FAangband (Now at 1.4.2)

[getter77]

http://angband.oook.cz/faangband/

FAangband is based on Oangband 0.7.0 (started by Leon Marrick, now maintained and developed by Bahman Rabii).  Changes have been made principally with the intent of immersing the player in the world of Tolkien's Silmarillion late in the First Age.  While it is certainly not perfectly consistent (all the bad
guys are still alive; all the good guys are dead, or at least have lost their best equipment), an attempt has been made to remove as many anachronisms as possible.

Here are the big changes:

- Races have been significantly changed.  Half-Orcs, Half-Trolls, Half-elves and Shadow Fairies have gone; there are new varieties of Elves, Dwarves and Men.  Dwarves as a whole tend to have better Intelligence than Wisdom; the reverse is true for (most) Elves and Hobbits.  Different races also have significantly different starting conditions.

- There is wilderness.  Wilderness is like and unlike dungeon. On the similar side, it is randomly generated in rectangular pieces; the "level" still only goes up or down by one in going from one piece to the next; there is a
  structured way of advancing through the wilderness.  On the other hand, it looks different (no rooms); there are sometimes choices as to how to advance (north or west, maybe, rather than just down); and tactics become quite different.  There are five basic types of wilderness - open plains, dense forests, rocky mountains, harsh deserts and pathless swamps.  It also has day and night, which affects light-hating monsters and the player's need for light.

- There are multiple towns, small and large, spread throughout the wilderness. Each race starts in its natural town.  This means that the starting towns for some races are in the middle of quite dangerous wilderness.  In order to reduce extreme effects of this (instant death, or instant growth of 15 levels), some races have improved starting equipment, and several races start with some experience already (advancing them in character level up to a maximum of level 5).  High elves are no longer the easy option, at least at first.  You can move your house to a different town, but only once you have walked there.

- There are multiple dungeons (five, to be precise).  At the bottom of each is a guardian, who can only appear there or in special circumstances (which you may be able to guess...) be summoned.  The first specialist ability (and second as well for warriors) is still learned at the beginning, but the two others each become available on killing a dungeon guardian.  It is possible to ignore the other dungeons and head straight for Angband, but there's a heavy price to pay.

- Word of Recall works differently.  Read away from your home town, it still takes you back there.  Read in your home town, you are given a list of up to four points to recall to.  When you recall back to town, you get the choice of which of your recall points you wish to update.

- Anything from later than the First Age has been removed.  No more Rings of Power, Grishnakh, Anduril, Saruman, Witch-King, etc.  There are some new uniques, artifacts and ego-items (and some just renamed).  There are also new item sets, and some reworked artifacts.

- There is no savefile compatibility with Oangband or Angband.  Savefiles had to change at least to accommodate changes to data structures (particularly the player data), and the big changes to races meant that any translation would be rather artificial.  Anyone with an Oangband savefile should keep playing it in Oangband; anyone with an Oangband compatible Angband savefile (version 2.9.1 or older) should be congratulated and, well, upgrade.

v1.2.9

This is savefile compatible with 1.2.8, and fixes all the bugs I currently know about. Please let me know if there are bugs, dislikes or other problems.

Plans for version 1.3:

    -AI improvements (maybe)
    -Massive wilderness revamp
    -Changes to travelling and recall

Plans for version 2.0:

    -More AI improvements
    -Maiar more Tolkienesque, and playable Spirits, and as a consequence
    -Playing as a monster, Posband style

[getter77]

v1.2.10

It's savefile compatible with 1.2.9. Tile issues are now fixed, I think, plus a couple of other little things and further code update. Oh, and also the bug which resulted in chem's gold-in-the-inventory bug is AFAIK not fixed. Please let me know if it occurs again (and if you happen to notice when; cause for bug and patches to fix also accepted).

[getter77]

v1.2.11

Well, that was a long week.

FAangband 1.2.11 is now available for windows, OSX or as source from the download page.

The help crash bug, standard roller bug and lack of shapechange key are fixed; there are also some UI updates.

My current plan is:

    1.Fix all gameplay bugs
    2.Get the UI in order (proper Shockbolt tile support, good default layout on Windows, Cocoa port properly operational, etc.)
    3.Call the resulting thing 1.3


I hope this release substantially achieves step 1, but I believe there are still some sporadic bugs around that are unfixed - in particular, I have not been able to reproduce the weird gold-in-the-inventory bug, so I'd appreciate a savefile if anyone comes across that. In fact, any gameplay bugs are ardently sought.

Thank you all for your attention.

[getter77]

v1.3

FAangband 1.3 is now available from the download page. Thanks to pav for hosting, and to everyone who has sent feedback.

The big changes for this release are:

    -A compressed wilderness map - the wilderness and all the dungeons except Angband have had levels cut out, and it is much quicker for any character to get to the first dungeon (Amon Rûdh);
    -Autoscum has gone back from being a birth option to being a switchable option; also there's a new "hard mode" (also switchable) where levels have a much higher rate of interesting rooms, pits and vaults;
    -Shockbolt's tiles are included, and default in windows, and Nomad's tiles now work much better;
    -The new trap handling (although introduced in some 1.2.x) is probably worth a mention, as traps and objects can now exist in the same grid.


I have also updated the page summarising the state of play with Shockbolt's tiles - there are gaps, but mostly I've plugged them with 32x32 tiles. Obviously I would like to see them filled properly, but I expect Shockbolt may have one or two other things to be doing

It's worth noting too that there are RPMs for a number of linux distributions, and both Carbon and Cocoa versions for OSX.

[Holsety]

    -A compressed wilderness map - the wilderness and all the dungeons except Angband have had levels cut out, and it is much quicker for any character to get to the first dungeon (Amon Rûdh);

Thank god. Slogging through the wilderness was just a pain, to be honest.

