ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Ok, the title of the subject is silly. It was my intention for it to be so, though.

Recently, I've gotten in my mind that I want to make a ToME module. Only problem is that I have no idea where to start, and for someone with very limited scripting/programming experience it's daunting. I have read some forum topics, and got the advice to follow the wiki, poke around in examples and specifically to load ToME and see how it does stuff.

Well, ok, I says, this should be easy. Reading is easy, applying what I read is harder, right? Wrong.

First off, the files of the example are of the type *.lua . I quickly figured that wordpad isn't going to cut it, and I had no intention of booting Linux and see if vim would do better. I looked around the Googles and found SciTE, which was helpful, in the sense that everything was nicely formatted and colored. I said that this is a very good thing.

Then I wanted to see how the ToME module is built and compare it with the example module, and perhaps even other player-made modules. I looked around for some modules, but very few were updated to beta 33, and even less were 'new' worlds (which is what interests me), most active one being add-ons to ToME. So the last part of the plan kinda flew out the window, but I still had the first one. Comparing ToME to the example.

Only problem is. Where is TOME? I've taken an inventory of all directories and I have no idea where are the files I should open and compare.

Ok so:

.\bootstrap <----- This holds the starting files for booting the game I think.
.\game\addons <----- I don't know what's supposed to be in here, dir is empty. Common sense would say that some kind of game add-ons would go in here. Not what I need in any case.
.\game\engines <---- I assume that some t-engine files are in here. Not good to touch.
.\game\loader <--- This holds the starting screen, maybe.
.\game\profile-thread <---- I'm fairly sure this files control online profile management and data sending and stuff I don't need. Yet.
.\game\thirdparty <---- Some kind of directory which hosts third party tools used by the engine? Not sure.

Ok, so that leaves

.\game\modules

The modules are in here as well as two .team files that I have no idea what they are. On a hunch, I loaded the larger one into SciTE and it seems that it is the ToME file (there's some LUA formatting inside as well as it being 117 MB large.). But I'm stumped now. The file is over 80000 lines long, it doesn't format correctly (there's weird spacing and characters all over the place), and I can't compare it with any example files because I wouldn't even know where to start looking.

Oh I also tried compiling the source code, but that was even a bigger can o' worms so I just let that drop.

Anyway, help please. Where is ToME?

In recent betas the tome module is compressed into team files. I believe you can unzip the tome-3.9.33 - team file if you want to take a look at the lua.

Another option for file editing is notepad++. I found the colorization much easier on the eyes then SciTE.

Yeah, Notepad++ is king.

Modules older than b33 should still have relevant code, so don't completely dismiss them for examples.

The best help though is on IRC, especially when DarkGod is about.

Thanks. However, in order to get help, I need to know what questions to ask.

Right now I don't even know what questions to ask.

I would like to eventually make some classes like the mimic and possessor in ToME 2, but there's a long way before that. First, I have to read the documentations and poke around a bit. When I find out what bits I need and which are redundant, and have made a skeleton, I'll see about questions.

I heard a rumor about the possesor that DG said when someone mentioned making a possesor class, "Hands off, possesor is mine!"

Just a rumor though!

I too would like a cool guide for module making! I thought this forum used to have a sticky with general info?

A guide would be awesome. The wiki has some information, but it's not exactly structured in the best way.

I found a module named Broken Bottle. It's simpler than ToME, but better than the example module, so now I'm taking it apart and seeing what makes it tick.

Hands off, possessor is mine!

Race you for it.

At my current speed, it will be done sometime Tuesday, 2031 AD.

But it's good to know that it's possible. I was momentarily afraid that it might not be.