How about more meaningful terrain/furniture?

[PurpleXVI]

Most of ToME consists of empty rooms, some are regularly shaped, some are irregularly shaped, but all in all they tend to be relatively uninteresting unless they've got a pillar or two in there, or the entrance is a nice choke point.

So how about adding "furniture?" Say that the game makes a room in one of the orc prides, it randomly populates it with chairs and a table, and a few barrels. They work as obstructions for movement(but not projectiles or vision, since they're just furniture), but obstructions with a low HP count which can be destroyed. Maybe another room is an orc mage's laboratory, it has tables and chairs, but also barrels of alchemical reagents(respond to fire or lightning damage by exploding or scattering fire/acid over the nearby area). It would add a bit of storytelling(perhaps the pride leaders have their own personal lairs/treasure rooms, with an elaborate throne that can be used for cover, etc.) and some tactical options, to have obstructions that can be interacted with.

The downside is that it'd probably mess with a good few skills, but I feel like it'd do a lot to make areas like the Orc Prides seem more like actual Orcish bastions and less like empty boxes.

For outside areas, it could open up for stuff like rockslides in the Daikara(hit the loose rocks to trigger some falling stones in the area), flammable brush in the Old Forest(hit it with fire or lightning to create a temporary zone of fire damage), that sort of thing.

But it'd just generally be nice to have the areas be more interactable and to have them consist of something more than walls, doors, enemies and the largely meaningless AoE things(blighted ground, glimmerstones, fountains of life, so on) that we have right now.

[Doctornull]

On the subject of meaningless terrain, what is a "Glitterstone" supposed to do? Why are they in the game?

Putting in some "campfire" tiles which actually provide light and which act like lava could be interesting. They could even get extinguished by Cold damage and re-ignited by Fire damage.

Trees could also catch fire and burn down. Using fire in a tree dungeon might be like using Pulverizing Auger in a stone dungeon.

Instead of drowning hazards, there might be shallow water which merely imposes the Wet status. Kite enemies through that so you can Stun-lock them.

[Red]

*Makes an Alchemist*

*Watches everything in the entire room take a hit for over 1000 points of damage*

I get the feeling a few classes aren't ever going to be able to deal with furniture.

However, I support this idea. It'd be cool to have a little more terrain doing things, even if it's just little passives like cover for +ranged defense.

[Planetus]

I like this idea. It'd give a lot more flavor to a lot of areas, as well as a little more tactical considerations. Making true furniture both block all movement (or maybe halve your movement speed to move onto and/or off the tile?, but still can't rush through it) and making it give high ranged defense, or maybe just a random chance to redirect projectiles that pass over it by 10 degrees to either side, so that both spell projectiles and archery projectiles suffer from it. Or maybe spells will hit the furniture, so only beam spells can pass through them?

[Sradac]

I support this. When I was abducted for the second time by demonic aliens, I saw some weird terrain features. Looked at them and thought "Oh cool, a torture rack. An iron maiden. That's neat". Just having those there, not being able to interract but just SEEING them added way more flavor to the area. It made it feel like it was more than just "rooms on a floating rock". It gave it a purpose.

[rexorcorum]

Hehe, nice

This is still part of the enormous/unending to-do list, so some day...