Game 439: Angband [2.4] (1993)

 

           

Angband [2.4]

United States

Independently developed and offered as freeware

First public release 1993 for Unix and DOS

Date Started: 3 November 2021

    

The story of Angband goes back to Moria (1983), one of the earliest post-Rogue roguelikes. It was written on a VMS system by Robert Alan Koeneke after he became addicted to, then lost access to, Rogue. (Primary information about the history of Moria comes from Koeneke's 1996 recollections on a Usenet group, now archived by Google.) He designed the game to be not only difficult but essentially unbeatable, continually patching it with new horrors every time someone managed to eke out a win. Koeneke released the source code in 1995, and various authors got to work porting it (and modifying it) for different systems, including the DOS version I played. The UNIX port by James E. Wilson became known as UMoria.

   

University of Warwick students Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand took the UMoria codebase and, starting in 1990, began working on what would become Angband. (Here I switch primarily to the history of the game at RogueBasin.) They added items, monsters, and other features; streamlined the code; and significantly expanded the Tolkien references. When Cutler and Astrand departed the university, they passed management of the files on to Geoff Hill and Sean Marsh. The first public release came in 1993, with the enigmatic version number of "2.4.Frog-knows." (I am compelled to note a 1992 children's book called Frog Knows Best and a 1967 Bewitched episode titled "Nobody but a Frog Knows How to Live.") Charles Teague created a DOS port the same year, and here we are. The story continues beyond 1993, of course, but we'll cover that in later editions.

   

The predecessor only had Moria and the balrog. This game has "Grip, Farmer Maggot's dog."

      

In character creation, Angband is almost identical to Moria. You choose a race from human, half-elf, elf, hobbit, gnome, dwarf, half-orc, half-troll, Dunadan, and high elf options. From Moria, "halfling" has been replaced with "hobbit," and Dunadan [sic? Maybe? I don't know.] and high elf options are new. You choose sex and then class. Class options are warrior, mage, priest rogue, ranger, and paladin with various race restrictions (e.g., half-trolls can only be warriors or priests; hobbits can only be warriors, mages, or rogues). Attributes are the standard Dungeons & Dragons set: strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma.

    

The game offers a couple of interesting options for attribute rolling, in addition to the customary method of simply rolling 3-18 (plus or minus racial modifiers) and being happy with what you get, you can instead specify a minimum number that you'll accept for each attribute, and the game will keep rolling until it finds that character. You can do an errand, have lunch, or go to bed in the meantime. At default CPU speeds, it rolls about 22 potential characters per second, or about 1,300 per minute. 

     

If you decide to roll the character yourself, you can reject as many sets of attributes as you want until you get a selection that pleases you. But it saves the most recent set that you rejected, so if you commit common error of rejecting a perfect character because you fell into a rhythm, you can retrieve him. This game is a "first" in offering both options.

   

Like Moria, Angband also offers a series of derived abilities, their levels set by a combination of race, class, and attribute: fighting, stealth, perception, bows, disarming, searching, saving throws, magic devices, and infravision distance. You also get a set of statistics over which you have no control: age, height, weight, social class, to hit, to damage, and armor class. A few lines are plucked from a database to serve as a "character background," but you only see this if you don't choose the automatic rolling option.

      

A completed character.

    

Gameplay begins on a town level, again as in Moria (but not Rogue and the NetHack line). The character begins with a few items suitable to his class; my Dunadan paladin had a broadsword, 5 rations of food, a Holy Book of Prayers, a Scroll of Protection from Evil, and 5 wooden torches. Characters can visit a weapon shop, an armorer, a temple, a general store, a magic shop, an alchemist, and the character's own home, the last one appearing for the first time in Angband. You can store excess items here. Although the dungeon consists of hundreds of levels, the character returns to town frequently via Scrolls of Recall. The stores all have plenty of items worth saving for.

        

I certainly don't need item i); it's winter in Maine!

          

As with Moria, random annoying NPCs wander the town: aimless merchants; singing, happy drunks; sneaky rogues; street urchins; blubbering idiots. They pick your pocket, beg you for money, start fights, and otherwise encourage you to just kill them, for which there seems to be no reward or penalty. Angband does not offer any other means of productively interacting with them.

          

In town. A merchant attacks me for no reason.

        

When you're ready, you take the stairs down into the dungeons. Where Rogue kept each level to a single screen, Moria's and Angband's levels sprawl across multiple screens. More important, the Moria/Angband line has no level permanence. Every time you leave a level and return, it is redrawn and re-stocked with monsters and equipment. Thus, you are under no pressure to clear a level nor to move downward before you're ready. You can generate an infinite number of Level 1s and grind to your heart's content. For these reasons, finding secret doors takes on a lesser importance.

      

Like any roguelike, Angband uses most of the letter keys for its commands, with different commands for capital letters (e.g., d)rop an item vs. D)isarm a chest). A few changes have been made since the version of Moria I played:

     

• Angband introduces magic rods in addition to wands. Where Moria had you a)im and fire a wand, Angband has you a)ctivate a rod and separately z)ap a wand. Moria hadn't used z at all.

• Angband allows movement with a cluster of keys that makes little sense to me . . .

 

y k u

h    l

b j n

 

• . . . although I suspect it will be mere minutes before some commenters reply that "that's just the old 'XK keys' cluster so popular on Unix systems. Everyone who was anyone back in the day knew how to use 'XK keys.'" [Ed. I should have noted that it also allows movement with the numberpad and arrows. That's what I've been using, although you need to use the letters in conjunction with CTRL for tunneling.]
  

