What is it?
- The most popular Angband spin-off,
and thus a roguelike game,
created 1994 on PC.
- What computer or emulator will it run on?
- A 386. At least newer versions do not support 16-bit code.
- Similar Games
- Rogue, ADOM, NetHack.
What is it?
On 1994-12-15, Topi Ylinen made a long post to rec.games.roguelike.angband, announcing that he had just uploaded Zangband in a not yet completely finished state to the ksu upload site. The upload consisted of the sources and two binaries, both for PC:
The PC binaries: There are two executables, one that requires 550k low memory (TINYZANG.EXE) and one that requires nearly 600k (HUGEZANG.EXE). The latter may perform better so if you can free up enough low memory, I recommend you use it. On the other hand, if it behaves strangely for you (e.g. hangs the computer, fails to save your character, fails to read your save file), you should use the first (TINYZANG.EXE) executable, which may be a bit slower. Please also note that the Nhsound program requires some low memory (this may cause problems). Fortunately, it is an external TSR so you don't HAVE to load it if you are uhm… low on low memory. Smartdrive and available EMS memory can drastically improve the performance of the program.
Zangband (sometimes written ZAngband) is probably the most popular of the many Angband spin-offs, and the one most different from the original. It is set in the worlds of Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber. Topi Ylinen later described its genesis thus:
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…
