Angband (Now at v4.2.0!)

[getter77]

v4.1.0!   

This has release has been a massive team effort by many people over a long time. The wonderful community on these forums has been a big part of that team. This is your game, I hope you like it.

This version has the first major gameplay changes since 3.5.0. Some of these changes have significant impact on the game, and affect longstanding parts of the game quite radically. Given that aver 750 individual changes have been pushed to the main game repository since the last release, what is presented here will be more of a summary than a detailed changelog.

Traps
    The general philosophy is that all players will hit traps at some time
    Magical trap detection has been removed, except as a spell for mages
    Active searching has been removed
    Characters have one chance to detect a trap, on seeing the grid it is on; this chance is dependent on searching skill
    Traps are either physical or magical, and there is a corresponding split in the player disarming skill
    Many new traps have been introduced, and old ones amended
    Traps are placed almost exclusively at corridor intersections or other chokepoints
    Trap density in vaults is reduced by 75%

Identify
    ID is now "rune-based"; once an object properry is recognised once, it will always be recognised on all future items
    The only forms of magical identify are scrolls and the mage spell, both of which identify a single unknown rune
    All scrolls, potions, mushrooms are identified on their first use
    Most wands, staffs and rods are identified on first use, the main exceptions being when they affect monsters and are tested in the absence of monsters
    Ego item names become known once all the relevant runes are known

Player knowledge
    Changes to previously known terrain outside the player's field of view (doors opening, etc) are no longer immediately known by the player
    Secret doors are now always found on stepping adjacent (or at a distance by the mage spell)

Dungeon generation
    A new generation algorithm has been introduced, and appears roughly as often as the classical generation algorithm
    There are many new vaults in the new algorithm, and also new room types - huge rooms, rooms of chambers, and interesting rooms (like small vaults)
    There is also an infrequently occurring generation type, the "moria level", which features large rough-edged rooms and many orcs, trolls and ogres
    Lava has changed from being a visual curiosity in town in 4.0.x to being generated in the dungeon; it will burn those without fire immunity
    Another new type of terrain has been introduced: passable rubble, which behaves like regular rubble except it can be walked through

Monsters
    Monster breaths are now cone-shaped starting at the monster, instead of being indistinguishable from ball spells
    Monster pathfinding has been improved (mostly), with monsters tracking explicitly by sight, sound or scent
    The relationship between player stealth and monsters waking has changed

Random artifacts
    Lights, rings and amulets are now fully randomised instead of based closely on the standard special artifacts
    The artifact set generation algorithm has been changed so that random artifacts no longer correspond to individual standard artifacts, but rather are generated so as to get a statistically similar distribution
    Calculation of object power has been simplified
    Generating a set of random artifacts now actually writes a data file like artifact.txt, which can be used for future games

Curses
    Sticky curses have been removed completely
    A large number of new curses have been introduced
    Items can have multiple curses
    Curse removal targets individual known curses on items
    Failed curse removal causes an item to become fragile
    Fragile items have a chance to be destroyed on future failed curse removals

Status effects
    Monster status effects have been redone to rebalance reliability and effectiveness, so that they may actually be interesting to use
    New types of status-inducing spells and magic devices have been included

Other
    Much more detail has been moved out to text files in lib/gamedata
    Many underlying code improvements

Here we go---the big time arrives anew!

[Avagart]

Traps overhaul sounds sensible, I;m curious how it's going to work in practice.

[Samildanach]

Traps overhaul sounds sensible, I;m curious how it's going to work in practice.

I have mixed feelings about the traps situation. Nick mentioned on Reddit that it's intended to, among other things, make Rings of Searching more useful. I can see the logic but so far my experience has been that I get too frustrated blundering into traps. For the first time ever, I had to kill my character because I was stuck behind a trap and couldn't get out. I don't usually do this, but I've reverted to playing an older version.

[getter77]

v4.1.1   

This version principally fixes bugs and balance issues from 4.1.0; thanks to everyone who has contributed to finding and fixing these. It also contains the experimental persistent levels birth option.

[Samildanach]

The persistent levels thing is weird. I welcome options to customise the play experience, but I have to wonder why someone would play Angband and then turn off Angbandiness. 

[getter77]

It somewhat begs for another similar update in conjunction where each level feeling is the highest possible level as well---99 Floors of the best* to eke out The Best.

[Legend]

It's been years since I've tried to pick up angband again. Just gave the new version a try. Did they remove searching? Or remove it as an actual command? I can't figure out how to do it unless it is now a passive thing.

Also, for the life of me, I cannot seem to get yellow torchlight even though it is set in the options menu.

Lastly, is there anywhere I can find other ascii fonts to use with it? None of the ones included really suit me.  I'm using 12x24x, but I'd really prefer something more dos prompt like and or a bold version of the current one.

Thanks.

[getter77]

v4.2.0

Angband 4.2.0 is now available for Windows, macOS and as source. It can be downloaded from rephial.org, and played at angband.live.

This version is mainly a major overhaul of classes and the monster list.

As for the last two 4.x.0 releases, there are too many individual changes to list, so what follows is a summary.

Classes
-------
Two new realms of magic have been added, nature and shadow, to the existing divine and arcane realms.

