks in Angband isn't all that fun?

How many megabytes is 3 hours of video at 480p? I assume OBS allows setting resolution? I may try this. (I have been trying to find a good screen recording software but haven't yet found one I like).

I think I could beat Angband in 3 hours. But it would take a lot of tries. I think I would play HT Warrior. You can dive incredibly fast with that combo. My strategy would probably take major risks in the first DL30. This challenge suits my playstyle: impatient; non-analzying, brazen, reckless.

[HugoTheGreat2011]

OBS is very flexible with the options. You can shrink it down to 480p high-quality settings. And 3-hours hmm...I guess a couple 100 MBs. Do a sample recording or two. Personally, I've made 1080p + 1920x1080 high quality PosChengband + heavy metal MP4 videos lasting nearly 150 minutes taking almost 2GB...not too shabby. But, definitely give OBS a try.

[Patashu]

Yes, you can set resolution and bitrate to any values you like in OBS.

I would say 3 hours of 480p footage is 1-2 gigabytes.

[Grotug]

Hmm.. maybe I'll stick with Quicktime. File > Start recording. That's about as complicated as I can handle a piece of software being. :-/

I did figure out how to set the recording resolution in OBS so as to not use up my entire minuscule HD. But figuring out how to record my screen is proving daunting. (Let alone just the window). Why is a piece of software that records the screen so complicated? :-/

So Youtube Tutorial 1 was pretty useless/poor. YT Tutorial 2 was a bit better and I figured out the very first thing I need to do in order to record my screen is select my source. Now to figure out which is my source:



I selected Display Capture but playback is still black.....

EDIT: I don't need transitions, I don't need fade.. I don't need two windows... I just wanna record mah screen. :-/ The only reason I'm not using Quicktime is because I can't set the resolution lower than my screen's. Though I suppose I could just lower the resolution of my screen and then record. I'm gonna try that.

My monitor resolutions are not very modifiable; so using Quicktime would be 4.5GB after 180minutes. I guess I'll fumble around in OBS a bit more.

EDIT: I got OBS to record my screen. Now my next hurdle (which Quicktime has no qualms about) is that I use the zoom feature on the Mac which allows you to zoom in on the screen by holding down ctrl and using the trackpad to zoom in. I do this because I cannot for the life of me figure out how to have the main Angband window take up my entire screen (I have an 11" screen so normal windowed play is not feasible).

So to get around this I just zoom in on the window and then play the game. But OBS ignores the zoom, recording, what it probably thinks to be the "true" screen rather than the zoomed in portion of the screen. So I get a video output that has the game take up 1/4 of the screen when playing the video back.

EDIT: So I used OBS's transform feature and centered the window and then stretched the window. The preview shows that angband now takes up the whole screen. But when I record, the ouptut is blackness... (nothing recorded).

EDIT: I restarted my computer and now it's working. I guess I should eat something before playing 3 hours nonstop. Thanks for the software recommendation! Glad I figured it out.

https://youtu.be/czxxlM0SynU#t=25s

https://youtu.be/czxxlM0SynU#t=14m5s things get a little more exciting.

[Derakon]

Good luck! Three unique orcs in close proximity...that's a fun encounter to try to do quickly.

[AnonymousHero]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Eh, there are two kinds of risks: calculated and blunders. Speed runs encourage the latter.

Well, that and... exploits. I wonder if there's any absurdly powerful exploits still lurking in Angband.

(Of course given that there are no reloads, it's going to be a lot more difficult to pull off any type of luck manipulation, but if you programmed a bot, you can conceivably get "arbitrarily" lucky. Or, if you found a "perfect" RNG seed, I suppose.)

EDIT: However, I am reminded that someone did actually complete a no-reload Baldur's Gate 1 run in ~1h30m IIRC... without exploits, IIRC.

[Pete Mack]

You mean beyond ridiculous archery damage, LOS abuse, and crazy randarts?

Originally Posted by AnonymousHero

Well, that and... exploits. I wonder if there's any absurdly powerful exploits still lurking in Angband.

[Pete Mack]

@grotug--
If you can't disarm traps, 'jump' on them with '_' command. Useful for going down trap doors too. Also, I find N/S exploration works better than E/W. The hallways are shorter, on average.

[Estie]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

You mean beyond ridiculous archery damage, LOS abuse, and crazy randarts?

I dont consider crazy randarts to be abusive. For every randart game where you get a "crazy" setup, there are 5 where you end up beyond par.

It could be considered abusive if people played randart games to get a win. But that is (rightly) not the case. If someone has trouble winning, it is a much better strategy to play standart games to get the first win.