AmigActive 13/AACD13.ISO/AACD/Games/Zangband/help/version.txt

Text File | 2000-08-26 | 26KB | 598 lines

=== Zangband History and Information ===

Versions 1.0 - 2.1.0c
---------------------

The seeds of Zangband lie in an obsolete and long ago vanished PC
variant (somewhat misleadingly) dubbed Angband--. The variant was
written by a hopeless Angband addict (previously Moria veteran and
winner) who got bored with the standard monsters and wanted to
introduce some new monsters. Angband-- was based on the PC Angband 1.31
sources, and it was set in Roger Zelazny's 'Amber' universe.

Later this individual got a better computer and learned to code, and
produced the PC Zangband, and most Angband-- monsters survived into
PC Zangband 1.0. PC Zangband 1.0 was the first PC Angband to introduce
(simple, font-based) graphics, which were also used in the graphical
PC Angband 1.40.

Yet this individual was still not cured of his addiction... his almost
as strong addiction to the Civilization style fantasy strategy game
'Master of Magic' inspired him to write a new magic system. The current
version of Zangband (2.*) incorporates this magic system, as well as
the best features from Angband-- and PC Zangband 1.0. It is based on
the Angband 2.8.1 sources (by Ben Harrison), and is therefore portable
to other systems (unlike the earlier versions which were for dos-pc's
only).

Incidentally, this person (me, Topi Ylinen) also thought that the
standard Angband monsters were too easy, which led him to introduce
such monsters as Death swords, Cyberdemons and Great wyrms of power...

Versions 2.1.0d - present
-------------------------

ZAngband 2.1.0c was Topi's last version, he has got a job and and
doesn't have enough time anymore to continue work on ZAngband.
He asked for a new maintainer and I was the one to take over the task.
May I introduce myself, my name is Robert Ruehlmann, I'm the creator
of the graphical Angband versions for DOS and webmaster of
"Thangorodrim - The Angband Page" ("http://thangorodrim.angband.org").

Special thanks
--------------

The newer versions of Zangband might not have come into existence
without the significant help from these excellent Angband programmers.

Topi would like to thank:

        Ben Harrison, for obvious reasons.

        Greg Wooledge, who pointed out a bug in the dos compiler,
        which was preventing Topi's progress with the first 2.* version
        of Zangband and for various patches.

        Julian Lighton, who must have sent Topi more ideas, patches,
        and bug reports, than all the others toghether.

        Robert Ruehlmann, whose nice new main-dos.c enables SVGA
        graphics and even windows in ms-dos.

        Paul Sexton, who is responsible for about 50% of the new code
        in 2.1.0.

Robert would also like to thank:

        Heino Vander Sanden, who created the quest-code and
        Dean Anderson, whose patch showed me the quickest way to
        implement the quests.

        Adam Bolt, who created the new ZAngband tiles.

        Scott Bigham, for the S-Lang patch.

        Jeff Duprey for the new mutations.

        John Duffin and Leigh Silas Hanrihan for the new items.

        Marten Woxberg for many new ideas.

        Ken Wigle for allowing me to include his town and quest code.

        Tim Baker for many patches and bugfixes and for ZAngbandTk.

        Chris Weisiger for many new vault layouts.

        Juergen Neitzel for countless new rumors.

        Topi Ylinen, Mark Howson, Adam Horowitz, Oscar Nelson and
        all the other regular members of the #angband chat channel
        for giving me lots of new ideas and being good friends.

        Benny S. Hofmann, Aram Harrow, Greg Harvey, Keldon Jones,
        Graham Murray, Remco Gerlich, Tim Baker, Oscar Nelson,
        Adam Horowitz, David A. Henry, "Strikes", Chris Hadgis,
        David Howdon, Jenni Henzel, Stephen Lee, Gwidon S. Naskrent,
        Eric Wright, Bob Martin, Jeff Coleburn, Ethan Sicotte,
        Brandon Walker, Kelly Trinh, Brian Graham, James W. Sager III,
        John Holton, Larry Bassel, Markus Linnala, Musus Umbra,
        Mike Hommel, Christopher Stranczek, Werner Baer, Andreas Koch,
        Jon Boehnker, Jason Willoughby, David Paoletti and many others
        for bugreports, patches, bugfixes, and ideas.


=== Brief Version History (of standard Angband) ===

First came "VMS Moria", by Robert Alan Koeneke (1985).

Then came "Umoria" (Unix Moria), by James E. Wilson (1989).

