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Archived news from 03/01.

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Archives - March 2001

Friday 30th March 2001
- New Gumband. Joseph William Dixon has released a new version (2.1.3b) of his variant - Gumband. The changes include a couple of bugs squashed, a few new artifacts and some relatively small tweaks. The files you are after should be found here...
Wednesday 28th March 2001
- Mac KAngband. Gileba has ported the recent version (2.9.2) of KAngband to the Mac (both PPC and 68k versions available). Sooner or lated, both files should turn up here...
Tuesday 27th March 2001
- Kharne Source. Dave Moore has decided to release the source of his roguelike - Kharne: The Revelation under the GNU Lesser Public License. If you're interested in taking a peek, you can find it on it's SourceForge project homepage here
- Time Capsule. Another month (Feb) finds itself thrown in the cardboard box of time and stuffed carelessly into the attic that is the Archives. Give it a few weeks and February will be a little damp, covered in an odd fungus and smelling faintly of mothballs...
Monday 26th March 2001
- Ularn Revamp. Josh Brandt has taken over the reins to Ularn and released a new version. The first steps are apparently tidying the code up and fixing the odd bug. Here are some of the changes...
  • "mkdir $(BINDIR)" in Makefile changed to "mkdir -p $(BINDIR)". Save files now compatible with Patchlevel 0.
  • Ability to unwield weapon (w -).
  • Helpful messages when wielding/wearing.
  • Improved spellcasting dialogue.
  • Implemented Vorpal Blade (except for when whacking monster several times)
  • Copyright message now has appropriate newlines.
  • Weapons/armour only glow if they're actually enchanted.
  • No longer says "You have found some gold\n it is worth foo".
  • Display of known scrolls and potions now correcty paginated.
  • Fixed "You went backward in time by 0 mobuls".
  • Copied nethack's magic mapping message.
  • Messages proofread and de-dorked. Pluralization done.
  • Fixed (some of) broken macros in header.h
  • Changed to sybolic constants for scroll and potion names, except in store.c
  • Removed the place where opening certain doors makes you lose a level.
  • Compiles cleanly on Linux, *BSD, Tru64, HP-UX, Solaris, and, I think, IRIX.
- Kamband OS/2. Skylar Thompson has created an OS/2 port of last week's (v2.0) release of Kamband. You should be able to find it here...
- DOS Ports. Speaking of Kamband (v2.0), Joseph William Dixon has also created a DOS port of both that and PsiAngband (v1.2.0). They should be found here...
- Amiga Ports. Next, two ports from Bablos for the Amiga. He's compiled Easyband (v2.1) and KAngband (v2.9.2) which should be lurking here...
- New Crawl. Time for a new version (4.00 pr11) of Crawl and with if comes a number of reworkings and bug fixes. Source and a Win32 binary is available (links later) but first, here is a list of some of the changes...
  • Potions, scrolls, and wands are all updated when used.
  • Cleaned up Abyss generation.
  • If you are butchering a corpse and teleport, the corpse still gets butchered but you don't get a silly message.
  • Fixed miscast effects.
  • All spell failures will add to mutagenic radiation.
  • Beam code completely changed to integer math.
  • Monster behavior updates from pr10zai incorporated.
  • More typos/grammar/spelling mistakes.
  • Fixed a couple problems with summoned critters.
  • Added Brent's wizard patch.
  • Monsters will be alerted to player's presence more easily if they recently fought the player.
  • Naming a character 'Con' is no longer allowed in DOS/win32.
  • 10% of wandering monsters are generated near stairs, but not in bands, regardless of player proximity.
  • Fixed Draconian scoring problem.
  • Sleeping/uninterested monsters will not follow a player up/down stairs.
  • Some fixes to monster following behavior, cornering, etc.
Files can be found here...
- I love ADSL. Guess what I got last Friday ;)
Thursday 22nd March 2001
- Mac EyAngband. Gileba has created Mac PPC and Mac 68k versions of the recent beta version (0.3.0b) of EyAngband. You should be able to find the binaries here shortly (if not sooner)...
Wednesday 21st March 2001
- New Kamband. Kamband (v2.0) from Ivan Tkatchev is available. Apparently, this is a 'playability' release with a number of tweaks and fixes to rid itself of annoying and incorrect features. On top of that, you have...
  • The wilderness now changes from night to day.
  • More in the nighttime and daytime it is now alot less dangerous.
  • Breeders are now hopefully less annoying.
  • Added some more wilderness vaults.
  • The town is now intergrated into the wilderness.
  • The "wilderness entrance" is gone.
  • Scrollable terrain is now more logical.
