Porting ToME2 to the T4 engine

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

In all honesty? I'd really like to see a '50 skill in X' achievement for each skill, to encourage build diversity, and players to try the less-used skills (Axemastery? Runecrafting? Stealing?), but that's more abut encouranging new playstyles, rather then rechurning the same rohanknight swordmasters over and over.

The void is obviously deserving of several achievements in it's own right (and of course, winning should have 2, depending on how you beat morgoth (with/without ring) rather then just the 1 (for winning while destroying the ring) and maybe some 'conduct' achievements. Win without using genocide/mass genocide, for instance.

A lot of your current ones are also very late-game oriented. Some early-midgame achievements might be useful.

Maybe for clearing special levels? (Orctown, Graveyard, Special orc caves level (forget what it's called), etc.) Throw in one for finding the lost town on the other side of Moria. (Though one for it's house quest might be unnecessarily cruel)

I'd like to see a 'rescue A relic for your god' achievement as well, for doing 1 of any god quest, not just for doing all of them. (And possibly hide the description for doing all of any specific god)

Some total damage/total kills (either/or, character/global) cheevos wouldn't hurt as some filler.

Hmmmmm.... I'm sure I'm overlooking some obvious things.

Will you be trying to wean players into the game by locking some classes/races at start? Some things are obviously much harder to play effectively, though given skill overlap, I'm not sure it'd mean quite as much, offhand. Thoughts?

And will your game be addon-compatible, so things like Theme, T-plus, etc could be reinstituted? (obviously if someone could be bothered to recreate them) Or new mods created?

Oh, and will you include C/Z monsters? (and options for them?) or stick to the pure Tome creations? Some of those C/Z monsters are worthy of achievements in there own right. Shudde M'elle still brings horrors to my mind.

[Zizzo]

In all honesty? I'd really like to see a '50 skill in X' achievement for each skill, to encourage build diversity, and players to try the less-used skills (Axemastery? Runecrafting? Stealing?), but that's more abut encouranging new playstyles, rather then rechurning the same rohanknight swordmasters over and over.

Certainly doable. The tricky bit might be thinking up names for all of them, actually.

The void is obviously deserving of several achievements in it's own right (and of course, winning should have 2, depending on how you beat morgoth (with/without ring) rather then just the 1 (for winning while destroying the ring) and maybe some 'conduct' achievements. Win without using genocide/mass genocide, for instance.

The Void is a very long-term priority, but yes, it will certainly get some achievements when I eventually get around to implementing it. And yes, the "evil"-end versions of the Ring/Morgoth achievements was an obvious oversight; they'll be going in in a future commit. A no-genocide conduct achievement would probably be doable too.

Maybe for clearing special levels? (Orctown, Graveyard, Special orc caves level (forget what it's called), etc.)

[checks notes] The special levels we have are:

• Deathwatch in Orc Cave
• Orc Town in Moria
• Galleon in Helcaraxe
• Machine in Illusory Castle
• Mt Doom in, well, Mount Doom
• Crypt, Dim Gates and Nameless in Angband

All of those are certainly ripe for achievements; it would just be a matter of defining exactly what constitutes "clearing" each of them.

Throw in one for finding the lost town on the other side of Moria. (Though one for it's house quest might be unnecessarily cruel)

Heh, I think I've only done the Khazad-d?m house quest once, back in one of the versions that had the very limited Mathom-house, so that character needed extra space to stow trophies when that filled up. Though that does suggest another idea: achievements for each house quest?

I'd like to see a 'rescue A relic for your god' achievement as well, for doing 1 of any god quest, not just for doing all of them. (And possibly hide the description for doing all of any specific god)

[sound F/X: source diving] Hmm, achievements have a show="name" mode that shows the name but not the description in the dialog if you haven't completed it, and a show="none" mode that shows neither the name nor the description. You're suggesting the former for the all-five-pieces achievements?

Some total damage/total kills (either/or, character/global) cheevos wouldn't hurt as some filler.

Also doable, since the current SVN tracks kill count. [sound F/X: source diving] Ah, never mind, I see from the T4 module that the achievements of that nature can do their own kill counting. [checks notes] Hmm, my collected character sheets suggests 1000 kills tends to happen around level 20 on average, 5000 around level 30 and 10000 around level 40; does that track with other people's experiences?

As for damage achievements, it could be done, certainly, but I'm not entirely sure (in the quantitative sense) what kind of damage output T2 characters are capable of, so I'm not sure what damage levels would be appropriate for achievements.

Will you be trying to wean players into the game by locking some classes/races at start? Some things are obviously much harder to play effectively, though given skill overlap, I'm not sure it'd mean quite as much, offhand. Thoughts?

