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Angband is a roguelike game derived from Moria and enhanced successively by Alex Cutler, Andy Astrand, Charles Swiger, Ben Harrison and Robert Ruehlmann. It is based on the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien. The adventurer is presented with 100 levels of the title dungeon, in which he or she seeks to amass enough power and equipment to ultimately defeat Morgoth. A new level is randomly generated each time the player changes levels, which gives Angband great replay value: no two games will be the same.
A veritable family tree of around sixty (around a dozen of which are active) variants of Angband exist, each often greatly differing in purpose and depth of changes. The best known variants are EyAngband, Hengband, OAngband, ToME, and ZAngband.
The Usenet group rec.games.roguelike.angband (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&group=rec.games.roguelike.angband) is a place to discuss all the aspects of the game. An IRC channel, #angband, exists on the WorldIRC network (irc.worldirc.org).
Angband is open source but not strictly free software because it is licensed under "non commercial use" terms, as was its ancestor Moria. However, there is an effort ongoing to re-license Angband under the GNU GPL. One advantage of this would be allowing it to be bundled with "commercial" Linux distributions.
Vanilla Angband gameplay is most often compared to Nethack, though in reality the games are almost polar opposites. Angband adopts a more serious tone than Nethack, and the focus of the game is more on combat tactics, inventory management and risk minimalisation than Nethackish puzzle solving and special casing. This has been the source of mild conflicts between the two communities.
Angband terms
- Artifact: A special item with preset statistics that cannot be destroyed, and of which only one instance exists. Once identified, they are never generated again.
- *Band: Generic name for any angband variant.
- Borg: An automated Angband player.
- Ego item: A standard item with special abilities, which vary according to its ego type. eg. Soft Leather Boots of Speed.
- RNG: Random Number Generator/God. Due to the importance of random effects in Angband, the game RNG is often referred to anthropomorphically.
- Unique: A monster of which only one instance exists. Once killed they are never generated again.
- Vanilla: The unmodified version of Angband.
- Vault: A special room which is not random, but is produced from a plan.
- Wizard: A debug/cheat mode.
See also
External links
- Thangorodrim (http://www.thangorodrim.net/) is the primary Angband site. It features development information, a variant list.
- Angband.oook.cz (http://angband.oook.cz/) (or oook) contains the Angband ladder, detailed spoilers, and other resources.
- The Angband Comic (http://www.damnsw.net/~devink/) has been defunct since 2002. It was drawn in the style of the game's text interface.
- Penance (http://penancecomic.com/) is a new Angband webcomic, but drawn in a more traditional style.
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