Angband (game)

Angband is a dungeon-crawling roguelike computer game derived from Umoria (C for Unix port of a game called Moria). It is based on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, in which Angband was the fortress of Morgoth.

Development

The first version of Angband was created by Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand at the University of Warwick in 1990. It was later enhanced by many others. Robert Alan Koeneke was the author of the game.

Angband was originally shared-source but not strictly free/open software due to being licensed under "non commercial use only" terms, as was its ancestor Moria. However, a nine-year-long effort to re-license Angband under the GNU GPL (i.e. getting permission from all contributors) was eventually successful. One advantage of this is allowing it to be bundled with "commercial" Linux distributions, and with those (such as Debian) with a moderately strict FL/OS ethos.

After Cutler and Astrand, the later principal developers of Angband included Charles Swiger, Ben Harrison and Robert Rühlmann. Harrison was the maintainer responsible for the "Great Code Cleanup", modularising, extending, and greatly improving the readability of the Angband source code, which lead to the large number of variants of Angband currently available, as well as the rather large number of ports to different platforms. Like other maintainers, he eventually moved on to other interests, passing the title to Robert Rühlmann in 2000.

A collection of sixty (of which only a dozen of which are still in use) variants of Angband exist, each often greatly differing in purpose and depth of changes. The best known variants include EyAngband, Hengband, OAngband, ToME(Tales of Middle Earth), and ZAngband(Zelazny+Angband).

The Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.angband is a place to discuss all the aspects of the game. An IRC channel, #angband, exists on the WorldIRC network (irc.worldirc.org).

Sil is a variant of Angband intended to be faithful to the works of Tolkien with recovering Silmarils from the crown of Morgoth as the goal.

Gameplay

Angband is set in Angband, the fortress of Morgoth. The adventurer is presented with 100 levels of the title dungeon, in which they seek to amass enough power and equipment to ultimately defeat Morgoth. A new level is randomly generated each time the player changes levels, which gives Angband replay value: no two games will be the same.

Gameplay of of the original version, Vanilla Angband, is most often compared to NetHack. The two games are, however, different with respect to tone - Angband adopts a more serious tone than NetHack - and gameplay - Angband takes longer to complete, and is more focussed on combat tactics, inventory management and risk minimisation than NetHack, which involves puzzle solving and special casing. These difference have been the source of mild conflicts between the two communities.

Angband terms

• Artifact: A special item with preset statistics that cannot be destroyed, and of which only one instance exists. Once identified, they are never generated again.
• Band: Generic name for any Angband variant.
• Borg: An automated Angband player.
• Ego item: A standard item with special abilities, which vary according to its ego type. eg. Soft Leather Boots of Speed.
• RNG: Random Number Generator/God. Due to the importance of random effects in Angband, the game RNG is often referred to anthropomorphically.
• Unique: A monster of which only one instance exists. Once killed they are never generated again. Systematically finding and killing them can be important to victory in the game, since the hardest few uniques can magically summon other uniques and thereby overpower the player.
• Vanilla: The unmodified version of Angband.
• Vault: A special room which is not random, but is produced from a plan.
• Wizard: A debug/cheat mode.

External links

• Rephial is the current main download site for Angband.
• Thangorodrim is the previous primary Angband site, though no longer actively maintained. It features development information and a variant list.
• Phial is the old official Angband home page, maintained by Ben Harrison until 2000.
• Angband.oook.cz (or oook) contains the Angband ladder, detailed spoilers and other resources.
• The Angband Comic has been defunct since 2002. It was drawn in the style of the game's text interface.
• Penance is a new Angband webcomic, but drawn in a more traditional style.
• Wikipedia page