[magnate]

I was interested in the comment about not using Angband code. You could easily use a lot of the code to do stuff like draw the screen and move the character without spoiling the game for yourself. It's all in which files you look in. Try the z-*.c files for a start. (Actually start with main-ibm.c and go from there!)

For those of you who don't like Angband's somewhat arbitrary character level progression system, try Sangband. It has a skill system which is much more believable and engrossing.

My 2p on which bits of Dom2 to focus on putting into a roguelike: I'm with Vicious Love on this, it's the flavour that's important. So the 17 races are not only the character races but the monsters as well - you can add some code to prevent the player's own race turning up as monsters. The cheap units are the low-level monsters, and the more expensive ones start later on. So you start off killing scouts & LI, and work up to taking on iceclads and principes.

Setting it above ground has its advantages but is much harder to do. I'd start with a dungeon and add a wilderness once it's working.

There is already a spreadsheet which lists all the Dom2 spells, btw.

CC