Porting ToME2 to the T4 engine

[Zizzo]

I tried to run the latest .team in T-Engine 0.9.34, and it first tells me it's incompatible before crashing.

Any ideas?

[checks .team] Well, for starters, v0.0.5 requires T-Engine 0.9.43. With luck, I'll be able to have something more recent out before too long, depending on how long it takes me to debug what I've got so far.

When a particle must be emited the generator table or function is called which defines the parameters for that one particle.

See, that's what I'm looking for primarily, is some explanation of those parameters.

[Zizzo]

With luck, I'll be able to have something more recent out before too long, depending on how long it takes me to debug what I've got so far.

I should really know better than to say things like that... So, that was a helluva long slog, with depressingly little to show for it. To wit:

Release 0.0.6 "The Floor Is Lava"

New in this release:

• Migrate to T-Engine 1.0.4.
• Partial implementation of damage types from monster melee attacks and spells, with the ability to change floor grids and destroy or otherwise affect objects on the floor.
• Partial implementation of resistances, immunities and vulnerabilities to various damage types, as conferred by worn equipment, temporary effects or monster flags.
• Implemented most of the NPC spells as talents.
• Multiple bug fixes for things (stores, random scroll titles) that could not survive a save/reload cycle.

Now, one of the interesting things about the T-Engine is that all of these NPC spell talents will be pretty much directly re-usable as player talents when I get around to implementing Possessors and Symbiants. To that end, I've tried to break some asymmetries in the behavior of the spells when used by NPCs vs the player:

• Haste Self confers temporary speed when cast by the player, versus permanent speed when cast by an NPC. Since applying timed effects to NPCs is as easy as applying them to the player, I'm going with temporary speed for both. Objections?
• Teleport To when cast by an NPC teleports you next to it (conceptually similar to T4's Shadow Leash or Bone Grab), whereas when cast by the player, it operates as a targeted teleport. Can't decide which approach to go with; the latter would be tricky to implement for NPCs, I imagine, but it's incredibly useful for the player. Thoughts?

And now, of course, I have to decide what to tackle next:

• Implementing player spells would drag me right back into the damage-type morass that delayed me for so long in the first place, and would mean I'd have to figure out how on earth to implement the UI for selecting a spell to cast...
• Level generation would be tricky; among other things, T4's room generators don't seem to have a concept of "inner wall" that T2's room generators depend on.
• The world map. Oh, dear lord, the world map...
• Archery, maybe? Now that I have all this experience with ActorProject:projectile()?

As always, the .team file for the release is available from my site, along with the Subversion repo and WebSVN frontend thereto.

[Zizzo]

And as long as I'm here, a couple questions:

• So I recently found the 'loading_wait_ticks' thing in init.lua, which certainly looks better than what I had. Thing is, I can't find where the actual ticks are generated, so I don't know how many total ticks I need to specify for the progress bar.
• Thinking ahead to race- and class-based powers like Possessor powers or Beornings' bear form, which will probably also be implemented as talents, would it be too much of a culture clash to have a T4-style hotkey icon toolbar to present these talents to the player? (Of course, that would be predicated on me actually designing icons for the talents, which probably exceeds my artistic ability... ).

[rexorcorum]

[*] Thinking ahead to race- and class-based powers like Possessor powers or Beornings' bear form, which will probably also be implemented as talents, would it be too much of a culture clash to have a T4-style hotkey icon toolbar to present these talents to the player? (Of course, that would be predicated on me actually designing icons for the talents, which probably exceeds my artistic ability... ).

Hum, in case you are in no hurry, maybe it's high time for me to test my mettle with some icon design And if I fail, there are always the ToME used icons for mixing and editing.
I can try how the things would turn out - give me a small sample of skills (ToME2 was long time ago and don't remember them much) and within a week I'll come up with something to show.

Cheers and keep up the spectacular work you're doing here!

[faustgeist]

This project is super, super cool. I know it's hard work - but there are many of us who are cheering you on and excited for the future

Thanks!!

[darkgod]

Cool!

As for hotkeys, please please please please do not *NOT* use them !
Hotkeys are modern and nice, macros are sucky and old.
Porting T2 to T4 is great but improving its UI is good too; copying for old time sake gets you things that can only be played by old timers
Make all spells/things hotkeyable.
If you dont want to design icons (thought there arent that many spells actually) use the textual hotkeys; but do use hotkeys!

As for the wait ticks, look for a line like "Wait finished, counted 264, 3867 ticks" in your log (you want the first number)

Level generator will need to be ported yes.
The worldmap shouldnt be too complex, T2 one is fixed too, jsut make some script to convert it.
As for archery if you want to stay truthful to T2, it shouldnt use :projectile() (neither should spells) but :project() as projectiles didnt have travel time.
Make tooltips on a fixed spot on the screen
Add autoexplore ! No game should be without it

Anyway IMO the next thing you should do: make it playable. At low level, make sure everything is ready to play a character thought the barrows (and give a torch to new chars). I tried getting there but found it empty of any creatures :/

[rexorcorum]

If you dont want to design icons (thought there arent that many spells actually) use the textual hotkeys; but do use hotkeys!

Oh, I'm sold completely , count me in for the icon making!

[darkgod]

You belong to me first !