Meh, I'm disinclined to do this, unless people really think I should. That sort of thing tends to bug me, as I'm sure you can imagine. If we do want this, I'll definitely need feedback on what to lock and how to unlock it. And you can be sure that it will be released in parallel with a corresponding ignore-locks addon.

And will your game be addon-compatible, so things like Theme, T-plus, etc could be reinstituted? (obviously if someone could be bothered to recreate them) Or new mods created?

Addon support pretty much comes for free with the T-Engine, and I'm starting to make an effort to provide module-level things that addons could hook onto. And yes, I'd be delighted if T2 modules were reimplemented as T2-on-TE4 addons.

Oh, and will you include C/Z monsters? (and options for them?) or stick to the pure Tome creations? Some of those C/Z monsters are worthy of achievements in there own right. Shudde M'elle still brings horrors to my mind.

I only plan to include base-level monsters in the module proper, though Zang/CthAng/Joke monsters (and corresponding achievements for killing them) should be easy enough to add via an addon.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Maybe for clearing special levels? (Orctown, Graveyard, Special orc caves level (forget what it's called), etc.)

[checks notes] The special levels we have are:

• Deathwatch in Orc Cave
• Orc Town in Moria
• Galleon in Helcaraxe
• Machine in Illusory Castle
• Mt Doom in, well, Mount Doom
• Crypt, Dim Gates and Nameless in Angband

All of those are certainly ripe for achievements; it would just be a matter of defining exactly what constitutes "clearing" each of them.

Leaving the floor by the down staircase while the level is 'special' sounds like a clear to me. Shouldn't trip if you come back to the floor later when it's no longer special, recalling out or reset recalling beyond it, or leaving via the up staircase.

Throw in one for finding the lost town on the other side of Moria. (Though one for it's house quest might be unnecessarily cruel)

Heh, I think I've only done the Khazad-d?m house quest once, back in one of the versions that had the very limited Mathom-house, so that character needed extra space to stow trophies when that filled up. Though that does suggest another idea: achievements for each house quest?

Nah, just worth it for khazad-dum, because that house quest is a quick recipe for suicide. ess I misremember anyway, it's filled with batshit crazy insane stuff, especially if you find it when first doing moria, and are wholly unprepared for it.

I'd like to see a 'rescue A relic for your god' achievement as well, for doing 1 of any god quest, not just for doing all of them. (And possibly hide the description for doing all of any specific god)

[sound F/X: source diving] Hmm, achievements have a show="name" mode that shows the name but not the description in the dialog if you haven't completed it, and a show="none" mode that shows neither the name nor the description. You're suggesting the former for the all-five-pieces achievements?

Hmmmm. I was suggesting a total hide, but a thoguht arises. Classes for te4 are hidden, but hint at requirements with their little poems. How hard would something similar for cheevos be? Examples:

Fully visible
Level 10 - Reach level 10

Shows whether you've earned it or not. Nothing special here.

Partially visible
Axes High - Demonstrate superlative skill with axes.

Visible before earning it. After earning it, append (or replace description with) the line "Acquire axemastery skill of 50." This grants some idea what you do, without giving it away (but is obvoius in this case, other then the value) Would be useful for things like the god quests, where saying what they are might be too much of a hint outright.

Mostly hidden
Master of the Ring - ???

Shows name, but nothing else. Like option we have now. Useful for things with no logical hint that doesn't entirely spoil.

Totally hidden
??? - ???

For really secret stuff. Shows nothing until you earn it.

Not sure how hard the new option would be to implement, but having the ability to drop hints about achievements would be nice, rather then just rely on people to stumble across them.

[Zizzo]

All of those are certainly ripe for achievements; it would just be a matter of defining exactly what constitutes "clearing" each of them.

Leaving the floor by the down staircase while the level is 'special' sounds like a clear to me. Shouldn't trip if you come back to the floor later when it's no longer special, recalling out or reset recalling beyond it, or leaving via the up staircase.

? I routinely recall out of levels like this after clearing them.

Nah, just worth it for khazad-dum, because that house quest is a quick recipe for suicide. ess I misremember anyway, it's filled with batshit crazy insane stuff, especially if you find it when first doing moria, and are wholly unprepared for it.

Yeah, my notes suggest I did it with a level-50 Swordmaster. And an Alchemist, to be fair.

Fully visible
Level 10 - Reach level 10

Shows whether you've earned it or not. Nothing special here.

[...]

Mostly hidden
Master of the Ring - ???

Shows name, but nothing else. Like option we have now. Useful for things with no logical hint that doesn't entirely spoil.

