''Angband'' is a dungeon-crawling

roguelike Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing computer games traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player characte ...

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

derived from '' Umoria''. It is based on the writings of

J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlins ...

, in which Angband is the fortress of

Morgoth Morgoth Bauglir (; originally Melkor ) is a character, one of the godlike Valar, from Tolkien's legendarium. He is the main antagonist of ''The Silmarillion'', ''The Children of Húrin'', ''Beren and Lúthien'' and ''The Fall of Gondolin''. ...

. The current version of ''Angband'' is available for all major operating systems, including

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, and Android. It's identified as one of the "major roguelikes" by John Harris.

Gameplay

The goal of ''Angband'' is to survive 100 floor levels of the fortress Angband in order to defeat

. The game is reputed to be extremely difficult. The player begins in a town where they can buy equipment before beginning the descent. Once in the maze-like fortress, the player encounters traps, monsters, equipment, and hidden doors. With the help of found objects and enchantments, the player's attack and defense power increases, and can even neutralise specific attacks. The player also meets characters and finds artifacts from

Tolkien's legendarium Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his ''The Lord of the Rings'', and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of ''The Silmaril ...

. ''Angband'' gameplay emphasises combat and careful resource management. The player has a certain amount of

health points Health is an attribute in a video game or tabletop game that determines the maximum amount of damage or loss of stamina that a character or object can take before dying or losing consciousness. In role-playing games, this typically takes the for ...

. Although ''Angband'' records the player's progress to a

save file A saved game (also called a game save, savegame, savefile, save point, or simply save) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hardw ...

, it does not allow one to resume a

saved game A saved game (also called a game save, savegame, savefile, save point, or simply save) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hardw ...

in which the

player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

has already been beaten. The levels are

procedurally generated In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In ...

, allowing for a unique game in every play.

Development

The first version of ''Angband'' was created by Alex Cutler and Andy Astrand at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands (county), West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded i ...

in 1990. They wanted to expand the game ''Umoria'' by adding items, monsters, and features. After Cutler and Astrand, the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

was maintained at the University of Warwick by Geoff Hill and Sean Marsh. They released "2.4.frog_knows", which was enhanced by others and widely ported to non-Unix platforms. Following their departure, the later principals of ''Angband'' have included Charles Swiger, Ben Harrison, and Robert Rühlmann. Harrison was the maintainer responsible for the "Great Code Cleanup", modularizing, extending, and greatly improving the readability of the ''Angband'' source code. This in turn led to the large number of variants currently available, as well as the rather large number of ports. Like other maintainers, he eventually moved on to other interests, passing the title to Robert Rühlmann in 2000. Rühlmann's contributions included releasing version 3.0, which included many monster and object changes contributed by Jonathan Ellis. He also introduced

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

, a lightweight scripting language, with the intention of simplifying development of both the main game and its variants. The ''Angband'' community, however, did not generally embrace the addition of scripting, with many expressing confusion over its usage, and it was therefore later removed. The original Moria/Angband

software license A software license is a legal instrument (usually by way of contract law, with or without printed material) governing the use or redistribution of software. Under United States copyright law, all software is copyright protected, in both source ...

allowed distribution of the game, but only does so if "not for profit", which precludes packaging with many

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

distributions or inclusion within a magazine cover disc. The license also does not explicitly allow code modification, something which is in practice ignored by the ''Angband'' community. In light of these perceived issues, an initiative to re-license ''Angband'' was therefore started by maintainer Rühlmann in 2000. This ''"Angband Open Source Initiative"'' was designed to make ''Angband'' proper

Open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

under the

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general u ...

license. The process was completed on 9 January 2009. Rühlmann stepped down in October 2005, leading to a brief period of uncertainty. However, Julian Lighton was soon announced as the new maintainer in March 2006, but did not release a new version of the game. Due to the absence of Lighton, Andi Sidwell assumed maintainership, with the support of the community, in December 2007. Under their watch, other developers have come on board and the game has seen significant gameplay and internal code changes. Maintainership passed over to the current maintainer Nick McConnell, starting from version 4.0.0 (2015).

Community

Some loci of ''Angband'' discussion are the

Usenet newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

rec.games.roguelike.angband, th
Angband Forum website
and the

IRC Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called '' channels'', but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat an ...

channels #angband (on WorldIRC) and #angband-dev (on

Freenode Freenode, stylized as freenode and formerly known as Open Projects Network, is an IRC network which was previously used to discuss peer-directed projects. Their servers are accessible from the hostname , which load balances connections by usi ...

). Some players continue to play ''Angband'' for several years.

Derivative works

Among ''Angband'''s many derivatives are ''MAngband'' (1997), a

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

variant; ''Zangband'' ("''Zelazny''"+"''Angband''") (1994), which incorporates elements of

Roger Zelazny Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 – June 14, 1995) was an American poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for ''The Chronicles of Amber''. He won the Nebula Award three times (out of 14 nomin ...

's ''

The Chronicles of Amber ''The Chronicles of Amber'' is a series of fantasy novels by American writer Roger Zelazny. The main series consists of two story arcs, each five novels in length. Additionally, there are a number of Amber short stories and other works. Four a ...

'' novels; and ''Tales of Middle Earth'' (1998), a Tolkien-themed game developed from the ''ZAngband''

code base In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

. ''Tales of Middle Earths

and story were later rewritten, and the game became ''

Tales of Maj'Eyal ''Tales of Maj'Eyal'' is an open-source roguelike video game released for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in 2012. ''Tales of Maj'Eyal'' is available as donation-supported freeware (donationware) from the developers; donations grant some e ...

'' (2012).

Legacy

David Brevik David Brevik (born February 14, 1968) is an American video game designer, producer and programmer who served as the co-founder and president of Blizzard North. He is best known for the critically acclaimed ''Diablo'' franchise. Currently he s ...

cited ''Angbands randomized levels and items as a "huge influence" on '' Diablo'' and "the model of what we wanted".

Ernest Cline Ernest Christy Cline (born March 29, 1972) is an American science fiction novelist, slam poet, and screenwriter. He wrote the novels '' Ready Player One'', '' Armada'', and '' Ready Player Two'' and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation ...

's novel ''

Ready Player Two ''Ready Player Two'' is a 2020 science fiction novel by American author Ernest Cline. It is the sequel to his 2011 debut novel '' Ready Player One''. Plans for a ''Ready Player One'' sequel were first announced in 2015, though Cline did not begin ...

'' features the dungeon from ''Angband'' and "Morgoth's crown" as the location of one of the Seven Shards that the protagonists must collect.

Notes

References

External links

* *
Angband.live
where one can play Angband, and several variants, online * {{MobyGames, id=/angband
Zangband.org
(''Zelazny'' + ''Angband'')
Angband variants table
- list of 140+ Angband variants 1990 video games Acorn Archimedes games Amiga games BeOS games DOS games Linux games Classic Mac OS games MacOS games Video games based on Middle-earth Video games featuring protagonists of selectable gender OS/2 games Roguelike video games Open-source video games Windows games Software that uses ncurses Cross-platform software Free and open-source Android software Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games using procedural generation