ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So, three or four hours into playing with T3, I've run into annoying engine bugs.

Since the problem is apparently one that's been floating around since April of 2007, the obvious is occuring to me that if I'm going to make modules, it might make more sense to make them for T4 than T3. With that in mind, I have a few questions:

1) Last I checked, the "official" status of T4 is roughly: "Maybe this can happen. But let's make sure before we announce anything." Is that still the case? Are we committed to releasing T4, or is this still experimental?

2) I've been loosely following the RFTs, and so far as I can tell, pretty much all of the testing and feedback is all at the module level. I haven't noticed anyone mentioning the engine itself since RFT4 or 5 or so. Is the T4 engine...functional? Is it ready for module makers to step in? From previous experience with T3, the module community had a huge impact on T3 development, and I think it was a positive one. It's one thing to do casual playtesting like has occurred up to this point. It's something else entirely to have a community of module makers building modules and providing regular feedback based on actually using the engine.

3) What criteria must be met before T4 is announced? "Has a playable module?" If so...I can understand that answer. We've strained credibility with the history of T3. But...module makers will have more incentive to work on T4 modules if people can actually download and play them. What must happen for T4 to be officially announced, and when do we anticipate that happening?

So the original plan was to get T3 to beta status... make the announcement causing some attention! Then announce T4 development (on the back of the T3 beta announcement causing an even bigger splash)!

The problem for the T3 stuff has been the Randart bug problem delaying things. DG did say he would look... This is the only major bug that stops T3 moving from alpha to beta status.

We could take the decision to actually stop all work on T3, DG himself is on record saying it is very painful to work with!

If we take the decision to stop working on T3 then my feeling is we should make the T4 announcement as soon as possible!

How do people feel about this?

madmonk wrote: the original plan was to get T3 to beta status

Don't you need a functional ToME module to do that?

Then announce T4 development (on the back of the T3 beta
announcement causing an even bigger splash)!

Does that really work? Isn't that kind of like waiting for a pregnancy to announce a divorce?

Randart bug
This is the only major bug that stops T3 moving from alpha to beta status.

...that seems slightly optimistic given that it's only taken me a couple hours of work on a very simple module to stumble on a bug that renders it totally unplayable.

We could take the decision to actually stop all work on T3

Unfortunately that might be a good idea. I suspect that if I were DarkGod, I would probably announce that I would no longer be doing anything with T3, but welcome others to take over it they felt so inclined. But then...I get the impression that's pretty much what's happened.

my feeling is we should make the T4 announcement as soon as possible!

Whether now or later, I'd like for there to be a firm decision on when to announce. Some sort of criteria that when met, we know that now is the time to announce. That criteria might be an arbitrary date, or it might be the existence of a playable module to include with release, or it might be when Jupiter next aligns with Saturn and Mars. Whatever. But a definite criteria that we can look at and say, "Oh...ok, time to announce."

LordBucket wrote:

madmonk wrote: the original plan was to get T3 to beta status

Don't you need a functional ToME module to do that?

The decision was taken to advance the T-Engine to beta status, there was considerable discussion around the module and it was felt that it was more important to advance the t-engine first and then work on the module

LordBucket wrote:

Then announce T4 development (on the back of the T3 beta
announcement causing an even bigger splash)!

Does that really work? Isn't that kind of like waiting for a pregnancy to announce a divorce?

Again we had the discussion around this and it was decided by DG and others that we should wait for the t-engine to advance before making the T4 announcement.

LordBucket wrote:

Randart bug
This is the only major bug that stops T3 moving from alpha to beta status.

...that seems slightly optimistic given that it's only taken me a couple hours of work on a very simple module to stumble on a bug that renders it totally unplayable.

How true, again at the time the original decision was taken the randart bug was the only bug stopping us. So this will obviously be a further delay...

LordBucket wrote:

We could take the decision to actually stop all work on T3

Unfortunately that might be a good idea. I suspect that if I were DarkGod, I would probably announce that I would no longer be doing anything with T3, but welcome others to take over it they felt so inclined. But then...I get the impression that's pretty much what's happened.

He has already made that announcement.

LordBucket wrote:

my feeling is we should make the T4 announcement as soon as possible!

Whether now or later, I'd like for there to be a firm decision on when to announce. Some sort of criteria that when met, we know that now is the time to announce. That criteria might be an arbitrary date, or it might be the existence of a playable module to include with release, or it might be when Jupiter next aligns with Saturn and Mars. Whatever. But a definite criteria that we can look at and say, "Oh...ok, time to announce."

That is not my call. You should take this up with DG and the other programmers.

Although with all the problems around T3 the probable best course would be to scrap it completely. Announce the T4 launch and proceed from there. Again this is not my call

I'm not sure what the official status on this is, and I'm not sure how it's playing now (still tinkering with RFT 3), but here's my take on it.

