Are autoexplore and autofight (ala DCSS) worth it in V to reduce early game tedium?

[emar]

Originally Posted by Estie

As for molds and bats, the LotR had Bill Ferny and neekerbreekers for starting encounters. I see nothing wrong there. You see, we arent really playing Angband. We are actually playing Moria II with the powercreep incursion that sequels are wont to have.

"The game is fine as is" is a strange statement considering all the substantial changes Nick has made since he became maintainer. In fact, there are people who mourn the loss of a maintained vanilla Angband tradition and call his game a variant, and they have a point.

I actually was thinking about the Moria legacy and started drafting a design document for a Moria-reinspired Angband fork.

Philosophy: Angband is still Moria at heart, so let's have an ill-fated expedition to reclaim it. The hope is to make a game that is near impossible to beat in the town mode, but reguarly achievable in ironman mode. Artifacts are truly legendary. The ironman player is almost guaranteed to never see one. In town mode, regular Angband gameplay resumes on dlvl 51, with artifacts easily acquired.

Ironman mode: Goal is to descend 50 levels at which point the game reaches maximum difficulty. The second half is ascending 50 levels of pure escape, being chased relentlessly by the Balrog. The player is not expected (or probably even possible) to kill the Balrog.

Town mode: The core Angband gameplay will be kept, with the Balrog put back on level 50 replacing Morgoth. The second half of the game (dlvls 51-100) is for prestige and will be delving into the deep, where the nameless creatures dwell. On dlvl 100, Nidhogg must be battled and whatever strategies players use to win will be subverted in the next version to prevent victory, akin to the original Moria. Because this will be for player levels well beyond Ironman, balance should be easier to maintain.

In both modes, the first seven levels are fixed. In ironman, the last 7 levels are also fixed. These will be the ruined city, populated with monsters (and eventually flavor objects, like skeletons and rusty gear). The remainder are randomly generated using standard dungeon generation. Persistent levels by default on both modes, with a birth option otherwise.

Food in the dungeon is old cram and cave fish and whatever the character brought with them. Cram is available in town mode for purchase, but supplies are limited.

Light is equally limited in both modes. There is no phial.

Ranged weapons will suffer penalties in narrow halls.

(Ironman Intro) "You are the last survivor of an ill-fated group tasked with transporting the One Ring to be destroyed in Mount Doom. What nameless horror slayed your guides lays behind. The doors are closed and will not open again. You must find your own way through the darkness. The wind malevolently carried one word before the abyssal silence descended: "Moria..." You hear drums, drums in the deep.

They are coming.

(Each race/class combination reflects a member of the Fellowship; only Frodo equivalent gets the ring for a newbie class. Starting gear is standardized by member.)

(Town Intro)
You are a dwarf of the second expedition sent to reclaim the city and mine from the Orcs and whatever creatures remain in the deep. The expedition has been successful and a town before the entry settled. The long fight to empty the ruined city and mines has begun.

(Standard Angband start, but with only dwarf races)

I originally thought of going with a more humorous subversion--the Amulet of Neiklot replacing the ring and the Dountmoom, but I think the darker approach mirrors the epicness and sprawl. Borderline unrelated, if anyone has read House of Leaves, I'm pretty sure it was directly inspired by Angband and Moria.

It's also ironic, because I originally was going to say that I had learned two things since playing: 1) don't argue with grognards without a playtest version and 2) Vanilla has been "butchered" and "ruined" every year since I began playing.

[emar]

Originally Posted by Nick

I'm not sure if you're aware, but there is a kind of primitive version of autoexplore already existing, where you can target any grid on the screen, and the game will attempt to pathfind toward it. This may not be immediately obvious to new players, but Angband is quite a complex game, and it's hard to make every feature of it apparent at first glance.

As for the reddit issue, my reaction is partly due to many, many years of reading r/roguelikes and being told that Angband is too grindy and DCSS and ToME are much better by people who haven't played it since 1998. There's also been a fair few cases of people showing up here and starting threads about how Angband should be more like DCSS. So I thought it was worth at least putting the position that Angband is its own game, and that popularity - even relative popularity among roguelikes - isn't necessarily the best judge of what direction it should take.

Using CMD_PATHFIND in conjunction with refactoring the targeting code to use the CMD system and moving the auxiliary functions for targeting into player-* and cleaning them up is how I imagine a fully-featured autoexplore would be eventually be implemented "correctly" from what I could gather from the codebase.

