ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Hullo

Today at work I was a bit bored and started thinking about altogether dropping all the current OS-specific ports and instead jsut use and an SDL interface that works on the same(actually more) platforms than ToME does.

Now ASCII lovers, dont fear, I'm one too, so this doenst mean ASCII mode would go, it would jsut work as the X11 and widnwos port, drawing the text.

I have lots of nifty ideas to make the sdl interface super neat and module-customizable. But all those imply one big drawback, namely the removal of the pure text mode ports, that is the "ibm" and "gcu" ports. Not reallly a big loss except it wouldnt be possible to play over ssh anymore.

Well it would with X forwarding, but we all know how "efficient" this is. An other (quite easy) possibility would be to be able to disconnect the display from the core, that is, one owuld run the core on a machine, and connect the client to it via a TCP/IP connection. But this still implies the game to be installed on the client machine, so I'm not sure how usefull this would be.

So I need your opinion please!

I voted no. And I voted no only because of the loss of the ability to play over SSH, which just so happens to be the only way that I play Tome at the moment. If there were a way to go for SDL without killing the ability to use SSH then this would be fine. As it stands now, I don't like the idea.

http://www.linuxgames.co.za/noeGNUd/screenshots.php

This is roughly my vision of the flexibility I want in the SDL ToME.

I voted for sdl.

I was reluctant at first, but I had a pretty lengthy discussion with Neil and Amaurea (hope I recall correctly, hapologizes if not) on the irc channel a while ago and got convinced.

Actually, the game is really really good, we all know that . But don't we all want it to get even better and to be played by even more people? I think the addition of graphics and a nifty interface is the best way to achieve that.
Nowadays, want it or not, graphics are important for any software. Even Linux (which I like, do not get me wrong) is heading more and more towards nice window managers and all, to be able to be used by even more people worldwide, and then achieve a greater quality in the end (more testers, more contributors, etc).

One of my complains was also the portability of angband, the possibility to be played on many different architectures. I though tome was very portable, but actually sdl is more! Using sdl in tome would allow tome to be played on more architectures, which is very important to me.

Hope I convinced at least a few people to vote for sdl, yessss commmeee on!

though I know you wanted opinions, I don't have one. I really don't care what you do with YOUR game. I will always play ToME, no matter the format (which may take some getting used to.) So go ahead with what you decide to do!

Grrreat! Me wants it! Me wants it NOW!

I see that ToME is becoming more and more different from the standard "angband variant" style, and I *like* it! (Not that I don't like Vanilla, but stll...)

A dumb question to fellow coders: as terminal-management and such are contained in relatively few source files, should it be possible to maintain both a 300-with-nifty-graphics and a 300-old-style-terminal without too much trouble?

Not that I'm volunteering for that, anyway...

Quite OT: I know you hate to be asked that, but when will 300 come out?
Please don't manathurst me for this question...

I voted no, for the same reason as Spyro. I think the sdl support looks very neat, but I play tome over ssh exlusively, and won't be able to install it on all the machines I play it on.

I voted "Don't care, will play no matter what" but haven't a clue what it all implies for me. Can someone translate the computer-speak into a direct description of what happens if the new system is implemented, i.e. I'm using ASCII exclusively, on a normal Windows XP platform. What would change for me? How would the screens look? And so on. I will not be switching to graphics tiles until they become cleaner and easier for me to distinguish, so I don't want to use something that complicates or impedes my ability to assimilate what's happening on-screen.

Carciofus wrote:Quite OT: I know you hate to be asked that, but when will 300 come out?
Please don't manathurst me for this question...

It's a while off. We're now actually going to ship a 2.3 and beyond while 3.0 proceeeds.

I answered I don't know, as I assume there won't be complications and usability-degradations to plain top-down ASCII style.

I usually play in X, but I have been known to play in console when there was that time there was a flaky update to X and I had to pass the time somehow while waiting for the downgrade to compile. (It was my old slow computer and X took many hours to compile.) It was a while ago and I don't expect that to happen again anytime soon, but well, that kinds of things may happen.

I won't use graphics in ToME unless they mysteriously become a great deal clearer and prettier than they are now. I started playing ToME because I was tired of everything being way too graphics oriented at the expense of gameplay. As to 3D, I think that's one of the most overrated game inventions ever.

I voted no. I have a number of non-X Linux boxes I use to play and I'm a bit of a console junkie. I play with one Windoze box on occasion, but I try not to use it unless work gets boring.

ascii all the way!

I voted "Don't care, will play no matter what" but haven't a clue what it all implies for me. Can someone translate the computer-speak into a direct description of what happens if the new system is implemented, i.e. I'm using ASCII exclusively, on a normal Windows XP platform. What would change for me? How would the screens look? And so on. I will not be switching to graphics tiles until they become cleaner and easier for me to distinguish, so I don't want to use something that complicates or impedes my ability to assimilate what's happening on-screen

Anyone wanna answer this?? I'd also like to know?

Again, text maps will be fully supported by an SDL ToME in both 2D an 3D views.

I'm with Nerdanel and Hunter (more or less). It would take a truly huge product to make me change over from ASCII -- though I do like the Tk products w/ ASCII dungeons -- and it seems from what Neil says that that'll still be there, so it doesn't really matter to me.