Tangaria

• Finally! Djinn’s lamps are there: Ancient Vessel, Magic Lamp, Cursed Vessel. Beware of even touching Сursed Vessels – it could bring devastation to you! At the same time by rubbing Ancient Vessels and Magic Lamps you could summon a djinn who will execute your hidden desire.. or you could disturb the sleep of angry djinn!
• Also new scrolls: Dimension Shake, Forest Spirit, Rumours, Damned Jail.
• You can’t buy Fortune Cookie anymore; only to find it in dungeons (+it’s tile mapped).
• Scrolls of acquirement become much rarer because their place took djinn’s lamps).

Added potions of death, ruination, detonation and scrolls of curse weapon/armour. It’s a tribute to ancient classic versions of Angband; though in Tangaria these items are not fatal and got somewhat different effects.

Attention! Right now we have broken torch light in-game; walls lightened incorrectly. Temporary fix:
  = (game options) → a (user interface options) → make view_yellow_light ‘no’.

Also as you may notice, there is a new design on the website and new sections.

– Fix lighting in town, remove obsolete “white color for torch-lit grids” option
– Exclude cookies from ignoring setup
– Don’t load features when getting a dump from the server
– New option: Use single items from floor instantly
– Allow more than 3 types of terrain for dungeons
– Remove prompt when taking single items from home
– Make breathing consume food
– Drop all items in a stack by default
– Wipe townies every dawn

Server updated!

I’ve added several new sections on the website and working on dungeon design.

– Stop block fall trap crash
– Fix a few small bugs
– Nerf death wings/golems
– Remove Unlife pits (we already have golem and elemental pits)
– Reorganise player-attack
– Increase bigger weapon dice chance
– V-combat throwing
– Modify some artifacts
– Make ent draughts nourish like honey-cakes
– Harmonise plurals of hydra
– Change order of messages when taking items off
– Detarget teleported monsters if out of LoS
– Add j/k keys for scrolling help text
– Nerf Recharge effect
– Make stunning kill fastcast, tap devices stun
– Halve device damage boosts
– Give some monsters orb of draining
– Fix resource leak (file descriptor not closed)
– Grammatical and spelling fixes
– Simplify Term_fresh
– Give ATTR_FLICKER to Cantoras and Gilim
– Give Alchemist’s gloves better armor
– Arrange town shops along streets
– Light hidden squares in town
– Un-hardcode hybrid monsters by adding a HYBRID flag
– Make sure every extra projection effect has a message
– Show plater grid trap or terrain on status line
– Make items with random resists also ignore that element
– Allow player to be pushed into traps, webs or objects by earthquakes
– Add README file
– Replace hardcoded flicker table with one from a config file
– Implement color cycling
– Nerf to Mana Channel
– Make Cover Tracks reduce monster hearing and sight as well as smell
– Major changes to blackguards
– Don’t show negative values in spell info
– Add player_property.txt
– Fix incorrect number of bytes read from Packet_scanf() calls
– Add browsing of player abilities
– GCU port fixes
– Changed Term_resize() to handle all of the saved stack of terminals
– Add movement speed to status line
– Make birth_ai_learn learn from breath attacks
– Make birth_ai_learn on by default
– Make monsters at preferred range more likely to cast spells
– Prevent randart launchers from getting negative multipliers
– New option: Use white color for torch-lit grids in towns
– Replace specific skeletons by general skeletons, rework Raise effect

Note: this is now on par with current V.

Yay! Client/server updated!

Slimer – it’s pretty peculiar creature:
Incredibly foul-smelling potato-shape ghost with gigantic appetite, he eats anything on it’s way. When he passes through solid objects, he leaves behind a nasty bright-green slime.

He isn’t a common monster… He’s got certain evolution which you could see in real-time while playing the game; thanks to new SHAPECHANGE from V.

Once upon a time you could meet mutated slime mold:
An enormous amoeboid substance colony which slowly quivering. Its defencing mechanisms are quite amazing…

This substance under certain condition could transform into ectoplasm:
Strange greenish liquid which floats in the air in one big blog, that burl from inside. It’s moving in chaotic manner and slowly drifting somewhat randomly.. but eventually crawling a bit closer to you. You do not know what to expect from it, but it won’t be anything good for sure.

And then.. ectoplasm may mutate into a slimer! So we have there certain evolution of monster species, mutated slime mold → ectoplasm → slimer:Beware, he is very hungry!

p.s.
Ectoplasm will be able to take different forms; smiler is only one of these..

World rebuilded; added Valinor and path to Aman – The Straight Road, which is blocked by Valar and hidden.

The Straight Road:

Valinor:

Also:

• Dunedain and Black Numenorean races are back!
• fixed errors in monsters and broken tiles
• dropped too high rarity of some monsters
• added new monsters: magic maggot, troll cannibal and… slimer. I’ll make separate post about him 🙂

I’ve decided to go back to Tolkien-based lore, as my own fantasy world can not fit all diversity of traditional Angband gameplay.. and I don’t wanna cut it off. So I would rather on the contrary – to enhance it and turn into the new universe which does not depend on my fantasy book; and do not depend on canonic JRRT ideas either.

