ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I think ToME2 (and TomeNET, based on ToME2... if you can handle real-time) is the best roguelike, and I'd like to see it become more popular again, as it was when it had its own website and own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel/‘room.’ What about starting a site for patches/variants/forks, with its own forum, and an IRC channel? The channel used to be on freenode and maybe QuakeNet IRC, but the freenode channel/‘room’ has been abandoned (though still registered, so no one can re-use it) with a link to that 4Chan-/Anonymous-related IRC, Rizon, which has the ToME4 channel. Of course, unofficial channels on freenode are named slightly differently.

I still moderate this forum and check it every few days, so if you have any more suggestions I will take them into account.

There is also a ToME forum at http://angband.oook.cz/forum/. It doesn't get used much except for tanger's TomeNet videos and Dark God's announcements.

IMO the best way would be to go help Zizzo in porting T2 to TE4 so it can remain relevant in a more modern engine

darkgod wrote:IMO the best way would be to go help Zizzo in porting T2 to TE4 so it can remain relevant in a more modern engine

*blush* [bows]

If you can exactly replicate, and extend (not remove things from) ToME2 game mechanics, along with better graphics that attracts more players (though I'd only play if having larger, Angband-style maps, graphics or not,) I'm all for that, but ToME2 being slightly old (apart from forks updated this year) doesn't mean it's less relevant (to me and many older or very intellectual gamers.) Even the NetHack's IRC channel/‘room’ (and the NetHack & Angband Usenet newsgroups) is large for today's IRC, almost 300 people, and NetHack is older than Angband. Moria/Angband/etc. just seemed to become less popular because of official development of the most advanced versions being slowed/stopped. I like classic-style roguelikes, not so much newer ones failing to meet old definitions (if I recall, someone said ToME4 has an ASCII mode, so maybe it's okay, as long as it's real, copyable text and not graphics ‘text’...)

As ToME2 is (or appeared to be) an engine (note, I didn't mention Middle-earth,) that's what I referred to: exact game mechanics (or engine) continuing from the classic D&D & AD&D (ADD)-inspired Moria, and the probably also AD&D 2nd ed. (ADD2)-inspired ToME2. Newer D&D was corporatized after videogames became more popular, and (as a general ‘dumbing-down’) removed many important parts (hundreds of skills, etc.) and added several videogame-style rules that don't make as much sense in paper & pencil role-playing (‘feats,’ instead of weapon mastery with higher damage and increasing effects from one attack type, and classic combat sometimes having ‘called shots,’ i.e. body area targeting, feat-type attacks replace most/all that with merely supposedly special attacks every certain number of turns.) That's not fun for me and is why I prefer Moria/Angband/ZAngband/ToME2; I don't play ToME4, as well as disliking the ToME1 & 2 trend of decreasing Moria-/Angband-style rangers' (magician-warriors) power then removing entirely in ToME4.

I'd be working on (Super)Rogue, (Net)Hack, Moria, (Ultra)Larn, Omega, Angband, ZAngband, Crawl/DCSS, ToME2 (or genericized variant of preceding *band, won't name, but available on FTP.SUNet.se,) or other classic-style roguelikes, before ToME4 or anything newer that diverges from classic D&D (through ADD2.) & classic roguelikes. That's fine if newer gamers enjoy them, but I don't much, and haven't won ToME1 or 2 yet (and Moria and Angband, only with wizard mode) and am mainly a Moria/variant fan of all games (and want to see a Moria/variant & NetHack/variant renaissance,) among also puzzle games.

Back to my original topic, I'm now hanging out on freenode IRC ##tome (just me, and unregistered.) The two ‘#’ mean it is unofficial, so I'm using it (as long as someone doesn't register it unless they are a moderator of ToME2 forums or a fork maintaner) to see if anyone wants a place to discuss ToME2 variants faster, i.e., conversations, besides forum posts. I'm also willing to host a classic/variants site in the future, but am planning on reinstalling my virtual private server (VPS) eventually.

Just a note, I dont understand you say you like warrior-mages characters but think tome4 removed those??? There are literally tons of classes or many flavours that fill that role

And the problem of using old engines/code is not that they are old it's that they plainly suck and are a pain to work with. It's what prompted me to start from a blank page for T4.

As for zizzo's T2 project, it is meant to replicate as exactly as possible yeah from what I gather. I can't make it an official project because it uses tolkien IP and i'd rather stay away from other people's IPs now But I do try to help when I can and I certainly follow it with great interest

darkgod wrote:And the problem of using old engines/code is not that they are old it's that they plainly suck and are a pain to work with. It's what prompted me to start from a blank page for T4.

It functions as "therapy" for some of us .

(... and just because I don't think I've said it before: Congrats on the success with T4!)

Ahah and thanks!

I should note that Zizzo's brilliant work is at this thread:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=4 ... &start=390