Cthangband 6.9 Release

Cthangband 6.9 is now finished. It’s only a minor release, with no real gameplay changes from 6.8. It’s mostly an improvement in the front end. It now has a proper menu system and lets you change the options mid-game instead of only on startup.

The new release can be found here:

https://github.com/Gurbintroll/Cthangband/releases/tag/v6.9

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Cthangband Now On GitHub (also 6.8 release)

Cthangband has always had a somewhat weird license – the Angband License – which says it’s okay to do anything you want with either the source code or the executable providing you charge no money for it. While this isn’t an Open Source license (it actually predates the Open Source movement) that demands the source code be shared, it does allow for the source code to be shared.

In the “golden age” of Angband development we would normally share source code by uploading it to a couple of specific FTP sites, but since I came back to it with Cthangband 5.0 those sites are long gone.

So from Cthangband 5.0 to Cthangband 6.7 the source code has just been on my home computer (and my NAS back-up device).

However, with Cthangband 6.8, that’s changed. I’ve switched to using GitHub, and the full source code of Cthangband is available for anyone to download from there. Anyone can now download the source code to build it themselves or to fork it and make their own variant of it.

The precompiled versions will still be available from this website.

So, speaking of 6.8, here’s what’s new (there’s very little change from 6.7, although I thought the level feeling bug was big enough to not wait for the next major version):

• Fixed level always giving worst feeling for treasure regardless of how much treasure there actually is.
• Swapped racial powers of Tcho-Tcho and Half-Ogre, since they make more sense the other way around.
• Fixed bug where message for unsuccessfully tunneling into a vein got the type of vein wrong.

Cthangband 6.8 can be downloaded from here.

The GitHub repository is here.

Cthangband 6.7 Released

As if you couldn’t have guessed by the title, it’s another Cthangband release.

This new version fixes a variety of issues, but also contains a few other game changes both big and small. The complete list of changes is below:

• Dead monsters no longer futilely try to flee in terror.
• Fixed bug where if a player had multiple natural attacks they’d not stop making them when the monster was dead.
• Fixed a bug where stumbling into a town while confused would mean you didn’t realise you’d visited it.
• Even characters with poor item sensing can now sense artifacts.
• Potentially offensively titled ‘Genocide’ spell (and its variants) renamed.
• Fixed longstanding bug that stopped you running along the edge of a room (eventually!).
• Monsters that steal gold will now drop it when killed.
• Monsters will no longer try to summon help against other monsters if there isn’t room to do so.
• Adjusted a few character history text fragments to make them more diverse and lose some sexism/racism.
• Fixed bug where a monster breathing on another monster would fire a ball instead of a cone.
• Fixed bug where a monster attacking another monster with a theft attack would continue attacking it after having blinked away.
• Fixed wrong message being given when a monster breaks through an Elder Sign.
• Fixed sanity checks not being fired when eldritch horrors come into view.
• Fixed Channelers’ ability not working on scrolls of Rumour.
• The chance of having your race changed through mutation has been reduced.
• Priests have a patron deity (based on the realm of magic they choose), and they get increased favour with that god.
• Sacrificing items to win the gods’ favour (at the temple) will give you benefits.
• Manual and Journal are now both accessible from within stores (racial high scores moved from ‘h’ to ‘v’ to make room).
• Exact dungeon offsets will vary from game to game (randomised on world creation).
• Cleaned up formatting of skill display.
• Small balance tweaks have been made to most classes; in particular Channelers and Druids have been given a bit of a boost.
• ‘Mindcrafting’ powers have been renamed to ‘Mentalism’ powers, since the Mindcrafter class is no longer the only user of them.
• The spell-using martial artist has now been renamed to ‘Monk’ and a mentalism-based martial artist (the ‘Mystic’) has been added.
• Abilities screen now highlights abilities you have to make it easier to see at a glance.
• Removed numerous annoying and useless wizard mode messages.
• Huge amounts of behind-the-scenes code refactoring.
• Fixed bug where monsters casting whirlpool on empty spaces would crash the game.
• Last bits of confusion between ‘allies’ and ‘pets’ cleaned up.
• The high score table now includes living characters from the three save slots.
• Added documentation for how martial arts works.
• When rolling stats, characters with too low a score in their class’s main ability score will be rerolled automatically.
• Fixed two vaults that had invalid definitions.
• Fixed occasional crash when placing a greater vault on a level.

The new version can be downloaded here.

Cthangband 6.6 Released

Another Cthangband release, this time – as you might expect from the title – it’s Cthangband 6.6.

