Tales of Maj'Eyal

[Damned Registrations]

Figured I'd give this another look since it seemed to be developing fast and the engine had some promise. Seems MUCH better now. Balance is much better early game, a stupid immediate death to what must have been a very out of depth monster when I was level 1 notwithstanding. I definitely recommend trying it out now; at least finish the starter dungeon and get back to town. There are (Failable, I've only finished 1 out of 3 so far) escort quests in the dungeons that give you nice rewards, they changed the potion chugging gameplay to an interesting system of attaching healing abilities to your character that have cooldowns, with the option of adding another slot for such an ability in lieu of unlocking another talent tree branch. Artifacts are in the game now, and random magical items seem to be pretty diverse and interesting. Talent tree is massive and very open and interesting. Currently playing as a halfling shadowblade; a rogue subclass that has some minor movement/detection/combat enhancement magic.

 

[20 Eyes]

What game are you talking about? I can't tell from your post and googling 'tome 4' isn't helping.

 

[TripJack]

troubles of middle earth

something like that? it sucks *edit* or at least it did suck

is it actually out of beta now?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Tales of Maj'Eyal, I assume.

 

[TripJack]

i see, it has nothing to do with middle earth anymore

makes sense

 

[Crooked Bee]

Here's a website for those interested. It's a very attractive roguelike.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Interesting engine, but I never understood why don't they either fully ditch graphics, or implement fully graphical tileset. Something about "@" surrounded by pixelart trees always threw me off.

 

[Lord Rocket]

OK checking it out

Will post thoughts later

 

[Damned Registrations]

Interesting engine, but I never understood why don't they either fully ditch graphics, or implement fully graphical tileset. Something about "@" surrounded by pixelart trees always threw me off.

I think full tileset is the goal, but tome has a fuckton of monsters as well as player classes and races, so it'll take a while to get there.

I've gotten a bit further now. Just found a kick ass dagger that adds 3 different types of damage to my melee strikes, both for it and my offhand.

Tip for anyone starting out with melee: Crank that weapon combat skill for the first few levels. You pretty much need a 95% hit rate to get by as a melee char, and you especially don't want to be whiffing your special attacks.

 

[Malakal]

Interesting engine, but I never understood why don't they either fully ditch graphics, or implement fully graphical tileset. Something about "@" surrounded by pixelart trees always threw me off.

@ is the symbol, @ is the man in roguelikes. THE MAN. (dot)

Will probably check this one out, I am a huge fan of roguelikes.

 

[Havoc]

First I read... "Thief 4 - Doesn't suck any more (IMO)" and was like and why is it in RPG section. Then I read again and was like .

 

[Damned Registrations]

Ouch. Just lost my promising warrior to what appears to be a plot related battle. Word of advice: E's are NOT to be fucked with.

 

[Lord Rocket]

OK for those who don't know:

TOME4 is a roguelike with D&D4/Dragon Age style mechanics, ie. you make your guy and then select various special abilities (as well as stats, race, subrace, class and subclass) with which to bash your enemies. These are subject to both cooldown and 'stamina' costs which theoretically should prevent you from spamming the shit out of them all them time. These restrictions also apply to healing abilities (well actually they don't seem to have stamina costs. I personally think they should but never mind) as there are no potions to be spammed, which honestly makes things a little more interesting.
Unlike DA, however, there are an awful lot of these abilities and they're all upgradeable which gives the player a few more choices at level up. They also have a relationship more akin to D&D4's feats which means they're not all 'one after the other' like I remember DA being, although they all have prereqs. I can't speak to balance as I have only tried to play a Dwarven Berserker on normal difficulty so far but first impressions of the character system are positive.
The game isn't too hard and your enemies are rarely threatening individually (unless they're of higher level than you or have a couple of mean special abilities), at least in my limited experience, but that isn't to say things aren't challenging. TOME4 is clearly designed as a longer term RL than, say, Stone Soup (more along the lines of ADOM really) so the lack of crushing difficulty is a good thing in this case. Actually given the longer-term goals I'd say that the progression/challenge balance is pretty good, you'll die if you mistime your ability use but there's room for error. Running away doesn't seem like a viable response in many cases (on one occasion I bolted it from some out of depth monsters but they tracked me down quick smart) so this is a good thing.
As far as whinging goes: it's fucking hard to see some things, especially those fucking poison vine traps which are a ^ the same damn colour as the background. This is improved somewhat by using the no background ASCII modes but that puts a . under the ^ for some reason which doesn't help either. Some items are likewise trickier to spot than necessary. The red tint that covers the screen as you are hurt is a neat idea but makes things darker than they need to be. The 'L'ook interface desperately needs a 'return to centre' button as it will quite happily start out pointing to something off screen when the thing you want to examine is right next to you.

Anyway yeah the new shit mechanics are actually implemented pretty well in this case and the game seems well made so far, a definite improvement over TOME3 which I was sort of ambivalent about. Will play again despite the UI niggles I mentioned. I'm also very interested in the modability of the engine although I can't really be bothered learning LUA at this stage.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Interesting engine, but I never understood why don't they either fully ditch graphics, or implement fully graphical tileset. Something about "@" surrounded by pixelart trees always threw me off.

