More proof that punctuation is entirely evil.
Angband is a roguelike game. This means that you move a @ around, trying to find good | and ), and slaughtering the letters of the alphabet (that'll learn that there stuck up Q, only letting U stand around *spit*). There are a few ways to win the game:
You can check out thangorodrim for real information, where to get the bloody thing, and the stuff I'm not in the mood to look up right now. Also described below in the links page. This is pretty much the official angband site now.
A little program that gives you stats on Angband (and closely related variants), Zangband, Kamband and Kangband scorefiles. It's written in Python, so you'll need a python interpreter (I used v1.5, others *MAY* work). Anyhow, click the file to download angscore-1.1.tar.gz. A sample of its wonderful output is here. And yes, I know that the globals method was a bit hackish (and more trouble than it needed to be), and yes, I used way too many values for bit-masks... I must have had a brain fart or something, and thought it was kind of neat the way it looked. Anyhow, I've fixed these, but the file hasn't been renamed.
Macrocvt is a little program to do some of the conversion between the old style (pre-2.8.3) macro system and the new one. It's written in ansi-c, and should be pretty portable, but it hasn't been tested on any systems other than linux, so your milage may vary. Also included in the package is a document about macros, which is also available here. The package is here.
That's it for now. I'm kicking around the idea of doing a variant that adheres closely to Tolkien, but that may just be a pipe dream (it's hard to write code that will actually stick to somebody).
Update: I've started working on an unnamed variant (not tangband, this is to fulfill one of the requirements I have for tangband) which incorporates python as an extension language. In fact, if things go as planned, it will be possible to completely specify the game in python, leaving only the major number crunching and display code in c. Still in the design phase, I intend to put up a page with more information and some of my notes RSN.
Update Update: I've stopped working on this, since Keldon Jones recently released pangband, a programmable angband using python. Which is just as well, really, since I only got as far as writing the base classes for my own before I started fudging around with gcl. I still want to get to the tolkien angband, tho, and I'll probably start building off of this when I get around to fiddling with it. Anyhow, the pangband home page is here.
Update Update Update: My notes for tangband are now online here. This is obviously still in the idea phase, though I invite comments.
Update*4: Holy Crap, it's been months since I've even looked at *band (or any other roguelikes, for that matter). I've found myself working on a bunch of other things (like this). I'd still love to get around to doing Tangband (hmm... maybe with guile as the extension language?), but at this point, I'll probably have to re-read The Silmarilion just to figure out what I was talking about in the notes ;).
Other Angband addicts have little hunks o' web. Check 'em out.
Pages dealing with roguelikes in general
When you get to the bottom you go back to the [TOP] of the slide.
Last modified Sat Jul 01,2000
Contains some annoyances for page harvesters >;^).