Werekracken's Beholder Fork

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Werekracken
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Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#1 Post by Werekracken »

This addon is a fork of the Beholder (Eye Fix) (https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/beholder-efix), which was a fork of Beholder (Continuation) (https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/beholder-cont), which was a fork of Beholder race/classes (https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/beholder-raceclasses). It's been over a year since Beholder (Eye Fix) was updated last and it's been broken for a while, so here is the third fork.

Adds Beholders as a playable race and the Mage Eye as a Beholder only class.

Nekarcos's Quality of Life 07: Visible Size Categories addon is recommended in conjunction with beholders because it's fun to see their size change as they grow.

https://github.com/Werekracken/tome-wkbeholder

---
Beholder race

Beholders resemble floating orbs of flesh with large mouths, a single central eye, and lots of smaller eyestalks on top with deadly magical powers. Instead of gaining category points as they level, they must absorb energy from arcane items to grow. They cannot wear most equipment, but have lots of tentacles and eyes.

-2 Strength, +2 Dexterity, +0 Constitution, +3 Magic, +4 Willpower, +2 Cunning
+10% Lightning, Fire, and Cold resist
-20% movement speed

Race trees

- race/beholder: Basic abilities common to all Beholders.
- technique/tentacle-combat: Strike nearby foes with your tentacles.

---
Mage Eye class

Mage eyes focus on harnessing the powers of their eyestalks.

+6 Magic, +3 Willpower

Generic trees

- spell/aegis
- spell/divination
- spell/conveyance
- cunning/survival (locked)
- technique/tentacle-combat: Strike nearby foes with your tentacles

Class trees

- spell/phantasm (locked)
- spell/meta
- spell/fire-eye: Flame eye abilities
- spell/frost-eye: Frost eye abilities
- spell/lightning-eye: Lightning eye abilities
- spell/central-eye: Central eye anti-magic abilities
- spell/tri-beam (locked): Refocus your central eye's energies. You must reach the 3rd beholder growth stage to be able to learn this talent tree.
- spell/death-eye (locked): Death eye abilities. You must reach the 5th beholder growth stage to be able to learn this talent tree.

---
Changelog
- v1.0.0 Took out some logic around redefining some AI rules for talent usage because it was breaking this from loading and breaking other add ons as well. Made Temporal Gaze thralls so that you can't switch and control them because that was causing errors too.
- v1.0.1 Fixed an issue that caused bump attacks to error in conjunction with other addons.
- v1.0.2 Fix Channel Mastery to correctly randomly use known masteries. Add sounds for Frost Laser and Lightning Laser.
- v1.0.3 Make Beholder playable in Embers of Rage.
- v1.0.4 Make all classes (except wilders) available to the Beholder race. Make beholders levitate by default instead of at stage 5 growth. Changed them from starting with 10 infravision to getting +2 infravision for each growth stage.
- v1.7.3 Bumping version number to fix the fact that tome version and addon version got switched up.
- v1.7.4 Change Temporal Gaze to not kill the target when it's over and to not follow you around. Reduce cooldown and duration of Temporal Gaze. Fix talent cooldown reduction while beholder addon is active (like with Windtouched Speed).
- v1.7.5 Make the Beholder cosmetic size changes into actual size changes as well. Add handling of Nekarcos's Quality of Life 07: Visible Size Categories addon. Fix instant graphic update on size changes.
- v1.7.6 Update all beholder character models with new art from Rexocorum! Increase the amount of points it takes to grow for stages 3/4/5 and update the Beholder race quest information in the quest log. Take out display size changing with growth because Nekarcos's Quality of Life 07: Visible Size Categories addon does a much better job of that. Add display of equipment for the Beholder and it's cloaked human model (but not at the character creation menu because of reasons.) Fix issue where growing while Cloaked made your character tile disappear. Take out chance for unique gems and rings on birth. Add quiver slot back in because some classes need it.
- v1.7.7 Fix starting rings. Improve quest information about growth. Fix alchemist golem tile.
- v1.7.8 Add a ring slot to replace the one lost by the quiver.
- v1.7.9 Re-fix beholder tile update on growth. When you change faction via your Cloak ability, the faction of your summons change with it. Take out T_ARMOUR_TRAINING = 2 from Beholder race definition, that should be class based.
- v1.7.10 Normalize talent levels (.0 or .3).
- v1.7.11 Fix Absorb Magic so you can only drain items whose material level is equal or higher than your growth stage (it wasn't being applied to unique and rare items).
- v1.7.12 Fix the Draining Gaze map effect so you can see the area of effect of your gaze.
- v1.7.13 Take the innate Use Tentacles off of non-Mage Eye Beholders and give them Tentacle Combat generic tree unlocked at 1.0 mastery (to help make up for not being able to wear most gear), and make Channel Mastery useful for classes other than Mage Eye. Fix error when trying to unlearn Tentacle Mastery. Add some base game spell talent trees to Mage Eye to keep up with the times (more options). Fix log lines for Manadrain Gaze effect damage. Add class icons from Rexocorum for Mage Eye.
- v1.7.14 Fix for compatibility with Zizzo's Passive Cooldowns.
- v1.7.15 Make Absorb Magic and Beholder's Cloak of Deception not unlearnable so that if auto-assign at birth is disabled new chars will still get them.
- v1.7.16 Fix faction when playing Recaiden's Demons campaign. Remove cooldown on Absorb Magic.
Last edited by Werekracken on Mon Jul 19, 2021 5:05 pm, edited 16 times in total.

