Talk:MAngband

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Contents 1 To Do, Dxco 2 Houses 3 General 4 DServ

[edit] To Do, Dxco

(To do list for user Dxco, started: Dxco 02:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC))

• Figure out exact lisence status, for an Infobox
• Infobox
• Representative screenshot
• Consider adding mention of the origin of the multiplayer code that MAngband uses (crossfire, I believe).

I chatted with the current maintainer, who seemed to indicate that Crossfire netcode was originally used, but that subsequent development largely, although not completely, moved the codebase past it. He said that "... references to it still exist <in the codebase>." As well, he mentioned that there were (presumably) code references to the TRACE project present either currently, or in the past. I'm not sure what the TRACE project is. Dxco 17:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

• Source first release and maintainership-change dates in opening section.

Done, but in an "informal" way that would be difficult to provide a source for: I traded email with the past maintainers to verify dates.

• Provide a tad bit more information on the Japanese client, etc.
• Expand the gameplay section, so readers are not forced to read the Angband parent page to understand what exactly MAngband gameplay is about.

Don't excessivly duplicate the information present in the Angband page, however. A brief rundown of the roguelike/Angband dungeon crawl gameplay style will be sufficient. Dxco 17:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

• Expand opening section just a tad, so it is clear the topic is a computer video game.

Actually, too much information unrelated to a general introduction of MAngband is present in this opening section. Move the maintainership history to the development section, and provide a brief overview

[edit] Houses

This articles needs some information about the new houses. --Sbluen 18:07, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I think this would fall under the category of what I've called the "Gameplay" section (which is perhaps not quite the right name for the info it would contain, but I'll go with it for now). In this section, I'd like to see both the basics of gameplay described, as well some of the noteworthy additions to mangband over its parent (such as houses, as you point out).Dxco 18:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, by the way, for the above link to mangband specific features. That will come in handy. Dxco 18:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

That link is also part of the documentation, which includes a few other useful documents. --Sbluen 01:07, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General

Sbluen, its good to see you adding to the page. I wanted to comment on a particular change you made that perhaps could represent a trend which we may want to be careful of following to strongly. In the player death section, you added reference to using scrolls of life to resurrect a player.

This is of course good info, and perhaps this page will grow in complexity to warrant such detail. However, at present, we should try to keep in mind that the degree of granularity in the article is moderately low. This is the case because ultimately we are talking about a fairly obscure variant of an obscure game in an obscure genre :P So, we should avoid adding too much detail, as the topic may not quite warrant it.

As well, lets try to focus on keeping the article suitable for a person who doesn't know what mangband is, but has come to wikipedia to find out about it. From this perspective, we should work to keep the information in the page moderatly general. So, in the example of player death, that a user drops their belongings when they die, and that they can be resurrected either by another player, or by themselves in town, is sufficient: we have gotten the general point accross about death, ghosts, and the cooperative nature of the death scenario. That a player is resurrected by another via the use of a particular type of game item named a Scroll of Life, however, is perhaps to particular and outside the scope of the article. This deeper level of information would be more approriate for the game wiki, or for a manual/player info site on how to play mangband.

Another example that perhaps is instructive in getting my point here accross is the added mention that a player, when killed drops their equipment *and* their gold when they die. This is of course very true, but again is a particular detail that lies outside the scope of a generally informative article on MAngband. We want the reader to understand the general principle of how death works in MAngband (die, and your stuff drops on the ground). The exact makeup of what particular things drop on the ground, however, is information more appropriate to a manual or intructional (as opposed to generally informational) site. Do you see what I mean here?

Put more simply, we want to provide general information to the reader in the body of the article, and then provide links to particular or detailed information that is available on websites devoted to the topic. Dxco 07:14, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand now. The extra information is now only in the external links. I added other details that contain links for unfamiliar readers. --Sbluen 08:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DServ

Reverted comment of dserv as aka "BMAnband" in the Development and Variants section: googling said results in zero hits, wheras "dserv mangband" returns multiple hits. Also, at the site of Liberatore's, I found no mention of "BMAngband", but found multiple references to "dserv" as the name for this variant. Dxco 03:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, I see now the cause of the confusion over Dan Liberatore's name: the MAngband site, in the "people" section, lists his name incorrectly as "Dan Liberstore (aka Berendol)", while Dan's website show's its correct form, "Liberatore." Apologies to Mr. Liberatore for the error.Dxco 03:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)