ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I've been poking away at a UI for the last few days and figured I'd share my progress and bug some people for help via my own module thread!! Weee!!

*edit* Oh yeah... here's the github repo and the gitorious repo. Note that this isn't really a game yet. I'm trying to sort out the UI before I start adding the meat.

Here's a fairly recent screen shot so hopefully the following makes some sense.

Obviously the hotkey display needs work. I know what I want here and have 'some' idea how to go about it but figured I'd prod you guys for feedback first.


Basically I want the player to have access to 10 active talents at a time. Five of these will be entirely dependent on what 'stance' the player is currently in. So I'll also need some stance buttons possibly right above those five bars. Something like this maybe with the dashes representing slightly smaller buttons.
The hash sign buttons would not be assignable. Changing stances would automatically swap these talents out.

I'd also like a hotkey bar representing what spells the character has memorized. These would be assignable and would basically work like like ToMEs talent assignment except that it would take a turn to assign these hotkeys, only spells would be assignable, and you only get five period.
Together the bars should look something like this...
I believe I can get the spell memorization thing working fairly easy using the current hotkeysicon class and some filtering on the 'm' menu. The stances I'm not so sure about. I'm considering initializing a secondary hotkeysicon class within my module and tweaking it directly.

Thoughts?

Thoughts beyond "hooray" you mean? We can chat in IRC about specifics.

Item support, sound, music, and a basic character sheet added.

I'm going to start modifying things pretty heavily so it's less 'example' module and more Fae including my own combat system, leveling, etc soon so I'm going to fork the repo so we have a base Hex Module we can add features too (though some Fae stuff should be reverted maybe for it).

This looks promising! Mind posting about the game concept, mechanics, character creation?

I'd also like a hotkey bar representing what spells the character has memorized. These would be assignable and would basically work like like ToMEs talent assignment except that it would take a turn to assign these hotkeys, only spells would be assignable, and you only get five period.

Uh, is this Vancian? As in, you memorize a spell, cast it, and it is lost/has to be memorized again? Not sure how I feel about that...

I'm still debating on the mechanics but I'm leaning heavily towards a success based die system using opposed rolls. Which is to say something like Shadowrun or the original World of Darkness uses. For those not familiar you may have an offense pool of 10d6 and the enemy may have a dodge pool of 6d6. Both would roll and each die over a certain amount would count as a success. In the above example we'll say you get 4 more successes than the enemy. These 4 successes would factor into your damage calculation. So instead of having 'critical hits' you have degrees of success built right in to all rolls. Irregardless I want the system to be fairly simple. Something I can explain easily to the player in a paragraph or two in a spoilers file.

As to character class and all of that the game won't have any and there won't be a birth screen. It will use a branching talent system to differentiate between builds. Basically every character will have access to all of the same talents but there won't be any way to master them all in a single play through. Character 'race' will probably be expressions of the Faerie Kingdom coming to the surface and will be built into the talent system but may be similar to ToME's generic talents in that they'll be separated from the main talent pool. As a very broad example you may put points into the Ogre talent Huge which would in turn lock out all other size based racial expressions (like the Goblin tree might have a corresponding Small talent). Either way they'll be picked mid-game and not at birth.

I don't want to give away to much of the plot but the game will take place in modern times. Your character gets lost in the woods one evening and stumbles into the Faerie Realm. You soon discover that several hundred years ago the Faerie Queen was killed and that the Realm was divided between two warring factions, the Seelie who believe in the Dreaming, or the power of imagination and magic, and the Unseelie who believe in the power of Reason and science. The Seelie believe that the Faerie Queen will soon be reborn which will thin the veil between the mortal realm and the Faerie Realm. The Unseelie know that the power of the Seelie's Dreaming is enough to bring about the Faerie Queen's rebirth if they're not stopped which will interfere with the progression of Reason and science in both the mortal and the Faerie Realms.

So from this I hope to extrapolate two or even three different possible paths through the game. One for siding with the Seelie, one for stopping the Seelie, and another for uniting the two powers of Dreaming and Reason. I'll start with one, probably the rebirth of the Faerie Queen (the Seelie) but plan to lay ground work to easily incorporate the other two.

