Talk:Angband
Latest version is 3.1.2v2
Released sometime in Apr 2010 ?
- However, although Angband is more akin to Tolkien than Moria, the prison is not re-created acording to his history but rather as a roguelike dungeon.
Took that out, I don't quite know what it means.[[User:M|–MT]] 07:14, 21 Sep 2005 (CEST)
Problems with this article
The current version of Angband is GPL licensed. Andrew Sidwell managed to contact the last of the original developers and get permission. So it's now available under both the GPL and the traditional Angband license.
Andrew Sidwell is now officially the current maintainer. But there are other problems.
If you are going to include the contents of the town, you might as well be complete and include "a small number of inhabitants".
The classes and races are *not* all from "classic Dungeons and Dragons": the Rogue class is a nod to the genre, while Dunadan and High Elf characters are playing a Tolkien race -- in fact the only races that can be said to clearly derive from D&D rather than Tolkien are the gnomes and the recently added kobolds (which you couldn't play in old D&D anyway). I'm sure you can play a half-troll in D&D these days, but that's not classic D&D, either. And let's not get into the Hobbit issue. Most of the class archetypes shared with D&D don't use the same names as D&D did, and D&D didn't invent any of those archetypes, it just used them. While Angband's debt to D&D should be acknowledged, the current statement is simply inaccurate.
The player doesn't face "Sauron and Morgoth" together, as might be inferred from this article. I suggest changing to "Sauron and then Morgoth".
There's an issue not with this article, really, but related to it. A structural problem: we have a "complete list of Angband variants" (which probably isn't really complete) and the "Angband variants" category page. It would be nice if the whole Angband variant listing thing could be unified somehow.
While some do consider Angband the easiest of the major roguelikes, others hold Nethack to be the easiest. It is certainly not uncontroversial to say that Angband is easier. This statement needs to either be modified or removed completely.
I would say that Fangband was the first major variant. It was popular in its day and many of its features made it back into standard Angband. For that matter, I've recently been assured that GW-Angband preceded Zangband, and it is significant for its influence on modern Angband, although it never was the trendy variant that Fangband and Zangband were in their times.
I'm not sure a list of "currently popular" variants is appropriate. For one thing, this changes over time and is somewhat subjective in any case. If such a listing belongs anywhere, it should be on the variant listings page, but I still don't think it belongs on roguebasin at all. You'd need to update too frequently and there would be too much room for argument and ill-feeling. There has been little mention of Steamband lately and SAngband has been noticeable only for the reappearance of its little tin god. Er, its maintainer. And is popularity based on total downloads, recent downloads, message traffic, people who have played in the last month, audience appreciation polls?...
There's a great deal that could be added, of course. The JLE patch changes probably belong in the history section. A fuller description of Angband's features could be added. The movement of data out of the code into editable text files also belongs in the history. But this sort of thing can wait for a clean-up of the existing material.
I will wait awhile for any feedback before making changes in case anyone cares to muster a defense of the existing text. Rdanhenry 08:46, 6 May 2007 (CEST)