The Angband Competition

The Angband competition is run by Tony Holmes on a bi-monthly basis and involves downloading a common save file, and playing Angband (or a variant) over the competition period. The first winning save-file wins the competition - and tie breakers and competitions without winners are determined using various parameters: such as deepest unique, highest experience, and so on.

Unlike the Nethack competitions, it involves a degree of trust, because Angband is flexible enough to be downloaded and modified in a large number of ways, and people playing in the competition are not just telnetting onto a central host to play. But the site says:

The aim of this site is to make the playing of Angband fun by
allowing you to play against other *band players.

So it's better to think of the competition as a way of comparing and contrasting your Angband experience against other people playing the game, from a common base-line.

It's one of those community resources that is highly valuable, but probably doesn't get enough praise until it's missed. So I just wanted to say thanks for Tony for hosting this - he's been running it since August 2003 and doing a great job.

(Oh, and in case you were wondering, the latest Angband competition is for Unangband, as announced here. You can download the save file from here. You have until 31st December to submit a save file back. Good luck).