ToME-SX 2.3.5 (a ToME variant)

[AmyBSOD]

Greetings, fellow Angband/ToME players! It's the first time that I post here, so I'm sorry if this is in the wrong subforum, but I'd like to announce my ToME 2.3.5 variant which I'm developing currently. ToME is a relatively new experience for me (started to play maybe a year ago) so I haven't come close to beating the game yet, but it's lots of fun and an incredible time sink so I decided to make some adjustments. But the main thing is that due to the game being open source, everyone can play the modified version! So I guess I should put a link: https://github.com/AmyBSOD/ToME-SX - the binary isn't always up to date, but the source files certainly are, so in the case of doubt, compilation nets a fully working game. Of course, credits go to DarkGod and his dev team as well as the Angband dev team for creating ToME/Angband in the first place - you guys rock!

At the time of posting this, my best character looks like this (might contain slight spoilers): http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=18221 (some of the screenshots might illustrate stuff not present in regular ToME). Currently I seem to have most success with warrior classes while my priests and other spellcasters often die early. But anyway, I should be listing some features of my variant "ToME-SX" to get people interested in it, right? So, here goes:
- More race/role/god starting combinations are possible.
- Lots of new monsters and monster egotypes can be encountered. Beware of nasty ones like breeder four-headed hydras!
- The player can enter any dungeon at XL1, but at their own peril.
- Fumblefingers can boost a much wider variety of skills, boost modifiers to values higher than 0.5, and has double the normal chance of appearing as a random quest. On the other hand, the Princess now offers four choices of items instead of three.
- Stores and homes can hold many more items. Ever wanted to have a selection of 120 items in the black market? Cause that's the default now, greatly reducing the amount of scumming/refreshing!
- Cure light/serious/critical wounds actually heals a non-negligible amount of hit points, but they also cost more to buy.
- Player skills can go over 50. This isn't as useful as it sounds though, since even at XL50 they can't go over 54 by use of skill points.
- Instead of "Legendary[20]", the highest displayed skill in the character screen is now just "Legendary", and corresponds to an effective level of 45 or higher.
- Higher level feelings require more "rating" points, which means that the "superb" feeling only triggers at a rating of 201 or more (used to be 101 or more). Now, superb feeling means there's really something worthwile on the level!
- Enchant weapon/armor can take the + of an item beyond 15, but it's incredibly rare to succeed.
- A new birth option "lvling_system" which means that monsters levelscale everywhere, not only in certain dungeons. This includes the wilderness, and it also makes ambushes much more likely, so it's actually still dangerous even for an experienced player!
- Volcanoes on the world map! They spawn lots of red dragons, fire vortices and other fire-based monsters. Also, desert and glacier terrain have their own list of monsters that can spawn.
- Randart items can have new affixes which weren't possible to generate on them before. *Identify* all you find, maybe there's something really good among them!
- Using slowing effects on monsters has diminishing effects. Yes, that level 50 "Area - inertia" thaumaturgy spell is probably still broken, but at least it's harder to make monsters quasi-immobile.
- Boomerangs now gain damage boosts from Boomerang-mastery and Druidistic skills.
- All potion types can be found in fountains.
- All trap types can be identified by triggering them. However, they still need to have an effect or they remain obscure.
- Moldoux can appear on any dungeon level. The Great Wyrm of Power breathes --more-- You die. Dump the screen? (y/n)

This is it for now, however the variant is in development, so I'll probably do other changes in the future. The main design goal is to add variety and fun, and the secondary goal is to reign in glaring unbalances but I don't want to take too much away from the "spirit" of ToME 2.3.5. Also, alchemy and runecraft are still in there; I didn't change them since I don't know how they're working at all, but from what I've read they're utterly broken...

Anyway, have fun! If someone decides to give this variant a try, I'd be interested in their opinions. But if you think it's complete garbage, please tell me why so I know what I can improve in future versions.
-- Amy "Bluescreenofdeath" (or AmyBSOD for short)

[Yottle]

It looks to me like you may have made it easier, but that is hard to tell without trying it out. Some of your ideas were also in the Theme module, which was very cool (I haven't seen a copy for several years).

AFAIK, Runecraft is completely screwed up. Alchemy works fine, but is ridiculously unbalanced- take a look at any winning Alchemist characters.

[AnonymousHero]

I wonder, do you have any pointers to what you did for the expansion of the home? I think it's something I'd like to port over to T2-AH.

Btw, the initial commit is a big no-no, and counter to copyright law in most countries. You cannot arbitrarily relicense code -- you need to get all of the original contributors to agree[1] (or rewrite their code, preferably using a clean room re-implementation if you want to be really sure that you're not creating a derivative work). It may even be illegal to do try to do so -- I'm not a lawyer (nor your lawyer), so I cannot say.

Whether anyone's going to care, I cannot say.

However, the Angband license is not GPL-compatible, it's basically impossible for anyone to redistribute your code.

I would suggest retaining the original license text. (You should of course feel free to license your changes any way you like; if you want you could go with e.g. "Angband license or GPLvX" or similar. In the end, I decided against it for T2-AH because it may complicate matters even further for further forks, etc.)

[1] The difficulty of doing this is immense. (Vanilla) Angband has been relicensed as GPL through a momentous effort.

