PosChengband is Born

Post date: Dec 26, 2012 4:14:19 PM

This post is to announce the birth of a new variant: PosChengband.

What is this? Well, its basically a complete overhaul of Chengband, incorporating every change I wanted to do but felt like I could not. Much of the code refactoring that I begun in that variant has been completed. Also, a few of the new classes have been redesigned (e.g., Time-Lords are no longer wimpy fighters with ridiculous early game speed bonuses) and most have been changed in major ways (e.g., Weaponmasters only pick a single group of weapons to specialize in rather than a single weapon type). If you liked Chengband, you will probably like PosChengband as well.

But what is "Pos" about? Many years ago I had great fun playing Drangband, a variant that allows one to play as a dragon (as a race, and to pick a class as well). Dragons can't wield weapons but instead fight with tooth and claw as well as their innate breath attacks. Their set of equipment slots differs from normal characters to make up for their lack of ability to wear weapons or shields. Instead, they get multiple ring slots. This game was great fun, and is still around. However, it is a DOS compile, and the map window is forced to 80x24. It doesn't support native fonts on Windows (a huge pet peeve of mine) and generally lacks many of the interface improvements to Angband. I was unable to bring myself to play it anymore. Since Hengband is just what I like, I set out to add Dragon races to Hengband (well, Chengband actually since I've done so much work on that variant).

However, during the process I discovered PosBand (and RePosBand). In this variant, one can play as a monster (e.g. a dragon) but cannot choose a class. Instead, the player evolves to greater and greater forms as they gain experience. So rather than just adding Dragons I decided this would be a better approach, and many of the monsters in PosChengband have been borrowed from PosBand and RePosBand (Though the code is all my own, of course). However, I've redesigned as appropriate (e.g., Dragon innate attacks improve gradually with level rather than all at once during evolution. Also, monster powers are often different).

So, at this point I have a variant with over 100,000 lines of code changes from Chengband, most of which are untested. Also, I've added the following monster races:

• • Jellies have a reduced number of equipment slots, but each slot can hold any type of object whatsoever giving the ultimate in equipment flexibility. Jellies play like warriors and their main powers are "division" and immunity to cuts/stuns. Jellies are illiterate and cannot read scrolls.

  • Spiders

  • Xorn begin life as an Umber Hulk which are capable of confusing their foes with a glance. Eventually, they evolve into a 4 armed Xorn, and yes, they can quadruple wield!

  • Dragons come in 14 different subraces and are great fun.

  • Liches

  • Angels

  • Hounds do not have a fixed evolutionary path, but rather progress through several tiers of advancement. At each stage, they pick a random choice from a set of available hound types. Their breaths and melee are much weaker than dragons, but they are good hunters with a few interesting talents.

I've also begun to update in-game help files. I have quite a few more monster races to add, quite a bit of playtesting to do, and just a lot of cleanup work in general, but PosChengband is currently playable and I'll probably have a release out in a couple of months.