Comments on: ZangbandTK: Confessions of a Dungeon Hack

By: thebigJ_A

thebigJ_A — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:35:43 +0000

“But if it’s a tiny sprite – or even just a letter – and just the raw functionality of the code, you can have dozens, hundreds, thousands.”

This is why Dwarf Fortress can be so beautifully complicated. Though, if I ever had infinite money and infinite man-hours, I’d (among other things), make fully rendered, bump-mapped and shinied up the wazoo, yet feature-complete, version of it. Oh, that’d be so nice.

By: Bait XVIII

Bait XVIII — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:39:23 +0000

ZAngband is winnable.

That’s the allure.

It’s wicked hard. It’s not always completely fair. There are certain intrinsics that are required before venturing past certain points in the game (If you see a little blue “e” and you don’t have Free Action yet, you’re too deep).

Since the documentation can’t really cover every scenario, the learning curve is nearly asymptotic.

And even when you have a character that’s ready to win the game, there are still creatures in the dungeon that you *run* from (Ancient Multi-Hued Dragons come to mind).

But it’s possible to win. And that’s either enough for you, or it’s not, to keep you playing.

Should one spend the effort to learn the game well enough to win it? That’s not for me to say. Plenty of people seem to spend lots of time learning to execute perfect headshots in Halo. Being an expert at roguelikes is a skill that will probably be equally useless in “the real world”.

If you’re hung up on ASCII, yuhjklbn, or characters that you name carefully, you may want to quietly take a pass on these games.

Also, if you think baseball batting averages are a tough sell for your self-confidence, then you may be a bit disappointed with your “win/loss” record on the RL high score list.

I’ve been playing roguelikes for over 25 years. I estimate that I’ve started at least 1000 characters. I’ve beaten the game (in one variant or another) four times. Bait the Eighteenth (an Elf Mage in IMoria) was the first. But that’s a record of (approximately) 4 – 996. That’s a lot of Yet Another Stupid Deaths.

Bait VII the Daywalker (a Vampire Chaos/Sorcery Mage in Zang 2.7.3) just gained Light Resistance, and is doing pretty well right now, but, as always, “if he dies, he dies”.

The game is winnable. And it’s very, very fun. And so I play.

By: Ithirra

Ithirra — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:03:42 +0000

I remember reading this article when it came out in PCG, I was absolutely hooked from the start. After almost 2 years of trying I finally got down to level 100 and killed the end boss, only to find that he wasn’t the strongest creature in the whole dungeon. I almost cried.

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 09:13:19 +0000

@ Jeremy: That’s exactly where I am with the game.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:56:12 +0000

Steamband is still my favorite Angband variant. The skill system provides an awesome amount of variety, and the Victorian/pulp SF theme seems somehow to express itself better than the slightly jumbled mass of most theme variants.

If you can stand ASCII I recommend playing roguelikes that way. Once you learn what a particular character (and coloration and capitalization) stand for, you can identify things at a glance much easier than you can with low res tile graphics. Or high res, for that matter.

By: Eschatos

Eschatos — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 01:31:50 +0000

I’m tired of Nethack after drowning in lava on the Plane of Fire in my most successful attempt yet. This and Dwarf Fortress sound like enough to sate my appetite for ASCII text games.

By: Bahumat

Bahumat — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:03:39 +0000

Just echoing the love for Nethack and especially old school Alphaman. God, I played the hell out of that game as a kid, and discovering Nethack was a total trip down memory lane.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:00:05 +0000

What is it about Zangband? I mean, I don’t think I really like it, not really. Yet I play it and when I die I immediately create a new character and start at level 1. There is just something compelling about it, maybe it’s the innate competitive nature that makes me want to play again and achieve better results. I try to get through each level and move on as if that makes a difference, but they’re all essentially the same, so that doesn’t spur me on. I found a level with an oasis and I didn’t even question it, I just moved on looking for the next thing to destroy. Every time I quit I think, this is the last time I’ll play, but then I get home and load it up. Maybe I’m just bored on this gaming hiatus while I wait for DoW II. Whatever it might be, I’ll probably continue to carve out my fortress in DF and delve deeper into the dungeons of Zangband.

By: Oddtwang

Oddtwang — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:41:36 +0000

Panther: Both on the list. We’ve got some rather lovely new music already, and there’s been a load of discussion about solo play. Personally I’m leaning towards making controlling a party less of a pain in the arse (I always hate it in RPGs; Dungeon Siege did a reasonable job but it was still a bit annoying).

By: Phil H

Phil H — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:27:58 +0000

(non-graphical) Nethack’s always been my rougelike of choice, and provided countless hours of good times, though its been getting some competition lately from my DS with the Izuna games and Shiren the Wanderer.

By: Andrew Doull

Andrew Doull — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:23:37 +0000

meh – roguelikes. Who cares?

By: Thants

Thants — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:19:03 +0000

As others have said Crawl Stone Soup is pretty fantastic. Really polished, it’s very hard to go back to Nethack after you get used to some of the features it has.

Also, there’s a good monthly column on roguelikes here: http://www.gamesetwatch.com/column_at_play/