| paleface [sys=PC; cat=Roguelike; loc=NA] |
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FrogComposband is a free, roguelike dungeon exploration game you can download from https://github.com/sulkasormi/frogcomposband/releases, or play right through your web browser at https://angband.live .
And it's open source, so you can even download the source code and compile it yourself. The ASCII version I'm running in this video is one I compiled and ran for myself from the latest source code, using the following commands, in the free, Linux-like Cygwin operating environment for Windows (I have the following packages installed in Cygwin: autoconf-archive, libcurl-devel, clang, make, libncurses++w10, libncurses-devel, automake, autoconf, m4, libtool, git):
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git clone https://github.com/sulkasormi/frogcomposband.git
cd frogcomposband
sh autogen.sh
./configure --with-no-install --with-ncurses-prefix=/usr LIBS=-lncurses
make clean
make
cd ..
./frogcomposband/src/frogcomposband -mgcu -- -right 40x25,* -bottom *x7
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I keep finding myself drawn to all the nutty playable races in these "kitchen sink" Angband variants, but driven right back off by the harsh old rules--cursed objects that stick to you, for instance--and the absence of years of additional refinement and balancing that has taken place since in vanilla Angband; I'm nowhere near good enough at roguelikes to handle being a leprechaun, doggone it!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That was all stuff I wrote initially. What I've found is that nearly no attempt has been made to balance the game; this makes it very quirky, with a lot to explore and learn in order to survive, but in practice I just kept getting ganked by some bizarrely powerful lone wandering monster in the newbie dungeon, which was really not fun. "Explosively" breeding monster swarms also seem a bit overdone in the newbie area.
There appear to be a lot of little bugs throughout the huge mass of content, reported frequently in its thread on the Angband forum. Game updates are somewhat infrequent.
Probably the nicest-looking ASCII dungeons I've seen, even the newbie dungeon has a nice dirt and roots look to it--although I'm not sure why there are multiple stairways next to each other all over.
It's fascinating to watch veteran players wiz through these amazing areas and do amazing things: I saw someone cutting through ice caverns with a pack of trained multi-hued dragons to fight a master thief once, it was impressive.
Pretty much this is one I'd rather watch than play. |
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| paleface 00:30:04 05/01/22 [relations updated] |
| | | | Variant of Angband (see entry 1412) through Zangband and Hengband (see entry 1414), as well as later variants, some of which were themselves variant compilations--so it picked up a lot of content! |
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