In 1990, Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand, with the help of other students
at the University of Warwick, created Angband 1.0, based on the
existing code for Umoria 5.2.1. They wanted to expand the game, keeping
or even strengthening the grounding in Tolkien lore, while adding more
monsters and items, including unique monsters and artifact items, plus
activation, pseudo-sensing, level feelings, and special dungeon rooms.

Over time, Sean Marsh, Geoff Hill, Charles Teague, and others, worked
on the source, releasing a copy known as "Angband 2.4.frog_knows" at
some point, which ran only on Unix systems, but which was ported by
various people to various other systems.

Then Charles Swiger ([e-mail]) attempted to clean up the
mess, resulting in several versions, starting sometime around November,
1993, with Angband 2.5.1 (more or less) and leading up to Angband 2.6.2
in late 1994. Several people ported (the primarily Unix/NeXT centered)
Angband 2.6.1 to other platforms, including Keith Randall, who made a
Macintosh port that added support for color usage. Some of the changes
during this period were based on suggestions from the "net", PC Angband
1.40, UMoria 5.5, and some of the Angband "variations", such as
FAngband.

Finally, I (Ben Harrison) took over in late 1994 when Charles Swiger
left. Initially my intention was simply to clean up what had become,
after ten years, a rather unholy mess, but the deeper I delved into the
code, the more it became apparent that drastic changes were needed, so,
starting with MacAngband 2.6.1, I began a more or less total rewrite,
resulting, eventually, in Angband 2.7.0, released around January first,
1995.

Angband 2.7.0 was a very clean (but very buggy) rewrite that, among
other things, allowed extremely simple porting to multiple platforms,
starting with Unix and Macintosh, and by the time most of the bugs were
cleaned up, in Angband 2.7.2, including X11, and various IBM machines.
Angband 2.7.4 was released to the "ftp.cis.ksu.edu" site, and quickly
gained acceptance, perhaps helped by the OS2 and Windows and Amiga and
Linux ports. Angband 2.7.5 and 2.7.6 added important capabilities such
as macros and user pref files, and continued to clean up the source.
Angband 2.7.8 was designed to supply another "stable" version that we
can all give to our friends, with new "help files" and "spoiler files"
for the "online help", plus a variety of minor tweaks and some new
features. Angband 2.7.9 optimized a few things, and tweaked a few other
things, and cleaned up a few other things, and introduced a few minor
semantic changes.

It is very hard to pin down, along the way from 2.6.2 to 2.7.0, and
thence to 2.7.8, exactly what was added exactly when. Most of these
steps involved so many changes as to make "diff files" not very useful,
since often the diff files were as long as the code itself. Most of the
changes, with the notable exception of the creation of the new
"main-xxx.c" files for the various new platforms, and a few other
exceptions generally noted in the source, were written by myself,
either spontaneously, or, more commonly, as the result of a suggestion
or comment by an Angband player. So if you have any problems with
anything that you do not recognize from older versions, you can blame
them on me. And if you like the new features and such, you can send me
a brief little "thank you" email (to [e-mail]) or something...

The Official Angband Home Page ("http://www.phial.com/")
was created along with Angband 2.7.9 to serve as an up to date
description of any bugs found in various versions, and to list all of
the people whose email addresses I kept having to look up.


=== Some of the changes from Angband 2.6.1 to Angband 2.7.9 ===

The most important modification was a massive "code level cleanup" that
made all of my other modifications much simpler and safer. This cleanup
was so massive that in many places the code is no longer recognizable,
for example, via "diff -r", often because it was rewritten from
scratch.

The second most important modification was the design of a generic
"term.c" package, which allows Angband to be ported to a new machine
with as few as 50 lines of code. Angband 2.7.9 thus runs without
modification on many machines, including Macintosh, PowerMac, Unix/X11,
Unix/Curses, Amiga, Windows, OS2-386, DOS-386, and even DOS-286.

It would be difficult to list all of the changes between Angband 2.6.1
and Angband 2.7.9, because many of them were made in passing during the
massive code level cleanup. Many of the changes are invisible to the
user, but still provide increased simplicity and efficiency, and
decreased code size, or make other more visable changes possible. For
example, the new "project()" code that handles all bolts, beams, and
balls, the new "update_view()" code that simplifies line of sight
computation, or the new "generate()" code that builds new levels in the
dungeon. Many changes have been made to increase efficiency, including
the new "process_monsters()" and "update_monsters()" functions, and
the new "objdes()" and "lite_spot()" routines. The generic "Term"
package yielded efficient screen updates, and enabled the efficient use
of "color".

