Beholder race/classes

[rexorcorum]

Thank you, Nagyhal!

I have received word from ajfluffy just a few days ago and most probably he won't have the time and means for addon work for at least a couple of months. So, I still stand with my decision/plea for forking of the addon and when he comes back, we'll sort the "what goes where" part . In the meantime I wouldn't want to miss playable "Beholders (tm)" for the current ToME versions.

Having said that, I'm eager to get my hands on one soon!

[Sradac]

Some kind of melee focused one. The tentacle talents were really cool but I almost always used my eyes as a priority (mage and everything).

Maybe a "nocturnal" beholder, much more aggressive and vicious than the mage eye. They stalk their pray, then strangle them and drain (insert whatever it is beholders sustain themselves with. Mana?)

Actually that could be really cool. An anti-magic stealthy rogue type beholder? Eatin mages and whipping people with barbed tentacles. Biting stuff too. Some om nom actions.

And by antimagic I dont necesariclly mean "anti" magic, but maybe more in lines with HousePets druid. They run on mana, but they also know how to drain and destroy mana since its their primary essence, they're probably pretty good at being in-tune with it and manipulating it.

[Nagyhal]

rexorcorum, that's fantastic news for all beholder fans!

Fantastic news which changes things considerably.

I may have to pester you slightly for ajfluffy's contact details or at least some further information on the likelihood of his return. If he's drastically hard up for example, then hell, a kinder deed than simply assuming control of the project may be to donate or to set up a small-scale crowd funding project. Not that I'd expect that kind of suggestion to go down easily, given how prideful people tend to be, it's just possible to see it as a little morally more decent. At least, we can dream of a better world in which it's not hard to bring crucial support to the people who deserve it.

I did have another idea for any content I would have to off-load, namely an Acolyte of the Eye, or a caster class for the more regular races that is bound to the services of the Beholders. In fact I've just looked in my fusty Roget's Thesaurus and come across the fantastic word to describe certain cult initiates of yore: "Epopt?". While founded upon more a more conventional ability set than the dedicated Beholder classes, the character would have the ability to grow eyestalks and tentacles, mimicking a few of the lesser abilities accessed by Beholders.

Anyway, that's all just a contingency plan.

In fact I might decide to usurp the Mage Eye class alone and not the entire Beholder project until we have more final confirmation of its creator's abandonment, which I hope will not be the case. I can work on building a nice evolutionary process for the beholder's growth stages, eyebeams that are more fun to use, a better, more challenging eyestalk fatigue system and a polished, bug-free presentation.

Sradac, as for your ideas I believe ajfluffy had in mind a psionic / antimagic combination beholder of some description, though how far evolved he has it in his mind by now I could not say. The idea would be to create a beholder whose focus on central eye powers give it a lot of Antimagic afffiity, while making use of many of the familiar psionic talent lines. I personally think stealth would work nicely for that class as a mindpower available only when the central eye is closed, in an "if I can't see you then you can't see me" sort of fashion.

Anyway, now, do sit tight for the update.

[Doctornull]

crowd funding project

I'd be surprised if you could get any significant money in return for the time it would take to set up such a thing.

[Nagyhal]

I'd be surprised if you could get any significant money in return for the time it would take to set up such a thing.

If that sort of sponsorship ever takes off to bolster small, creative projects, it'd be more a microfunding thing. Essentially, a little can mean a great deal more for some other people--you often don't know if the person you're speaking with online comes from a much poorer country. And sometimes just a single formerly-unwanted gadget is enough to really enable somebody.

Anyway, I did expect that that would be mistaken, but what I meant to say is that there are, conceivably, other options out there.

[Doctornull]

I'd be surprised if you could get any significant money in return for the time it would take to set up such a thing.

If that sort of sponsorship ever takes off to bolster small, creative projects, it'd be more a microfunding thing. Essentially, a little can mean a great deal more for some other people--you often don't know if the person you're speaking with online comes from a much poorer country. And sometimes just a single formerly-unwanted gadget is enough to really enable somebody.

Anyway, I did expect that that would be mistaken, but what I meant to say is that there are, conceivably, other options out there.

That's a good point, I was thinking in terms of first-world game development projects which can be rather high budget.

Microfunding would be a really neat way to get addon requests done.

[Nagyhal]

Sorry for the late update. After a lot of mucking around trying to systematize my workflow, I eventually made git for Windows actually implode on itself, so I've decided to compile the first Beholder update manually. Read below for the juice.