[getter77]

v1.3.1

Version 1.3.1 is now the one on the download page, and also on the variants tab. Should be savefile compatible with 1.3.0, but back up when upgrading just to make sure. Many thanks to those who have reported bugs.

Bugs fixed/improvements made:

    -Neaten object info (in dumps, etc)
    -Fix crash in command menu
    -Stop crashes when changing to ASCII in SDL
    -Fix regional map (it is now shorter range, but accurate)
    -Improve item origins
    -Remove some anomalies between wands and staves
    -Fix to UTF8 in html screen dumps
    -Make squelching from the ground more sensible
    -Fix bug with speed update when leaving water
    -Update Complainer
    -Fix some race heights and weights
    -Improve overhead map
    -Make 'no' answer work in stores
    -Redo Shockbolt tile flavours (especially potions)
    -Fix dungeon/compressed mode Nowhere Town bug

Failed to find/fix/repeat:

    -Bug affecting use of numbers in keymaps
    -Telekinesis/arrow pickup not working properly when the pack is full
    -Odd line-of-sight or telepathy bug involving seeing into a distant room

[getter77]

v1.3.2

There is one obvious new feature - Sil-style hybrid and solid block walls have been duly stolen, and are now options (=, Display Options). In a similar vein (get it) neutral monsters have a shaded background, and the trap detect edge uses shading as well.

Bugfixes:

    Element proofing only proofs one element
    Occasional mana for warriors has been removed
    Staff pricing works properly
    Inventory behaves as it should now (no more vanishing items and overfull pack)
    Origin of store-bought items is displayed properly
    Adamantite can be generated (thanks kaypy)
    The itemlist will not crash with too many items (kaypy)
    Spell displays are more accurate, the resistance spell no longer hastes (!), some other minor bits and pieces (all kaypy)
    Randart missile branding activation has a timeout
    Unarmed combat gets Holy Light bonus when appropriate
    Game autosaves on level change
    32x32 tiles are using buzzkill's latest Universal Tileset
    Player race monsters appear in the correct places - note that the fix for this means the game has a noticeable pause on startup before loading the map


Bugs not yet fixed include spellcasting keymap issues, the lighting bug and the old trap detect radius not vanishing until the player moves after a new detect. I also have not done tile substitution for shapechanged players.

Oh, and there's a new bug - html screenshots are broken

[getter77]

v1.3.3

New features:

    -Hard mode in wilderness is now harder (monsters are tougher)
    -Tol-In-Gaurhoth still has lots of wolves and undead, but only the regular amount of hounds
    -Neutral and sleeping monsters are separated properly in the monster list

Bugfixes:

    -html dumps now work
    -Stole Elly's new view code from Vanilla, fixing the lighting bug
    -Made the throw command start with quiver items if any
    -Fixed cocoa port version number
    -Object pseudo-id merging is better (notable activatable items like magestaffs)

I believe all bugs remaining are minor; please let me know if I'm wrong.

[getter77]

v1.4

New game map
There is now a fourth game map. As well as the compressed and extended wilderness and the hybrid dungeon, there is a Vanilla-style dungeon - complete with town at the top, Sauron at level 99, Morgoth at level 100, etc. In many ways playing on this map is very like an updated and modified Oangband.

Option revamp
The process of choosing a character now starts with choice of map (as above) and then "game modes" - which are what used to be called birth options. Map and modes appear in the 'C' screen and character dumps, but not in the options. Regular options have been trimmed down and reorganised, too.

Improved squelch
There is now a menu on item destruction like the Vanilla one, but squelching is finer grained than in V. Each level of squelch (good, average, etc) can be set individually for each type of item, and individual ego types can also be set to squelch; all this should be easy from the destruction menu, but can also be set by going to squelch under the options menu.

There are also a bunch of minor improvements and bugfixes:

    -Wilderness ironman works properly again
    -Choice of specialty is slightly smoother
    -Spell and other menus are a bit neater
    -Shopkeepers don't get ripped off as easily
    -Autoinscriptions work properly now
    -Quiver inscriptions work properly for throwing weapons, and trigger automatic pickup
    -Pseudo-ID inscriptions are wiped properly when the item is fully known
    -Item selection should always start on the right one of inventory, equipment, quiver or floor
    -A lot of savefile and other code improvements imported form Vanilla
    -Door creation works properly
    -Artifact rods have timeouts
    -Word of Recall is always stocked by the Alchemist

[getter77]

v1.4.1

   

-Quickstart works
    -File dumps work
    -Items that get squelch status on ID are dropped immediately
    -Running stops the step before being adjacent to a visible monster
    -Fragile items (ie will possibly be destroyed with another uncurse attempt) are marked as such in their description

[getter77]

v1.4.2

This is mostly a bugfix release, with also quite a bit of underlying code restructure as the whole V maintainer thing encourages me to align codebases as mush as possible.

One noticeable change is a better menu for choosing game modes (formerly known as birth options); the game also now moves from the splashscreen to the news screen without requiring a keypress. And The Complainer gets some new complaints

Bugs fixed include:

    -Object descriptions contain full curse and curse removal info
    -Perfectly balanced weapons ID properly
    -Player can no longer move through the lava unharmed by saying they don't want to
    -Various issues with shapechange from chaos are fixed
    -Some tile allocations have been corrected
    -Trap visibility issues after amnesia fixed
    -Door placement on dungeon generation works properly now (2-year-old bug finally fixed)
    -Trap detect edge drawing updates immediately, and is complete
    -Objects meant to be light (weight) now are, instead of giving permanent light
    -Items bought from a store still show their curses once bought
    -Trap setting can be chosen as an ability by warriors, rangers and druids again
    -Detection animation doesn't leave map errors

I actually don't know of any remaining bugs.