Angband

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Angband
Angband.png
Screenshot by Angband
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 1990
platform Amiga , DOS , Linux , Mac OS
genre Computer role playing game
Subject Fantasy ( Tolkien's World )
Game mode Single player
language English
Current version 4.2.1 (June 3, 2020)

Angband is a rogue-like computer role-playing game .

Usually the language used in the game is English. It is subject to the Angband License and - like the source code - is freely available.

General

Angband is based on the game Moria, first published in 1983 on Unix- based systems . Angband first appeared in 1990 and was originally developed by students at the University of Warwick . Historically, the game was under a proprietary license for a long time , which only permitted free reproduction, but was not fully GPL- compatible. Thus Angband was not free software up to version 3.0.9 and z. B. not included by default in Linux distributions . From version 3.1.0 beta the game is under the GPLv2 after all authors have released their source code.

The game world is set in the Tolkien universe - Angband is the name of Morgoth's fortress . The rules of the game are reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons . Diablo, which is very successful in the commercial sector, is largely an implementation of the Angband gameplay . In contrast to the individual moves in Angband , the actions in Diablo are not turn-based.

The final goal of the game is to reach level 100 of the dungeon and defeat the boss Morgoth there. On the way through the randomly generated dungeon levels one encounters a variety of monsters that have their origins in Middle-earth mythology, in D&D and in the rogue tradition.

The player can choose his avatar from a variety of races and classes, all of which are taken from or at least inspired from Tolkien's universe.

Despite the simple display, the game has a very great depth of play. There are countless objects , enemies and special indestructible artifacts from “Middle-earth”, including the One Ring, of course.

In general, the "bands" are considered to be one of the two main lines of development in rogue-like games. The focus is set somewhat differently than in the "-hack" -like games. The official manual describes the game as a dungeon simulation, it is less about solving puzzles and more about tactical approaches. So it is e.g. For example, it is very important to equip the player character with the right resistances and magical aids, or to flee in good time in an emergency with overpowering opponents. After all, the powerful magician Gandalf has succumbed to a demon from the depths in the literary original, and as in almost all rogue-like games, each adventurer avatar lives only once, unless the player cheats by resuming a cached game.

An interesting feature in some variants is the Borg , an automatic player who is even able to win the game on his own.

A separate newsgroup is maintained for discussions about the game, bug reports and suggested changes .

graphic

Angband's graphics were originally represented using the ASCII character set , as in many rogue-like games .

On the left you could see the race, class and rank of the player. Further character values ​​are listed below. The rest of the screen was the playing field, # is a wall,. is a free area. @ is the player, t is a villager. The colored numbers showed entrances to different houses.

Angband is available for many computer systems, including MS-DOS , Unix / Linux (with variants for curses and X11 , among others ), Mac OS and Amiga . The modular, well commented source code allows easy adaptation to systems that are not yet supported.

There are now several graphics sets for Angband that can be used on a number of systems. Most gamers use these graphic tiles today.

variants

There are a total of around 60 variants, of which currently (2019) around a dozen are actively maintained.

Web links