MAngband

Ok, I'll post an update for the few who have asked about my continued moderation of the forums, so I don't have to write/tell the same story over and over again. Anyone who enjoyed my posting and other admin stuff is entitled to know all this, so here goes. This is gonna be a bit long.

Apparently all was not well with the forum data, and this translated into the new phpBB forum software (which I despise with the greatest passion), and this must be fixed before I am granted moderation privileges. However the entire MAngband team (of which I am not a member, in case anyone thought I was) has other priorities, so until they see fit to stop working on the game and fix the forum, the forum data will remain corrupt and I don't get to be a moderator. After four weeks, I definitely realize it's not at all important to the current team. You guys really don't need me to moderate, though. The forum is off the radar enough, and someone else with admin uses it somewhat regularly. Guess I'll take an extended holiday. You are all free to contact me via email if you require any information you cannot obtain through the proper channels (forums, IRC, email the team, or ask in game as a last resort.)

tl;dr Can't do my old duties until someone unspecified fixes something vaguely specified, which is not a priority and doesn't look like it ever will be. Sorry. Taking a break. Be back someday, in the meantime email me.

So here are my last thoughts for now:

1) This game NEEDS to look outside the Angband community for new people. Yeah, you want to prove something to the rest of the Angband community which honestly believes you have a crappy bug-filled product where people kill newbies and casuals for no reason, but the Angband community is also shrinking. They know their community is shrinking, too. You really should, instead, want to involve new people from outside who can get other people excited. Get past the mentality that the Angband players are the main people you want to impress and you'll open new doors. But, to get outsiders interested, it must have a compelling website, with a good, active forum. This brings up the following points:

1a) A compelling website is well designed, visually attractive, readable, engaging and fast. You've got fast down, now work on the other points and you'll have a great site.

1b) Engage those who stumble across the website. Add a more screenshots showing off various features of the game, like houses, stores, the wilderness, various dungeon things like vaults and pits, piles of treasure, people chatting, and a party slaying dragons. Are you excited about a feature? Make a page about it. What's indispensable to you? Make a page about it. Appeal to the adventurers, the treasure hunters, the socialites, and the fighters. Make a big visual feast and explain what's going on in the pictures. Describe things dramatically, since somebody who's never played will wonder why you'd get excited over a grid of periods and hashes with a big gray P and some symbols scattered around.

1c) Get the current player base posting on the forum more often. It's not difficult, and if there are regular posts about things going on game, it looks like there's a healthy community. This might require point 1a to be addressed. I really don't enjoy looking at the current forum. At least increase the text-background contrast, please?

2) Gamers rarely care about IRC these days except old-school MUD-ers who used it way back before IM clients rose to popularity. If you absolutely must require people to use IRC to contact the development team, which I see as a definite kiss of death, then put a stable, usable Java IRC client on the website, make it easy to find, and set it up so it automatically joins the correct channel. Don't make anyone learn to IRC until they are ready for it. Have logs of the past week or so available, somehow, because nobody likes cluttering their systems with extra windows that aren't doing anything. Clean desktop-itis is more common than you think.

3) Fix the grammar and spelling on the website. It's really simple. Firefox 2, which most of you use (except the few Opera people) has a built-in spell checker. All word processors currently in competition with Word, whether free or not, have spell check - and there are command line spell checkers if you abhor GUIs. Copy and paste text in, run the checks, fix the problems, and copy and paste the fixed text back onto the website. Not everybody is an English major, but everybody has access to free tools to fix their mistakes, ok?

Yeah, yeah, I know. Cue posts about how I never play anymore, never beat the game, got killed easily by the hardcore PVPers, and therefore I'm not important... Basically, that's why I'm outta here for now, so don't waste a post with that.

Alright. Good luck, guys. I know you've been working hard and I'd like to see it pay off. May you have increased success, and may all of your labors come to fruition.

Thanks for the good wishes Berendol. The invitation remains open for you to join in the team and fix up those issues you mention. As it does for anyone else who wants to help out with any aspect of the project.

Design is very personal and subjective thing. However, the forum software allows everyone to choose their own "theme" for the MAngband forums, so anyone who is sick of looking at purple (fink I'm looking at you) can simply choose a different theme by selecting one in their Profile.

We've only installed a couple of the thousands of themes available. If anyone's favourite is missing, let me know and I'll install it.

Berendol wrote:Cue posts about how I never play anymore, never beat the game, got killed easily by the hardcore PVPers, and therefore I'm not important... Basically, that's why I'm outta here for now, so don't waste a post with that.

That stupid Berendol, he doesn't even code anymore, why is he posting? Get a job, you bum!

/kidding

All joking aside, however, I must say that looking at the changelog (thanks for that, btw) has some changes I really don't agree with. Limiting ESP, stiffing the entire Paladin class...I just really don't like it. Sure, it seems to bring Mangband in line with Vanilla, but, well, look at Star Was Galaxy. Just because the "root" decides it needs massive changes doesn't instantly make them better. That's just my feelings, however, and you guys are choosing to go with that. More power to you.

I, however, like the old code base better. If I'm feeling froggy I just might put up a variant of Berendol's code...as pissy as I've been every once in awhile, it's not a bad codebase.

Is there any specific reason to go with some of these changes besides just bringing it closer to Vanilla? Is it really right for Mangband? As an example, Vanilla is turn-based, if I remember right. You can spend 5 minutes if you want examining every single tile, make one move and notice that there's a tunnel forming at the bottom...which is Morgy...and recall before he's anywhere near you. In Mangband, given that it's realtime, you don't have that luxury...so being able to ESP the entire map is a blessing. So, that being said, why would we try to force a round peg into a square hole?

...of course, I'm going to look like a huge jerk if Angband has been changed so it's realtime too, but still!

Hi Big Juan,

The ESP change is a particularly contentious one. Having played with it, I think it really adds some more excitement into the game.

However, you're right in that this particular change is one of the few which is effected by realtime. It's just not possible to react in time in some deep dungeon situations. It's very unlikely that this limited ESP (in it's current state) will remain in the game for the release version.

On your general question, "Is a change right just because it brings us closer to vanilla?" For me, the answer must be "yes". There are a few cases where "realtime" or "multiplayer" prevents this of course, but they are mostly few and far between. The reason I think the answer must be yes is because of simply what MAngband is, Multiplayer-Angband. Sure we could add whatever features we felt like on any particular day, we can change the rules, add new races, tweak this and that based upon our own personal preferences... but then that wouldn't be Multiplayer-Angband would it? It would be Jugband, BigJuanband, PWMAngband, TOME.NET, Ironman, or whatever.

In any case, we'll soon see if the balance of Angband 3.0.6 makes for a more fair and fun game. I personally think it does. As per the projects Roadmap directly after the version 1.0.0 release we will be working on 1.1.0, the focus of which will be to look at areas where the Angband 3.0.6 rules aren't really working for multiplayer and realtime. We can all play it, and then we can tweak it.

It's worth noting that the 1.0.0 to 1.1.0 transition will also be an {excellent} time to capture completely what the differences are between Angband and MAngband. Right now most of those changes are in various people's memory, but not well captured in the sources. We know of some obvious changes (corridors are two tiles wide in general instead of one tile wide) yet many other just aren't known about. When we see what doesn't work when played as Angband plays, then we can capture how and why we changed it for future MAngband development.