ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

People of Maj'Eyal, my minions!

With the release of Tales of Maj'Eyal 1.0.0 I can now start to create new content again, branch into new campaigns, ... and this shall be great fun.

But there is one side of the game that is not as developed as it could and I wish to change that. It is however not something I can do myself: Modules!
So, in the spirit of promoting the creation of new, quality, games based on TE4 I would like to create a new contest!

During this year 2013 up until the 1st december your task will be to create new, amazing and fun games using TE4. Anyone can, and is welcome to, participate (except me obviously) !
When the contest closes there will be a big vote when ToME players can elect the "best" game.
Players will be asked to rate each game on fun, polish and innovation, the winner being determined by the best average of those factors.

In addition of fame and pleasure of having created a fun game the 1st place will also grant a 500€ reward, the second a 150€ reward and the third a 50€ reward (by paypal).

The rules to participate are as follow:

Game must be announced on http://forums.te4.org/ by the 1st of august (but you are encouraged to announce, and start dev much earlier)
Game must not use a modified TE4 engine (so taking the .team file should work on any ToME installation)
Game must not be a "variant" of ToME itself, it must be its own thing. Code from ToME can be used, but only in small parts (i.e: taking inspiration of the party code is fine, ripping half the class files is not)
Game must be comply with TE4 license (but it inherently does anyway)
Game graphics (if you choose to have) can not use the shockbolt tileset (which is licensed only to ToME)
Game graphics, musics, ... that are not code can be under a different license (and with the authorization of the authors obviously)
Game must be released by the 1st december (you can, and are encouraged to continue dev on it afterwards obviously)
Games are encouraged (but not required) to release often during the year. Remember for players to like your game they must be able to play it!
Games can be adaption of other games/roguelikes, as long as you respect copyrights, licenses and the wish of the authors
Game must be published at least on http://te4.org/ as a game module

You are very welcome to join #tome on irc.rizon.net where nice people can sometimes help you and post about your game/progress/questions in the modules section of the forums!

Now open your code editors and start coding!

It goes without saying that I'm in! I have some awesome T-Engine games planned for 2013 :)

Challenge accepted!

Challenge accepted.

Somehow I knew you'd say that

I've been looking for an excuse to get one of my ideas off the ground, might as well try...

I am in!

Now I just need to figure out what cool things to make

I am assuming that some peoplereques create/request engine improvements, and may I request all people pass it along so that the engine improves for everyone?

I'm in! I've been meaning to learn lua, and this is a perfect opportunity. Now to figure out something small to start with...

darkgod wrote: When the contest closes there will be a big vote when ToME players can elect the "best" game.
Players will be asked to rate each game on fun, polish and innovation, the winner being determined by the best average of those factors.

I hope this is done in a fair and transparent way! Don't want any controversies etc like in some other polls ;)

On a serious note though, this is a good set of factors to judge against (similar to the 7DRL ratings). But it'll need to be tied to registrations somehow, and require a minimum number of votes or something similar, and you should reserve the right to interfere if there's any foul play (like a dev going round giving everything else low ratings). Where money is involved these sorts of things can get messy.

Timing the votes around 1st December should ensure some nice publicity for T-Engine games on the ASCII Dreams poll too :)

Yeah votes will be tied to accounts thats have played, wouldnt be fair otherwise

As for the timing .. let's just say I didnt choose the date by chance

For those interested, I put together a more advanced version of the T-Engine example module a while back:

http://gamesofgrey.com/games/basicmodule.zip

It's a bit more polished and fuller featured than the default example module. It's needs a little tweak in init.lua to run on the latest T-Engine. I'll maybe make a better version of this in the coming month with some extra comments for newcomers.

Grey wrote:For those interested, I put together a more advanced version of the T-Engine example module a while back:

http://gamesofgrey.com/games/basicmodule.zip

It's a bit more polished and fuller featured than the default example module. It's needs a little tweak in init.lua to run on the latest T-Engine. I'll maybe make a better version of this in the coming month with some extra comments for newcomers.

That would be much appreciated, thank you. I'll be sure to take a good look at this.

Grey wrote:For those interested, I put together a more advanced version of the T-Engine example module a while back...

To be honest, we should probably update the packaged versions of the example modules and improve the T-Engine documentation. And when I say "we", I mean subjugate people learning T-Engine to write and improve as they ask for advice in IRC.

Grey wrote:Where money is involved these sorts of things can get messy.

It is true. We can still be friends when you are rich and famous-ish, right?

I'm interested in doing my own module. It's just that there seems to be almost no documentation of T-Engine4. Grey's example module didn't help me much. How to get started?