Guess what exists? Yeekband

[getter77]

: paging fizzix and company:

http://www.gratisgames.webspace.virg.../yeekband.html

Neither on the variant list here, nor Furytech mirror, despite seemingly being completed some time ago----"Angband License" and all.

How I found this is link diving through the world of the Fringe P&P scene, specifically a random link to the dev/author's Dark(er) Dungeon page....then I saw the ASCII in a banner, said "Wait...what?!", and here we are. Why I was doing that is a story for another time, but I digress.

Yeekband is a variant of the classic game Angband.

In Yeekband, you play the role of an adventurer descending into the depths to find fame and fortune, and to eventually (should you become powerful enough) reach the 100th level of the dungeon and kill Morgoth. The game is similar to "Action RPGs" such as those in the Diablo and Torchlight series, except it replaces action with strategy and tactical play. Instead of being a real-time clicking frenzy with you dying because you failed to click the "Potion" button quickly enough, the game is turn based and you must plan and strategise your moves or die because you didn't manage your resources well enough.

Yeekband does not have flashy graphics or animation. Instead it uses ASCII characters in different colours to represent the player and their surroundings (see the screenshots below). While this may seem positively stone-age to the younger players, it does have its advantages. Firstly, it means that a large amount can be displayed on screen at once. Secondly, our brains are good at recognising letters quickly - so we can see what is what without having to peer at barely distinguishable graphics. And thirdly, it means there can be much more content. While modern Action RPGs may have anything up to a hundred different types of monster (Diablo 2 has about 60, for example) and must palette-swap them for more variety, Yeekband can have over 650 different monster types with unique abilities without needing to have loads of animation data, graphics, and sound effects for each of them. Similarly, it has 12 races and 8 classes for a total of 96 combinations; and over 120 spells without needing to have lots of graphical data and animations for any of those.

Yeekband has been specially modified to make it simpler for inexperienced and less tech-savvy players who might be overwhelmed by the amount of configuration and poorly documented options that Angband tends to have. Of course, while simpler means that the game is less fiddly to set up and play, it doesn't mean that the game is smaller or not that the game is any easier to complete!)

What this means is that while Yeekband contains the full game play of Angband (in fact it contains more since it has an extra race and extra classes with their own mechanics and gameplay styles), much of the configuration has been pre-defined. The dozens of options have been pre-set for you for an optimum (in the opinion of me, of course) playing experience; and it automatically has separate save-games for different Windows logins.

Although some variants of Angband include graphical and sound options, and multiple windows, Yeekband takes a "back to basics" approach and uses a single window with ASCII characters. This is partly to recreate the "classic" feel of older rogue-like games and partly, again, to make it simpler for the novice user who does not need to learn how to configure the graphical multi-window interface for their system.

Having said that, Yeekband can still be configured to best suit your screen resolution. Since it runs in a standard Command Window, you can change the font and size of the window to your liking using the standard method.

Given the nature/intent of some of the changes and inclusions, I'd say it is well worth looking into harvest friendly bits for V4/Pyrel/etc----as would it probably be swell to get the dev in here to explain how in the world this entire thing went down as a Forum search on here turned up nothing, nor has this manifested elsewhere in my studied kingdom...

Would also be a sight to see eventually make the rotation for fizzix's recent Angband LP showcasing.


EDIT: Blast you elder Vanilla board, hiding things in your depths! No idea if there is still any proper v2 plans going, though the guy still seems to be actively doing things in general.

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...eekband&page=3