As with 6.5, this is only a minor update with a few bug fixes and quality-of-life changes, not any major gameplay changes. A full list of the changes is below:

• The ‘K’ command now recognises that rings and amulets with negative bonuses are worth destroying.
• Being out and about at midnight might be really good or really bad depending on the date…
• Fixed bug where quest info wasn’t properly reset between characters.
• Added documentation about the different towns and the types of shop that can be found in them, as well as the services provided by each shop.
• Changed the colour of a couple of townsfolk to avoid overlaps.
• Renamed the group versions of the various novices to apprentices so they don’t get confused with the individual versions in the kill list and monster recall.
• General stores now run an escort service.
• Fixed lighting of town fortifications at night.
• Corrected the spelling of Hlanith, which had been spelled wrongly for over two decades before I noticed!
• Sunrise and sunset are now accurately(!) calculated, based on the date (assuming that the island is on the 51st parallel north).
• Game time is now tracked properly, rather than just inferred from turn count.
• Yig added to list of patrons, replacing Mordiggian.
• You can now invoke the favour of Great Old Ones with a scroll even if you don’t have one as a patron.
• Thresholds for boring levels decreased to reduce amount of re-rolling.
• Fixed a few incorrect pluralisations of monster names.
• Curses can now be removed at the temple.
• Fixed bug where if you had *exactly* the right amount of gold for a shop service it would think you couldn’t afford it.
• Fixed resting for the night/day recovering hit points but not mana.
• Documentation about feelings updated to show the separate monster/treasure feelings.
• Special levels now override the separate monster/treasure feelings.
• Viva la slime molds!
• Player skills now show a relative rating as well as an absolute percentage.
• Changed a few UI text colours and symbols to make things easier to read against the textured backgrounds.
• More behind-the-scenes code refactoring.

The new version can be downloaded from here.

Dark Dungeons X Available

I’m pleased to announce that Dark Dungeons X, the 10th anniversary edition of Dark Dungeons is now available at DriveThruRPG in both print and PDF format here.

When deciding to write a new edition of Dark Dungeons for its 10th anniversary, I took stock of the change in circumstances since I released the original game ten years ago.

At that time, the original edition that it was based on wasn’t available to buy except for extortionate prices second-hand on eBay. That unavailability was the impetus for me to write the game. However, a desire to emulate that original edition as closely as possible led me to write two games, not one.

Dark Dungeons was the version of the game designed for maximum fidelity to its source material, for those who wanted to replicate the experience of playing that source material without needing to pay inflated prices for a second-hand copy of that material. Darker Dungeons, on the other hand, was the game as I actually played it. While the rules for Darker Dungeons were more streamlined and consistent than those in the source material, this necessarily meant that they were less close to it.

So I had the two games. Dark Dungeons for those who wanted closer emulation, and Darker Dungeons for those who wanted improved rules.

However, ten years later the situation has changed. The original edition that Dark Dungeons was based on is now cheaply available in both electronic and print formats. This makes the older Dark Dungeons mostly redundant – since if you want a high fidelity copy of the original rules you can just use those original rules now.

Therefore, when planning Dark Dungeons X, I made the decision that I would use the improved Darker Dungeons rules as a basis for the new edition rather than the Dark Dungeons rules. Since there’s no reason to slavishly copy the original game because those who want that can just buy the original game now I might as well use the improved rules for those who would rather have that.

So that’s what Dark Dungeons X has. It’s based on Darker Dungeons, freshly edited and reformated (I’m the first to admit that the first printing of Darker Dungeons was badly edited – that’s why I never put it up on DriveThruRPG: while I was happy with the rules, I was never happy that the book itself was edited and formatted to an acceptable standard), and with “Developer Commentary” side-bars explaining how the game differs from its source material and why I made the decisions I did when writing it.

But I am more than happy with Dark Dungeons X, and it is now available at DriveThruRPG in both print and PDF format here.

Cthangband 6.4 Released

While I’ve been waiting for the printer to approve the manuscript for new 10th anniversary edition of Dark Dungeons, I’ve been bug-fixing Cthangband.

The latest version (6.3) had a few bugs in it, and since I have big plans for version 7.0 I decided that I should just release a quick bugfix version rather than wait until 7.0 is ready.

So I’ve done just that. Cthangband 6.4 has very little change from 6.3, but it fixes a few bugs that really needed to be fixed rather than being able to wait for the next full version.

