Some news from fronts 🙂
Soon (we all hope so) game will be accessible in Linux – thanks, Flambard! (maintainer of MAngband); also he published Multiplayer Variants Network Manifesto (which I fully support) and introduced _browser_ client!
Powerwyrm works on bringing monster changes from Vanilla. It includes huge tileset rework and cool stuff like new abilities: spiders can now weave webs, humanoids using whips (extra-distance attack), spitting, etc. Also it will include some core changes like Sil lightning system! 😉
The arguable thing is that a lot of monsters in PWMA will be removed/renamed – the same way as it was made in the latest version of Angband. It doesn’t mean that I have to change monsters in Tangaria; I’m planning only to add new stuff. My goal is to preserve classic, vanilla spirit of Angband… As it’s ‘lore’ concentrated in monsters – I’ll try to be careful with monster changes as much as I can. The only problem that Tangaria losing some compatibility to PWMA 🙁
Considering details in these changes: for example, PWMA will not have greek references anymore (Lernean Hydra, Medusa, Polyphemus, Atlas, Kronos, etc). Personally I like greek references… They make game educational as players could google monster names, read Wikipedia, etc.. I did it a lot while played earlier *bands – got loads of new knowledge; even started to read some new fantasy books after I’ve met monsters from them.
So IMHO it’s much better to remove direct&precise Tolkien’s references (as it’s copyrighted) but leave and even enrich lore with valuable knowledge (greek and not only – which is in a public domain). Of course, maintaining core fantasy-style ‘canonic’ (which means – tolkien-inspired) is important.. But stuff like Lernean Hydra doesn’t mess it.. In general, I really like oldschool *band monsters concept except for cyberdemons and some mad sci-fi stuff 😉 (by oldschool I mean old Angband version; I suppose it was based at 3.x + monsters from other variants, like Z+Angband). It’s fun to have references to as many great fantasy writers as possible. For example, it will be great to have 9 princes of amber reference in-game.. To avoid copyright they could be smartly renamed. The same thing is to rename Sauron to Dark Lord etc.. So when you meet the monster – you know who is it, but it doesn’t contain strict copyright reference which is great. It’s kinda the way which DarkGod made in ToME4; but he went much too far and removed ALL references to all writers; this made game’s lore a bit dull (which doesn’t make the game bad.. I love ToME4 very much.. but imagine if it will have these oldschool monsters… mmm..).
So.. In Tangaria I’ll remove all copyrighted stuff, but it will be smartly renamed so the spirit of original monsters will stay intact. At the same time, I’m creating my own universe, so it’s not just blindly copying all monsters to the game =)
But it will happen later. Now I’m planning races rebalance.. All races will have no more than 200% (or 150?) exp penalty as having high exp penalty is actually an advantage in Tangaria as you could explore dungeons longer and get better items. Eg you could enter 1st (after newbie dungeon) dungeon ‘Mountain Gorge’ only if your lvl not higher than 5; ‘Orc cave’ not higher than 10, ‘Severs’ not higher than 15 etc.. I like this principle very much as your gameplay is always challenging, without any trace of cheezing; and you need to think strategic – at which moment to enter/leave certain places; to plan your adventures to be able to get to the bottom of the dungeon to meet a boss (bosses drop will be buffed to make them more desirable).
So all races will be rebalanced, even dragons (sorry, Powerwyrm 🙂 ).
Folks, if you got a suggestion about rebalance, you are welcome to make them. Recently I’ve published game’s gamedata at the website, eg races are: https://tangaria.com/data/races/ or https://tangaria.com/gamedata/p_race.txt (all data, including locations – is there https://tangaria.com/gamedata/ ). I’ll publish a server 7-zip archive later on; so anyone will be able to run a server at the local machine in one click.
Cya in-game!
p.s.
My past stream: