Here is a short video of a new zone of the next beta: Mount Doom

You must rush to the end before .. something bad .. happens!

But a horde of orcs will come and try to stop you, a line of sun paladins form to buy you some time, but do not linger!

You can also see a very small shader (used to make the lava "glow") and a new feature: actor emotes

As promised here comes T-Engine4 and ToME4 beta4 !

OSX binaries will come hopefully tomorrow and the linux binaries are suspended for now until I find a good way to make them.

Release highlights:

• Fix the random crashes that could happen, you should be safe now!
• Changed ALL musics, please give them a try, they are very much worth it!
• Two new zones
• A new class
• Much balancing and fixes

Expanded changelist:

• insane mode cannot cheese stats
• fixed crash on some platforms when entering levels (or even just randomly)
• hostile encounters in the far east
• fix achievement "that was close"
• fix savefile code on OSX
• Static map generator can use getMap() function inside maps to access the Map object and change it directly
• the far east map central mountain is under a particle shield, where the High Peek will be located
• staves are 2 handed
• cannot wield a 2handed weapon + 1 offhand
• new musics by Celestial Aeon Project
• music volume setting
• ego staves of wizardry and rarer and more expensive
• OpenGL shaders support (not used yet)
• changed the C map code to handle multiple textures (mainly used for shaders)
• more orcs in the moria
• arcane power is a sustained effect and level 1
• manathurst is level 2
• mages now start with arcane power instead of manathrust and lightning instead of corrosive vapour
• some monsters now have escorts
• new troll: the mountain troll thundered (elite)
• New class: Anorithil! We stand between the darkness and the light
• Rush & Blinding speed switched position to make rush easier to get
• New talent "Heightened Senses" in cunning/survival tree (2nd position)
• monsters now have lite(does not show)/infravision/
• stealth/invis now prevents the monsters from targetting you
• light makes it obvious where you are even if stealth/invis is active
• stealth disables light automatically (invis does NOT)
• a warning pops up if a monster targets you while stealthed or invis
• stealth gives 1 invrafision
• stealth more powerful at level 1
• fix zone loading (does not recompute level)
• level decay works correctly
• tactical mode active from birth, stays on between saves
• changed trollshaws as the starting zone
• flyers are not seen unless seen
• most zones have a 5 level range now instead of 11
• New zone: Carn Dum, same tier as Old Forest, Maze, Sandworm Lair
• scrolls & potions have gradual chance of destruction based on damage done
• money is now auto-picked up
• nerf angmar' fall a bit
• fix fire & cold breath to do more damage
• fire drake summon is immune to fire
• turtle summons now get a shell shield talent
• minotaur summon now uses its abilities more often and last longer
• jellies summon now have more life
• fix lightning breath for hydra summon
• resting/running is impossible if loosing air
• fix summoning targetting
• player does not get infinite energy while controlling a summon
• allow dual (or more) egos engine-side and in ToME
• knockback breaths/balls will not do multiple knockbacks
• mage quest can now accept rings/amulets too, if mages are unlocked the staff of Angmar Fall will be enough too
• new zone: Unremarkable Cave (random encounter in a specific location of the far east)
• Ego items powers are based on the material level of the base object. A mithril weapon will get better bonuses than an iron one

Have fun!

Coming next beta to you, I present the Anorithil!

And a little gameplay video with one:

As promised beta 3 is available at http://tome.te4.org/

Enjoy!

As promised here comes T-Engine4 and ToME4 beta3 ! This release improves many aspects of the game, adds new content after Tol Falas, introduces a new unlockable class, the Sun Paladin. Note: the windows binaries are now compiled in debug mode, so people who experienced random crash please run it under gdb for me (see this link: http://doku.t-o-m-e.net/tome4:running_tome_with_gdb) Note2: When you'll have unlocked sun paladins you'll probably notice they do not start in a "logical" location, that's normal I'll implement it later but I wanted people to try them. OSX binaries will come hopefully tomorrow and this time around we fixed them ;) Changes in no particular order:

