ToME off of Wikipedia

[madmonk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_ ... Maj%27Eyal

Needs more content! I think the RPS article and roguelike of the year are enough to meet "notability", but the article is still a stub, so add stuff, people!

Good start! Really like this!

I don't like Wikipedia so I won't actually edit this - also I happen to be in the credits for the game so again don't feel I should edit the Wikipedia post.

OK, I have a couple of comments to make:

The engine skeleton is written in C, but most of the engine is written in Lua. It supports many openGL features such as particle effects and shaders even though it's not a 3d engine.

You might want to rewrite this as:

The game engine is written in C, with the game overlay being written in Lua. It supports many openGL features such as particle effects and shaders even though it's not a 3d engine.

.

Also:

Tales of Maj'Eyal is a dungeon crawl game where the player creates a character,choosing one of 24 classes, one of 9 races, a difficulty level, and a permadeath setting. Gameplay is heavily focused on combat, with exploration and NPC interactions being less prevalent.

might be re-written to:

Tales of Maj'Eyal is a dungeon crawl game where the player creates a character, choosing one of 24 classes, one of 9 races, a difficulty level, and a permadeath setting. Gameplay is heavily focused on combat and exploration with NPC interactions being less prevalent. Certain Races, Classes and Schools are locked at the start of play and can be permanently unlocked during the normal course of exploration and activities.

Character development utilises training points that can be allocated within a School of Mastery (Class specific or Generic schools) to a specific Talent (skill or spell); further investment in the talent allows for enhanced effects for that Talent. A further refinement allows players to invest in a School as a whole, allowing the school's talents to be used if it is locked or to enhance the School multiplier.

I've got tangled, so I'll stop there. Hope that is helpful.

[greycat]

I added some info on the older game. The nethack page had that information right in the first paragraph, so I copied that style.

[outolumo]

Looks good. Some thoughts:

I think some more could be said about the engine - after all, one thing that makes it notable is that the same platform (te4) can be used beyond mere extensions to Maj'Eyal.

Likewise, the aspect of ToME being Free software, could be brought up even more, and clarified that it is not only easily changed by the developer, but that the community - or just about anyone - can script new features in it.

Specify that the on-line chat is an in-game chat feature.

[madmonk]

Ok try this.Want feedback to make it better.

Tales of Maj'Eyal (ToME 4) is an open source roguelike computer game created by Nicolas Casalini ("DarkGod"). It is a descendant of Casalini's earlier game ToME (Tales of Middle Earth)[1], which is an indirect descendant of Angband. Development of ToME 4 started in 2009[2], and the first formal release occurred in 2012[3].

Tales of Maj'Eyal is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux under a GNU GPL version 3 licence.
Contents

1 Gameplay
2 Game Engine
3 Addons & Modules
4 Community Interaction
5 Awards
6 References
7 External links

Gameplay

Tales of Maj'Eyal is a dungeon crawl game featuring tactical turn-based combat and advanced character building. Play as one of many unique races and classes in the lore-filled world of Eyal, exploring random dungeons, facing challenging battles, and developing characters with your own tailored mix of abilities and powers. With a modern graphical and customisable interface, intuitive mouse control, streamlined mechanics and deep, challenging combat, Tales of Maj’Eyal offers engaging roguelike gameplay.

The continent of Maj’Eyal lives in relative peace. After millennia of war the orcs are extinct, the advanced races have allied together, and the evils of magic have been repressed. But there are still untamed forests, cursed lands, marauding bandits, sealed dungeons of undead, and whispers have spread of hidden cults. Some even say the orcs are not all dead, and muster their strength in dark places.

You are an adventurer, seeking your fortune in the open world, investigating ruins and mysteries in search of riches and powers. Explore a continent still scarred by the terrible Spellblaze from ages past, teeming with wild beasts, monsters, trolls and giants. Delve through dark dungeons infested by armies of undead, demonic monstrosities and hideous horrors. Uncover world changing secrets, from relics of the ancient and all-powerful Sher’Tul race to veiled cities of magic and concealed psionic beings. Fight with skill and care against undying necromancers, towering dragons, primeval forces, arcane demons and world-threatening powers.

Game Engine

The Game engine (Te4) is written in C, with the Game overlay (ToME) being written in Lua. It supports many openGL features such as particle effects and shaders.

Addons & Modules

The design of the game allows for changes to be easily made; it has an extensive addon system that allows the designer to change almost anything in the game. There are currently more than 100 addons, many of which have been incorporated into the game. Most notable addons are the OldRPG [4] alternate graphics set, and some official addons like the item vault, or Stone Wardens.

The game engine is not tied to ToME (the game overlay) and as a result it is entirely possible to remove ToME and substitute your own adventure in its place. There is extensive documentation in the Wiki covering this and most other aspects of the engine and game.

Community Interactions

The game can be played in one of two ways. Players can choose to register themselves with the game server, this will record their progress and allow them to access their character from anywhere in the world. It also collates game statistics including top 25 killers of players, commonest character types and a realtime level statistics collator which gathers other interesting statistics. In addition to holding their character it also allows access to an on-line chat facility, and item and monster linking, enabling others on the server to observe those items or monsters.

The other method is to play off-line and in which case the player will not have access to the facilities noted above.