- Win Kamband. Franklin Bratcher has created a Win port of the recent Kamband release. You should be able to find it here...
- PernMAngband Snippet. Another version (3.1.1) of PernMAngband has been released. The only change is the addition of a monk class.
Tuesday 20th March 2001
- DOS Crawl. As is the way lately, there is now a DOS binary of the last Crawl release (4.0pr10zf) available from...
- PernMAngband Update. The kid with the deity fixation, 'Darkgod' has updated the client to his multiplayer variant PernMAngband (v3.1.0). It's not exactly clear what has been changed but apparently some bugs have been fixed.
Monday 19th March 2001
- Win Iso. Hansjörg Malthaner has created a Win version of his PernAngband-flavoured isometric 'add-on' for Angband, Iso-Angband. You can download it from the project homepage along with the Linux version.
- KAngband Update. John I'anson-Holton has released the stable (or should that be non-beta? or post-preview?) version (2.9.2) of his variant KAngband. The changes are pretty much those listed for the beta version on the 5th of March but with these additions...
  • The original quest plots are now available.
  • Made some changes to allow 'magical items' to be artifacts.
  • Added four new artifact rods. Rod of Delving (Stone-to-Mud), Rod of Hidden Ways (Dimension Door), Rod of Unsung Heroes (Berserk Rage, Haste Self, Remove Fear) and Rod of Illusions (Ghostliness, Invisibility, See Invisible).
And the files can be found here...
Friday 16th March 2001
- Crawl Slip. Third time lucky it seems, for the Crawl crowd. The version linked yesterday (which in itself was the second link given) turned out to have a problem creating monsters all over the place. Well, the version below (4.00 pr10zf) - optimistically labelled the 'final' version - has this problem fixed. Enjoy...
- EyAngband Update. Eytan Zweig has a beta version (0.3.0b) of his variant EyAngband available. You can find a list of the changes aswell as download the source/Win binary from this location.
- Mac Gumband. Gileba has created a Mac PowerPC version of Gumband (v2.1.3) which you can grab from...
Thursday 15th March 2001
- Egoboo Alpha. Ben Bishop has a new alpha version of his 3D dungeon trawling roguelike Egoboo. The main difference is this version runs under OpenGL/SDL, whereas the previous versions were DirectX. Currently, Win and Linux is supported with hopes to add Mac support in the near future.
- More Crawl. Apparently the last version of Crawl (4.00 pr9) was a little on the bug ridden side so you'll be very happy to know that there is a new (4.00 pr10z) version available. Changes this time around include...
  • Wandering monsters are no longer generated close to the player.
  • Speedup completed for win32 binary.
  • Level 27 should once again have staircases to Zot.
  • Crawl -plain now uses the appropriate character set.
  • All(most?) female uniques should be properly gendered now (missed a break statement).
  • Resistance to divine lightning is now messaged a bit better.
  • Messaging for vampiric attacks is now much better.
  • Monsters are no longer generated on teleport traps.
  • Fixed errant DOS #include.
  • Fixed overly long line in '?' screen.
  • More multiuser fixups, changed default makefile to makefile.lnx
  • Changed god favor to be more in line (but not identical!) to prayer messages.
  • Fixed crash on long player names (except for Mac/win32, where there was never a problem).
  • Several dozen spelling and grammatical fixes.
  • Improved weapon selection and wield_warn() messaging.
  • Wield_warn() will no longer crash for Monks.
  • Fixed silly problem with monster placement where 'bands' of monsters could very easily be scattered across the entire map.
  • Restructured place_monster() and mons_place() to be MUCH MUCH MUCH more readable...
Files can be found here...
Friday 9th March 2001
- Mac Slash'Em. Paul Hurtley has put together a Mac port of the recent SLASH'EM (0.0.6E4F3) update. Both source and PPC binary can be found on his homepage, here.
- New DeadCold. There is a new version (010308) of Joseph Hewitt's sci-fi roguelike, DeadCold available. DOS executable and source available from the homepage, with these changes...
  • Numerous bug fixes.
  • The game now begins with the PC inside his spaceship.
  • The Look and Enter commands have been implemented.
  • Instructions now appear on the BackPack screen.
  • Status changes for PC and critters have been implemented.
  • Critter resistances and vunerabilities have been implemented.
  • Improvements have been made to the game's scripting language.
  • New monsters, items, and rooms for the PC to discover.
  • Creatures get upset if the PC attacks one of their friends.
  • There is now a puzzle to be solved. It's not just random hacking and slashing anymore!
- Win32 Crawl+. Seems some people have found the screen redraw in the Win9x version of the last Crawl release a bit chuggy. To help out, there is a new 'experimental' Win32 version which improves such matters 10-50 times. If you're willing to risk any new probs it throws up, you can find it here...