DG originally stated that he was messing around with a new engine and such, that he didn't want to commit to anything. The development on the module has progressed to the point that I'd say that he's willing to make that commitment to finish it up.

As for the announcement, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. There's still a lot to be implemented here. I think that once he has most of the kinks worked out and the stuff implemented, we can then make the move to announce the "Official" Alpha of T4. I don't think we should jump the gun on this yet. Clearly the new engine works and DG is interested and excited to be working on it.

Heya lordbucket:)

Yes I am fairly confident I like codingfor T4 now.
You are right in saying a fixed date would be nice.
I'm going to ski for one week I'll have plenty of time to think about that.

I'd liek to write a longer post but I am in a hurry msut pack real quick ! See ya un a week !

DG.... skis? WTF? I always envisioned you as an old man, bent and wizened with age with a long white beard poring over line after line of code.

Weird.

Xandor Tik'Roth wrote:DG.... skis? WTF? I always envisioned you as an old man, bent and wizened with age with a long white beard poring over line after line of code.

Weird.

Really? And you envisioned that old, bent, wizened man getting married a couple years ago? I always picture him with big nerd glasses, wearing a beret, illuminated only by the glow of a computer screen. But yeah skis don't fit my picture either.

Oh... Guess I forgot about that.

feathin wrote:

Xandor Tik'Roth wrote:DG.... skis? WTF? I always envisioned you as an old man, bent and wizened with age with a long white beard poring over line after line of code.

Weird.

Really? And you envisioned that old, bent, wizened man getting married a couple years ago? I always picture him with big nerd glasses, wearing a beret, illuminated only by the glow of a computer screen. But yeah skis don't fit my picture either.

Long time no see!

I'm glad you are back!

Well it seems ski does not work to well for me I got wrong feet and they hurt horribly after 10minutes..
So ... one week wasted ! Going home Sunday...
I'll post a picture of me when I get back

As for a release date I was planning to do it when the game is playable up to level 20 (up to finding the staff of absorption).
Currently its possible to get to about level 14 or so I believe. It lacks some items/egos town(s) and stores.
There are a few engine bugs I need to fix too.

As for the engine it is stabilizing, I do less and less work on it lately. You can throw an eye or two on the code if you want to see how it works lord bucket. Most of the basic structure should be good by now.

As for a date, I won't promise much but about one or two months should be quite enough for the milestones I set previously.

BTW it is really frustrating to have one week "off" and to not be able to code due to frelling ski

BTW lord bucket the engine class and methods are documented. Either look in the code or at http://te4.org

The other aspect of this decision will be the T3 status...

Do we scrap it?

Do we continue to maintain it?

madmonk wrote: The other aspect of this decision will be the T3 status...
Do we scrap it?
Do we continue to maintain it?

These are my preference, is order of how much I would prefer them:

Preferred:
1) T3 is maintained, bugs are fixed, new releases are released. Whether or not anyone makes a ToME module for T3 is irrelevant, as there are already plenty of existing modules for it.

Not preferred, but acceptable:
2) T3 is formally, and officially abandoned and people stop insisting that they're working on it without actually doing anything.

Let's not do this:
3) T3 is left in an uncertain state, and people continually insist that they're working on it, but nothing ever happens. Nerdanel continues to be unhappy about the lack of randarts for another few years, but that never gets fixed. Eventually an alpha20 is released that's still missing the zlib library, still has fatal, game-breaking bugs, and introduces some new ones.

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I like T3. I've spent a lot of time working with it. I'm not feeling entirely enthusiastic about starting over with T4. But in its present state, T3 is non-functional. I have people on another forum expressing great enthusiasm about playing my T3 modules, but they can't because the engine is broken. You guys sweeped a lot of stuff under the rug when you closed all the old bug reports apparently with the belief that they had all magically been fixed somehow. In the week that I've been working with it again, I've filed two new bug reports, and somehow I suspect that since nobody got around to fixing "engine goes irreparably blackscreen and reinstalls and reboots don't fix it" probably not much else from those 100-some closed reports has been fixed either.

I'd like to see T3 finished. I don't care if it ever has a ToME3 module, I don't care if randarts are implemented, and I can work around most of the missing features, but I'd like to see the bugs get fixed.

But if nobody is going to do that, it doesn't really matter if the stuff that I see people working on ever gets done. Elcugo's new wilderness system, Nerdanel's randarts, Shigerello graphical tile support, estevens' migration to the new Physfs code...none of this matters if the bugs don't get fixed. So either somebody who can fix the bugs, or have mercy on all the people still working on T3 and let them know they can stop.

Incidentally, Nerdanel if you're reading this, the second bug report I filed involves the same error messsage that you're getting with the randart code. I haven't looked at randarts, but it's remotely possible the problem might be related. I think fixing it would simply involve adding a few lines to /engine/load2.lua so that it recognizes the required data types. Apparently nobody ever thought that a module maker might want to store items in the savefile.