And I get it. Angband is its own game, but it has a PR problem and is trending in the same way as Ham Radio in America (emacs might be a more accessible metaphor) where people have been doing (mostly) the same thing for decades and the youngins' don't appreciate it because they have smart phones and computers.

It's a tragedy to me that Diablo ate Angband's metaphorical lunch. Introducing the general population (not being gatekept by grognards on reddit and elsewhere) to Angband via smartphones by building on Cuboideb et. al's work with sane defaults is I think a great way to keep the Angband player base alive (firmly segregated from the grognards via the playstore) akin to the adoption of Software-Defined Radio by less neophobic hams. Angband is an absolutely perfect game for smartphones if the controls can be optimized in a way that doesn't impact PC players at all.

[Estie]

Originally Posted by emar

It's a tragedy to me that Diablo ate Angband's metaphorical lunch. Introducing the general population (not being gatekept by grognards on reddit and elsewhere) to Angband via smartphones by building on Cuboideb et. al's work with sane defaults is I think a great way to keep the Angband player base alive (firmly segregated from the grognards via the playstore) akin to the adoption of Software-Defined Radio by less neophobic hams. Angband is an absolutely perfect game for smartphones if the controls can be optimized in a way that doesn't impact PC players at all.

Diablo not only ate Angbands lunch, it also consumed the last remainders of Blizzards winter supplies, but thats another story.

I am about as far from a legal expert as you can get, but my limited understanding was that Angband code was protected from being used commercially. So, could it end up in a play store at all, and if so, why ?

[emar]

Originally Posted by Estie

I am about as far from a legal expert as you can get, but my limited understanding was that Angband code was protected from being used commercially. So, could it end up in a play store at all, and if so, why ?

Cuboideb's version (and it's antecedents) are already in the Google playstore (but not on F-Droid for some reason). Right now that version is effectively Angband-for-people-that-already-play-Angband. Making a vanilla-only version that already has a "just works" config would be Angband-for-people-that-stumbled-onto-it-while-waiting-for-the-bus.

[Estie]

I didnt know that, very interesting. Do you have to pay for playing it on the phone ?

[emar]

Originally Posted by Estie

I didnt know that, very interesting. Do you have to pay for playing it on the phone ?

No, it's freely available. From what I understand, takkaria built a second port based off of Angdroid (I can't find any details) which Cuboideb resurrected. Given that takkaria is a former maintainer, I'm guessing everything is above board.

The reviews for Cuboideb's port are interesting in that it's pretty much just grognards either happy to have the game on Android or complaining about Angband 4.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by emar

I actually was thinking about the Moria legacy and started drafting a design document for a Moria-reinspired Angband fork.

Please do this. I got chills reading the description; a game which put this into practice would be epic. I don't know how much you've looked at Sil, but your ironman mode is very similar in game trajectory. I'm not going to comment very coherently now because my mind is kind of reeling with the implications, but imagine a couple of paragraphs of praise and that's more or less my reaction

Originally Posted by emar

I originally thought of going with a more humorous subversion--the Amulet of Neiklot replacing the ring and the Dountmoom, but I think the darker approach mirrors the epicness and sprawl. Borderline unrelated, if anyone has read House of Leaves, I'm pretty sure it was directly inspired by Angband and Moria.

I have not read House of Leaves, but I want to now.

Also, btw, I believe the original Android port was written by david3x3x3 and/or retrobits (see this thread, this github repo and this google code site).

[Pete Mack]

The Android port is excellent, BTW. Yes it could be more emphatic about defaulting to the latest V. But that'scan easy fix.

[Cuboideb]

Originally Posted by emar

Right now that version is effectively Angband-for-people-that-already-play-Angband. Making a vanilla-only version that already has a "just works" config would be Angband-for-people-that-stumbled-onto-it-while-waiting-for-the-bus.

Good observation.

Two unexpected issues I found with this port are:

1. Input speed. There is plenty of room to simplify the input method, but I noticed something. Angband players type really fast (you can hear it in youtube), so I tried to improve the port in that way (full keyboard, automatic display of menu options for the ribbon, floating buttons, etc.) instead of going for less amount of input widgets.

2. Minimum display size. This is a big one. Angband (and variants) screens are really huge for mobile. My favorite device is a tablet in landscape mode.

Right now I'm adding an experimental setting (optional) for halving z_info->max_range for V and FA to see how it works for large tile sizes. I think the game will be harder this way for mages (more close ranged combats), but I want to see if it improves the mobile gameplay.

[Pete Mack]

Did you change breath attenuation to match? Again, this matters most for mage, priest, rogue, and, ranger. (In that order.)