Middle-Earth By Night - [Old World of Darkness]

[darkgod]

And technically it's not a "full convertion" since it's not even based on ToME

[FACM]

Canderel,

Same here. Mage is probably my favorite system. It's also probably going to be the hardest to implement exactly by the book. I may have to ditch improvised magic and just use lots and lots of rotes instead. While a good selection of pre-made spells will cover 90% of what mages can or will ever do, it's not quite the same as complete free-form spells. But that's more a limitation of not having a human GM telling you how things work out.

I'd like to have something fully implemented to show, but that may take a while. There's between 85 and 100 discipline abilities in Vampire (depending on if I want to count all the Thamaturgy and Necromancy paths), and I'll need to actually get most of the mechanics system implemented before those will do anything. Hopefully I can get the melee combat system in reasonably soon, and something resembling proper character creation.

[Canderel]

Implement guns... Early. They are fun.

[FACM]

Today was reasonably productive. I got the skills in place, and I think I found out why my talent dialogs aren't displaying. I've only half-fixed that, though. I've assigned the talent_types to players now, but I need to re-do the dialogs (which I borrowed from ToME) to not use the mastery value. In a couple days this may be something resembling a simple game.

EDIT: It's tomorrow, and I'm gonna redo the dialogs from scratch. I only got a test dialog working today (MAME cabinet is my other project, and it got more attention). Not going to post code today, since practically nothing changed sans 1 short new file.

[FACM]

New post, because of actual news.

I did get a test dialog to pop up, with a list of abilities and disciplines. I'll have to hide a couple of them, since you shouldn't technically buy them like that. I've also added a placeholder file for a re-done talent class, since the ToME one I'm borrowing from is workable for now but not quite perfect for this.

DG, I did notice something a little weird about the dialogs. The keybinds are all defined in engine modules, so if I put a function into my game with the same name, like LEVELUP, it piggybacks the same default keys as the ToME module. Likewise, adding my own keys and making them appear in the keybinding menu isn't clear how to do. (I assume you just cut/paste the functions in the engine modules that define keys and change it to fit your needs.) Were those meant to be module-specific, by chance?

[darkgod]

Yeah keybinds are totaly global, so that players who define a roguelike keyset wont have to redefine it for all modules, as long as the module uses somewhat default bindings. This is obviously also valid for dialogs, wouldnt make much sense otherwise

As for defining new bindings check the files in game/data/keybinds/ and just make yourself a new file in game/modules/yourmodule/data/keybinds/ and then load it in load.lua:

KeyBind:load("move,hotkeys,inventory,actions,debug,mykeybinds")

[Baker]

Same here. Mage is probably my favorite system. It's also probably going to be the hardest to implement exactly by the book. I may have to ditch improvised magic and just use lots and lots of rotes instead. While a good selection of pre-made spells will cover 90% of what mages can or will ever do, it's not quite the same as complete free-form spells. But that's more a limitation of not having a human GM telling you how things work out.

You could do something very similar, though, although I don't know how well the engine supports this. Have mages create their own spells, by choosing the spell effect, magnitude, additional effects, etc. You could create a system that allows for "damage by element", or "creation of item or creature", governed by what spheres you know and how well. You know, kind of like in the Elder Scrolls, except more flexible because you don't have to bother with graphics. And then just add more and more possible effects. Sure, it'd be broken as hell, but probably really fun.

[Frumple]

That... sounds terribly similar to what Portralis does, last time I played the thing. Not necessarily a bad thing, I suppose. Would give an example of an already implemented system, albeit in a different codebase. 'Course, balance et al would be completely different... I think. Actually, thinking on it, t4 and port do have pretty similar systems in some ways, though Portralis has absolutely freaking ridiculous damage scales (For example, a quote, "... 2 billion hp cap for monsters...". There are theoretically ways to kill capped monsters in the system.). Hrm... *ponderponder*

*Hah. A ToME module being influenced by Portralis would be terribly amusing, iffin' yeh ask me. Port started out as a PernAngband variant, though it's entirely different these days.

[Baker]

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking of, actually. I like this kind of system in general, gives you more flexibility and means that you don't just sit on a ton of underpowered or overpriced spells you don't really have a lot of use for.

Agreement on the damage scales, by the way. 26 million damage fireballs, oh my God.

[darkgod]

Kinda like T2 runecraft ?

[Baker]

Yeah, pretty much, except less broken . Runecraft was fundamentally the same approach, but the fact that it required material components and didn't scale as well as regular spells did with the various spellpower skills kind of made it pointless. The way I imagine it you would spend talent point to improve your skill in a sphere, which would give you access to more advanced effects (like "change base material of item" instead of just "create chunk of metal") and make you more powerful at the effects you already know, but the details of what each sphere level can roughly do can be easily found in the Mage sourcebooks.

[FACM]

For those who aren't aware of how magic works in Mage:

Mage allows for magic with the theory of consensual reality: The world is shaped by the observers in it. Nowadays, with 7 billion-ish people roughly aware of basic physics, magic doesn't really fit in. Mages have an Avatar, roughly described as an oversoul in some places, which lets them grab reality and overrule the majority. The consensus kicks backs, especially when there are mortal witnesses, and this can be really dangerous for a mage.

Magic efficiency is determined by a mage's Arete stat (1-10), and their rank (1-5) in the relevant Spheres: Forces, Time, Matter, Correspondence, Spirit, Life, Entropy, Mind, and Prime. Each rank provides greater purview into that facet of reality. A rough breakdown, which varies a bit from sphere to sphere, looks like this:

Forces 1: Detect forces
Forces 2: Control minor forces
Forces 3: Control major forces
Forces 4: create minor forces
Forces 5: create major forces

The descriptions are intentionally vague to give players more creative control of their spells. In-game mechanics prefer that you use coincidental effects (like 'lucky' hits and 'unfortunate' breakages of items) over more obvious (vulgar) effect, like throwing fireballs.

Mage is going to be the third core book I work into this module, after Vampire and Werewolf. I'm still mostly fighting dialogs and the talent system (and about to rewrite the talent system if that's what it takes,), but after I can get that worked out I should be able to move on to implementing the actual game.

[Canderel]

A matter mage of level 3 (Control major forces) matter decided he'll seperate the oxygen from the rest of the stuff in the air as an NPC was ready to light a cigarette, igniting himself in an oxygen fireball. Dunno if a lvl 3 mage should be able to seperate atomic particles truly, but the GM allowed, perhaps lvl 5 to create oxygen next to the guy is more likely to do the trick, but either way.

The police and the fire brigade got to the scene, and suspected arson... A GM always gets you back... the non-RNG-god...

[Antagonist]

FACM, I am interested in your dialogs, esp if you finally got them right.

I saw you created a basic page on them on the wiki, with 3 lines, that I have since expanded, though I have nothing yet on 'levelup' dialogs, aka where you can add and remove points to stuff, something most RLs need.

My major limit is time, but more examples to work off of is always good, especially since I'll need something similiar for my DnD 4th edition module, thats on abit of a hiatus till I get my Tower Defense module playable.

EDIT: Whoa, long winding sentences are long winding.

[Canderel]

Real time tower defense?