ToME vs ToME

[giygas]

Okay, what happened? I loved old school Troubles of Middle Earth. It had a lot of grinding and the classes were imbalanced, but for me had the right level of complexity, and a skill system which I liked a bit more than the Crawl skill system. I still have an old version on my computer, but I decided to see if there is a newer version. The main site had been seemingly wiped of files, but I found Tales of Maj Eyal, which seemed to be the same thing because of various forum posts and info on their new website, just with the name changed.

Oh, was I so, so wrong.

It's horrible, the graphics are annoying, and there is no console mode that I can find. The skill system is completely fucked up, and removes the challenge that made old school ToME fun. Most of the races have been removed, and those that remain have little diversity, and since everything that was weak originally (yeeks) has been buffed there is even less diversity. The classes are pretty bleah, as all the interesting ones have been removed.

So now I have some questions, because I don't understand how a game this bad could just go down the shitter, and because the internet has little information regarding this transition.

Why were all the Lord of the Rings references removed?
Why is there no console mode?
Why were so many races removed (if it was to remove LOTR references, then why not just rename them)?
Where can I get any of the files for the last version of the real ToME?
WHY DID THIS WIN BEST ROGUELIKE OF THE YEAR TWICE???

Sorry for ranting, but I'm morbidly curious about how this came about.

[One-Eyed Jack]

I don't follow ToME 4 very carefully, but I think Tolkien was excised for legal reasons. Also, a lot of the races (as well as many of the classes are locked at the start and require you to unlock them in other playthroughs.

[giygas]

I don't follow ToME 4 very carefully, but I think Tolkien was excised for legal reasons. Also, a lot of the races (as well as many of the classes are locked at the start and require you to unlock them in other playthroughs.

I thought it could be a legal thing, but vanilla angband is still around, so I don't think that's it.

It's not a "lot of the races." It's three out of the nine races that are locked. There are 22 total classes, but all of the new magic and magic-fighting classes are stupid.

In the version I played there were 22 races, all of them very different from each other. And more classes then I can count.

[BlackSheep]

There's also a console mode, I believe. It may just be a console tileset, though.

[giygas]

After exploring the ToME4 website, it seems that the real ToME is still (sort of) under development if you are willing to compile it. (There are recent commits on gitorious, but mostly maintanence

[sardonica]

It was a legal thing. He got a cease-and-desist letter over the Pern influences in Pernband, but kept the Tolkien elements. After another 10 years he decided he didn't want another letter so he removed all of that stuff too.

I don't like the current version mainly because it's way too static. Most branches feel the same every time. That interacts horribly with permadeath. The engine is also disgustingly slow and bloated, though that isn't really a complaint about the game itself.

I also returned to ToME after many years away.

The current incarnation is tremendously bloated, I can't see where anything is on the screen (its all green/brown/black,) there's no ASCII options, combat has moved even more to the forefront and is extremely repetitive and occasionally luck-based, different character classes start in their own premade vaults.......

Damn shame really.

[cursednobleman]

I tried to like ToME, but whenever I saw a unique it would kick my teeth in. I felt really bad after not being able to reach the third dungeon level because of a blasted unique.

[zogre]

I saw the new ToME a while back, and tried it. Didn't like the tiles, found a way to turn on the ASCII tiles, which I liked better, so I played for a bit. Found that for me, the only way to survive the early uniques was a very strong defensive build, which eventually bores me, and when bored I tend to make poor decisions. I didn't like having to unlock character classes, either, so the game sits for now.