Ascii Dreams poll

[myshkin]

Originally Posted by Mikko Lehtinen

When Angband doubled the dungeons levels from 50 to 100, it might have lost some very important structure, too. Now there's an effort to rebalance the monsters for 100 levels; perhaps it should be accompanied by adding end bosses, too.

Levels 33, 66, 99, and 100 seem intuitive to me.

Oangband is the closest to my ideal Angband: serious, tough, epic. Perhaps I should try this idea there, and tie learning specialties to killing end bosses... Who should the end bosses be?

If we sort the V list of uniques by level and divide in thirds, the likely candidates are

• 33: Mim; Lokkak; perhaps Bert, Bill, and Tom together; Lorgan; Kavlax if we want to be mean
• 66: The Balrog of Moria; Shelob; Saruman; The Mouth of Sauron; Thuringwethil; Glaurung

Saruman seems like the clear winner to me for the second third. None of the first third candidates is particularly thematic. Uvatha lurks a little deeper, and I could certainly see the first ringwraith as a decent first boss.

[Derakon]

My main concern with minibosses is that they force the player to stop and power up enough to deal with them. My preferred style of play involves diving much deeper than I "should" be and then very carefully choosing my fights, which doesn't mesh well with being forced to stop and kill a specific powerful-for-his-depth enemy.

We had discussions of good ways to implement minibosses in other threads, though. Specifically this one, with my personal opinion.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

I like both myshkin's and Derakon's ideas.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by myshkin

If I were more on the ball, I would point you to a github tag. Until that work is complete, though, you can see http://rephial.org/downloads/3.0/ang....0.7s3.tar.bz2

And I kept the diff for precisely this purpose, if you want it.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

I don't believe infinite dungeons is an issue. As Ido points out, you can balance the game around either battles, between which you can effectively completely recover, or the complete dungeon, which requires a finite dungeon. Provided Angband is balanced around making sure each battle is challenging, I believe infinite dungeons is fine.

Of course, by that I mean Hengband infinite dungeons, not any other type...

I had to google that:

The biggest change is addition of the 'Saved Floors' which is added only on the Hengband 1.5.0. You can climb back stairs to get back former floors, but different stairs will always take you to (infinite) different floors. More over when you get back to the surface using stairs, Word of Recall, or some other way, all saved floors will be cleared and you can explore entirely new infinite number of floors. Artifacts and unique monsters will appear freely on any new floors, and if old ones are already in saved floors, they will disapper from saved floors(they had moved to new floor). Random quest level is 'only-once' and stairs will be blocked from the inside once the player exited the quest level. Level-teleport, trap door, and stair creation take you to the floor right above or right under the former floor which is connected with one of the stairs in the former floor; so you can get back to pick up the long sword (4d5) even *after* you have fallen from trap door.

Interesting!

[andrewdoull]

Originally Posted by Magnate

And I kept the diff for precisely this purpose, if you want it.

At one point the algorithm I used was included in the Angband source - in init1.c

Which begs the question when that file was removed.

[Mikko Lehtinen]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

Provided Angband is balanced around making sure each battle is challenging, I believe infinite dungeons is fine.

Of course, by that I mean Hengband infinite dungeons, not any other type...

This combination really could work!

OK, how do we make each battle challenging then?

Maybe there should be some monsters, or some monster abilities, that wouldn't get any easier to defeat as you gain levels. That way even a level 50 character would face some real danger even on DL 1.

One idea, just to pick an example: Sanity score, which would depend only on race and class but not on character level. It would work just like hitpoints against some monster attacks.

Or divide hitpoints into endurance and life, with life points not increasing with levels. Usually life points would be reduced only after endurance is at zero. But some kind of attacks would reduce life points directly, like curse spells and poison.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by andrewdoull

At one point the algorithm I used was included in the Angband source - in init1.c

Which begs the question when that file was removed.

It was removed circa 3.1.2, when all the text file parsing was replaced with a new system that lives solely in init2.c. Thanks for the reminder - I'll dig up the algorithm for fizzix as well, in case he's interested in seeing how the changes were derived.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Magnate

It was removed circa 3.1.2, when all the text file parsing was replaced with a new system that lives solely in init2.c. Thanks for the reminder - I'll dig up the algorithm for fizzix as well, in case he's interested in seeing how the changes were derived.

Anything is useful. From what I gathered, the rebalancing mainly sorted out monsters in the first 40 levels, but there are some curious differences, like time hounds being moved up.

[ekolis]

Originally Posted by Mikko Lehtinen

Or divide hitpoints into endurance and life, with life points not increasing with levels. Usually life points would be reduced only after endurance is at zero. But some kind of attacks would reduce life points directly, like curse spells and poison.

Hmm, that sounds similar to Steamband's Hitpoints/Woundpoints system... except in Steamband, I think WP did increase with levels, and also, it was possible to lose WP even if you had HP remaining; the chance of losing WP instead of HP from any given point of damage was simply WP / (HP + WP).