[Lord Estraven]

On a less dire note, volcanoes and other landscape features are a great idea. I've wanted to do that in Neoband for a while, but the V code base makes it difficult.

[AmyBSOD]

Whoops! The license bit was worrying me already, since I somehow couldn't find any license at all in the ToME 2.3.5 code I used as a base, so I googled and read somewhere that Angband uses the GPL license... my bad! If I broke copyright law then I didn't do so on purpose, I swear! Which license would be the correct one to use?

The "expansion of the home" (255 slots instead of 24 or whatever the default was) is actually rather easy: in st_info.txt, scroll down to "Home" (number 7) and increase the W:(number) value. I think values greater than 255 cause bugs, so I set it to exactly 255. The same has been done for stores so they can hold more stuff, but they won't actually stock that much more unless some adjustments to store.c are done as well.

It might well be that certain parts of the game are easier, but on the other hand some are harder, especially if the player chooses the levelscaling option which can lead to super-leveled kobolds/grey molds/yellow snakes etc. appearing, with +50 speed, hundreds of damage output per turn and such. Of course, in the Angband dungeon it happens anyway, but with the option on it also happens elsewhere, including the wilderness...

Maybe I'll also take a look at Theme and cherry-pick some of its features. Or does that violate the license? (Again, sorry for screwing that up!)

[Yottle]

One of the ideas that I liked in Theme was the use of damage from the dungeon itself, as in Cirith Ungol in Tome but much worse. There were some dungeons and even wilderness areas that were deadly except for carefully prepared, high-level characters. That offset much of the unbalancing effect of more powerful items and character options.

By the way, Furiousity disabled Alchemy in Theme. I think she also killed Runecraft, but I don't remember.

Level scaling also occurs in the Nether Realm. A pack of level 150 snaga is extremely dangerous. Chain-summoning demons get out of hand in a turn or two. The only strategies that I know that work there are Mass Genocide and chain summoning GWoPs. It is great fun.

[AnonymousHero]

Whoops! The license bit was worrying me already, since I somehow couldn't find any license at all in the ToME 2.3.5 code I used as a base, so I googled and read somewhere that Angband uses the GPL license... my bad! If I broke copyright law then I didn't do so on purpose, I swear! Which license would be the correct one to use?

I wouldn't worry too much about it -- it's not like anybody's going to come after you .

It's the "original" Angband license. Now that you mention it, I'm not sure the code actually had a "LICENSE.txt" (or anything to that effect). However, most of the files had a copyright header along the lines of

Code: Select all

 * Copyright (c) 1997 Ben Harrison, and others
 *
 * This software may be copied and distributed for educational, research,
 * and not for profit purposes provided that this copyright and statement
 * are included in all such copies.

I'm not sure how ironclad that is as a license legally speaking, but at least the intent seems reasonably clear.

(Btw, the bit that clashes with the GPL is the "not for profit" bit.)

The "expansion of the home" (255 slots instead of 24 or whatever the default was) is actually rather easy: in st_info.txt, scroll down to "Home" (number 7) and increase the W:(number) value. I think values greater than 255 cause bugs, so I set it to exactly 255. The same has been done for stores so they can hold more stuff, but they won't actually stock that much more unless some adjustments to store.c are done as well.

Ah, right, thanks. I'll give that a whirl -- I suspect it'll lead to segfaults eventually, but I guess I can only find out by trying.

Maybe I'll also take a look at Theme and cherry-pick some of its features. Or does that violate the license? (Again, sorry for screwing that up!)

The situation for Theme 1.2.0 seems to be similar to the Tome 2.3.5. See permission.txt.

Btw, FWIW, I would be happy to have T2 under a GPL license, I just think it's too much effort for little gain at this point to even try to bother finding all the contributors and getting their approval. (I'm not even sure the CVS repositories exist any more, etc.)

[AmyBSOD]

The game has been updated and now includes monsters from various other Angband variants, adding flavor and randomness; some of them can be deactivated by turning off joke monsters. My characters keep getting killed by them too, e.g. Jigen Daisuke who appears at a native depth of 40-something, fires a rocket every time he gets a turn that does 300 damage (150 with shards resistance) and moves at a crazy +60 speed. Still, I'm having a lot of fun.

[Yottle]

The game has been updated and now includes monsters from various other Angband variants, adding flavor and randomness; some of them can be deactivated by turning off joke monsters. My characters keep getting killed by them too, e.g. Jigen Daisuke who appears at a native depth of 40-something, fires a rocket every time he gets a turn that does 300 damage (150 with shards resistance) and moves at a crazy +60 speed. Still, I'm having a lot of fun.

That's a level 40 monster? How do you possible kill him?

[AmyBSOD]

That's a level 40 monster? How do you possible kill him?

Not sure yet; the only time I ran into him, I died because I underestimated him. But he doesn't resist poison, so noxious cloud would work if I can get the drop on him before he wakes up. While he then starts firing his rockets I'd heal repeatedly, and hopefully he won't kill me anyway (rockets deal less damage the more damaged the monster launching them is). However, this variant has lots of other nasty surprises waiting for the unwary. Some time ago I was on Heart of the Earth, level 29, when suddenly something started breathing darkness and invoking darkness storm from outside of my line of sight. Before I realized what was happening I was already dead.

[Yottle]

Sounds like Ungoliant, though what she would be doing on level 29 I don't know.