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As to casting, no it won't be Vancian. Casting a spell won't 'burn' it but instead will change the balance between your Reason and Dreaming. Your Reason will basically be your Saving Throws against magic while your Dreaming will be your Spell Power. The character will probably know many spells (assuming they've invested in Dreaming) but will only be able to use a handful at a time. Swapping spells out will take a turn to discourage lots of swapping mid-fight and to encourage the player to pick spells based on the expected situation. It won't be a straight jacket though, if the player really needs spell X and they don't have it on their hot bar they can swap it mid fight assuming they can afford the turn it will take.

The idea really is to give the player a ton of spells (including lots of utility like Light, Forest Walking, Water Breathing, etc. etc.) without crowding the interface with 40 different buttons.

I'll probably work technology into the game too as 'Reason magic'. For instance having a gun equipped may lower your Dreaming. But with the first campaign centered around siding with the Seelie I probably won't expand on that system to much until later.

Looks like fun, edge. I remember talking to you about the talent/attribute system on IRC. I'm sorely tempted to harass you with questions about the world and plot. :P

The stance system is interesting, though I'd rather have the skills associated with the stances fixed, so I could switch between fire magic, healing magic, teleport magic, etc, without having to think about what skills were associated with each stance. I'm also not sure about it taking a turn to switch stances - maybe it could instead reset your "dreaming" to 0? The gameplay would be very different from your proposed system, though, and I think what you have would still be fun.

Ahh.. maybe I wasn't clear enough.

There will basically be two completely separate systems. A spell system with the memorization components I mentioned above and another system for melee. The spell system will not have stances. It will just have you get X spells, pick wisely based on the situation or spend time mid-fight adjusting.

All melee abilities will be tied to stances. There will probably be three stances with five abilities each. I'm not sure yet how stance switching will work or if it will cost a turn. It might be tied to a strike or something like Brawlers and the Arcane Blade rework. These will all be active abilities. Stances will probably have many passive abilities tied to them that you can invest in through the talent trees on top of the active ones.

Ha, maybe I wasn't reading very carefully. Sounds good.

A couple more screenshots

http://i.imgur.com/6Smwl.png

http://imgur.com/RQPu6

Many thanks to tiger_eye for getting the hexes to look like hexes

Whoah, those hex borders look awesome!

They're actually tiles Grey. And with a bit of gimp magic they're really easy to modify

Here's an image using a gradient on the base tile (again tiger_eye) that shows what can be done with it.

http://imgur.com/ALxbT

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Going with a success based system defaulting to six sided dice. Basically you have a pool of dice and roll against a target number (default 4). Each die that hits or exceeds the target number is a success.

Got the basics of the combat system in using an offense pool, dodge pool, armor pool, and damage pool. Crits happen when the number of successes produced by the offense pool exceed the number of dice in the dodge pool which lets you add the net succeses (the offense successes - the dodge successes) to your damage roll. Damage is resolved by rolling damage pool vs. armor pool, each net success is one point of damage.

Tied offense vs. dodge tests favor the attacker to bias towards combat resolution.

(*It will be a low hit point game compared to ToME as shown by the screenshots*)

Ah, very cool work by tiger_eye. Not sure I want the hassle of tiles though. Hmm, but I guess I should learn how to use tiles sooner rather than later :/

I don't like the dice system I must say. For the same reason I spoke against dice in the latest episode of Roguelike Radio. There's no fun in seeing the results of a computer rolling dice.

Comparatively speaking, my knowledge of dice based systems is much better then stuff like logarithmic formulas or other such things. I know what to expect out of it and I know how to explain it to the player.

That's really my reasoning for using it.

That said I don't expect to use much variance in die types. The system is more about having success based tests (and thus degrees of success such as the crits I described above) then having things like 3d8 + 2d12 damage.

As I said above, damage will be a straight number of successes conversion (and thus tend to be small numbers.) I don't expect the player to ever break 100 damage.

So its not really a traditional dice based system (ala D and D). Its much more Shadow Run or World of Darkness. But I haven't listened to the latest rogue like radio episode so maybe it will change my mind

Alright, combat system polished up so it can handle weapons and what not. Here's a basic run down from the combat comments (I'll probably transcribe this to the games in game spoilers once I get that going so any spelling errors or what not feel free to point out).