Just ASCII + A Column Covering Interactive
Fiction and Other Nongraphical Adventure Games

Adventurer vs. Red Dragon
by Simon
de Vet
(click to enlarge)

By Erik Reckase

Part
Seven: The Many Angbands

It’s official–I’m permanently hooked
on Rogue-like games. Whether it’s a quick game of PocketRogue on
my Palm Pilot or a longer venture into the NetHack realm, I’m always up
for the challenge. Similarly, I’m curious about the many other Rogue-likes
that I have yet to play–could one of them be better? That’s the nice thing about
Rogue-like games–I can pretty much guarantee that if you’re looking for
one to fit your particular gaming needs, you’ll find one after a bit of searching.
In this column, I’ll be discussing Angband, a game based loosely on the
writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, which has more variants than any other game I’ve seen.

Angband,
like many of the currently popular Rogue-like games, is a descendant
of a much older game. Back in 1980, Robert Koeneke, a student of engineering at
the University of Oklahoma, was invited by a group of system administrators to
play some games on the school’s machines, which included an early Star Trek
game, the Colossal Cave Adventure, and Rogue. Shortly afterward,
he switched departments and worked as a student assistant on computers–but the
administrator of the system was staunchly anti-game, so Robert decided to write
his own Rogue. This game would become Moria, a game similar to Rogue
but with a Tolkien theme, a top level with stores, and a place to store your
booty. The original version, Moria 1.0, was written in VMS Pascal and was
finished in 1983. Over the next few years, further upgrades to the game were made,
and the source was sent to other universities in 1985. The development of Moria
culminated in the release of Moria 4.7 in 1987. The next version, 5.0,
was to be maintained by student assistants at OU after Robert went to work for
American Airlines, but the new version was never released, and the improved source
code was lost forever.

A
screenshot from ZAngband, one of the many variants of Angband
(click to enlarge)

However,
in 1990, Alex Vutler and Andy Astrand, along with other students at the University
of Warwick, created Angband 1.0, which was based on the Unix version of
Moria, Umoria, released in 1989. Their goals were to strengthen the Tolkien
associations, as well as adding more monsters, artifacts, special dungeon rooms,
etc. Further modifications of this version were made until 1992, when Angband
2.4.frog_knows was released. This version would serve as the early baseline
for porting Angband to other platforms. In 1993, Charles Swiger took the
Angband reins, and version 2.6.2 was released in 1994 with many bug fixes
and significantly cleaner code. Ben Harrison, interested in writing an Angband
borg (an automatic Angband player), began a major rewrite that allowed
easy porting to other platforms. On the first day of 1995, Angband 2.7.0 was
released, and Ben became the Angband maintainer by default (Charles got
a real job and had to step down). After five years and many updates, Angband
was passed to Robert Rühlmann, who fixed the remaining bugs and released
Angband 2.9.0. The current release (2.9.1 as of this writing) supports
many platforms, including Windows 95/98/NT, DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, OS/2, and Linux,
and it also includes graphical tiles if the player prefers graphics over ASCII.

The goal in Angband is to reach the fiftieth level of a dangerous
dungeon and defeat Morgoth, the Black Foe of Middle-Earth, as described by Tolkien
in The Silmarillion. Along the way, you will fight many foes and find numerous
powerful artifacts that will help you in your quest. The structure of the game
is fairly simple–the uppermost level is a market, where items can be bought and
sold to better prepare your character for the journey ahead. The dungeon below
you is randomized, and each level changes every time you visit it. If you explore
and clear the first level, and then do the same with the second level, on your
way back to the surface the first level will be different than the first time
you visited. The dungeon levels are larger than those found in NetHack and
ADOM, spanning nine screen areas each, so there’s a lot of exploration
to do! Gameplay is very similar to all of the other Rogue-likes that I’ve
discussed before.

A great feature that is included in Angband is
the ability to define macros. You can redefine keys to perform certain combinations
of tasks for you, like wielding a digging tool and digging for a certain number
of turns, or alternately attacking with different weapons. You can also engrave
items with numbers to make accessing them much easier. There are tons of definable
user preferences, vault rooms with special objects, and a very detailed magic
system with many different items to experiment with.

I mentioned before
that Angband has a huge number of variants. According to the Angband
home page, there are at least 32 different variants of Angband, finished
or in development, with different features and goals, sometimes significantly
modifying the entire gameplay! Here’s a sample of the different games based on
Angband.

• Zelazny Angband (ZAngband)–written by a team
  of nine, this popular variant includes a wilderness, quests, and maps. The objects
  and monsters are culled from Roger Zelazny’s Amber fantasy series.
• Cthulhu
  Angband (CthAngband)–written by Dean Anderson, this variant of ZAngband
  contains monsters from the books of H.P. Lovecraft.
• Multiplayer
  Angband (MAngband)–written by Keldon Jones and maintained by Alex Dingle,
  this variant allows multiple players to explore the Angband dungeons, encountering
  each other and teaming up if they desire.
• Opinion Angband (OAngband)–written
  by Leon Marrick, OAngband completely reworked the combat and damage system
  to stress character skills and weapon quality. Other enhancements include a new
  class (assassin) and throwing weapons.
• Dragon Angband (DrAngband)–written
  by Aaron Mandelbaum and maintained by Tom Morton, this variant allows your character
  to be a dragon, as well as a Big Screen option and fractal caves.

  
  DrAngband’s
  Big Screen option in action, with some neat caves
  (click to enlarge)

As
you can see, there are many different games based on the Angband engine,
each slightly changing the game experience to satisfy a different group of gamers.
I’ve included a couple of links to quality Angband pages below … Angband
and all of its variants are totally free, so grab a copy and try it out!

• Thangorodrim–The
  Angband Page: This is epicenter of all things Angband, maintained
  by Robert Rühlmann. Versions of Angband for just about any platform
  can be found here, along with links to the many variants, help files, and some
  great Angband humor. Highly recommended.
• The
  Angband Newbie Guide: Although it hasn’t been updated in some time, this
  page by Chris Weisiger gives a great introduction to the game and helpful hints
  for staying alive.
• The
  AngbandTk Home Page: This site, managed by Tim Baker, hosts the many
  variations of AngbandTk, a graphical front end to Angband with sound
  support for Windows platforms. If you really can’t stand the ASCII characters,
  and the tilesets aren’t good enough, try these versions–you won’t be disappointed.