Favourite *band variant

[buzzkill]

You know, I think about playing ToME every once in a while, but never actually do it. I think I've downloaded it more than once without ever ever actually playing it for more than 5 minutes.

[bio_hazard]

You know, I think about playing ToME every once in a while, but never actually do it. I think I've downloaded it more than once without ever ever actually playing it for more than 5 minutes.

ToME pretty daunting at first- I'm still getting the hang of it. It is pretty much the opposite of a streamlined, ergonomically-optimized, single-dungeon crawler. The latest complete version is 2.3.5. Content-wise the game has a LOT (legitimately too much if you want a simple quick game).

-At character creation- choose between a variety of races (ever wanted to play as a Deathmold, Rohan-knight, or thunderlord?) Classes and sub-classes (your dwarf can specialize on axes if you want), and body types (forget what this is called- either normal, zombie, vampire, skeleton, etc...).

-Also character creation- you can choose to worship a middle-earth god if you want, and get access to special spells, abilities, quests, and penalties if you don't follow the god's rules.

-Character develops with skill points gained each level. Skills are for a range of abilities, including 'normal' things like fighting and magic (which are generally subdivided a little more, so your mana (SP) increase will be more or less independent of your ability to activate a rod or cast fireball). also things like monster summoning, demonology, symbiosis with molds, and prayer skill.

-At character creation, set number of random quests for the 98 main dungeon levels: these quests provide items or open up new skills.

-multiple dungeons each with their own flavor (tree-filled, ones with impenetrable rock, ones with water or lava features).

-multiple towns most with town services (and multiple homes).

-main quest (including extended quest after Morgy at level 100), plus many side quests.

-Fixed artifacts side by side with randarts and "folk-arts" (activatable objects for effects like healing, satisfy hunger,)

[Pete Mack]

Yes, ToME is muy complicated. I had to create 6 macros just to be able to play:
1. Go to the character screen and:
2.
- increase speed by 4
- decrease speed by 4
- increase aggressiveness by 4
- decrease aggressiveness by 4
- increase speed & aggressiveness by 4
- decrease speed & aggressiveness by 4
3. escape from the character screen.

Without using these, there's no way to finish even the thieves' quest. Without the macros, it's really tedious.

[bio_hazard]

I'd forgotten about the tactics! ha ha. that's usually the first noob question "why did the scrawny cat kill me in town"

[Psi]

Without using these, there's no way to finish even the thieves' quest. Without the macros, it's really tedious.

Assuming you're going hand-to-hand maybe. I always played sorcerors, so would stick to cowardly/running throughout the game.

ToME is good fun, but there are so many unbalanced abilities that you can exploit to make winning easy (take symbiosis, charm a Master Q and chain summon GWoPs for example). Unfortunately I didn't have the self-control back then to avoid that sort of cheese. I went void-diving a couple of times, but it just wasn't fun down there.

[andrewdoull]

Due to current competition, I once again looked into tweaking the Un graphics. As it stands now, without even something as basic as the walls displaying properly, I find it unplayable.

Could you clarify what you mean here? Are you unhappy with walls as # marks? I reverted that option due to the number of complaints about the Windows ANSI walls not displaying with particular windows OS versions.

However, the 800+ (!!!) terrain types quickly scared me off. Andrew, are all of the terrains used in the standard game, or are many of them only used in campaign mode? Why so many different, yet seemingly identical, wall types?

Use the knowledge menus (~) to see which tiles are actually significant from a visibility point of view. You can also assign the appearance that way (v) but be sure to dump the reassignments to file if you need to.

There are a number of reasons for differing wall types:

1. These help theme particular dungeon levels.
2. The walls can be searched and interacted with in a variety of different ways.
3. They help you find potential locations to search for secret doors.
4. They help clue you in on the most powerful monster on the level.
5. They have corresponding graphical tiles.

Andrew

[Acenoid]

Hey there!

favourite variant is mangband as it's multiplayer, persistent and nice people play it. Greatest change is the "fake" realtime mode.

[buzzkill]

Could you clarify what you mean here? Are you unhappy with walls as # marks? I reverted that option due to the number of complaints about the Windows ANSI walls not displaying with particular windows OS versions.

I'm, pretty much, a graphics junkie. If it doesn't support DVG graphics, I'm not playing it, the exception being Steam. What I find so tragic about UN is that despite supporting DVG and double/triple tile, and it's many play innovations, I'm still not playing it.

The BIG problem: Blank spaces/unexplored areas appear as x's rather than nothing. This is apparent in all the attached pictures.

The other problem: The ASCII towns are acceptable (top/right) save for the whole screen being filled with x's. The DVG town buildings are made mostly of #'s for some reason. But in the dungeon, the walls don't show up as #'s. Well, some do, but many (on some levels a lot, in some areas nearly all) are various numbers 0-9, and other symbols as well, which make ID'ing a wall as a wall a bigger chore than is should be. This is worse when trying to use DVG graphics, as the small characters on the large tiles all pretty much look the same leading one to often mistake unexplored areas as walls, or walls as something else. As you can see, it's not at all apparent, without closer inspection, that our hero (top/center) is nearly surrounded by walls. The ) for wall symbol is a particularly bad choice (top/left), esp when combined with the 3, the 1, the %, the *, and then throw a few items on the floor or a few monsters in the room and you would really have a mess. Having a consistent/unique color for all wall tiles would be a good place to start.

Normally, me being me, I'd just take the DVG and fix it as I go. Once most of the terrains are functioning somewhat, it would probably be much better. But like I said earlier, the nearly 1000 different terrain types scared me off.

EDIT: Forgive the multiple edits, this accidently posted before I was done with it.

[andrewdoull]

I'm, pretty much, a graphics junkie. If it doesn't support DVG graphics, I'm not playing it, the exception being Steam. What I find so tragic about UN is that despite supporting DVG and double/triple tile, and it's many play innovations, I'm still not playing it.

The BIG problem: Blank spaces/unexplored areas appear as x's rather than nothing. This is apparent in all the attached pictures.

You can start by changing the invisible trap graphic using the pref files to something other than an 'x' - a blank space would be fine. Since you've made such a passionate argument for it here, I'll be adding an option in the next release to have the same behaviour for the trap notification area that Angband now does.

The other problem: The ASCII towns are acceptable (top/right) save for the whole screen being filled with x's. The DVG town buildings are made mostly of #'s for some reason. But in the dungeon, the walls don't show up as #'s.
[snip]
Normally, me being me, I'd just take the DVG and fix it as I go. Once most of the terrains are functioning somewhat, it would probably be much better. But like I said earlier, the nearly 1000 different terrain types scared me off.

Luckily there's a function to help you with this. Go into the '~' knowledge menus, choose terrain knowledge, select a terrain who's graphic you want to change and hit 'v'. You'll be able to pick an new DVG graphic for this. You can also use copy and paste here to copy graphics around ('c' and 'p' if I remember correctly).

I hope this helps.

Andrew

[Pete Mack]

Yes, c&p works, and it helps. But when the number gets into the 1000's, you might want to try writing a (perl) script. Or you might want to add more support in the graphics editor.

EDIT: in fact, that sounds like a fun project... Mini-RDBs are so much fun. Hmmm.

[JimmyMike]

So far I've been enjoying FAangband the most. Tried ToME, couldn't get too much into it. Vanilla is fun, but sometimes feels like it needs a little spice.

-JimmyMike