ToME 2 maintenance

[KiTA]

Yeah, actually, that worked perfectly. Thank you.

Anyone know if 2.3.8 works on the ladder?

[AnonymousHero]

There should be no problems with using 2.3.8-ah on the ladder.

[AnonymousHero]

To any forum admins that may be out there: Could you please sticky this?

[Lord Estraven]

FWIW: I have a list of feature and tweak suggestions... Since I'm no longer working on TFork I figured I'd see if some of the saner changes from it (and some other stuff) might fly in tome2.

1. Not very important, but right now Geyser still increases mana use at times without increasing damage.

I think the best way to fix this is to reduce the MANA_MAX field from 35 to 25, This should keep mana and damage always in line without jeopardizing the spell's low-powered role.

2. Boomerangs are rubbish, because the throw multiplier is always 1 and you never get more than 1 shot per turn.

I'd say the way to fix this is to a) make the multiplier (2 + get_skill(SKILL_BOOMERANG) / 12) as per the throwing multiplier in OAngband, and b) use p_ptr->num_shots to determine energy use as per archery. Boomerangs may be silly but IMO they should be useful.

3. Sneakiness skill is not useful, as I've probably mentioned too many times, and Disarming is a waste of skill points. Even if it scales to 100 at 50 points, it will still be a waste even for Rogues.

I'm not sure how to handle this without too much code, or too much straying from the original game; the problem is, no matter how you look at it, Sneakiness and Disarming will never be competitive with magic devices.

My (current) best suggestion on this would be to have the Trapping ability offer bonuses to perception, searching, and disarming, on the premise that someone who can set a trap should know how to spot and disable one. This way Trapping becomes more desirable and useful, and modification of the original game is less than through other means I can think of. It's still something of a hack though.

4. Runecraft is completely broken, currently all the skill does is add to spells' mana use. IMO it should:
- Not increase mana consumption at all
- Reduce spell fail rate in some way
- Maybe increase damage efficiency for damaging spells

5. Beorning bear form has weapon and shield slots but no digger slot, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Fixing this would make Beornings significantly more convenient IMO.

I may mess around with this stuff further on my own, and see where I can go... Not sure how to suggest a change be committed on Git though.

[Lord Estraven]

Okay, I have cloned the tome2 git repository on Gitorious, the clone is called miramor-tome2-changes...

I'm having second thoughts regarding the Trapping thing, since that would make Sneakiness REALLY useless. The more I think about it though, the more I think it makes no sense to have searching and perception affected by any skill, just based on the code. If Sneakiness bonus scales as it should. so that perception is perfect at skill level 50, then it's a total waste of skill points. If it scales well enough to make sense as a skill investment, there's no reason to boost it any further than where you'd get 100%. Either way it won't be remotely balanced.

The way I handled it in TFork was the latter; I made ~30 skill points in Searching and Disarming (for a warrior with a +0.9 modifier) give perfect perception and disarming. I figured that's roughly comparable to ~20 skill points into Conveyance and Divination, less useful but more convenient... Maybe I'll try that out again in the cloned repository and see if it isn't too horrible. It is broken, but ToME does have a long tradition of being somewhat broken.

(BTW I also gave all mages a +0.9 modifier to Disarming instead of zero. Kind of dumb for mages, but whatever.)

Edit: Also there was another change I wanted to make.

6. Make some Mindcraft spells less powerful.
- Character Armor AC bonus should depend on skill level
- Speed boost from Adrenaline should depend on skill level
- Minor Displacement should just teleport you instead of creating jumpgates

That's pretty much it.

[AnonymousHero]

Please create one (EDIT: *branch* ) "per feature". It will probably make it a little bit easier for me to pick & choose what to include in ToME2. I haven't thought in detail about all the changes you've proposed, but I really would like a fix for boomerangs. As you say they are completely pointless as-is.

[Lord Estraven]

Okay will do. D'oh!

[Lord Estraven]

Okay I'm tweaking the boomerang fix now...

[Lord Estraven]

Final boomerang tweaks should be up today. Currently boomerangs are somewhat overpowered.

Edit: Boomerang tweak pushed. Other stuff (Sneakiness/Disarming, bear form, Mindcraft) will come soon.

There is something of a problem with boomerangs, where their branding damage seems to be inflated compared to melee weapons. Not sure if that's just how ranged stuff is calculated or if it's something I did wrong.

[Lord Estraven]

Sorry for the delay, it took me a while to figure out what you meant by branches. Anyway the changes are up now (as branches) and I've filed some merge requests.

[AnonymousHero]

A bit of a hectic weekend this weekend, but I'll see if i can get round to testing a little + applying during next week...

[Lord Estraven]

No problem, things are kind of hectic here too...

Edit: in the mean time though I may make changes to the Runecraft and boomerang patches. Runecraft does need some balancing and boomerangs should probably make use of num_fire and do less damage...

[Lord Estraven]

Yeah, just FWIW I've taken down the Runecraft merge request. The branch is still up there but it turns out it's still broken, runespells can be cast with insufficient mana... So I'm going to need to do more work on it.

[Lord Estraven]

If anyone's listening, I've taken down the merge requests and removed my repo clone... It seems AH is too busy right now, so I'm not going to bother him.

[AnonymousHero]

Dang. I was probably going to pick up a couple of the Mindcraft changes. After the changing over to instant pseudo-ID, I'd already changed (but not pushed) Psychometry to always be full ID (but not *ID*), and I wanted to also apply some of your changes.

Probably not the void gate limitation, though. I don't particularly care that players can abuse it -- if a player chooses to do so, they've just ruined their own game. The chain summoning abuse is more interesting to eliminate in that it becomes almost unavoidable with the current game mechanics. (Not that I'm actively going to do anything about that either. I'm just sayin'...)

Anyway, if there's any way you can "rescue" those Mindcraft changes, I'd be glad to include those, push out a version 2.3.9-AH and call it a day (though I'll certainly leave the git repo open and still try merge things if reasonable/requested).

I've scratched (almost) all the ToME itches I had when I started and I'm not really that motivated to work on it much more.

EDIT: If you do still have some way to "rescue" those changes, just post a diff here or something. IIRC they were small enough to apply easily by hand.