Character Classes

[maletruck]

This might be a little early, but one of the great things about the earlier TOME, was the the dozens of races and classes. While I'm psyched about the new improvements with T-engine 4, I sorta miss all those options.

Also, ToME 3-4 wasn't working for me, but now 4 is. I thought this might have something to do with Vista, but in any case thanks for making it work as of the latest update!

[Vanguard]

Well there are more classes than the menu initially offers you, but you need to unlock them.

[madmonk]

Also do not forget this is a beta...

Which means that new classes and races are being added all the time.

[greycat]

Really, these are alpha releases. Beta testing implies that the feature set is completely implemented and we're just finding the bugs. There are major functional changes between ToME 4's "beta" releases.

[shani]

Really, these are alpha releases. Beta testing implies that the feature set is completely implemented and we're just finding the bugs. There are major functional changes between ToME 4's "beta" releases.

One might argue the Classes / races / zones are new content , not features.
Which does not defy the meaning of Beta testing.

[darkgod]

That looses a bit of context with a game like ToME, even when the game will have all the needed content to win I'll keep adding more so by this definition it'll always be alpha

[Repton]

Come on, Darkgod, get with the jargon --- if you're adding content after the game is finished, it's DLC

[darkgod]

Dont tempt me !
Wanna pay ? If you have too much money I'll take it happily

[shani]

I don't have *that* much, but i'll gladly pay for good DLC

[darkgod]

In the far horizon I could if you insist
Or rather, make it more like donation-ware, that is the addon (ok dlc if you want :> ) could be opensource&free (because I like opensource&free!) but with no publicly available download areas. You would receive it as a "gift" when making a donation, but people that do not have much money can still enjoy them if it is given to them by other players.

BTW, I have some "DLC" in mind already:
- Orcs: The Rise to Power: you can play an orc from an extinct Pride. You want revenge against the other prides and the sunwall for destroying everything you knew, and while you are at it, become the master of all the Prides.
- Ents: The March of the Entwifes: play as an Ent, probably with special classes, and look for the entwifes to save your race. You know what ? the far east is full of green pastures that the entwifes could have loved!
- Nagas: Gardians of the Tide: You serve Maglor and his task to protect the Silmaril (reference to the Caverns of Ossë idea). Again some specific classes. Begins with some underwater zones to clear threats then go inland.

Basically my idea here is to offer alternate quests/backstory and explore some new races/classes alongside.
What do you think ?

PS: this wont be before we are out of beta obviously, I want one main story before adding more

[getter77]

Sounds like a solid'ish plan for DLC there darkgod----though you'd have to get all the logistics worked out as there are folk like me that only use credit cards online for purchases and the like instead of messing with Paypal/Debit nonsense.

Might I suggest cycling? In that, let's say, you only have a few DLC entities available at any given time. Upon those doing their time in turn of creation, with whatever kind of pace is managed, you then incorporate them oldest to newest into ToME4 free and proper with another fresh DLC pack to occupy the slot in turn. This way you prevent a bloated page of eventual DLC packs looking to overwhelm a newcomer while also adding great goodwill value to the ToME4 base with yet more new content, fixes, and enhancements.

[madmonk]

So that means you are going to have two classes of players... quite apart from other problems!

Those that can and do pay for the DLC, and those who don't. Which means you have split your install base in half and will now have a lot of extra testing to do for any release. You may not want to go there.

The other thing is that T4 may be released as GPL (or LGPL code) which means that people who pay for the DLC should also get the code as per the license. Is that what you want? Since it means that in reality the income stream from DLC would be minimal... because the code would get out and then who wants to pay for it?

[getter77]

^^ This is another reason I suggest as above, as then it mainly becomes an issue of time delay versus monetary delay. Keen on access to a DLC pack sooner rather than later? One could then shoot a few bucks along to do so. Patient? Just wait for an update with it via cycling that will also likely be, as it is the nature of such things, improved via feedback from early adopters. So long as other general updates don't stop on ToME4 proper alongside DLC doings---this could work.

The only other thing I could think of would be if it were possible to make each of these things into Modules, yet have completion of such Modules with their given cast of characters become the unlock mechanism/criteria in ToME4 proper...

Can a Module even communicate with ToME4 in this manner?

[darkgod]

Humm maybe I was no clear, I do not want to make it closed or anything madmonk
Yes TE4 is under the GPL andI intend to let it stay that way, anyway I dont see very well how a module could be close sourced, it's just a bunch of lua scripts after all, you could compile them to bytecode but it is less portable (which I must resolve though because savefiles have some bytecode in them :/ )

Anyway my point was that I do want them to be open and available, just with an incitive to click on that donate button, if I wanted to become rich with ToME I probably would not have made ToME ;>

BTW this is all shani's fault! :>

[atan59]

Why not make it rather a community-wide donation incentive, e.g. "the game is free, donations are encouraged to keep on working on it, and when x amount of (overall, total) donations is reached, y new content will be released" (for everybody, as a standard release)