Porting ToME2 to the T4 engine

[Zireael]

Spells! I'm gonna take a good long look at them since I have loads of them left to implement for Veins.

And I really love how this is going on still even though you've been mostly silent, Zizzo!

[Zizzo]

And I really love how this is going on still even though you've been mostly silent, Zizzo!

Yeah, sorry, I kinda go into deep-dev mode at crunch time. Don't worry too much unless my SVN repo goes silent for weeks at a time.

[Zizzo]

A question for future reference: Is anyone particularly attached to T2's policy of only showing monster properties that the player has seen (only listing resist fire among a monster's resistance, for instance, if it has resisted a fire attack from the player or one of the player's ancestors), as opposed to T4's policy of showing everything about the monster right off the bat? The T2 way would be a bit more work on my end, but I could go either way.

[What brings this up is that I've been fiddling with factions, which we would almost certainly want listed in the actor tooltip, which in turn led me to think that I should probably get around to beefing up the current anemic actor tooltip anyway. ]

[edge2054]

I liked that old angband style of monster ID but I don't know that I would have missed it had you not said anything.

[Zizzo]

I liked that old angband style of monster ID but I don't know that I would have missed it had you not said anything.

Oh. Um... sorry? If that's the consensus, I can certainly go with that --- especially now having discovered the proper incantation to add a world{} table to the module, where such data would presumably live. And since each module gets its own world{} table, I don't have to worry about collisions in, say, achievements.

[Castler]

Is anyone particularly attached to T2's policy of only showing monster properties that the player has seen (only listing resist fire among a monster's resistance, for instance, if it has resisted a fire attack from the player or one of the player's ancestors), as opposed to T4's policy of showing everything about the monster right off the bat?

I've played enough Moria and *band that I like the T2 approach, but I also expect it's a lower priority than some other features you might be working on.

Also, off by one error in Player:describeFloor:

Code: Select all

game.log('There are %d objects here.', i - 1)

should be

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game.log('There are %d objects here.', i)

[Crim, The Red Thunder]

I liked that old angband style of monster ID but I don't know that I would have missed it had you not said anything.

Oh. Um... sorry? If that's the consensus, I can certainly go with that --- especially now having discovered the proper incantation to add a world{} table to the module, where such data would presumably live. And since each module gets its own world{} table, I don't have to worry about collisions in, say, achievements.

Probably a big request, and not urgent.... any chance you can go with both? T2 globally remembered seen aspects across all characters, so long as they maintained a savefile with the same name. (While this is nice for folks who just use player, or a single name, it was annoying for those who uniquely named our characters). If you can track the individual aspects globally by profile, rather then by individual save, I'd love to see the detailed building lore of monsters.

However, since not everyone will want that, especially those coming from current T4 to your port of T2, a toggle option to 'reveal all lore' by default when on, and use your data-tracking file for what previous characters have seen if off, would be the best of both worlds. Admittedly, it would also mean much more work for you... (sorry) But I'd hate to lose the old feature 'just because', especially since if it's tracked by profile, rather then individual character name, I no longer lose everything each time I run a different character, or use a different savefile so I can run multiple characters at once.

[Zizzo]

Also, off by one error in Player:describeFloor:

Code: Select all

game.log('There are %d objects here.', i - 1)

should be

Code: Select all

game.log('There are %d objects here.', i)

[sound F/X: source diving] Ah. Apparently I must have forgotten I'd already done that above:

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-- i is now one higher than the number of objects on the floor; bump it
-- down.
i = i - 1

Fixed in SVN.

Probably a big request, and not urgent.... any chance you can go with both?

Hmm, now that you mention it, that actually makes a good deal of sense. Doing it both ways would really only be slightly more work than doing it the T2 way, if I implement the T2 way right.

T2 globally remembered seen aspects across all characters, so long as they maintained a savefile with the same name. (While this is nice for folks who just use player, or a single name, it was annoying for those who uniquely named our characters). If you can track the individual aspects globally by profile, rather then by individual save, I'd love to see the detailed building lore of monsters.

Oh, that was always the plan: the learned monster data will live in the world{} table, which is shared across all characters. That's why I was so happy earlier about discovering how to set that up.

[Zizzo]

Okay, here's an oddball question: By default, the T-Engine binds the < and > keys to the virtual event CHANGE_LEVEL, which is handled by a callback set in Game:setupCommands() [which is why you can hit either key to change levels in T4]. Is there any way in that callback to find out which key was actually pressed? Because I can imagine it would be disconcerting for the player to hit > on a random spot somewhere in Bree and get popped up to the world map.

[Failing that, I suppose the fallback strategy would be to rebind those keys to separate actions, which means I'd have to figure out how to determine which key would correspond to a given level-change feature. The other alternatlve would be to have explicit town exits like T4 has, instead of allowing < anywhere in town... wait, no, that wouldn't work for wilderness levels, never mind.]

[grayswandir]

Code: Select all

self.virtuals[virt](sym, ctrl, shift, alt, meta, unicode, isup, key)

Looks like the CHANGE_LEVEL function is actually called with a lot of parameters.

[darkgod]

As gray said

And a reminder: come on IRC already !!!!!!

[Zizzo]

Code: Select all

self.virtuals[virt](sym, ctrl, shift, alt, meta, unicode, isup, key)

Looks like the CHANGE_LEVEL function is actually called with a lot of parameters.

[sound F/X: source diving] Ahh, yes, I recall I had to do something similar with the KeyBind:any_key() function to get at the <ctrl> and <shift> modifiers in Enhanced Object Compare. Thanks.

[Zireael]

Any plans to port some of Angband's AI, such as dead-end detection? I've found that ToME 4's critters, even with A*, are very prone to getting stuck in dead-ends when fleeing from my heroes.

[Zizzo]

Any plans to port some of Angband's AI, such as dead-end detection? I've found that ToME 4's critters, even with A*, are very prone to getting stuck in dead-ends when fleeing from my heroes.

...Maybe? I'm not particularly familiar with the monster AI handling in either program. I imagine it would take a fair amount of work, so it'll probably be a low priority for now.

[Harmless]

Just wanted to throw in some very selfish words of encouragement. Tome 2.x is my favorite roguelike, although I don't play it as much due to my laptop not having a full numpad for control. Autoexplore and mouse control mixed with occasional special events and DG sightings have been fantastic upgrades to the ToME family. While I enjoy those upgrades, and the increased visibility of ToME has been good for the product overall, it's lost many of the fun things that made T2 so awesome. The princess captured by greater rotting Qs, the ridiculous potential of making your own artifacts with an alchemist, the fumblefingers who lost his sword to a band of 17 mushrooms that led to you getting a .5 ratio in symbiosis so you could proudly wear your own Q on your back while writing a massive runon sentence because you were excited thinking about the prospect of it all happening again inside the T4 engine... Ahem.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the project, and hope you decide to stick with it.
Good luck!