Hi all,

(This will be old news to some of you ; apologies for not posting
sooner)

I'm sad to have to announce that KAngband is no longer being developed.
Most of the development team don't really have time to work on it any
more, my efforts to recruit more developers have mostly failed, and I
can't really finish what I wanted single-handedly. I think it's probably
better to end development now, rather than waste people's time on
something that isn't going to be finished soon.

Apologies to everyone who was waiting for the new version; there are
still fans out there, and I'm sorry to let them, and Ken Wigle, down. In
retrospect, I should have released smaller, more frequent updates, but I
didn't think the Python implementation would have taken anywhere near as
long as it did. Oh, well ; I'll try not to make that mistake again.

'I told you it would end in disaster' flames will be shown the way to
/dev/null, btw :)

The project will probably die completely at this point - however, if
anyone wants to take over where I left off, or incorporate some of the
new code in their own work, I'd really *love* to see that happen. (Even
if you want to take it in a completely different direction). The
Python/C core is 95% complete, there is a fair chunk of documentation,
but things like the new arena, etc, etc. aren't finished.

I still think there is a future for Python in 'band, it doesn't
necessarily make the code huge, slow or bloated, and I'd **hate** to see
the code rot away. The latest code has not yet been released (I was just
finishing off some extra transparency stuff, and it wasn't fully
tested), but I'd be happy to clean it up and finish it off if there is
any demand. Feel free to mail me if you happen to be interested ; there
are lots of unreleased tools, idea lists, etc. that might be useful.

I won't be staying active in the roguelike community, but e-mail will
still work.

Thanks,
Mark