    Nature realm relies on harnessing the power of the earth, and is opposite to the arcane realm, which uses craft and cunning.
    Divine realm uses harmony and light, and is opposite to the shadow realm which aligns with darkness, power and sacrifice.
    Rangers now use nature magic, like the new Druid class
    Necromancers are the major shadow caster class
    Blackguards are fighters enhanced by shadow magic
    Pure casters (mages, priests, druids, necromancers) use five books (down from nine)
    Hybrid casters (rogues, paladins, rangers, blackguards) use two or three books
    Classes no longer have different rates of gaining experience


Monsters
--------
Each base monster type has had its game niche reconsidered, and there has been a general push to use Tolkien-inspired monsters where appropriate. Some of the major changes include:

    Ainur - most of these now align with one of the great Valar, and have corresponding powers
    Dragons - these have mostly been made stronger and deeper
    Humanoids - dark elves have been replaced with dwarves, gnomes with Drúedain
    Hydras - each hydra type is like the previous type with a new head and attack added
    People - the association of some of these with player classes has been expanded to include the new classes
    Snakes - some of these are now dangerous
    Spiders - more dangerous and deeper, with unique abilities
    Trees/Ents - these are new, tough to kill enemies
    Wights/Wraiths - wights are all now shallower than wraiths, and the Ringwraiths are much deeper


Game Mechanics
--------------
In the course of the class and monster changes, many new mechanics have been introduced, with some of the major ones being:

    Player and monster shapechanges
    Variable light and darkness are created by monsters, player gear and player spells, and the player has a meter to measure the light level on their square
    Mages can drain mana from magic devices
    Rogues can steal from monsters
    Temporary brands and slays (Priests, Paladins, Blackguards)
    Necromancers can see in the dark, and can cast less well in light
    Healing of hitpoints every turn for a time (Druids)
    Control of a monster, including making it attack other monsters (Necromancers)
    Shield bashes (Warriors, Paladins, Blackguards)
    Decoys which monsters will attack instead of the player (Rangers)
    Blackguards can go into a state of bloodlust which improves their combat at a price
    Monsters can whip or spit on the player from nearby
    Monster groups act more as a group, with leaders and sometimes bodyguards
    Innate spells (e.g. breaths) and cast spells (e.g. bolts) have separate frequencies
    Deeper in the dungeon shallow monsters are less likely to appear
    Monsters can teleport to the player
    Spiders can weave webs
    Monsters can have innate darkness around them
    Traps added that trigger on leaving their square
    Ringwraiths can inflict the Black Breath
    Monster spells can have different levels depending on monster spell power
    The player now has a hunger meter, and food is more important
    As with classes, all races gain experience at the same rate, except for humans who are faster, and high-elves who are slower
    The Temple has been replaced with a Bookseller who sells books of all realms


Code Improvements
-----------------
There have also been some improvements to the codebase, both visible and invisible to the player. The main ones are:

    Addition of an SDL2 front end
    Change to mostly using a single grid rather than x and y coordinates in much of the code
    More readability of datafiles
    Some font improvements
    Some new tiles
    A new online (rather than in-game) help system
    A new experimental (and so far unbalanced) birth option for percentage damage
    An option to start a new game after dying instead of closing the game and re-opening
    Many fixes to bugs and memory leaks


All this has been achieved through an amazing joint community effort, with code provided by

    Alex Mooney
    Anna Sidwell (takkaria)
    Bardur Arantsson
    bron
    Dag Arneson (sanedragon)
    Derakon
    Elly Fong-Jones (elly)
    fizzix (Aaron Bader)
    fruviad
    John Weismiller (emar)
    Kusunose Toru
    Mikolaj Konarski
    Paul Johnson
    PowerWyrm
    Ryan Schmidt
    Stefan Strogin
    Vic K
    wkmanire
    wobbly

and bug reports, change suggestions and contributions to discussion which has influenced this version by

    Adam
    AnonymousHero
    Antoine
    Aszazin
    Atriel
    bio_hazard
    bunnies
    Carg
    Carnivean
    cccfire
    Chud
    ClaytonAguiar
    Clearshade
    clouded
    Cold_Heart
    Combatereak
    Darin
    debo (cyberdemons pls)
    desstorm
    Diego Gonzalez
    Djbanete
    dos350
    Dragget
    Ed_47569
    Egavactip
    emulord
    EpicMan
    Estie
    Estragon
    Evilpotatoe
    Flambard
    fph
    Gauss
    Geoff Hill (yes, that one)
    geoff_tewierik
    gglibertine
    Glorfindel
    Goaticus
    Grotug
    gtrudeau88
    Gwarl
    half
    HallucinationMushroom
    Holy_Rage
    Hounded
    Hrrunstar
    Huqhox
    Ingwe Ingweron
    Jeff Greene (nppangband)
    jevansau
    jml34
    Jungle_Boy
    kandrc
    kaypy
    khearn
    Kinematics
    luneya
    Mark
    MattB
    misanthropope
    MITZE
    Mondkalb
    Monkey Face
    Moving Pictures
    mrfy
    Muscleguy
    MWGE
    Narry
    Netbrian
    NightLizard
    Nomad
    olivertheorem
    Once
    Pahasusi
    Patashu
    Pete Mack
    Philip
    Pondlife
    Quirk
    Raerick
    Raxmei
    Rydel
    Scatha
    schatz
    shirish
    Sideways
    Sky
    spara
    Sparrow the Dunadan
    Sphara
    swaggert
    tangar
    the Invisible Stalker
    Therem Harth
    Thraalbee
    Tibarius
    Timo Pietilä
    TJA
    TJS
    topazg
    Vivit
    Voovus
    Vorczar
    Werbaer
    Whelk
    Wiwaxia
    Youssarian
    Zikke
    Zirael

as well as, I am sure, other people I missed. Thank you all. I hope this version is as much fun to play as it was to prepare.