- Lethe Update. Michael Clarke has released a new version (1.1.01) of his Lethe patch for NetHack (v3.3.1). The patch and executable are available from the project homepage. Here are the changes...
  • Made Ochre Jelly's less corrosive.
  • Taught monsters about people removing things.
  • Added number of moves to death record.
  • Added extinct/genocided to vanquished foes list.
- Tarra. See you next Thursday, probably.
Thursday 8th March 2001
- Online Roguelike! Probably the most complex online roguelike game in existance, Dunjon Of Düm is the brainchild of one Rich Carlson. It's quite difficult to explain the depth and sheer sphincter-gripping gameplay of this online game, so pop along and enjoy yourself for an hour or two...
- DOS Crawl. There is now a DOS binary of the last Crawl release (4.0pr9) available from...
- Another Break. I've got another few days off next week to deal with some householdy stuff that needs doing. Probably no update on Mon/Tue/Wed. :( And yes, the Dunjon is a 'joke' link :)
Wednesday 7th March 2001
- Crawl Update. The Crawl peeps have another dev version of Crawl for your enjoyment. Crawl (4.00 pr9) comes with the following bucket of changes...
  • Fixed possible scorefile parsing problem if lines went over 80 characters.
  • Fixed problem adding low-scoring entries to the score file.
  • Lots of little in-game documentation changes [...] including revamped '?' screen.
  • No more "sorry, you can't target what you can't see." from 'x' look.
  • Improved 'C' command.
  • Fixed far strike & twist
  • Patched up multiuser compile.
  • Quokkas don't generate corpses any more.
  • Easy butcher now defaults to false.
  • Options for race and class added to initfile.
  • Monsters don't throw stuff any more if they are in melee range (i.e., right next to their target).
  • Misc. code & stylistic fixes.
  • Charmed monsters will no longer be described as 'friendly'.
  • Brave attempt made to introduce correct pronouns when describing monsters (e.g., "Jessica is here. She is wielding a mace. She looks somewhat confused.")
  • Made shop names more visible (for at least 'x' look).
  • Can now pickup items which auto-combine, even if your pack is full.
  • Scrolls of fear won't auto-identify if nobody is scared by them.
  • Fixed "killed by giant ant" problem.
  • Name can be entered after race and class if desired (you are still asked immediately, in case you are loading a saved game) comments on the new interface welcome.
  • Two misc. job title fixes.
And the files can be found here...
- Easyband Files. Just a quick note to say you can get the Easyband (v2.1) files from the *band FTP site now...
Tuesday 6th March 2001
- More Easyband. Another update of Andres Zanzani's variant to make Angband a little easier - Easyband (v2.1). Unfortunately, this update is breaks the v2.0 savegame compatibilty but does add the following...
  • Correct Potion of Experience bug ( not give experience )
  • Correct Stinking Cloud Bug
  • Fast Autoroller : no more to wait
  • Female character start with more gold ( just to buy some useless tools... ;)
  • New Ego Weapon: Weapon with Crystalie. The rare Crystalie are natural magical stone embewed with faintly powers (Blue Crystalia - Power over Body, White Crystalia - Power over Sense, Yellow Crystalia - Power over Light, Purple Crystalia - Power over Mana).
  • Ranger get an Extra Bow Shot at 50 LV ( so 20/30/40 LV)
  • Rogue get an Extra Sling Shot at 30 LV ( so 20/30/40 LV)
  • Tweaked Class Maximun Melee Attack ( at curve edge )
  • Warrior get Resist Fear at LV 20 and Resist Blindness at 30 and Resist Shard at LV 40
  • Wizard get Resist Disench. at LV 30 and Resist Nexus at 40
  • Priest get Resist Nether at LV 30 and Resist Chaos at 40
  • Rogue get Resist Poison at LV 30 and Resist Dark at 40
  • Paladin get Resist Dark at LV 30 and Resist Nether at 40
  • Ranger get Resist Confusion at LV 30 and Resist Poison at 40
  • Blood of Life Patch adapted from Pernband also from David Blackston (allow to cheat death ;)
  • 2 new monster : Topobanshee, Happypotamo ...
  • Unified command for praying and casting : 'm'
  • Change priest spells in varius aspect (mainly in less randomness, es. : rnd(3*cl) become rnd(2*cl)+cl )
Monday 5th March 2001
- Kharne Update. Dave Moore has a new version (0.12) of his roguelike - Kharne: The Revelation available for download from the project homepage. There are is a full list of changes to be found here.
