Mirrors:
[2001/01/29] Some long-overdue cleanup.
My web site isn't very fast, and it's extremely busy due to some of the other files that I'm serving on another virtual host. Please bear with me, folks -- and if you can't get the large files from this site fast enough, try the mirrors.
[1999/06/18] GW-Angband 2.8.3v3 has been released. This is (still) an alpha code release. Please send me any bug reports so that GW-Angband can become better.
[1999/05/08] GW-Angband 2.8.3v2 has been released. This is an alpha code release for testing and debugging. I'm interested in hearing bug reports concerning any aspect of the game, and also game balance issues. (There are some important changes to the game play, and balance is therefore at risk.)
If you wish to compile GW-Angband 2.8.3v2 for a specific platform and release it, then please be advised that due to the new RNG code, GW-Angband 2.8.3v2 is now released under the terms of section 6 of the LGPL. In a nutshell, this means that you have to release either the source code for any changes you make, or individual object files -- but please read the license for details. (Most of you shouldn't be affected by this, since the Angband community has always released source code voluntarily.)
[1998/03/??] GW-Angband 2.8.3v1 has been released. You can get the source code patches here. GW-Angband 2.8.3v1 is a bug fix release from GW-Angband 2.8.3, which applied the GW-Angband customizations to the Angband 2.8.3 code base, and also included random artifacts. Installation instructions can be found in the file named README.1st in the patch archive.
[????/??/??] Version 2.8.1v1 is still available as a patch against GW-Angband 2.8.1.
A DOS-386 version is also available; this is a binary distribution compiled with DJGPP v2. You will need an 80386 or newer processor, and a DPMI memory manager (such as Microsoft Windows, or CWSDPMI).GW-Angband 2.8.1 has a fairly severe bug in the Rogue's spells. Mages and rangers are not affected. It is highly recommended that all players upgrade from 2.8.1 to 2.8.1v1. However, a patch from Angband 2.8.1 to GW-Angband 2.8.1 is still available. The small size of this patch (and the 2.8.1v1 patch) makes this a much more efficient download for people who already have the Angband 2.8.1 source code.
[1999/06/18]There aren't any known bugs in GW-Angband 2.8.3v3... yet! Please find them and turn them in so that they can be slain mercilessly.
GW-Angband 2.8.3v2 had a few small bugs which are fixed in 2.8.3v3. But upgrading is not critical.
GW-Angband 2.8.3v1 fixed the following problems found in GW-Angband 2.8.3:
All players of GW-Angband 2.8.3 are encouraged to upgrade to at least version 2.8.3v1.
One of the flaws with the standard versions of Angband is that there is a tendency for mages to become invulnerable warriors in the end-game. This is unbalanced, since a mage with the Globe of Invulnerability spell is basically unstoppable. Also, it doesn't feel particularly mage-like, since the mage will almost always prefer combat to spells. Therefore, I decided to try to do something about this.
I started by analyzing the combat system. There are some flaws there as well. A weapon's base damage is often worthless compared to the damage bonuses available from rings of damage, which are often better than rings of speed! Also, mages, being limited to 4 blows per round, have a tendency to use large weapons, whereas warriors (who get up to 6 blows) often prefer small weapons which permit them to get more blows than the larger weapons. These aspects of the game felt wrong to me as well.
My first change to Angband was a small release that I called Angband 2.7.9v6gw. It was based on Angband 2.7.9v6, but incorporated many changes, including a weakening of mages' and priests' combat skills, and a big decrease in the power of rings of damage. There are lots of other little subtle (and one or two not-so-subtle) changes as well. Finally, I included some powerful mage spells that were posted to rec.games.roguelike.angband by Karl. Angband 2.7.9v6gw remains available as a source code patch to Angband 2.7.9v6; the DOS-386 executable is no longer being distributed.
Later, I decided that 2.7.9v6gw was a step in the right direction, but still wasn't quite what I wanted. I decided to revisit the mage spellbooks, 4 of which have not been updated since the Moria days, except for the replacement of Remove Curse with Spear of Light. Many of the spells weren't useful, or were essentially duplicates of other spells. There were some spells that I thought mages should have but didn't; and I thought that mages should not have Globe of Invulnerability. I wanted to give mages a little bit more flexibility, so I reorganized the spells by category; I haven't done everything I want to do yet, but I think the spell changes I've made are great fun.
This new version was a much more thorough change than 2.7.9v6gw was. It was different enough from standard Angband that I needed to establish a separate name for it and start keeping track of version numbers. Fortunately, Ben Harrison has continued Angband development with version 2.8.0, and nobody else has used any of the version numbers in the 2.7.9 series after 2.7.9v6. So I am calling my variant GW-Angband (boring, but reasonable), and the version numbers for my releases start with 2.7.10. GW-Angband 2.7.10 is still available as a source code patch to Angband 2.7.9v6gw. The DOS-386 executable is no longer being distributed.
When I incorporated the GW-Angband ideas into Angband 2.8.1, I had to undergo a large jump in the version numbers. This was necessary because of the way Angband save files are version-stamped. I was originally going to call it GW-Angband 2.7.12, but doing so produced a 2.8-format save file with a 2.7.12 version stamp. The result couldn't be parsed by the restore-game code. I therefore had three choices:
Ben released Angband 2.8.2 a while ago, but it had at least one controversial change which made it somewhat unattractive for many players. I also became involved with my random artifact code around that time, and some wonderful new variants started to appear (some of them using GW-Angband code and/or concepts -- thanks!), so GW-Angband development lagged.
With the release of Angband 2.8.3, a lot of new user interface code has been introduced (including a reversal of the unpopular 2.8.2 item quantity selection code). I've also got the random artifact generator into what I hope is a mostly stable state. While GW-Angband is no longer a highly popular variant, it was time for an update; so I applied the GW-Angband patches to the Angband 2.8.3 code base, cleaned up the mess (which was actually rather small), applied the random artifact patches, and then cleaned up that mess (which was even smaller). I tested it a little bit, and released it in source code format.
Now that I've really cleaned up the mess (by going through the patch by hand, like I should have done in the first place), I hope that GW-Angband 2.8.3v1 is as bug-free as I can make it.
GW-Angband 2.8.3v2 is the first release in over a year, and the first version with real gameplay changes in a couple years. It's an alpha release, intended for testing and debugging purposes.
[1999/06/18]GW-Angband 2.8.3v3 fixes a few small bugs in 2.8.3v2, including long-standing bugs inherited from vanilla Angband. I also reorganized the Mage spells again (but the change is not nearly as large as the switch from vanilla Angband's spell list), and made some more small tweaks to various parts of the program.
I may have omitted some of the changes in the earlier versions, or mixed up exactly when a change was made; this is being written after the fact.
See the full change list for more details.
For more details, please see the full full list of changes.
Some of these may be out of date; I'll try to find some time to clean this up one of these days....
You may send feedback to me at greg@wooledge.org, or post to rec.games.roguelike.angband, which I read regularly.
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