[ann] T-Engine4 and ToME4 are beta!
DarkGod
darkgod at te4.org
Tue May 11 09:43:31 PDT 2010
The board is set, the pieces are moving.
For many years people have patiently waited for ToME3 to be released, for
many years I have tried. But I always burned out of developing it too
fast. It was a pile of old crappy code I could not stand working on
anymore...
So one day I set out on a new venture, to rewrite it all from scratch, to
forget code I could not bear using anymore and to focus on a new engine,
and a new game. This was about six months ago, and now after 20 private
alpha versions I am ready to unleash the Tales of Middle-Earth: The
Fourth Age and T-Engine4 onto the world!
**** T-Engine 4
This is the âspiritualâ successor of T-Engine 3, the basic idea is the
same: to make a roguelike game engine that allows the game maker to focus
on making a game, not on handling the trivialities of coding.
Being the lua fanatic I am the engine obviously uses it, and much more
than in T-Engine2/3. There is a very small C core that is mostly unaware
of any high level designs, it simply provides access to graphics, sounds,
input, â¦
T-Engine4 can handle many things and is meant to be easily extended. Its
lua core is documented and based on a simple OO design, leveraging the
full power of Lua.
A list of features can be found at http://te4.org/ but the most important
ones are:
* single unified UI using OpenGL on all platforms
* support for many roguelike concepts from scratch without imposing
limits on what can be done with them
* easy input (keyboard & mouse) support
* generic save/load code using serialization, simple objects do not
even need to be aware of it, it works auto-magically
* support for both graphical mode and traditional ASCII, potentially
at the same time
* many other things, checkout the site and try it
**** Tales of Middle-Earth: The Fourth Age
Because an engine is nothing without a game (and because I wanted to make
a game), I developed ToME4 at the same time.
As I developed ToME3 I was starting to feel restricted by the theme I had
setup for myself, that of the quests for the ring in the third age. Do
not get me wrong, I love the setting but it felt to me like I was meant
to follow a pre-existing story and had little room for improvements, all
I could do was bastardise it.
So I took a hard, but IMO needed, decision for ToME4 and scrapped that
altogether. It is based one hundred and twenty two years after the fall
of Sauron, in a world that is in relative peace under the guidance the
High Kings of the Reunited Kingdom (Gondor and Arnor). The player is not
âthe chosen oneâ that goes on to save the world from level 1 but instead
a simple adventurer, out for glory and treasures. While there is a grand-
evil-that-must-be-stopped it is revealed slowly as part of the player
leveling up and should feel much less intimidating.
The biggest gameplay change is probably the switch to a new stats&skills
system. The primary stats are now Strength, Dexterity, Magic, Willpower,
Cunning and Constitution (with a hidden Luck stat) and the skill system
has been changed to follow a âstandardâ pattern for most skills. They are
now called talents and usually have 5 levels. All talents are organised
in talent types, usually 4 talents per type.
This forces to have some interesting designs for each classes, melee
classes have gained a lot from it and now have many combat techniques
they can use.
Some races, classes and other âthingsâ also need unlocking before they
can be used. Fear not, the mage class for example is indeed in the game
but requires unlocking to be available, as are others. There is mainly
two reasons for this design:
* it allows to not overwhelm a new player with too many unknown
choices at birth
* it allows to give ârewardsâ without winning the game
At the start the player can be a human, dwarf, elf or hobbit and either a
warrior, rogue or archer (with subclasses for each).
ToME4 (and T-Engine4) are meant to be enjoyable by anybody, as such there
is no hidden âmacroâ, or tons of useless and cryptic options. Key-
bindings and graphical modes are set-able in game with the main menu
(available by pressing Escape from the game). Mouse support is available
in most dialogs, it can even be used to activate talents.
Both ToME4 and T-Engine4 are now in public beta, meaning they are usable
but not done. T-Engine4 is mostly good and I did not modify it much for
some weeks now, except to add some new independent features (like new map
generators). ToME4 story is fully planned in my head and was meant to be
split in two half. The first half is done and playable (and such the game
is currently winnable), the second half will be implemented during beta.
A new subforum has been setup at http://forum.t-o-m-e.net/ too.
Lastly I want to present my excuses to all the people who waited for so
long without news, I tried to come back many times but never could. And
when I started TE4 I did not want to announce it for fear of losing steam
again, but now that beta is reached I do not fear anymore!
Now go to http://tome.te4.org or http://te4.org and download it!
PS: feels good to be back!
--
T-Engine4 and ToME4 now available!
http://blog.te4.org/ http://te4.org/ http://tome.te4.org/
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