Do you guys think it's worth playing vanilla ADOM and angband?

[Amnekian]

I heard about JADE and I'm not sure if there is a "upgrade" version of angban, but my question is, do you think it's worth it jumping into the vanilla versions of these games?

[AgingMinotaur]

JADE is an alternative name for ADOM 2, which is still in its early development. The original ADOM remains one of the better RLs out there, according to many – certainly well worth playing. Since ADOM is closed source, it hasn't spawned any variants as such.

Angband has a whole bunch of variants, and not so many seem to play good old vanilla Angband anymore. Still a great game, though – I used to play Angband by the bucketload about 10-20 years ago. I wouldn't be able to recommend one of all the variants (having played just a few).

Both are worth checking out. And don't forget to give the original Rogue a spin

As always,
Minotauros

[Skeletor]

Adom has been my first roguelike many years ago and despite having tried a lot of other roguelikes, I still enjoy it very much. So yes, still definitely worth playing, as Jade is still far from being as complex as its preceder.

I'm not an Angband fan but I wouldn't play vanilla Angband even if I was one.. very dull. There are some interesting variants out there, like QuickBand and UnAngband.

[guest509]

  I'd say it's still worth playing Adom, as you'll appreciate more what Adom II (JADE) is doing.

  Angband has been eclipsed in quality by some of the newer games. At least that's what I hear. SIL is pretty good, I've fired it up a few times.

[AgingMinotaur]

Okay, I'll yield/jump on the bandwagon, and agree that classic Angband is perhaps most interesting for historical reasons, or if you're going to make a variant. Last I tried it, I admittedly went: "Meh, guess I'll just play a game of Adom."

As always,
Minotauros

[TheCreator]

Angband is just like Linux - thousands of variants, it's virtually impossible to choose the best one so I don't even try. That's why sometimes I hate open souce and free licenses.

[Holsety]

Wouldn't bother with vanilla Angband.

http://angband.oook.cz/variants.php
This place has a decently up-to-date list of variants, with short descriptions. Just pick whichever ones sound interesting and give it a try.
I'm a fan of FAangband, FayAngband, Sangband and NPPangband myself.

[getter77]

Well, both are intended to get some updates again somewhere in the future----vanilla Angband being nearer and more substantial than the ADOM updates that may depend on some other stuff and mainly be fixes.

Vanilla DOES have the benefit of a freshly very spiffy 64x64 tileset that is being banged out for when said new release does happen, and IIRC may yet see some UI improvements as well that'd set it a bit further apart from the variants still operating under the elder code bases.

[Quendus]

not so many seem to play good old vanilla Angband anymore.

There are lots of people, old-timers and newbies, enjoying vanilla Angband and posting about it.

Well, both are intended to get some updates again somewhere in the future

Angband is constantly being developed, with nightly builds at http://rephial.org/nightlies/ and full stable releases every 6 months. The dev team is focussing on discouraging boring gameplay elements (for instance, removing bad items and replacing them with mixed-blessing items, to encourage ID-by-use), improving interface (drawing an outline of the region you've cast a trap detection spell in), balancing item drops and making them more interesting (eg. no plain enchanted daggers at DL60), etc. They're also separately working on "Angband v4", which is a platform for experimental and drastic changes, to test whether they produce good changes to gameplay. Here they're doing things like playing with the combat system, traps, nerfing teleport-other and detection spells, etc.

I'm not an Angband fan but I wouldn't play vanilla Angband even if I was one.. very dull.

Angband is dull if you take "you have the option of grinding for XP/loot" to mean "you must grind for XP and loot", and fully explore each of the 100 levels 10 times. But with a stealth stat, a ton of ways to detect monsters and items, and an abundance of escape methods, there are plenty of much more fun alternatives. Diving (going straight for the nearest stairs every level) is a great way to make games shorter, and more interesting (though there are people like Timo who enjoy exploring levels fully). Some people even manage to dive straight to the bottom of the dungeon without stopping.

I'm a fan of FAangband, FayAngband, Sangband and NPPangband myself.

Other awesome variants are Sil and PosBand. The easiest way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to ignore variants that haven't been updated for several years, and to ignore any based on ZAngband (which is a classic example of the more=better mentality).