Specifically, the changes are:

• The buildings in Kadath are now ruined rather than merely empty lots.
• Replaced paper texture used for character sheet and journal with one that makes the text more readable.
• Fixed bug where the known abilities of non-random artifacts weren’t showing in the journal.
• Fixed a handful of minor mistakes in the documentation.
• Fixed bug where Tarot Draw spell was drawing multiple cards.
• Fixed program hanging due to invalid quest target being unable to be placed when the Demon Spire is entered for the first time.
• Fixed bug where using ‘s’ to sell items would sometimes automatically sell a whole stack rather than letting you choose how many to sell.
• Fixed crash when pack overflows after taking off an item or splitting a stack of items.
• Fixed crash when recalling from wilderness outside a town into a dungeon.

As you can see from that list, there’s very little in the way of anything new – just the change to Kadath (and even that’s just a minor cosmetic change with no effect on gameplay). The main thing it does is fix the bugs that had been found in 6.2 and 6.3.

The new version can be found here.

Dark Dungeons X Finished

Back in December, I mentioned that I was going to start working on a new edition of Dark Dungeons.

Well, I’ve spent the last four months doing exactly that, and I’m pleased to announce that the new edition is finished.

I’m calling it “Dark Dungeons X”. The ‘X’ standing for both 10 (because it’s the 10th anniversary edition) and ‘Expanded’ because this new edition includes material from both the original Dark Dungeons and also Darker Dungeons.

The changes to this edition, when compared to the previous edition, are:

• New and improved layout – the book is now around 410 pages rather than 320 pages, but that is because I’ve moved away from the cramped three-column layout and used more modern design. However, I’ve kept the feel of the book as close to the original as I can, design changes notwithstanding.
• The rule changes for Darker Dungeons are included in the text. Darker Dungeons is the game as played at my table, and now that the original game that Dark Dungeons was based on is available to buy as a PDF once more (which wasn’t the case when Dark Dungeons came out) there seems little point in releasing a new edition of Dark Dungeons that slavishly follows it.
• There are a couple of new additions to the game over and above those added in Darker Dungeons – the Clockwork race, and the Warlord fighter variant, for example. Also the Immortals rules have been given a major expansion to make them more of a blend between the two sets of Immortals rules from the original game and I’ve added values for magic items.
• I’ve added a whole bunch of “Developer Commentary” sidebars to the game. These explain the reasoning and intent behind the various rules and rules changes in a more personal manner rather than the impartial “rules voice” used in the text itself.
• A switch from the old Lulu print-on-demand to a print-on-demand available directly through DriveThruRPG.

Having said that Dark Dungeons X is finished, it is going through a final period of proofreading and checking – and will be uploaded to DriveThruRPG (for both PDF and print-on-demand) in a couple of weeks time.

Cthangband 6.2 Released!

The title says it all, really. There’s a new version of Cthangband. It’s version 6.2. And you can download it here.

If you don’t know what Cthangband is, check the Cthangband page on this site.

If you do know what Cthangband is, check out the change log below to see what’s new:

• Replaced old plasma-based terrain generation with a Perlin Noise based one for a more realistic island.
• Flavoured items now have their true appearance even when unidentified.
• New town layouts to give towns more personality.
• Added an “Other” gender for those who want it (or those playing sexless golems).
• A metric ton more internal code refactoring.
• New animation system for spells and similar effects.
• Lighting and line-of-sight is now visible on more than just basic walls and floors.
• “Organic” cavern levels added (using the same Perlin Noise algorithm as the new terrain).
• New in-game “Cthangpedia” documentation added.
• High Score Table is now versioned, so you’re only comparing scores with characters who have had the same game experience as you.
• When choosing to re-use a character, the character gains a generation after their name (which is displayed on the high score table, save game preview, and gravestone). For example, “Bob”, “Bob II”, “Bob III”, “Bob IV”…
• Recovery rate is now properly shown as a multiplier on the character sheet, rather than a misleading “Regen” bonus, since it does not actually affect health regeneration; only poison/stun/bleeding recovery rate.
• Fixed occasional crash where the game would try to delete a non-existent monster.
• Chests are now included in the Journal’s “Worthless Items” section.
• Fixed bug where examining a disarmed but still locked chest would cause a crash.
• Fixed Journal’s monster list so it doesn’t skip monsters when browsing backwards.
• Reverted to classic speed system.
• Fixed bug where fixed-quest uniques could sometimes appear outside their designated level.
• Journal’s pet list now identifies what your pets are even if you’ve not seen them.
• Fixed bug where unusual key combinations (e.g. Alt+Numpad2) could sometimes cause a crash.
• Removed the (albeit very remote) possibility of getting an offensive name for a random artifact or an offensively shaped vault.
• Doubled the size of the colour palette.
• Changed the colour and/or character of over two hundred monster types to reduce ambiguity (fewer monsters now look identical); particularly Lovecraftian creatures, which have been mostly moved to the new characters of ‘A’ (for ‘Abomination’) for the races and ‘X’ (for ‘Extradimensional Entity’) for the unique Great Old Ones and Outer Gods.
• Glyph of Warding changed to Elder Sign
• Explosive Rune changed to Yellow Sign
• Recoloured a large number of items and dungeon features to take advantage of the new colours and enhanced lighting.
• Tunneling through trees no longer gives a confusing message about walls.
• Corrected cost/level of Chaos Bolt spell for Cultists.