But anyway, here are a few things that come to mind, in no particular
order, and with very little time or effort. Somehow I managed to put
off updating this file to the very end, and it will just have to do for
now. The recent changes (and bug fixes) can be found at the Official
Angband Home Page.

     color
     macros
     keymaps
     user pref files
     generic feature array, with template file
     generic object array, with template file
     generic artifact array, with template file
     generic ego-item array, with template file
     generic monster array, with template fils
     generic vault array, with template file
     binary image files for the template files
     special stat effect tables
     a special table of spells
     a special table of options
     inventory tagging
     inventory restrictions
     using objects off the floor
     various new runtime options
     the new "destroy" command
     the new "examine" command
     the new "note" command
     the new "dump screen" command
     the new "load screen" command
     the new "un-inscribe" command
     the new "change visuals" command
     the new "change colors" command
     the new "change macros" command
     the new "save game" command
     the new "fire" vs "throw" commands
     rearranged equipment slots
     a standard bow slot
     an extra inventory slot
     an underlying keyset
     refueling torches
     better monster memory
     nicer targeting mode
     object stacking
     the recall window
     the choice window
     the mirror window
     new high score code
     special lighting effects
     intelligent monsters
     new monster flags
     text formatting code
     much cleaner store code
     generic spell projections
     scrolls of *identify*
     maximize mode
     preserve mode
     new inscription code
     new message recall code
     new spell and prayer code
     massive cleanup of effects code
     new object allocation routines
     powerful (but simple) on line help
     robust savefile cheat preventers
     new official cheating options
     new blindness code
     new hallucination code
     optimized object description code
     new keypress input routines
     actual object discounts
     fractional (asymptotic) speed
     postponing updates/redraws
     run-time price determination
     better wizard commands
     the automatic player
     launchers of extra shots
     elemental ignore flags
     new ego-item types
     new player ghost creation
     no more sliding objects
     no more sliding monsters
     new object flags
     new chest trap code
     regularized the artifact code
     regularized the ego-item code
     new monster abilities
     new monster spell attacks
     some new store owners
     run-time skill computation
     player kills vs ancestor kills
     better room illumination code
     better group monster code
     table access through pointers
     more redefinable constants
     slightly new screen layout
     extreme code cleaning
     extreme optimizations


=== A Note from the Maintainer (of standard Angband) ===

Welcome to Angband 2.7.9v6.

My name is Ben Harrison, and I have been the maintainer of Angband
since November, 1994, when the previous maintainer, Charles Swiger
(who developed Angband 2.5.1 through 2.6.2), got a real job. Starting
with Angband 2.7.0, and continuing through the current version (2.7.9),
I have been responsible for a number of major improvements to the basic
Angband game, some of them obvious to the casual user and others hidden
below the surface, but no less significant. The most significant
improvement has been a total rewrite of large portions of the code,
which, after ten years of modifications by various people, had begun to
resemble a rotting death mold. Also significant was the design of a
generic "term.c" package, which has allowed Angband to be easily ported
to Macintosh, Amiga, X11, Windows, and basically every system in
existance (including a beta-version for DOS-286).

In addition, I have added lots of new commands, features, and
functionalities, most of which appear to have been accepted by most
people as a good idea (TM).

It is extremely easy to port Angband 2.7.9 to a new system. If you
cannot find a version that will compile on your machine, you can
usually make one by writing a single file of about one hundred lines of
C code.

Angband 2.7.8 was intended to be a nice, clean, stable version, so we
can all give copies to our friends. Unfortunately, it contained a few
minor bugs. The *enchant* armor/weapon scrolls were "swapped". The game
starts to look funny if too many objects accumulate on the floor. The
"Q" command (commit suicide) does not work. You may not be able to load
older savefiles. Some special dungeon levels may take a long time to
generate. Good drops can include cursed rings of speed. But you can see
that none of these are "fatal", so Angband 2.7.8 remains for now the
most "official" version.

Angband 2.7.9v1 through Angband 2.7.9v6 are intended as "transition"
versions leading up to the release of Angband 2.8.0. Angband 2.8.0 will
include many extensive changes from Angband 2.7.8, see the web page for
more information.

Most of these changes have been completed, and include things like
cleaning up some internal code issues, optimizing the code (again),
extending the functionality of some existing commands (such as target
and look, which now handle directional motion), tweaking various
aspects of the program, most notably in the introduction of new
symbols and colors for various monsters, and in the use of a more
regular set of RGB values for the various color codes, etc. Again, see
the web page for a complete list.

Angband 2.8.0 will introduce a version independent savefile format,
along with a new terrain feature concept, and the ability to allow
multiple objects in the same cave grid. It may or may not separate the
"unique" monsters from the "normal" monsters, perhaps introducing some
new "normal" monsters, such as "skeleton lord" or "giant boar" or
"master mage".