All I've done here is to clean up the previously existing content and make it playable for ToME 1.0.5. In the time it's taken me I've also engineered some pretty far-out functionality for putative new Beholder talents, but ultimately I'm not sure about going ahead given the unfortunate status of the creator.

Players, your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is try to take Beholders to the end of the game and see if my efforts to make them playable again have been in vain! Any game-breaking errors or imbalances you do discover shall be hot-fixed immediately, while myself, rexorcorum and ajfluffy shall be listening to take on board your ideas for improved gameplay. I also intend to join you on an epic, multi-eyed quest through Maj'Eyal if not to win, then to have my Beholder die as late in the game as possible.

temporary upload while I wait for the official go-ahead from DG

Beholder v0.5.9: Changelog:

Polish:
Fixed all typos.
Clarified a couple of tooltips here and there (mostly where they caused me confusion in trying to determine if they were working properly :3).

Bugs fixed in base ToME module:
Fixed Phase Door runes to respect actors' x_on_teleport attributes.
Fixed tooltip of base module OUT_OF_PHASE effect incorrectly stating that all timed effects increase in duration rather than that detrimental effects alone decrease in duration.
Used Hackem_Muche's glorious talent rewriting functionality to fix the armour training talent so that the "Use Talents" interface can be accessed by bodiless characters.

Bugs fixed in Beholder talent trees:
You really do get enormous while-phased bonuses from Extraterrestrial Origin now, it's quite lovely. Playtest and abuse, please!
Fix cardinal-direction targeting for central eye talents which was not working.

• (Do you like this feature? Is it worth keeping? Does it make you feel sufficienty "beholdery" while playing?

• Why does it exist in the first place--perhaps a throwback to beholder characters in an older roguelike?)

Fixed a bug in which Death Ray was not properly disintegrating enemies.
Fixed a seriously imbalancing bug (sorry, but it had to go!) in which Flame Laser was causing double damage to the primary target.
Fixed a mental bug in which Invoke Fear would actually open Pandora's Box, threatening the existential integrity of both the ToME client and the exterior universe at large.

New content:
Added a Beholder name generator for character creation.

[rexorcorum]

Let the lazursss zapppp !!!

[darkgod]

You already can upload you know

[Nagyhal]

v5.9.1 [link] Changelog:

• Added a counter to the Drained Eyestalks effect icon.

__________________________

Well, I suppose I'll be making regular updates to the Beholder classes after all. Because we so dearly hope the creator will be able to return, however, my own projects are going to take precedence for the meantime!

I'll make sure you guys have got a nice, polished classic-style Mage Eye up and running, and then post the first huge update sometime around March next year, in the hope that ajfluffy manages to surface before then :3.

Priorities include:

• Draining eyestalks becomes awesome rather than an annoyance—at the most extreme here, I'm talking eyestalks with a zero cooldown that take zero game time to fire, just as long as you fire them at a sufficient angle apart from one another, and then they'll only overload when you fire them all at once.
• Proper progression from a nymphal, helpless, adorable little floating oculopod up to the fully-fledged mid-sized beholder form that you currently start with.
• Choices at your growth stages between advancing your eyestalks, central eye, tentacles, mouth, or just your general beholder size, which will also give a preliminary glimpse of some of the other varieties of beholder.
• Make current eyebeam trees denser, with more options (and probably slightly less per-activation power.) There will still be effectively one eyebeam per talent tree.
• Beholders will travel more slowly as they grow, not more quickly, to compensate for increased instantaneity in their talent trees.

Coming soon in a preliminary release:

• Superbly swooshing lazerr sound effects, zappy lazerr graphics, just a lot more lazerr happening in general.
• Awesome, out-of-this-world starting zone deep with the Beholder Hive Space.

[loimprevisto]

::checks calendar::

March?!

Announcing all that awesome sauce then making us wait almost four months for it? You monster!

[kemott11]

I think the fire beam 3rd ability is bugged. It only applies burn to enemies hit by splash damage but not the main beam.

[Nagyhal]

Pants, I think you're right. Fix incoming.

[Nagyhal]

I made an amateurish mistake, sorry about that. I guess coding is like making a cup of tea - not only easy, but superficially risk free. Hence sometimes, when I've got higher concepts playing on my mind, I tend to put the kettle in the fridge and start to put the milk back where the kettle should be and... Well, here's the fix I promised:

v5.9.2 [link] changelog:

• Flame Laser now melts faces appropriately

[FlarePusher]

Just bought a shield rune to get my last 0.50 power to the next tier, tried to use drain magic and got this...



Ah shit, the training token from arcanum is an arcane plot item with tier 0, so that's where it shits up.