- Stable Slash'Em. There is an update of SLASH'EM (0.0.6E4F3), bringing it to the end of the current development cycle to a point where it can be considered 'stable'. Changes can be found here while source and Dos/Win/Unix binaries are available from the project homepage.
- Gumband Release. Joseph William Dixon has a new version (2.1.3) of his variant, Gumband available. The changes can be found in the text file listed below for download.
And Franklin Bratcher has created a Windows version which you should be able to find here...
- Win PernAngband. Kusunose Toru has created a Windows version of PernAngband (v4.1.5). You should be able to grab it from...
- Amiga Bits. Bablos has ports of several recent *band releases for the Amiga. This time, you're treated to EyAngband (v0.2.3), Gumband (v2.1.3), Psiband (v1.20) and ZAngband (v2.5.4). You should be able to find the files linked below...
- Lethe Patch. For Nethack 3.3.1, "It adds the fabled river Lethe flowing from just past the Medusa level down into the depth of Gehennom. It features some special river levels, along with expanded demon lairs and the eternally dark Gulf of N'Kai at the bottom of Gehennom.". If this sounds like your cup of stagnant river water, pop along to Michael Clarke's project homepage, here, where you can pick up the patch and a compiled executable.
- KAngband Preview. John I'anson-Holton has released a preview version (2.9.2beta) of KAngband for playtesting/bugfinding purposes. It's a shift in the codebase and currently only features one plot ("Troubles at home") and as such, savegames using the other plots are not compatible. Here are the changes...
  • Upgraded the source code base to Angband 2.9.2. (See the change logs for standard Angband for details).
  • Changed some minor feature differences so as to conform Kangband more closely with standard Angband (mostly combat stuff).
  • Conformed vault generation with standard Angband.
  • Updated building and quest-handling code to that of Zangband 2.4.0.
  • Entering and leaving quests is now done via the '<' and '>' commands.
  • Added a Maia race similar to that of Oangband (from where the stats and histories were taken). Maia have intrinsic regeneration and slowed digestion. Unlike Oangband, their score is not adjusted.
  • The temporary high resistances available to certain classes are now cummulative with the permanent high resistances and offer the same protection from magical attack side effects (such as stunning and confusion).
  • The Monster AI options now factor in the temporary resistances when choosing which spell a monster will cast.
  • Added the "No confirm to destroy known worthless items." option from Zangband.
  • The cheat_flav option was replaced with cheat_iden which makes the game behave as if all items have been *identified* when describing them.
  • Monsters with quality drops may now also drop Rings of Lordly Protection and Rings of Extra Attacks.
  • Vorpal weapons now do a flat 1/3 extra damage *after* factoring in weapon damage bonuses but the effect only kicks in half the time. This needs to be playtested.
  • Vampiric weapons have had caps on their life draining removed but no longer drain monsters every blow. This needs to be playtested.
  • The chaotic effects produced by Chaos brand weapons have been changed so that you will now get a player-centered, radius 2 ball of either chaos or disenchantment if the chaotic effect goes off.
  • Replaced the Mage's 'Resist Poison' spell with 'Resist Electricity'.
  • Fixed a bug with the 'Resist Cold' spell.
  • Fixed a bug with the separation of confusion and chaos and the smart_cheat option.
  • Fixed a bug with *ID-ing* certain artifacts.
  • Fixed a bug with the "Immolation" spell in Purifications and Healing which was intended to be "Dispel Demons (x6)" but actually dispelled undead. Since dispelling demons doesn't fit with the theme of that book, the spell was moved to Wrath of God with altered minimum level and mana costs and reduced to x4.
And you can find the source here...
- Mac PernAngband. Gileba has created a Mac PowerPC version of PernAngband (v4.1.5) which you can grab from...
Friday 2nd March 2001
- New Kamband. Ivan Tkatchev has released a new version (v1.9) of his variant Kamband. Changes include a new class (Avatar) who is assigned 'fates' by their god, changes to the scoring system and the addition of a simple help file (kamband.txt).
- DOS Crawl. There is now a DOS binary of the last Crawl release (4.0pr8) available from...
Thursday 1st March 2001
- Back Again. After a few days break, I'm back again. Several updates to add but not enough time... hang in there folks - sorry for any delays.
- EyAngband Revamp. Eytan Zweig is also back with a new version (0.2.3) of his variant EyAngband, moving the code base from Angband 2.9.1 to 2.9.2 and all the extraness that entails. The full list of changes and download links can be found on the project homepage.
- Mac Ports. Gileba has a few Mac ports to share with you guys. On the menu we have Psiband (v1.2.0), EyAngband (v0.2.3) and ZAngband (v2.5.4). If you mouth is watering, tuck into these...
© Copyright 2001 Darren Hebden.