Dungeon Hacks by David L. Craddock

Author:David L. Craddock
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: game design, game development, roguelike, video games, pc games, angband, rogue, diablo, computer games
Publisher: David L. Craddock
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Test of Time

For over twenty years, the titanic doors of Morgoth’s fortress have creaked open, swallowing hapless and hearty adventurers alike. Thousands have ventured into the labyrinth, and the devteam—McConnell, Bader, Carr, Osheim, and Robert Au—believe thousands more will brave its depths so long as one tradition remains sacrosanct: “It’s very clear that what has kept Angband going is that maintainers have graciously stepped down and handed over the reins. No one has ever said, ‘This is my game. I get to decide what it is, and I don’t want to work on it anymore, but no one else can either.’ Every time a maintainer has stepped down, they’ve passed the torch amicably to the next person,” Bader explained.

Sidwell speculates that interest will continue indefinitely due to cheap, widely available Internet access, which facilitated rapid growth of the game and its community beginning in the 1990s. “There was an outpouring of innovation when variants started being made and they all provide quite a different gaming experience. In some sense it makes a lot of sense to have so many variants; if everyone tried to work on one game, you would have an unintelligible and broken mess. This way you get cross-pollination of ideas, copying of code, and so on. I think it’s probably a good reason why Angband has stayed going.”

Most importantly, a text-only game that originated on a dumb terminal did not seem outdated—not then, and not now, when the imagination still remains a more powerful graphics processor than the most lavish video card. “Every few years, somebody tries to make a multi-player version [of Angband], or a version with ‘better’ graphics, but that is, in my opinion, missing the point,” Harrison stated.

New players find their way onto the forums, ask questions, and begin their quest. Osheim believes it should be the goal of all devteam members to make the descent into darkness as welcoming as possible.

“I think that despite the fact that it’s a somewhat challenging game, I think the experience could be much more welcoming for new players. Some games have a tutorial mode. I would love it if Angband had more of that stuff. We have some things like that, but we have a long way to go.”

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