Totally hidden
??? - ???

For really secret stuff. Shows nothing until you earn it.

These are show="full", show="name" and show="none", respectively, from the existing ShowAchievements dialog, except the latter two show "- Unknown -" instead of "???" for the description.

Partially visible
Axes High - Demonstrate superlative skill with axes.

Visible before earning it. After earning it, append (or replace description with) the line "Acquire axemastery skill of 50." This grants some idea what you do, without giving it away (but is obvoius in this case, other then the value) Would be useful for things like the god quests, where saying what they are might be too much of a hint outright.

[sound F/X: source diving] Hmm, I don't think that would require significant change... [sound F/X: coding] Okay, we now have a modified ShowAchievements dialog in SVN that supports show="full" in combination with a 'desc_undone' field to describe achievements that haven't been achieved.

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Alright, since I started down this rabbit hole, I might as well contribute.

Prospective achievement names, at least for a few. Starting with 50-skill stuff, since that's the rough one to come up with names for. (Most of) These don't have 'hidden' descriptions yet, which I'd prefer to come up with, because just flat telling people what to do for everything seems bland... But at the moment, I was trying to come up with clever names.

Took the list of T2 skills from here so if ssomething's missing/extra/wrong, correct me.

And while I'm not sure how many of these we would want (the point was to encourage varied builds, so people would have some reason to try every skillset), removing the base things like combat, magic, sneakiness, might be doable. how many others we might want to remove is another issue, though only doing cheevos for skills no one uses seems a poor idea.

??? - 50 combat
??? - 50 weaponmastery
Fighter Like Swords - 50 swordmastery
Make it Hurt - 50 critical hits
Axes High - 50 axemastery.
@ Smash! - 50 haftedmastery (@tom Smash, maybe? I couldn't use hulk...)
Seeing stars - 50 stunning blows
Stabby-Stabby-Stab-Stab-Stab! - 50 polearm mastery
??? - 50 archery
Farmer Maggot's Apprentice - 50 sling mastery.
Take a bow! - 50 bow mastery. (Shoot me for that pun. Please.)
Don't Cross Me - 50 Crossbow mastery.
Back Atcha! - 50 Boomerang Mastery.
??? - 50 barehand mastery
Bjorn's Student - Fight as fiercely as a bear! (50 bearform combat.) (I couldn't resist this tribute...)
??? - 50 boulder throwing
??? - 50 antimagic

??? - 50 sneakiness
??? - 50 steath
??? - 50 disarming
Sneak Attack! - Sometimes, you just need to stab someone in the back. (50 backstab)
Like a thief in the night - Just how big a haul can you get away with? (50 stealing)
Can't Touch This - Perform the hammerdance (Shoot me again please... 50 dodging.)

Power of the Istari - Demonstrate superb command over magic (50 magic)
Point'n'zap - Just aim. It's really that simple. (50 magic device)
Supercharge It! - Empower your magic to incredible levels (50 spellpower)
Master of all - Only a few can bend all magic to their will (50 sorcery)
??? - 50 mana
Powers of the elements - Become a true master of elemental powers. (50 geomancy)
Everything's Flammable - If it isn't ash yet, you're not trying hard enough. (50 fire)
Hydrophile - You can freeze it, boil it, drink it, drown things in it... pretty much everything. Except cook. (50 water)
A strong wind - Like the wind, you blow through everything, and nothing can bar your way. (50 air)
Stalwart as the Stone - The might of the very land is yours to command. (50 Earth)
Playing the meta-game - ??? (50 meta)
Eagles, Horses, and Rohankights - So many ways to get from A to B, but none better then you. (50 conveyance)
I can see everything - See all. Know all. Understand all. (50 divination)
Wibbly Wobbly - The timeline is your plaything. (50 temporal)
??? - 50 mind
??? - 50 nature
The Flame of Udun - Bend this mighty force to your will. (50 Udun)
I love the smell of brimstone in the morning - Your soul for power, your enemies souls for victory. (50 demonology)
The grave is no bar to my call - The generations of the dead obey your whim! (50 necromancy)
??? - 50 runecraft
Power Within - Harness your inner magical power to it's fullest potential. (50 thaumaturgy)
Mix a bit of this, a bit of that... - You can make anything if you try! (50 alchemy)

??? - 50 spirituality
A voice from the heavens - The gods answer your every call, and stretch out their hand to assist you. (50 prayer)
Mental Superiority - Your mind is sharper and stronger then any sword. (50 mindcraft)
Magnum Opus - With every step, a jaunty tune, and lyrical tones announce your presence. (50 music)

??? - Monster-lore
Heeeere critter critter - There's nothing you can't make serve your bidding. (50 Summoning)
The Egyptians were Amateurs - You can preserve more then just mummies! (50 Corpse Preservation)
Nice Bod! - Improve yourself, on the backs of others. (50 Possession)
Best of Friends - (50 Symbiosis)
Anything you can do... - I can do better! (50 Mimicry)


Obviously some of those descriptions aren't entirely serious, but hopefully this starts some brainstorming on achievement ideas. Some are stupid, some are bad, maybe a few are useable. I couldnt' come up with everything, but I put a shot into it, and hopefully something will spark interest.