Dark Dungeons – 10th Anniversary Edition!

It occurred to me the other day that next year Dark Dungeons will be a decade old!

I thought it might be nice to produce a new edition for that – partly to commemorate it, and also because I noticed that people are still downloading the game on DriveThruRPG after all this time (last month alone I got over 100 downloads from there) yet the printed version is not available from there – only from Lulu – since it wasn’t designed using the proper specifications for DriveThruRPG’s third-party POD supplier.

So, in order to kill two birds with one stone I thought I’d take the old Microsoft Publisher files and move the content to InDesign and into a template that will be compatible for POD on DriveThruRPG.

That way I get a 10th anniversary edition and it’s much easier for people looking for a printed copy to find one.

But the big question is – what text should go in it.

Currently, I have three versions of the game in my files:

1. Dark Dungeons – This is the original game, albeit the second printing (which replaced the to-hit table of the first edition with a much simpler d20 + attack bonus + AC >= 20 formula.
2. Darker Dungeons – This was my version that included house rules rather than sticking to the original game it was based on. Chiefly, it had:
   • All mechanics were unified under the d20 + bonus + modifiers >= 20 mechanic
   • I added Weapon Mastery abilities to shields, rather than them giving a flat bonus to AC
   • I took a lot of the randomness out of character generation, using a standard array for ability scores instead of rolling for them and using average values for hit points instead of rolling for them
   • I added the Mountebank class (a half spell user)
   • I mostly swapped the Magic-User and Elf classes, so that the Elf is now the one who is weak and can’t wear armour whereas the Magic-User is the one who can both fight and wear armour but needs more xp to level up
   • I split out the Druid from the Cleric completely, and gave them a Command Animal ability to replace Turn Undead
   • I reflavoured the Mystic class to a Beastman race, swapping the martial artist theme for a race that got more bestial as they got more experience
   • I added specialisation for Magic-Users and Clerics so that they could specialise in a particular type of magic
3. Darker Dungeons Revised – I never finished this one. It took the Darker Dungeons rules and added a few changes to them (there would have been more changes, but the project never got very far):
   • Reflavoured the Mystic again, this time to a Warlock
   • I added a Warlord option for a high level fighter as an alternative to becoming a Chevalier
   • I added a new racial class – the Clockwork – based on Eberron’s Warforged

As I say, the big question is which of those – if any – should be used as the basis for a 10th anniversary edition.

My first thoughts are that I’d want to include at least some of the Darker Dungeons material. The original Dark Dungeons was designed to be a close clone of the original game because the original game wasn’t available other than second hand for extortionate prices. That’s changed now – you can buy the original game in digital and POD versions – so there’s no reason for the 10th edition to slavishly stick to it. If people want to play a strict original-game–compliant game they can simply buy the original.

So I think the issue is how much of the additional Darker Dungeons (and Darker Dungeons Revised) material should be in there?

I’m definitely intending to use the unified mechanics and the druid. I’m less certain about the other changes.

(By the way, if anyone has any suggestions, I’ve created a discussion thread over at The Piazza.)

Lightmaster Print-on-Demand Version Now Available

I’ve received my proof copies from the printer, and they’re fine. In fact they’re more than fine – they’re beautiful.

It’s always nerve-wracking waiting for proofs and always a relief when they arrive; and these ones arrived earlier than I expected. I thought it would be another week or so. When I ordered them, it said they’d take 7-13 days to arrive; but they arrived in five.

Anyway, since the proofs are good I’ve gone ahead and made the Print-on-Demand option public over on DriveThruRPG.

It may take a day or so for them to appear there – there’s usually a slight delay.