• many fixes
• when attacking the assassins in the special encounter they get hostile
• some more info in the savefile description for ToME
• tells the player when he spotted an hostile while running/resting what it is and if it is offscreen
• Escape works in quantity prompts
• 4 difficulty settings: Easy/Normal/Nightmare/Insane
• toned down the starting traps damage
• Forest level generator
• Level generator now ensures connectivity from entrance to exit and to level guardian usnig A*
• Trollshaws switch to "Forest" generator, using fBm noise
• add Cavern level generator, also based simplex noise and some floodfill
• Keybind screen scrolls correctly on 800x600
• many typo fixes
• player profiles, replacing some settings, achievements wont transfer but unlocks will
• BSP generic class
• Town map generator
• better particle engine; particles can follow an actor
• many new spell effects
• scroll of shielding
• fix phase door & teleport to not be stopped by LOS
• fixed savefiles for OSX
• fireflash effect
• extended quest line after tol falas, moria is now available
• most talents now warn the player when self-targetting
• cannot die in the ambush of tol falas
• killing ukruk is now supported in tol falas ambush
• all sustained talents deactivate if the ressource they depend on reaches 0
• changed all speed mods to be a percent and compute them right (+100% means twice as fast not infinitely faster)
• reduced shadowstrike damage
• all crits are now 150% instead of 200%
• stun/freeze/slow/pinned/confusion/blind durations reduced based on rank and physical/mental/spell resistance
• Freeze cooldown increased to 5
• "hit warning" displays the direction of incomming ranged attacks
• nasty surprise for the Master
• monster can now have escorts
• 2 new unique random boss
• Monsters that can open door can now .. open doors :)
• Anacondas dont stun, they constrict
• New quest in the far east for access to the Gates of Morning
• Added Gates of Morning (copy of bree for now, sorry!)
• New zone: Ardhungol, lair of spiders
• Sun Paladin class available

Have fun!

Beta 3 is coming in a few hours, and to make you wait here are some of the new spell effects you'll find inside! Here we can see fireflash, manathrust beaming, lightning and some more:

And there a demonstration of the hit direction warning and persistent spell effects:

Coming to you next beta: an improved particle engine to display spell effects, like this chain lightning spell: Yes this is made with the same particle engine (scripted in lua obviously) that handles explosions. I also added spinning shields around the player/npc too but a screenshot does not do them justice, you'll have to see them live. (Or, how does one capture a video of an opengl app on linux ?)

As promised, here comes T-Engine4 & ToME4 beta 2! This releases fixes many little bugs, and some major ones, re-balances some things here and there, improves the interface and CPU usage. It also come with a very dirty example module which is much much smaller than ToME that people can use as a base for their own modules. The current endgame moved a bit with the addition of Moria but not much further, in the next few betas I will implement a good part of the missing zones for levels 20-50. And this time, OSX binaries are available! List of changes in no particular order:

• try to stop passage of time after death
• menu for sound & music disabling
• allow window to dynamic resize
• do not destroy objects when not able to equip them
• A* algorithm (engine.Astar)
• game pauses when it looses focus, no CPU used when paused
• modules can return true from their tick() to pause the ticking until the next SDL event, reducing CPU usage drastically
• mouse-right-click will now make the player either:
  • run to the clicked spot if a path can be found
  • run in the direct if no path is found
  • move one turn in the direction if hostiles are present or if the clicked spot is adjacent
• MiniMap ! default keybind: TAB
• move lua lane keeper to a lua file, to avoid 64bits problems
• all coroutine.resume calls no do good stacktrace
• Mac OSX support
• PlayerDisplay does not run every frame, better displaying performance
• fixed crash with no music found
• template example module
• bows & slings improve firing range
• fixed Berserk (wont loose attack)
• stats on levelup are bound without considering items
• keybinds used in Birther
• traps are correctly detected by the Sense spell
• new world map special encounter
• arcane combat is now sustained
• black mamba & anacondas are rarer and higher level
• adjust stats&life by rank
• Shadowblades now have "Shadow magic"
• nobody regens mana but mages
• id from inventory screen now updates correctly
• do not waste cooldown & resources when canceling archery
• talents don't activate with the mouse by just dragging over, requires a mouse up
• identify now works on equipment too
• black bear is greyer
• fixed all npcs to use auto_req for their stuff
• added moria and a reason to go there, the end is quite loose at this point
• Ukruk now has Rush
• Stone Wall actually works now
• added a_lomos_del_dragon_blanco music
• fixed chain lightning
• new display modes: ascii with color background
• slings are made of leather
• gradient lightning
• all players now start with 2 potions of cure poison
• reduced the size of the last level of elven ruins

Have fun!

Ok .. pun intended! Anyway, coming next version: gradient lightning. Again this is a per-module setting, yay T-Engine !

Today is a good day! A new feature will join ToME4 next release, the minimap! It should be self evident what it does. There are three modes:

• no display
• small display in the corner
• big display over the map

Now I'll return to implementing the Moria, Golbug and the Orb of Many Ways!