And a few new ideas -

That which is dead cannot die - Return from the dead. (Save yourself with the necromantic kill-to-res thing)

What is this thing? - Use a junkart/Identify X junkarts

By the grace of god - Be saved from death by Eru. (Hide this one, obviously.)

I cleared this floor of death, and all I got was this achievement. - Survive a death fate. (and a nice nod to our T4 descendant...)

[Zizzo]

...And I think that's the last of the bugs, except for the ones I've no doubt missed, which you get to find for me. And so, without further ado:

Release 0.1.3 "With A Little Help From My Friends"

New in this release:

• Symbiosis, as promised. The game option '"Live" symbiotes' controls whether worn symbiotes operate T2 style, applying one round of melee attacks each time you attack in melee, or "new" style, attacking adjacent opponents at its own speed.
• Related to the preceding, pets and symbiotes can now be given names. Symbiote objectss can be named from an inventory dialog; pets can be named via the right-click map menu.
• Actor tooltips. The game option 'Learn monster information' selects between T2-style tooltips, reflecting only what you've learned, and T4-style tooltips, reflecting full monster information. I haven't yet implemented all the places where you can learn monster information by observing them; later versions will pick those off.
• Monster egos like Chieftains and Shamans. This part isn't terribly well tested, actually...
• Floor inventory handling, in the form of two new inventory dialogs ShowInvenFloor and ShowEquipInvenFloor that show items on the floor in addition to your inventory/equipment, allowing you do things like read scrolls from the floor. (This was born of annoyance during testing at having to pick up a symbiote object to use the Release Symbiote talent on it.)
• Related to the above, you can now drop worn/wielded items directly from the equipment list. The only thing left that you can do directly is sell a worn/wielded item, as that would require a dialog showing player equipment, player inventory and store inventory. Maybe for a future version...
• Achievements, as discussed earlier. This release defines achievements for accumulating 100K/500K/1M gold, killing 1000/5000/10000 monsters, "evil" versions of the Ring/kill-Morgoth achievements, finding Khazad-Dum, completing Khazad-Dum's house quest, completing the first relic quest (for any Vala) and the assorted level-50 skill achievements. Apologies, Crim, I had already come up with preliminary names for the skill achievements before you posted your suggestions; I'll be going through your ideas for the next release. (And if you think your puns were bad... )
• As promised, preliminary implementation of actor/object shimmering and hallucination. If I've done this right, it will avoid a small T2 bug that always annoyed me: a monster like, say, a Zombie Ancient blue dragon, which is supposed to shimmer just in blues like the non-zombie version, ends up shimmering in all colors.
• For future addon developers, I've started adding assorted infrastructure that addons can hook onto, documented in the dev-notes/ directory in the .team file. Of particular note are:
  • A callback infrastructure similar to T4's. I'm actually using this a lot in the module proper; worn symbiotes absorbing damage to the player, for instance, is covered by an on_take_hit_pre() callback on the symbiote object.
  • This one I'm probably more proud of than I should be: talents can now define "hooks" into the UseItemDialog to automatically add an action that applies the talent to an appropriate object — a lot like my Use Item Shortcuts T4 addon, but with fewer dodgy hacks. (Here again, it just bugged me that I couldn't just invoke Release Symbiote on a symbiote object from an inventory dialog.)
• Preliminary implementations of monsters crushing/picking up objects from the floor, crushing/pushing past monsters, opening/bashing doors, and potentially leaving behind a corpse/skeleton when they die.
• Preliminary implementation of the FRIENDS/ESCORTS monster flags, for monsters that get populated in groups.
• Preliminary handling of retaliatory damage for various shield effects and monster/equipment flags.
• On a minor note, added plural handling for monster names, so that the eventual Princess/Lost Sword quests will be able to properly tell you that you need to kill 10 Fire vortices. (Apparently the plural of Catoblepas is Catoblepones. Who knew?)