• To free up those keys, Moria's b)rowse a book becomes P)eruse a book, which forces Moria's P)rint Map to become just M)ap. u)se a Staff changes to Z)ap a Staff. l)ook changes to x)amine surroundings, which forces x)change weapon to become X)change weapon. j)am a Door with a Spike changes to S)pike a door, requiring S)earch Mode to move to the pound key (#). Angband even freed up capitalized versions of those letters: Moria's L)ocation becomes W)here, and B)ash becomes f)orce/Bash, requiring f)ire/Throw an Item to become t)hrow an Item. This further requires t)ake off an Item to move to the capital version, which in turn requires T)unnel to move to CTRL-direction.

      

M)ap shows a smaller-scale version of the dungeon level.

      

• Angband adds g)et an Item (instead of just automatically picking it up when you walk over it), A)ctivate an Artifact, G)ain New Magic Spells (to go with a more complex magic system), and Inscribe an Object ({).

• Perhaps most notable, in addition to attacking adjacent monsters by specifying a direction, Angband allows you to hit the * key to bring up a targeting cursor. This allows you to target any enemy in range with a missile weapon, wand, rod, or staff, rather than just those in the same column, row, or diagonal. This feature was apparently introduced in a UMoria variant called Morgul.

   

As with most roguelikes, your combat tactics on the first few levels are limited to bashing monsters with your melee weapon or throwing things at them. As you gain levels and equipment, your options start to grow. I found Moria and Angband far more forgiving on these early levels than Rogue or NetHack. Your hit point total is generous, and it regenerates quickly once combat is over. Enemies die in one or two hits. Poison wears off fast.

         

Angband's magic system is more advanced than Moria's, with multiple spells across multiple books, and   a skill level with each.

        

The game has to be a little bit easier, though, because it's insanely long. A winning game of Rogue takes no more than a few hours. A winning game of NetHack takes perhaps 12 at the most. But each of those games has you find the Amulet of Yendor after 30 or 40 small levels. To kill Morgoth--the goal of Angband--you have to go below Level 100, and the levels here are much larger. (I have a note that in this version Morgoth appears at Level 150 or above, but I can't trace it back to a source, so I don't know if it's true.) That's a long time to keep a character alive without making a mistake. 

  

It also creates a unique challenge for me. When I approach a new roguelike, I typically try to win it honestly--that is, adhering to permadeath--for about half a dozen characters. Then, if it seems like it's going to take hundreds of hours to win it that way, I'll reluctantly allow myself to backup my character every level or two. For Angband, though, those initial half dozen characters could easily last 20 hours. Thus, I think I'm going to start backing up my character right from the start, and just try really hard not to use the backups.

    

Finding a random scroll.

   

Beyond that, there's not much you haven't seen in many other roguelikes. There still is no hint of a real story. Every level serves up battles with an increasingly difficult selection of monsters drawn from Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons, and other sources. You find potions of assorted colors, scrolls with various nonsense phrases, and rings and wands of various materials. The colors, phrases, and materials are randomized for each new game, and you have to learn them through a slow process of testing them (which can be dangerous) or using Scrolls of Identification.

    

There were no problems on Level 1. I killed grey molds, kobolds, fruit bats, white worm masses, rock lizards, jackals, and large white snakes, and made it to character Level 2. I found a crimson potion (which turned out to be a Potion of Heroism), a chartreuse potion (Salt Water), a clear potion (Water), a Scroll of Protection from Evil, and a brass lantern. I left a lot of stuff on the floor, principally skeletons of dead monsters, broken weapons, and shards of pottery.

     

White worm masses can multiply.

      

When I had finished Level 1 the first time, I went down to Level 2, but it soon became clear that a successful player probably needs to make multiple loops through Level 1 (or, more precisely, different incarnations of Level 1 generated by going up or down and back again). I nearly suffered two deaths. The first was at the jaws of Grip, "Farmer Maggot's dog." The second from a terrifying creature whose name I forgot to write down, but it had the ability to teleport itself to me and me to it. Only the presence of a nearby staircase saved me from both creatures. Thus, I spent most of my time this session on repeated iterations of Level 1, occasionally ducking down to Level 2 for brief forays. My primary goal in the early game was to make enough money to afford better stuff--including Scrolls of Recall and some armor--back in the town.

     

My inventory towards the end of this session.

     

A few other notes on miscellaneous encounters and gameplay elements.

      

• A lot of enemies in this game are described in terms of color: metallic green centipedes, white icky things, giant black ants, and so forth. I don't know if the colors mean anything. I haven't met any black icky things or giant white ants.

       

Are there large red snakes later?

        

• Where Rogue had imps, Angband has "rogues" who frequently show up long enough to pick your pocket and then disappear in a puff of smoke.

• There are no corpses to eat in this series of games.

• The game makes a distinction between worn-and-carried items and the rest of your inventory. You use different keys to call different lists. I was startled at first when worn items stopped appearing in the inventory. I thought I had lost them.

• You can equip both a primary weapon and secondary weapon and exchange them with a single key. I did that accidentally at one point and didn't realize I had been fighting enemies with a torch for a while.

• You need a light source to see at all. Even with it, however, there are dark patches of the dungeon.

• With the right tool, you can tunnel through walls by holding CTRL while specifying a direction. Sometimes money is embedded in walls.

      

Tunneling south to reach that money.

     

• I don't quite understand the spell system. Every time I level up, I can apparently (G)ain ability in spells, which I guess the game selects at random from among the spellbooks I'm carrying. There are multiple potential spellbooks for each profession.

• You can sell items at shops in town. I have to keep reminding myself that used items have value and I shouldn't just discard them.

• However, stores won't buy items that aren't any use. I couldn't sell a Wand of Hasten Monster, for instance.

     

That's about all I can cover for the opening hours. I hope the game offers enough interesting content to sustain a series of entries as I try to make it down to Level 100 or 150 or whatever is necessary. 

    

Time so far: 3 hours