[rexorcorum]

You belong to me first !

That's a known fact, but still I also need some time off from the "whip"

[CaptainTrips]

Had to think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9xbI5a1ilk&t=0m14s

Also, keep up the good work Zizzo, I'm excited. And don't forget junkarts!

[darkgod]

Request: rename this module to "ToME Classic"

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

I believe he already has. At least, upon clicking new game, the list of modules appears, and it is labeled there as "Tome Classic 0.0.6"

And while I'm here, I want to be sure to drop Zizzo some words of encouragement. There may be nothing I can do to help this project, but I certainly wait with bated breath for it's completion, that I may share my love of classic tome with the modern audience, much less relive it myself, in a new form.

[Zizzo]

Hum, in case you are in no hurry,

"No hurry"? You did notice how long this last release took, yes?

And if I fail, there are always the ToME used icons for mixing and editing.

I had considered that possibility, but I wasn't sure how kosher it would be.

Porting T2 to T4 is great but improving its UI is good too; copying for old time sake gets you things that can only be played by old timers
Make all spells/things hotkeyable.

The problem with that is a level 50 Sorceror with all eleven school tomes has 55 castable spells. Add Eru or Melkor or Udun and that's up to 58/59. Throw in the Mimicry talents up to Arms Mimicry to wield two mage staffs and you've blown your 60-hotkey limit. And that's not a contrived edge case; that's two of my three sorcerors (and poor Serulin just hasn't gotten that far yet...).

On the subject of UI changes, though, another question for interested parties: the module currently has a dedicated 'q'uaff-potion command, and I had assumed that once I finally got around to implementing scrolls/wands/staffs/rods/etc., I'd add the corresponding item-specific commands for them too. T4, by contrast, combines all of these under a single 'a'pply command (or 'u'se IIRC in the non-roguelike keymap). Which would people prefer?

If you dont want to design icons (thought there arent that many spells actually) use the textual hotkeys; [...]

Hm? [checks code] Oh, my; there is a HotkeysDisplay there. I must have inherited it from the example module. [sound F/X: coding] And some quick stubbing out of a few early skills has them showing up nicely in the hotkeys display. I think I'm inspired...

The worldmap shouldnt be too complex, T2 one is fixed too, jsut make some script to convert it.

You don't understand; in T2, the player can drop out of the worldmap anywhere. Into one of those wilderness pseudo-levels that you can exit at the edges into another adjacent wilderness pseudo-level, moving you on the world map in the process. And those areas have to be specially generated so that adjacent edges match in their terrain, so that that edge transition works. And I can't just punt that if I want to implement food, because the player can run out of food on the world map, which drops you into the wilderness.

As for archery if you want to stay truthful to T2, it shouldnt use :projectile() (neither should spells) but :project() as projectiles didnt have travel time.

I'm compensating for that for now by setting projectile speed to 50 (I could crank it up to the hundreds or thousands, but I wasn't sure how high that could safely go). I assumed that :projectile() was necessary to get the effect of an arrow hitting some other monster that had the misfortune to be in its flight path to its intended target. I may also need it to make Piercing Shots work.

Make tooltips on a fixed spot on the screen

[sound F/X: coding] Done.

Add autoexplore ! No game should be without it

(shrug) Meh, don't use it myself; I assume I'd have to dig it out of the T4 code somehow?

Anyway IMO the next thing you should do: make it playable. At low level, make sure everything is ready to play a character thought the barrows (and give a torch to new chars).

Torch? Light radius 1? You're kidding, right? I was seriously considering having the Bree general store have a guaranteed Brass Lantern in stock.

I tried getting there but found it empty of any creatures :/

? Odd; I'm almost certain I remember Dwelf nearly buying it at least once. I'll have to check...

Oh, I'm sold completely , count me in for the icon making!

You belong to me first !

Oh dear. Is this something I don't want to get in the middle of?

And don't forget junkarts!

Gyeep! ...Hmm, actually, those are just activatable objects, aren't they? And I could stick a resolver in the entity definition to handle the randomizing... yeah, I think I can have those out for the next release.

[darkgod]

Dropping anywhere in the wild is easy, it's kidna like T4 ambush but you can choose to enter.
As for sides matching other sides, implementation detail, IMO you should do that when the whole rest of the game works. This is utterly non important

About hotkeys, most certainly you dont need to have *ALL* those bound at all times (and you could extend how many hotkeys are available is needed).
UI is *hugely important*, we are in 2013, UIs from the 80ies just wont cut it

[rexorcorum]

Hum, in case you are in no hurry,

"No hurry"? You did notice how long this last release took, yes?

Yep, no hurry then. I'll do some thinking/researching for the right look and feel. On a different note, this most probably will drag the whole UI look question in, but ... one issue at a time

And if I fail, there are always the ToME used icons for mixing and editing.

I had considered that possibility, but I wasn't sure how kosher it would be.

Not much I guess - they have this distinct look with ovals, gradients and vector-y stuff, shouting "modern" and we're considering ToME Classic here, for crying out loud!

Oh, I'm sold completely , count me in for the icon making!

You belong to me first !

Oh dear. Is this something I don't want to get in the middle of?

No worries, we're just messing with each other (and I have this pesky habit of constantly jumping between the Main Quest and various sidequests...)