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

[Zizzo]

And as a special bonus, ZAngband monsters! Now, fair warning: this is just a proof-of-concept; not all ZAng monster features may be supported (heck, not all T2 monster features are currently supported).

[I tried uploading this to te4.org, but apparently that doesn't work for non-T4 addons. We Apologize for the Inconvenience.™]

[Zizzo]

And accumulated questions and comments from development of this release:

• Is there a particular reason that GameEnergyBased:tick() doesn't call Entity:actBase() on the entities in game.entities{} as it does for the entities in game.level.e_array{} in GameEnergyBased:tickLevel()? Because game.entities{} is where my worn symbiote Actors live, and NPC:actBase() is where they regenerate HP, so I had to do a really nasty hack to get that to work.
• At what point in Entity:loadList() is an entity's :init() method supposed to be called? Because with my Actors, engine.interface.ActorLife:init() is apparently being called, and setting self.life = self.max_life, at a time when self.max_life is still a resolvers.dice(), which has frequently led to NPCs being created with post-:resolve() life less than (or sometimes greater than) their max life. I had to patch that up in NPC:resolve().

Bjorn's Student - Fight as fiercely as a bear! (50 bearform combat.) (I couldn't resist this tribute...)

D'awww...

[Zireael]

Some problems I noticed:
1) can't open the debug Change Zone dialog, it throws a Lua error related to level_range
2) sometimes it throws an error related to NPCEgo. Line 210, attempt to index global 'Tiles'. I guess you forgot to require something?

[HousePet]

Might not be relevant, but if someone adds 'require NPC.lua' outside of a function in an addon, it causes various actor things to initialise too early causing problems.
That is what I though of when reading your life init problem.

[Zizzo]

Some problems I noticed:
1) can't open the debug Change Zone dialog, it throws a Lua error related to level_range
2) sometimes it throws an error related to NPCEgo. Line 210, attempt to index global 'Tiles'. I guess you forgot to require something?

I knew I was gonna screw that up... I've uploaded a new .team that should fix both of those.

Might not be relevant, but if someone adds 'require NPC.lua' outside of a function in an addon, it causes various actor things to initialise too early causing problems.
That is what I though of when reading your life init problem.

Yeah, don't I know it. I had the module completely falling apart at one point when I was trying to require('mod.class.NPC') from mod/load.lua. Hadn't occurred to me to connect it to the max_life problem, though. I think I'm gonna make an effort to split out the parts of mod.class.NPC that I need at load time into a separate file that can be require()'d without screwing stuff up. Thanks.

[Zizzo]

Oh, one last comment I forgot to mention earlier:

All of those are certainly ripe for achievements; it would just be a matter of defining exactly what constitutes "clearing" each of them.

Leaving the floor by the down staircase while the level is 'special' sounds like a clear to me. Shouldn't trip if you come back to the floor later when it's no longer special, recalling out or reset recalling beyond it, or leaving via the up staircase.

I should probably elaborate on my earlier response: I think it's at least reasonably likely that the player will recall off special levels like these after clearing them instead of continuing on via the down stairs, in order to restock consumables, sell off loot and *ID* the level's artifacts. At least, that's what I usually do. If we tie the achievement to leaving the level via the down stairs, a lot of players might miss the achievement this way.

[Atarlost]

I'd imagine clear would mean having no hostile monsters on the level (or if there's one with inaccessible shriekers behind glass or something having a hostile monster count equal to the number of inaccessible monsters).

[Zizzo]

I'd imagine clear would mean having no hostile monsters on the level (or if there's one with inaccessible shriekers behind glass or something having a hostile monster count equal to the number of inaccessible monsters).

That would work, sure. (You don't think we need a requirement about getting the artifacts on the level, though?)

In the meantime, unless anyone has any requests, I think I'm gonna try and work up princess/lost-sword quests for the next version. Couple questions on that front:

• Would it be better to have each level's quest be a separate quest entry, in the style of T4's escort quests, or bundle them all together, as I'm doing with the relic quests? [More specifically, the latter way would most likely have all the princess quests under one quest entry, and all the lost sword quests under another.]
• To simplify issues slightly, I'm thinking about having the random quest placement skip around the three special levels in Angband. That would, of course, reduce the maximum number of random quests to 95. Objections?

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

Hmmmmm. As long as it's something that could be surmounted by addon, no complaints to rerouting in angband. (I'm envisioning the rebirth of theme, and it's additional special levels potentially creating issues if your fix is TOO hardcoded.)

The difference in 3 fewer skill levels wouldn't be TOO terrible, I suppose...

Also Yay! FumbleFingers! Hooray for swordmasters with psionics, or haftedmasters with mimicry! Symbiote anythings named Venom!