Angband (video game)
Angband is a rogue -like computer role-playing game.
As a rule, which is used within the game to English. It is the Angband License and is - as the source code - available for free.
General
Angband is based on the 1983 first on Unix-based systems published game Moria. Angband first appeared in 1990 and was originally developed by students at the University of Warwick. Historically, the game was a long time under a proprietary license that allowed only gratuitous duplication, however, was not fully GPL - compatible. Thus Angband was up to version 3.0.9 not free software and example not included by default in Linux distributions. However, since version 3.1.0 beta the game is under GPL after all authors have released their source code.
The game world is based in Tolkien 's universe - Angband is the name of the fortress of Morgoth. The rules of the game are reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons. The very successful in the commercial sector Diablo is largely a real-time implementation of the principle of game Angband.
The aim 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, you encounter a variety of monsters that have their origin in the Middle-earth mythology in D & D and in the Rogue tradition. The player character can have a variety of races and classes, which are all taken from Tolkien's universe, or at least inspired.
Despite the simple representation of the game has a very large depth of play. There are innumerable objects, enemies and special artifacts from Middle Earth, of course, the One Ring.
Generally considered the " bands" as one of the two main lines of development of the Rogue -like games. The priorities are slightly different set than the " hack "-like games. The official instructions referred to the game as a dungeon simulation, it is less about solving puzzles as a tactical approach. So it is e.g. very important to equip the player character with the right resistance and magical aids, or to take in case of an emergency at overpowering opponents in time to escape. After all, a demon has died from deep in the literary presentation of the mighty wizard Gandalf, and as in almost all Rogue -like games every adventurer only live once.
An interesting feature in some versions is the Borg, an automatic player who is even able to win the game independently.
For discussion about the game, bug reports and change proposals A newsgroup is maintained.
Graphic
The graph of Angband, as shown in all Rogue -like games using the ASCII character set.
On the left is the race, class and the player's rank. Among other character values are listed. The rest of the screen is the pitch, # is a wall. is a free surface. @ Is the player, t is a villager. The colored numbers are inputs to different houses.
Angband is available for many computer systems, including MS -DOS, Unix / Linux ( with variants among other curses and X11), MacOS and Amiga. The modular, well- commented source code can be easily adapted to not yet supported systems.
There are also several graphic kits for Angband, which can be used on some systems.
Versions
There are about 60 variants, of which about a dozen are actively maintained.