The forums have been on-line for more than 10 years (coming from ToME, ToME2) and has more than 5000 registered members.

Awards

Winner of the Roguelike of the Year award 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Reviews of Tales of Maj'Eyal have been positive[5][6][7]with praise being given for its accessibility, graphics, user interface, and variety in its gameplay.

[leycec]

Wikipedian Avs5221 just rejected the submitted article. The reason? Purportedly, that "This submission is not adequately supported by reliable sources."

Frustratingly, this submission was adequately supported by reliable sources – including a prominent article from notable website Rock, Paper, Shotgun, a for-profit partner of the even more notable website Eurogamer.

So what went wrong? We can only speculate. Without casting aspersions at Avs5221, I suspect the References section is probably the problem. While Rock, Paper, Shotgun is notable, the second, third, and fourth references cite http://te4.org. And that's a problem, because that's us. If unaffiliated sources cannot be found (and they probably can't be), all references to http://te4.org should simply be deleted. (I'm not happy about any of this either.)

I'd repair the submission myself, but... well, it's not my article. I'd feel a bit heavy-handed expunging someone else's content. Perhaps the original submitter(s) wouldn't mind having another go at it? For what's it worth, I feel lukep and madmonk did a fantastic initial job. With just a wee push, we can definitely get this sucker accepted.

So. Wikipedia. It kind of sucks now, doesn't it? As the Wikipedia community ossifies into lassitude and decrepitude, the encyclopedia begins to harbor a certain hostility to non-mainstream topics. Sadly, roguelikes have never been mainstream. (The Souls series notwithstanding, of course.) While I respect the volunteer efforts of most Wikipedians, I do hope they begin to tone down the anti-blog, anti-website rhetoric. As if mass media sources are "reliable" merely for being tattooed on the skin of dead trees, right?

In the meanwhile, game on!

[madmonk]

Well I take your point about the references...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress has extensive self references, but it also has article done by other sources (including the NY times).

That makes the difference.

[lukep]

Don't worry about stepping on my toes, if I didn't want people to modify it, I wouldn't have posted it here .

If I'm reading it right, it's the references that are bad, not the notability requirement. Using a source for information about itself is expressly allowed, so I don't think that's the issue.

That being said, I'm running through it right now and adding a bunch more citations for the information (there were a lot of missing ones, like everything between the start and the last section).

[leycec]

Don't worry about stepping on my toes, if I didn't want people to modify it, I wouldn't have posted it here .

Great! I might have a crack at it.

If I'm reading it right, it's the references that are bad, not the notability requirement. Using a source for information about itself is expressly allowed, so I don't think that's the issue.

Without mind-reading Avs5221, I wouldn't be so sure. While self-sourcing is permitted, the conditions are fairly strict, explicitly stating: "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, [so long as] the article is not based primarily on such sources."

But the article was based primarily on such sources. The first four references (and arguably a few others) were either self-published or questionable. But you're completely on the ball there with recent edits, so... well done, man.

We all appreciate your grueling Wikipedia work.

That being said, I'm running through it right now and adding a bunch more citations for the information (there were a lot of missing ones, like everything between the start and the last section).

Awesomeness incarnate!

[madmonk]

Without mind-reading Avs5221, I wouldn't be so sure. While self-sourcing is permitted, the conditions are fairly strict, explicitly stating: "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, [so long as] the article is not based primarily on such sources."

But the article was based primarily on such sources. The first four references (and arguably a few others) were either self-published or questionable. But you're completely on the ball there with recent edits, so... well done, man.

Yep, a definite +1

[darkgod]

Some more references that could work:
http://www.godpatterns.com/2012/12/nove ... elike.html
http://whyigame.wordpress.com/2012/12/0 ... -from-gw2/
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/18/tales ... 109-years/
http://garthright.blogspot.fr/2012/01/t ... jeyal.html
http://www.diygamer.com/2012/06/award-w ... o-beta-41/
http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/02/tome ... h-new.html
http://waltorious.wordpress.com/2012/02 ... f-majeyal/
http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/106302- ... eview.html
http://indierpgs.com/2012/01/new-releas ... scendancy/

[Canderel]

Other than external links, I'd not reference anything on TE4.org. But on External you can have direct links to the original announcement, and all those things.

Also if you edit *other* pages, like Roguelike and free games lists etc. to reflect it, name that it won roguelike of the year 3 times running on *those* pages, then it becomes internally necessary to keep the page.

[darkgod]

Yeah I agree

[lukep]

I'm starting to think that it would have been easier to ask forgiveness than permission, but on to round 3.

(seriously, much easier, DCSS, has precisely two things sourced outside of itself, the Ascii dreams results, and "Stone Soup has since then developed an unprecedented variety of extensions which fit into this general vein of "play aid", such as allowing searching through every item ever discovered by regular expression.[15]", and it isn't even flagged as not having reliable sources.)

[R-F]

The reason the Wikipedia article is being shut down is simply because that's what these twats do constantly. The easiest way to get your Wikipedia account more permissions / rights is to delete "non-notable / undefended" articles on there.

It happened to a bunch of MUDs last year.

[madmonk]

Which just points up how unreliable Wikipedia actually is.

And we are trying to get a page on it!

It is still worthwhile, though!