You can email compliments, complaints, bug reports, and presents to
me ("[e-mail]"), and you can post interesting experiences,
general questions, compilation questions and code suggestions to the
newsgroup ("rec.games.roguelike.angband").

You can obtain the latest source and pre-compiled executables from
various places, try "ftp://ftp.cis.ksu.edu/pub/Games/Angband/Angband-2.7.x"
and the developer site at "ftp://export.andrew.cmu.edu/angband". You
will need to enter the appropriate sub-directory, such as "Source" or
"Macintosh".

You should visit "http://www.voicenet.com/~benh/Angband/" (the
Official Angband Home Page) and "http://www.paranoia.com/~jth/angband.html"
(the Unofficial Angband Home Page), for more up to date information.

You may freely distribute the game, and its source, though you are
bound not only by the existing copyright notice from 1984, but also
whatever restrictions may be present on various other pieces of the
code, including the fact that any source written by me is technically
automatically placed under copyright and may thus not be used for
commercial purposes.

The basic help files supplied with this game are more or less up to
date, but when in doubt, the source (or the newsgroup) is the place to
turn for advice. Or attempt to figure it out by experimentation, this
is sometimes the most fun. In particular, see "commands.txt" for
information on the available commands, some of which have been recently
added or changed, and "options.txt", which describe how to customize
several aspects of the game to suit your preferences.

The documentation is very easy to modify and update, so you may want to
check in to the ftp site occasionally to see if there are any new help
files (or spoiler files) for you to acquire. Note that the spoiler
files are not distributed with the source since they are so huge, but
you can obtain them from various places as with the source and
executables. New spoiler files may be placed in the "lib/help" or
"lib/info" directories, to allow access via the "online help" system.

Remember to tell all your friends about how much you like Angband...

Happy adventuring!

+++ Ben +++


=== A Posting from the Original Author ===

From: [e-mail] (Robert Alan Koeneke)
Newsgroups: rec.games.roguelike.angband,rec.games.roguelike.moria
Subject: Early history of Moria
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 04:20:51 GMT

I had some email show up asking about the origin of Moria, and its
relation to Rogue.  So I thought I would just post some text on the
early days of Moria.

First of all, yes, I really am the Robert Koeneke who wrote the first
Moria.  I had a lot of mail accusing me of pulling their leg and
such.  I just recently connected to Internet (yes, I work for a
company in the dark ages where Internet is concerned) and
was real surprised to find Moria in the news groups...  Angband was an
even bigger surprise, since I have never seen it.  I probably spoke to
its originator though...  I have given permission to lots of people
through the years to enhance, modify, or whatever as long as they
freely distributed the results.  I have always been a proponent of
sharing games, not selling them.

Anyway...

Around 1980 or 81 I was enrolled in engineering courses at the
University of Oklahoma.  The engineering lab ran on a PDP 1170 under
an early version of UNIX.  I was always good at computers, so it was
natural for me to get to know the system administrators.  They invited
me one night to stay and play some games, an early startrek game, The
Colossal Cave Adventure (later just 'Adventure'), and late one night,
a new dungeon game called 'Rogue'.

So yes, I was exposed to Rogue before Moria was even a gleam in my
eye.  In fact, Rogue was directly responsible for millions of hours of
play time wasted on Moria and its descendents...

Soon after playing Rogue (and man, was I HOOKED), I got a job in a
different department as a student assistant in computers.  I worked on
one of the early VAX 11/780's running VMS, and no games were available
for it at that time.  The engineering lab got a real geek of an
administrator who thought the only purpose of a computer was WORK!
Imagine...  Soooo, no more games, and no more rogue!

This was intolerable!  So I decided to write my own rogue game, Moria
Beta 1.0.  I had three languages available on my VMS system.  Fortran
IV, PASCAL V1.?, and BASIC.  Since most of the game was string
manipulation, I wrote the first attempt at Moria in VMS BASIC, and it
looked a LOT like Rogue, at least what I could remember of it.  Then I
began getting ideas of how to improve it, how it should work
differently, and I pretty much didn't touch it for about a year.

Around 1983, two things happened that caused Moria to be born in its
recognizable form.  I was engaged to be married, and the only cure for
THAT is to work so hard you can't think about it; and I was enrolled
for fall to take an operating systems class in PASCAL.

So, I investigated the new version of VMS PASCAL and found out it had
a new feature.  Variable length strings!  Wow...

That summer I finished Moria 1.0 in VMS PASCAL.  I learned more about
data structures, optimization, and just plain programming that summer
then in all of my years in school.  I soon drew a crowd of devoted
Moria players...  All at OU.

