2009-06-25 07:24:51

In light of a recent discussion on the audeasy list  about complex rpgs, I thought people would be interested in hereing about one project I've been involved with recently.

i hasten to add, this is something which is unfortunately in developement. On the pluss side, developement is very structured, so i have hopes of it happening.

That litle disclaimer out of the way, what I'm talking about here is the roguelike game Angband.

This is a very large, very complex, dungeon exploration roguelike game, in which you must desent into the depths of Morgoth's stronghold of Angband and defeat him.

For those unfamiliar with the Silmarillion, Morgoth is the original Dark lord of Middle earth, and was Sauron's boss ages before Lord of the rings.

The Angband game is a typical roguelike, with some of the most complex item, equipment and spell management I've ever seen. The focus is very heavily on combat and exploration, but with innumerable spells, many status effects (some of which can be deadly), resistances to balance, and many monsters pluss unique bosses, the game is deffinately rewarding.

It's also completely randomized like most roguelikes so you don't know what you will find from game to game.

I might also add that the game is huuuge! the dungeon has 100 levels, with about a thousand different monster types and a huge selection of items.

The game is also deffinately and distinctly challenging! if you have the wrong items, have balanced things incorrectly, or get into a bad combat situation with too many enemies at once you will die, no questions asked.

I've never had much luck with roguelikes, sinse I do not have a braille display, and the aski graphics don't do well with Hal.

I found however that mucking about with certain graphical settings, Angband was actually playable through a combination of my limited vision and Hal to read in game text messages.

After playing for a bit, it occurred to me that there were many features of the game, ---- ability to list on screen objects, a really nice look and targiting system with the curser, inventories etc which worked by text lists accessible with letters, ---- that would actually make the game highly playable without use of any graphics at all with one or two tweaks, such as a directional look command, a coordinates system and maybe some extra messages about exits.

So, I asked around on the angband forum ad contacted the dev.

the good news is, he agreed about the changes, and added them to the features request list for future versions. The bad news is, he said they'd probably make it into version 3.12, ---- and version 3.10 came out in January, ----- so I'm guessing it'll be a while before this surfaces, and even at that point it might take some tweaking to work correctly.

Stil, I thought people would be interested to know there's another project in the works to provide an accessible rpg.

Oh, and the best part? Angband is not just a great game in it's own right,but also the basis for a hole host of varients.

these introduce different monsters, quests, environments other than the dungeon, npcs, different weapons spells and classes and other ways of using them, and world outside of Tolkeen's to play in.

Sinse a good many varients also use the original game as their basis and update their features according to it, ----- there's a good chance some of these would be accessible to if the original game could be made to be.

That's all future plans though.

I'll look forward to reporting this, ---- and if Zackery cline or anyone else has experience of playing Angband as a roguelike with aski graphics to share, ---- feel free.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2009-06-25 11:52:49

Oh, i looks for it, and now game is not very playable by myself, i think so this game will be have good sound system, cause i read something about it.

Thanks for news dark, i am waiting for it, cause RPGs are my favourite style of games.
BTW maybe in future we'll seen a game like Final fantasy from square enix, or similar to my second favourite tittle, legend of zelda. Audio games marked is maybe great, but truely, most games are small, low quality, for one two or three hours to play, and cost too much. This is one big argument for my interesting in developing a games, but i can't programming, only can desing a sound system, and if we, with friends create a this worms game, crete it for free, cause we want show people what we can make, and we want only positive sentences about it, and we'll be happy. We planning in future creating big, and high quality adventure games, but we need someone who can help in programming, and sure for free.

Oh... this can be little offtopic, but  sometimes i write too much and talk too much lol.
Back to the main topic, good idea with this rogue like game, and it's very inetesting project, after great entombed tittle.

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2009-06-25 12:03:23

As I said, the game is not currently accessible at the moment, sinse currently there's no way to tell (other than using aski graphics), where any monsters, items or other things are in the game, ---- that's the point of my suggestion of the coordinate system which hopefully should make it into Angband in future.

Sound is an interesting point. While as a roguelike, the game is currently text and graphics based (either tiles or aski graphics), it does support a system for in game sounds, and there is a rather nice sound pack for it with sounds for entering new levels of the dungeon, killing monsters, casting spells etc. This also works in at least some other varients of the game besides original Angband (vanilla Angband as it's also called).

While as essentially a dungeon exploration game, it's stil not quite final fantasy, it is certainly a major improvement I think, ---- pluss, some of the other varients of the game do include quests, npcs etc and as I said, I'm hopeful that if the coordinates system and other access features get included in vanilla, other varient developers will include them, ---- thus creating not just one accessible game, but a hole slew of them using a similar engine.

This is obviously stil in the future though, ---- and probably a ways off (I'd guess next january at the least). I thought though people would be interested in another long term project to provide an accessible dungeone exploration and roleplay game.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)