ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm not a programmer so emphasis on attempting. I'm new to the forms but found Tales of Maj'Eyal on steam a wile back. I liked how the game worked and it seems that T-engine is kinda like RPG maker with some exceptions.

First I understand that some of the engine is free to make your own game. Best I can tell is that all tiles, story and I guess weapons/equipment lists/notes are not to be copied.

This is fine because my game has nothing in common with ToME. But I'm trying to use ToME lists and modify them. I.E. turn a bow into a cannon, using the same coding but changing the name, damage, range, ammo, etc. etc. and removing any magical items. I.E. A magical two handed sword of fire is ok in ToME, but a magical cannon of fire in my game isn't.(Flame thrower)

I was also wondering if there is a mod/stand alone program or a better way to make maps because right now I'm using note pad (Programming at its finest here) to open the maps and "-/--++**" isn't my idea of map making.

I also want to use hex map tiles instead of square map tiles. I think I can do this by having the player see a hex map wile the game uses a square map and moves the player around like a knight on a chess board for left and right movement and using "blank squares". This to me, a non-programmer, sounds a lot easier then programming the a hex map from scratch. This also might require some modifications of the T-Engine4 which I'm not sure if someone can do.

Welcome

You've guessed right about the assets

Now my advice anyway would be to NOT start form tome itself, it's far too big and unwieldy for that. Start from one of the example module or various smaller modules around or you'll get completely lost

TE4 supports hex grids natively, I suggest you take a look at many of Grey's games for that as he uses it extensively (http://gamesofgrey.com/).

As for map editor, TE4 can read the .tmx files from http://www.mapeditor.org/
There are .tmx files already in use in tome, to give you an idea how it works.

Hey thanks for getting back to me so quickly!

Yes I'm not trying to edit tome into my game, but I have a very small understanding of coding. I'm trying to use the coding of how arrows and ammo work. Also my game has resources(ore) that are required to reload a weapon. In a play threw I escorted someone to safety and received a skill that required a gem or stone to use. I lost the character soon after that and I am unable to recall the name of the skill. But I'm hoping I can find the skill and pull the code from that skill and add it to the arrow/reload code. This would allow me to have someone reload without having ammo just magicaly appear. This code I'm trying to use is part of a list. I'm unsure if copying the code is allowed or not, as I am not coping your "elm longbow" but I am copying the coding of how the weapon works. Or another way to look at it, is I'm not sure if the code for how an bow/arrow is part of tome or TEngine4.

Thanks for the two links.

Verbatim copy is unlikely to work I assume, but no it's not a problem

Is there any list of the commands and what they do?

List of commands ?