I asked Jimmey Todd, a good friend of mine, to write a better
character generator for the game, and so the skills and history were
born.  Jimmey helped out on many of the functions in the game as well.
This would have been about Moria 2.0

In the following two years, I listened a lot to my players and kept
making enhancements to the game to fix problems, to challenge them,
and to keep them going.  If anyone managed to win, I immediately found
out how, and 'enhanced' the game to make it harder.  I once vowed it
was 'unbeatable', and a week later a friend of mine beat it!  His
character, 'Iggy', was placed into the game as 'The Evil Iggy', and
immortalized...  And of course, I went in and plugged up the trick he
used to win...

Around 1985 I started sending out source to other universities.  Just
before a OU / Texas football clash, I was asked to send a copy to the
University of Texas...  I couldn't resist...  I modified it so that
the begger on the town level was 'An OU football fan' and they moved
at maximum rate.  They also multiplied at maximum rate...  So the
first step you took and woke one up, it crossed the floor increasing
to hundreds of them and pounded you into oblivion...  I soon received
a call and provided instructions on how to 'de-enhance' the game!

Around 1986 - 87 I released Moria 4.7, my last official release.  I
was working on a Moria 5.0 when I left OU to go to work for American
Airlines (and yes, I still work there).  Moria 5.0 was a complete
rewrite, and contained many neat enhancements, features, you name it.
It had water, streams, lakes, pools, with water monsters.  It had
'mysterious orbs' which could be carried like torches for light but
also gave off magical aura's (like protection from fire, or aggravate
monster...).  It had new weapons and treasures...  I left it with the
student assistants at OU to be finished, but I guess it soon died on
the vine.  As far as I know, that source was lost...

I gave permission to anyone who asked to work on the game.  Several
people asked if they could convert it to 'C', and I said fine as long
as a complete credit history was maintained, and that it could NEVER
be sold, only given.  So I guess one or more of them succeeded in
their efforts to rewrite it in 'C'.

I have since received thousands of letters from all over the world
from players telling about their exploits, and from administrators
cursing the day I was born...  I received mail from behind the iron
curtain (while it was still standing) talking about the game on VAX's
(which supposedly couldn't be there due to export laws).  I used to
have a map with pins for every letter I received, but I gave up on
that!

I am very happy to learn my creation keeps on going...  I plan to
download it and Angband and play them...  Maybe something has been
added that will surprise me!  That would be nice...  I never got to
play Moria and be surprised...

Robert Alan Koeneke
[e-mail]


=== Previous Versions (outdated) ===


                          VMS Moria Version 4.8
Version 0.1  : 03/25/83
Version 1.0  : 05/01/84
Version 2.0  : 07/10/84
Version 3.0  : 11/20/84
Version 4.0  : 01/20/85

Modules :
     V1.0  Dungeon Generator      - RAK
           Character Generator    - RAK & JWT
           Moria Module           - RAK
           Miscellaneous          - RAK & JWT
     V2.0  Town Level & Misc      - RAK
     V3.0  Internal Help & Misc   - RAK
     V4.0  Source Release Version - RAK

Robert Alan Koeneke               Jimmey Wayne Todd Jr.
Student/University of Oklahoma    Student/University of Oklahoma





                        Umoria Version 5.2 (formerly UNIX Moria)
Version 4.83 :  5/14/87
Version 4.85 : 10/26/87
Version 4.87 :  5/27/88
Version 5.0  :  11/2/89
Version 5.2  :   5/9/90

James E. Wilson, U.C. Berkeley
                 [e-mail]
                 ...!ucbvax!ucbernie!wilson

Other contributors:
D. G. Kneller         - MSDOS Moria port
Christopher J. Stuart - recall, options, inventory, and running code
Curtis McCauley       - Macintosh Moria port
Stephen A. Jacobs     - Atari ST Moria port
William Setzer        - object naming code
David J. Grabiner     - numerous bug reports, and consistency checking
Dan Bernstein         - UNIX hangup signal fix, many bug fixes
and many others...




Copyright (c) 1989 James E. Wilson, Robert A. Keoneke
  This software may be copied and distributed for educational,
  research, and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright
  and statement are included in all such copies.

Umoria Version 5.2, patch level 1

Angband Version 2.0  Alex Cutler, Andy Astrand, Sean Marsh, Geoff Hill,
                     Charles Teague.

Angband Version 2.4   :  5/09/93

Angband Version 2.5   : 12/05/93 Charles Swiger.

Angband Version 2.6   :  9/04/94

Angband Version 2.7   :  1/1/95  Ben Harrison

--
Original   : (??)
Updated    : (??)
Updated    : Zangband DevTeam
Last update: December 12, 1999