Re: MultiplayerAngband / Tales/Troubles of Middle-earth (networked)

On Fri, 20 Sep 2024 12:54:07 -0500, Altered Beast wrote:

David Chmelik wrote:

On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 12:20:50 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Thu, 19 Sep 2024 11:59:02 -0000 (UTC), David Chmelik
<dchmelik@gmail.com> wrote:

I recommend MultiplayerAngband (MAngband) / Tales/Troubles of
Middle-earth (networked, ToMENET).  They're somewhat roguelike
(except realtime) you can also use graphical tiles.  They're based on
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and inspired by Rogue, Moria, Angband,
ToME (single-player).

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A URL would have been nice.
Something like this: https://www.mangband.org/

 
also http://tomenet.eu/
 

It's still text-based [...]

 
As stated, they have text and graphical tiles, but you might have to
install/configure (various) tiles.
 

That sounds like fun.  Is it cooperative or competitive?

Though, I don't use tiles myself, because I prefer to quickly see when
different humanoids (for example beggars & drunks or a vampires & liches)
are different (p versus V & L).  In 1990s that was difficult with Angband
graphics, but it may be that graphical tilesets are larger now so more
easily distinguishable (but Moria/Angband also had a manual chapter
showing monsters by their letters, and a command to identify anything on
the screen using its ASCII/unicode character).

MAngband & TomeNet have cooperative & competitive aspects.  I think they
haev a player-killing (pkill) mode, but I don't use it.  At least TomeNet
also has 'Highlander Tournament' (kill each other like in Highlander film/
TV series and in the end there can only be one for the prize) and other
games regularly.  One can't get unlimited resources, so there's sometimes
some competition getting those, but more often players form adventuring
parties, guilds, etc., and help each other with that, and some steal from
monsters or shops.  There's definitely some competition in getting unique
magical artifacts (such as the rings of power, special weapons & armour,
etc.) but there are maybe 100+ named ones (but nothing close to that many
players) and thousands of random artifact (randarts) so most players can
get several after some levels, and more powerful players give up artifacts
that are no longer powerful enough for them, often giving them to other
active players.  It maybe was suggested don't do that instead of drop true
artifacts so they disappear, but most servers have periods fewer people
are playing so there's maybe only one person who can use the true artifact
and wants it.  A few artifacts at the end of the game are true but not
unique, so every winner gets those.  Single-player Angband/ToME manuals,
source code, and spoiler files/sites have more information about
artifacts, etc.  There's also some competition killinq unique monsters,
which always return ('respawn') after dying.  Each character can only kill
them once, so it pays to keep track and don't accidentally do it twice
while in an adventuring party or not as good for the party (on second time
they may not powerful/magic items such as artifacts that could be sold for
party if the killer of that unique doesn't want them).

I could say a lot more, since I've been playing Rogue, Hack, Moria, etc.,
since 1993, but I've only ever beat Moria/Angband using wizard mode (not
usually allowed on MAngband/TomeNet servers).  I think http://rephial.org
might be the Angband website, but as for Moria, the last maintainer hasn't
updated it since maybe 1994 and his homesite disappeared a few years ago. 
Older roguelikes are still easier to play to learn basics before
(M)Angband/ToME(Net).

Hack became NetHack, and there were multiplayer InterHack and HackNet, but
one had playability problems, and the other hasn't been updated decades.