ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I am finally giving up on this awesome but sadly dated game for the following reasons.

1. It got old.
The slog through DG's "plot" was fun the first time, but it gets tiresome after a while. Go to Dol Guldor and kill the Necromancer, go and kill a bunch of dungeon guardians, kill Sauron, haul the Ring over to Mount Doom, kill Sauron again, go back to Angband and kill Morgoth... The RGP aspect wears thin.

2. The skill system doesn't do its job.
The skill system should allow huge diversity of character builds. Instead you have a fairly narrow range of builds that work, and a lot that don't.

3. I don't know how to do my job.
My attempts to rebalance and improve things have only served to introduce further problems and further lack of balance. The unfortunate fact is, I don't know game design... And it shows.

4. I don't know what to do, anyway.
I've basically run out of ideas for stuff to add to T2; what I can add is stale, and what isn't stale is beyond my coding skills.

5. Have I mentioned I can't code?
There's no decent cross-platform interface like V's. It would be nice if I could write one, but that is *way* beyond what I can do right now. I know how to create GUIs using Java Swing (and I'm kind of rusty). I don't know anything about using SDL or Qt.

So, in short: it's no longer fun to play, it's no longer fun to tweak, and I (still) don't possess the skills required to bring it up to date. Thus, I move on.

(I hope none of you feel that I've let you down. If so, I offer my apologies.)

Are you thinking about moving on to ToME4?

Nope. ToME4 still doesn't work properly on any of my computers. I suspect it's the Intel chipsets.

DG reached the same conclusions a few years ago. T2 is still an awesome game for a newbie, but once you have been through it a few dozen times it loses most of its appeal. When there still were a bunch of active T2 players most of the activity centered around challenges like trying to win without using any objects.

I still fire it up every once in while for old times sake. I even do the same with Rogue.

I have the same problem with T4. Maybe it isn't a problem, since I have much more time for productive activities now.

I hear you on the productivity side. I have escaped sinking time into playing ToME4 by... sinking time into developing for it. Not really a net gain there. I don't want to hijack this thread that should be celebrating your contributions to T2, though, so cheers and good luck in the future!

Lord Estraven wrote:
2. The skill system doesn't do its job.
The skill system should allow huge diversity of character builds. Instead you have a fairly narrow range of builds that work, and a lot that don't.

I hear you. There is a little variation when you choose different classes, but all similar classes will tend to end up with the same skills. I'm not sure skills are what *bands really need. (Caveat: I have still to try Sangband properly.)

Lord Estraven wrote: 3. I don't know how to do my job.
My attempts to rebalance and improve things have only served to introduce further problems and further lack of balance. The unfortunate fact is, I don't know game design... And it shows.

That was your job? One big problem with T2 is that the engine has lots and lots of hardcoded behavior, but pretends to be highly customizable via Lua and edit files. (To see examples of this just search for examples of hardcoded monster names, or even string matches for starts-with-"W" to find all elementals.)

The code base has almost no abstraction -- every bit of code knows everything about every other bit of code/data. This is what made me realize that any cleanup/porting is basically futile.

Lord Estraven wrote: 4. I don't know what to do, anyway.
I've basically run out of ideas for stuff to add to T2; what I can add is stale, and what isn't stale is beyond my coding skills.

Have you tried Theme? I found it much better than vanilla T2. (Though it too does tend to age.)

Lord Estraven wrote: 5. Have I mentioned I can't code?
There's no decent cross-platform interface like V's. It would be nice if I could write one, but that is *way* beyond what I can do right now. I know how to create GUIs using Java Swing (and I'm kind of rusty). I don't know anything about using SDL or Qt.

A Qt GUI would actually be a major win, I think. Contrary to all the other options it is actually cross-platform and easy to program. Unfortunately it does require C++ (but that only means the GUI has to be C++, not the game engine.)

I someone were to implement a decent Qt GUI, I think all the other ones could be ditched. (Modulo GCU, I suppose.)

Lord Estraven wrote: So, in short: it's no longer fun to play, it's no longer fun to tweak, and I (still) don't possess the skills required to bring it up to date. Thus, I move on.

Godspeed. May I recommend Entroband (if you can still find the source) or Chengband? Lots of interesting/weird stuff to explore -- though the Entroband "engine" is even more hardcoded than T2. FAangband and OAngband are also awesome.

PosBand was also pretty cool (if you like Possessors) -- never could get RePosBand running, unfortunately.

Lord Estraven wrote: (I hope none of you feel that I've let you down. If so, I offer my apologies.)

Not at all.

AnonymousHero wrote: I hear you. There is a little variation when you choose different classes, but all similar classes will tend to end up with the same skills. I'm not sure skills are what *bands really need. (Caveat: I have still to try Sangband properly.)

Yeah. If I ever do my own variant, it will not use skills.

That was your job?

Ugh, gods no. I mean "my job as a variant maintainer," or something to that effect.

BTW I have tried Theme. Never got much into it due to a bug that made dungeon generation very slow.

A Qt GUI would actually be a major win, I think. Contrary to all the other options it is actually cross-platform and easy to program. Unfortunately it does require C++ (but that only means the GUI has to be C++, not the game engine.)

I someone were to implement a decent Qt GUI, I think all the other ones could be ditched. (Modulo GCU, I suppose.)

If I ever get around to writing my own *band, I think I will probably use Python and Tkinter, or somesuch. Tkinter may be ugly (on Linux anyway), but it is fast and cross-platform. Granted I'm no programming wiz, I feel like Qt is overkill for a roguelike.

(Also, a) low-level programming is hard for me to get the hang of, and b) I want an excuse to use regexes in my variant.)

Godspeed. May I recommend Entroband (if you can still find the source) or Chengband? Lots of interesting/weird stuff to explore -- though the Entroband "engine" is even more hardcoded than T2. FAangband and OAngband are also awesome.

PosBand was also pretty cool (if you like Possessors) -- never could get RePosBand running, unfortunately.

Thanks for the recommendations.

yufra wrote:I hear you on the productivity side. I have escaped sinking time into playing ToME4 by... sinking time into developing for it. Not really a net gain there. I don't want to hijack this thread that should be celebrating your contributions to T2, though, so cheers and good luck in the future!

Contributions, LOL, what contributions?

But if you want a review, two of the funnier moments are...

- Making bolas and chain weapons use the Weaponmastery skill. The result was predictably overpowered for, like, everyone.

- Messing up Archery so bad I had to restart from scratch. I was trying to make Archery less Green Arrow and more sniper, but it really didn't work.

Sadly I didn't get screenshots of my other hijinks, ah well.

BTW, has anyone here played Furyband? Is trap handling any better in it than in normal T2?

Edit: wait I've tried Furyband already. Ah well, maybe I'll take another look.

I think I'm an Angband tweaking junkie. Whenever I have nothing really serious to occupy me, I get the urge to start mucking around with T2 again.

Anyway I've got some new ideas that I think might make things more interesting. In particular I have new ideas for trap handling.... I'll see what you guys think.

Welcome back. It is hard to get the monkey off your back, isn't it?

Hey, 21 days... Not bad.