Welcome to the new World: https://tangaria.com/world/
(please note, that it’s draft edition; it will be updated a lot of times).

Commentary: Continue reading →

I’ve tried to gather Angband history in one chain:
https://tangaria.com/history/

The idea – so newcomer could understand the origin of the genre and to ‘feel’ it’s history. Story starts from singleplayer masterpieces, but eventually become focused around multiplayer variants, as I’m mostly interested in them. It’s was especially interesting to collect letters from initial game’s developers; to see the situation from their point of view at that point of time.

I’ll be glad to include there more information. If you found an inaccuracy or error, please report it! 🙂

There are loads of new V monsters came from PWMA 1.4 and when I’ve merged it to Tangaria, I’ve decided that it’s time to make a complete overhaul of monsters:

• angels are back. Maia is still there but, they appear much rarer and in forms of ‘spirits’ – as something between wraith and elementals; while angels have a physical humanoid form. Except returning classic Angband regular angels (Angel, Archangel, Cherub, Seraph, Fallen angel, Archon) and bosses (Uriel, Azriel, Gabriel), I’ve added Michael, Raphael, Lucifer… and Lilith. Last two ones replaced PWMA Nether Realms bosses…
• ..speaking of which – Xakaze, Father of Abomination become the leader (72 lvl boss) of new ‘mutant‘ race family (includes mutant-monsters like a squire, paladin, fighter, warrior, mage, etc). These poor weird creatures trying to find their own place in the new world. Mutants ‘Resistance’ is not too powerful organization yet, but they are trying hard… to turn the world upside down.. some of them at least // there will be separate lore on the website about mutants and all new races. Also, Lilith and Lucifer are temporary bosses – right now I’m creating new lore concept, more info in next post.
  
• djinns (and female jinni) – they will become a new separate monsters ‘base’ family; for now, I’ve revamped some V maia to djinns. Soon player will be able to find djinn lamps which he could try to rub to get lucky.. or not.
• fey, pixies and fairies – another new monster family. Some of them live in mushrooms areas and even taught them to talk…
• As we got pixies – we will need unicorns (not a joke!). ZAngband (and TomeNET, which adapted some ZA monsters) already had Unicorn of Order; which I’ve added (as always, with the rework of its characteristics and lore). And we got some more beautiful unicorns (Shtukensia approves!). Better do not slay these innocent beasts – you could become unlucky, people say.
• several new variations of tree/ent monsters (V added some, which I multiplicated over levels – Strange dry tree, Young ent, young huorn, etc). Not all of these monsters should be killed when you meet them. Also, some of them got quite long branches, so it won’t be easy to avoid it without getting hurt even in quite wide corridors (should you search for another route?).
• Russian folk monsters: Baba Yaga, Chudo Yudo, elki-palki, Zmey Gorynich, One of Forty Thieves, Solovey the Robber, babay & babayka, kolobok, oprichnik, Konyok-Gorbunok, Moroz, Likho, Kaschey, Viy, Zhar-ptitsa. Some of them become bosses, some – regular monsters. Not everything strictly follows Russian lore, eg kolobok is end-game beholder (who he became? poor block). Also I’ve added some fiction Russian lore, eg Khattabych, the Djinn & Gyulchatai, the Jinni. Goal of this monsters to add some flavour, but at the same time not to spoil classic fantasy atmosphere – so I’ve assigned them to different depths to prevent player meeting them often (dozen ru-monsters out of 1185 total is nothing really).
• Hoard of new monsters, some of them (I didn’t had time to make a complete list): magpie, giant cockroach, satyr, golem skeleton, Mad king, iron pig, wisp, doppleganger, inquisitor, fire golem, little girl horror, vampire mistress, black hand, flying coffin, efreet, diablo (not an unique), flaming skull, boggart, glaz, orc necromancer, etc. Some stuff was just renamed, eg Tik’srvzllat → Merlin, Moltor, the Dwarven Archer → Robin, the Archer, etc
• readjusted new V monsters, eg tamer appears with a lot of tamed animals (as it should be IMHO); some just simply renamed, eg lord of Carn Dum → shadow priest; spider of Gorgoroth → frogger; werewolf of Sauron → volkodlak, etc
• assigned some new traits and spells (eg HEAL_KIN)
• New objects which could be found in the dungeon: barrels, crates, statues, altars, obelisks, etc. This is a highly experimental feature. Beware to swear near the altar of ancient god!
• Added all new PWMA aquatic monsters from past 1.4 dev update! Soon I’ll enhance them with some more stuff; for now I’ve added one more there: a mermaid.

Continue reading →

Thanks to Flambard for repairing PWMangband Linux build and writing the guide!

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