For me, the main attraction of Angband is its excellent customisable user interface. I haven't seen any roguelike (other than variants) come close, and many variants (even Sil) suffer from basing their interface on earlier forks (NPP) without incorporating changes from later versions. Angband avoids wasting player time by displaying up to 9 extra windows, in which the player can put (for example):

• Information about whichever monster they most recently targetted
• List of monsters the player is aware of (dangerous ones in red)
• List of items the player is aware of on the map
• Inventory/equipment
• Long list of previous messages, meaning -more- prompts can be disabled.

All of this information the player gets from moving their eyes, rather than remembering some arcane keypress. To me, this is more important than being able to determine if an amulet is an amulet of teleport or not by dipping it in a potion of sleep.
And then there's the macro system, which lets you do things like "fire whatever's in the first quiver slot at the nearest monster" or "cast magic missile at the nearest monster" with one keypress.

TL;DR: play vanilla Angband. Then play Sil.

[Holsety]

For me, the main attraction of Angband is its excellent customisable user interface. I haven't seen any roguelike (other than variants) come close, and many variants (even Sil) suffer from basing their interface on earlier forks (NPP) without incorporating changes from later versions. Angband avoids wasting player time by displaying up to 9 extra windows, in which the player can put (for example):

• Information about whichever monster they most recently targetted
• List of monsters the player is aware of (dangerous ones in red)
• List of items the player is aware of on the map
• Inventory/equipment
• Long list of previous messages, meaning -more- prompts can be disabled.

All of this information the player gets from moving their eyes, rather than remembering some arcane keypress. To me, this is more important than being able to determine if an amulet is an amulet of teleport or not by dipping it in a potion of sleep.
And then there's the macro system, which lets you do things like "fire whatever's in the first quiver slot at the nearest monster" or "cast magic missile at the nearest monster" with one keypress.

Off-topic rant incoming 

^ What he said. Those optional extra windows are marvellous. Really, any form of showing more info on-screen rather than requiring me to press buttons to get to it is excellent. Incursion does it, Brogue does it, Nitrohack does it.
Being able to 'I'nspect items/equipment and get numerical data out of it is another great thing about the 'bands. So is 'l'ooking at monsters to get information, especially if your monster memory's been filled up a bit.

But speaking of discouraging boring gameplay elements...

Spawning in town with the option to return there and stock up on more items... Going back to town to sell things you're not going to use so you can buy things you WILL use... All feels like flow-breaking to me, the addition of tedium.

I've tried playing with no_selling on, maybe I should turn on ironman?

Also, the 'bands really need to do something about their keybindings. I can "a"im a wand, but I have to "u"se a staff and "z"ap a rod? Also I get to "A"ctivate artifacts? That's four seperate commands that do the same thing; USE AN ITEM. I know there's a difference between a wand, a staff, a rod and my artifact lantern, but why not let me just "a"ctivate magical items as a single command for all of those? Hell, you could add food, potions and scrolls to the "a"ctivate command. Take a clue from Brogue/The Slimy Lichmummy!

[Quendus]

But speaking of discouraging boring gameplay elements...

Spawning in town with the option to return there and stock up on more items... Going back to town to sell things you're not going to use so you can buy things you WILL use... All feels like flow-breaking to me, the addition of tedium.

I've tried playing with no_selling on, maybe I should turn on ironman?

no_selling improves that a lot - no more dragging loot around, and the gold drops are multiplied by 5 or so to make up for it. With no_selling the only reason to go to town is to stock up on consumables (like if Ancalagon made you use up all your cure critical wounds potions), and to store/retrieve equipment that you expect to need in the future. The home was pretty essential in all my wins - you need amazing equipment to beat Morgoth, and some elements of your future equipment aren't viable until you have some other amazing stuff to support it (like storing Anduril at home because your only source of cold resistance is the dagger you're wielding).

Ironman even eliminates that. I've not won ironman, but if you don't like Angband's town then I would recommend it. I think they make consumable drops a lot more common to make up for the lack of shops

Also, the 'bands really need to do something about their keybindings. I can "a"im a wand, but I have to "u"se a staff and "z"ap a rod? Also I get to "A"ctivate artifacts? That's four seperate commands that do the same thing; USE AN ITEM. I know there's a difference between a wand, a staff, a rod and my artifact lantern, but why not let me just "a"ctivate magical items as a single command for all of those? Hell, you could add food, potions and scrolls to the "a"ctivate command. Take a clue from Brogue/The Slimy Lichmummy!

Strange that they got the 'w'ear/'w'ield command right when every other roguelike got it wrong, but got the 'u'se item keybinding wrong, huh? Still, it does have the benefit of cutting down the number of items in the list you're presented with when you use one of those commands - if you had a single 'u'se command for wands, rods, staves, potions, and scrolls, then you'd have to hunt for the item you're looking for in a list of 10-20 different things. It also cuts down on mistakes, like if you try to use (r), a staff of teleport and end up quaffing (f), a potion of boldness, in an emergency...

[Quendus]

Oh, and no_selling mode was one of the more recent additions (last year or two), specifically to make people who don't like ferrying junkarts back to town happy

[getter77]

Another alternative, though divorced a bit from vanilla, is Ironband for the anti-town doings.

http://angband.oook.cz/ironband/

[Amnekian]

For me, the main attraction of Angband is its excellent customisable user interface. I haven't seen any roguelike (other than variants) come close, and many variants (even Sil) suffer from basing their interface on earlier forks (NPP) without incorporating changes from later versions. Angband avoids wasting player time by displaying up to 9 extra windows, in which the player can put (for example):
Information about whichever monster they most recently targetted
List of monsters the player is aware of (dangerous ones in red)
List of items the player is aware of on the map
Inventory/equipment
Long list of previous messages, meaning -more- prompts can be disabled.
All of this information the player gets from moving their eyes, rather than remembering some arcane keypress. To me, this is more important than being able to determine if an amulet is an amulet of teleport or not by dipping it in a potion of sleep.
And then there's the macro system, which lets you do things like "fire whatever's in the first quiver slot at the nearest monster" or "cast magic missile at the nearest monster" with one keypress.

I'm a newbie. The way you talk makes it seem like very good stuff, but I have no idea what this is. Could you clarify some more? I also want to ask you what rebindings do you usually do at the game?

Also, I've started to play angband instead of ADOM. I'm just taking a break from Nethack and relinquish myself from the idea of "I will only play another major roguelike after beating Nethack". I'm getting my ass kicked for nearly a year now, probably time to study another roguelike.

[Quendus]

I'm a newbie. The way you talk makes it seem like very good stuff, but I have no idea what this is. Could you clarify some more? I also want to ask you what rebindings do you usually do at the game?

Basically, if I have a fresh install of Angband without any preferences files, the first thing I do is press '=' to get into the birth options menu (these options can only be changed at character generation).
In the birth options, I'll set things like "monsters exploit player's weaknesses" and "items always sell or 0 gold" on. If you have a distaste for towns like Holsety, you might want to turn on "restrict the use of stairs/recall" or "restrict the use of stores/home".

Once the character is generated, you can go into the '=' menu again to do things like changing to the roguelike command set (with a nethack background I'm guessing that would be easier to pick up), centring the map on the player (really useful to avoid getting killed by offscreen monsters), changing @'s colour to match HP level (so you can keep your eye on the action rather than the stats bar), setting the %HP at which the game starts telling you you're in trouble, and even enabling mouse movement if that floats your boat.

To use the extra windows, you need to set them visible in the title bar menu (Window->Visibility). Once you've got some extra windows, you can tell the game what to put in them using "Subwindow display settings" in the '=' menu, which lets you assign different pieces of information to be displayed in different windows. The Windows version of Sil actually does all this automatically! It gives you windows for the message log, monster information, inventory, equipment, and (for some bizarre reason) all the dice rolls used in combat.

I'd say the most important ones to have are messages, inventory, and monster list. With messages in a separate window, you can turn on "auto_more" in the warning and disturbance options, saving you a lot of time. The inventory window lets you ascertain at a glance what your options are in a given situation, and the monster list is another guard against getting killed by things before you notice them (scary things appear at the top in red).
When starting out, you might also find the monster recall window useful - it says helpful things like "1 of your ancestors has been killed by this creature, and it is not ever known to have been defeated." - a reliable cue to run away

As for keybinding macros - you can create a new keybinding using '=md'. Then you type the key that you want to activate the macro, followed by what you want to do. Typically I'll pick something like 'Z' and set it to either \e\e\efn' (escape out of any menus or prompts, and fire whatever's in quiver slot n at the nearest monster) or, if I'm playing a mage, \e\e\emaa' (press escape 3 times, then cast magic missile at the nearest monster). Sometimes I'll also bind P to \e\e\eR\r (this is just like the normal 'R'est command, except I don't have to press enter afterwards).