@ is the symbol, @ is the man in roguelikes. THE MAN. (dot)

Will probably check this one out, I am a huge fan of roguelikes.

Thank you, Captain Obvious, I've played NetHack, ADOM, Zangband, Dwarf Fortress, IVAN, Enola, Incursion, etc, etc, so I already have this obscure and valuable knowledge which you kindly offered me.

 

[Malakal]

Interesting engine, but I never understood why don't they either fully ditch graphics, or implement fully graphical tileset. Something about "@" surrounded by pixelart trees always threw me off.

@ is the symbol, @ is the man in roguelikes. THE MAN. (dot)

Will probably check this one out, I am a huge fan of roguelikes.

Thank you, Captain Obvious, I've played NetHack, ADOM, Zangband, Dwarf Fortress, IVAN, Enola, Incursion, etc, etc, so I already have this obscure and valuable knowledge which you kindly offered me.

Stop asking retarded questions then. I assumed that you are yet another ignorant newb with pretentious nick. Actually thats still a possibility.

And its General. I got promoted some time ago for my hard work at GRPG subforum.

 

[Damned Registrations]

As far as the look/targetting interface goes, it's tied in with mouse support. I haven't tried disabling the mouse support to see if it makes using the keys only less finicky, but I spent about half a dozen levels as an alchemist before I figured out how to target the ground with my bombs by using the mouse instead of the keys.

 

[Lord Rocket]

FUCK! I didn't even try the mouse to be honest. That explains a few things.

Still, for RLs I do expect proper keyboard support (and frankly I much prefer not to use the mouse at all these days).

 

[zeitgeist]

Are there any interesting games (i.e. total conversions/separate projects, not just modules mainly based on the ToMe mechanics) built on the ToME engine (T-Engine4) yet? I remember being pretty impressed by how modular and customizable it was all supposed to be, since everything was in Lua, but that was a long time ago, and there were no projects that were even nearing completion at that point. Has this changed in the meantime?

 

[MisterStone]

Yeah I thought the engine looked great when I played it a few months ago, but the game they made for it was rather lame. Is the game itself better now?

 

[Lord Rocket]

Alright, I've spent a few hours with the game now. My first impressions were a bit off but it's still a pretty good game. The main issue is the lack of challenge - I created a Human Fighter who was blitzing basically everything no probs thanks to some very powerful and easily available healing powers (you can find them for sale in the secret town which is not particularly well hidden) which I got early and remained very useful up until my death in The Maze (not because I met something meaner than me, but because I kept not giving a shit about traps. I went through about four nasty ones in a row and succumbed to the poison one injected me with). The only creatures I had some modicum of trouble with were the boss monsters but even they went down without too much trouble.

This still needs work on the monster and dungeon (stuff other than monsters and traps would be great) sides but the character mechanics are workable. At the moment it's like half a great game.

 

[Crooked Bee]

To me, it definitely feels like an improvement over 3. The engine is indeed very attractive, and I like the DnD4 style Lord Rocket has described. As for the lack of challenge, LR is obviously better at roguelikes than I am, so I won't comment on that. (I actually found playing a rogue rather challenging. ) Also, I agree that, in dungeons, "stuff other than monsters and traps would be great".

 

[Flatlander]

This is the Age of Ascendancy, after over ten thousand years of strife

The elven kingdoms are quiet. The Shaloren elves in their home of Elvala

Aranion Gayaeil. The Thaloren elves keep to their ancient tradition of living in the woods, ruled as always by Nessilla Tantaelen the wise.

Is there an online generator somewhere that can produce this crap or did they actually have to type all of that by themselves.

I don't care if it's the greatest game of all times with deepest mechanics ever realized, I just can't be assed to play another RL set in generic RPG setting.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

This is the Age of Ascendancy, after over ten thousand years of strife

The elven kingdoms are quiet. The Shaloren elves in their home of Elvala

Aranion Gayaeil. The Thaloren elves keep to their ancient tradition of living in the woods, ruled as always by Nessilla Tantaelen the wise.

Is there an online generator somewhere that can produce this crap or did they actually have to type all of that by themselves.

I don't care if it's the greatest game of all times with deepest mechanics ever realized, I just can't be assed to play another RL set in generic RPG setting.

Really? I feel the opposite way. Make it generic if you like, but provide a decent game. Anything else is just cream.

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Interesting engine, but I never understood why don't they either fully ditch graphics, or implement fully graphical tileset. Something about "@" surrounded by pixelart trees always threw me off.

Stop asking retarded questions then. I assumed that you are yet another ignorant newb with pretentious nick. Actually thats still a possibility.

And its General. I got promoted some time ago for my hard work at GRPG subforum.

Oooh, how edgy!
Mate, your reading comprehension sucks. I asked if they are implementing graphical tileset, then why do they start with trees and whatnot, and not the character symbol. It could be engine restriction, such as in DF's adventure mode, or it could be conscious design decision. If that'd be the later, than I find it strange.

But DamnedRegistrations had already answered my question, so that's that.

 

[Flatlander]

Really? I feel the opposite way. Make it generic if you like, but provide a decent game. Anything else is just cream.

Okay, I exaggerated. It sounds cool enough even with the lame setting. Too bad that the next gen OpenGL visuals are too much for my crappy Linux drivers, guess I'll have to boot to Windows first...