rexorcorum
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#2 Post by rexorcorum »

Damn, I have forgotten how much fun was playing Beholder! So, thank you for bringing it back. :)

Couple of issues to look into:
  • For some strange reason the addon keeps reverting to it's initial release version (1.0.0) while the auto-update is on. It's the first time something like this happens with an addon :). Thus, all stuff listed will be for that version
  • It appears there was central eye visual cone after all, but that was what bugged in the first place with Nagy's fork and was removed in the later one. Maybe you can look at the ground effects for normal implementation of such things? (there is the paradox ground gfx that is rarely used and will look good for the gaze maybe)
  • I keep Temporal Thrall-instakilling rares and a Bringer of doom (all those in the ID, if that matters), so I feel something is off with the ability, but will test more when I have time
  • Again in ID and with version 1.0.0 on Nightmare I managed to fully grow before reaching level 10, which feels kinda underwhelming. Might wanna look into this as well or add some more growth stages perhaps?
And I will look if I keep the ajfluffy's conversation from long ago for the plans for melee, antimagic and psionic eye, if you are interested in those ;).
~ [ RexOrcorum, a.k.a "rexo": Official Visual Magus, Addon Beautifier, Achiever, Knight of the 561 Trees, Dark Interfacer ] ~
darkgod wrote:~ [ DarkGod whips rexorcorum with Suslik (& many others as well) ] ~

Werekracken
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#3 Post by Werekracken »

I'm glad people are using the addon! You went through all the work of making the art, it was a shame that it was not being used.
rexorcorum wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:47 am For some strange reason the addon keeps reverting to it's initial release version (1.0.0) while the auto-update is on. It's the first time something like this happens with an addon :). Thus, all stuff listed will be for that version
Sorry! I think on the first version I pushed I had the addon version and the game version mixed up. I fixed that by pushing addon version 1.7.3 and will be incrementing the version from this point. That should fix the auto-update.
rexorcorum wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:47 am [*]It appears there was central eye visual cone after all, but that was what bugged in the first place with Nagy's fork and was removed in the later one. Maybe you can look at the ground effects for normal implementation of such things? (there is the paradox ground gfx that is rarely used and will look good for the gaze maybe)
I started looking at that yesterday. Thanks for the tip. I will look through earlier versions of Beholder too.
rexorcorum wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:47 am [*]I keep Temporal Thrall-instakilling rares and a Bringer of doom (all those in the ID, if that matters), so I feel something is off with the ability, but will test more when I have time
* takes a note *
rexorcorum wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:47 am [*]Again in ID and with version 1.0.0 on Nightmare I managed to fully grow before reaching level 10, which feels kinda underwhelming. Might wanna look into this as well or add some more growth stages perhaps?[/list]
* takes a note *
rexorcorum wrote: Tue May 11, 2021 7:47 am And I will look if I keep the ajfluffy's conversation from long ago for the plans for melee, antimagic and psionic eye, if you are interested in those ;).
That would be great, thank you.

Munie
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#4 Post by Munie »

Hi. Thanks for keeping this addon alive, it's one of my favourite. I'm using this addon (link below) for visible size categories, can't really imagine playing without it after so many years. It still works just fine despite numerous updates for the game in general, but it seems to mess with the Beholder's model at its final fifth stage - its size reverts to the size of the third stage at certain points, like changing floors, and back to its - gargantuan, I suppose - size after using certain abilities, eye-closing ones if I'm not mistaken. I suppose it has something to do with a conflict between how two addons handle changing the size categories. I had the same issue with previous forks too. Do you think there's a way to fix it?

https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/neka_qol07

Werekracken
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#5 Post by Werekracken »

Munie wrote: Thu May 13, 2021 3:54 pm Hi. Thanks for keeping this addon alive, it's one of my favourite. I'm using this addon (link below) for visible size categories, can't really imagine playing without it after so many years. It still works just fine despite numerous updates for the game in general, but it seems to mess with the Beholder's model at its final fifth stage - its size reverts to the size of the third stage at certain points, like changing floors, and back to its - gargantuan, I suppose - size after using certain abilities, eye-closing ones if I'm not mistaken. I suppose it has something to do with a conflict between how two addons handle changing the size categories. I had the same issue with previous forks too. Do you think there's a way to fix it?

https://te4.org/games/addons/tome/neka_qol07
Done! v1.7.5

Munie
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#6 Post by Munie »

Well, that was fast! Sweet, thanks. Ended up being save-compatible too.

If you're looking for ideas of what to do with the Absorb Magic skill to make it more rewarding, maybe it could just give further on spellpower boost after the final growth stage. It could be balanced by allowing only artefacts or tier five items, let's say, with diminishing results, like the way the game handles saves stacking with them being only partially effective further on. Alternatively, if you're into doing something more intricate, another Nekarcos addon could serve as an inspiration. In his odyssey addon, there's a system that allows consuming certain artefacts for special bonuses, like new abilities and buffs to stats. You can check this post for the list of things referring to artefacts in the addon: viewtopic.php?p=230046#p230046 Maybe something like that could be a good idea for the Beholder addon too, for arcane artefacts and some other things from the horror-themed group of items. For instance, there's that particular tentacle mindstar that could fit well with this idea, like consuming it offering bonuses to the tentacle-combat. Or that maw-like belt that could grant special melee attacks or even the Slow Death tree that fits well with beholders. Would require quite some coding work though, I imagine. But I'll leave this idea here just in case.

Also, if you're looking for ideas for prodigy evolutions, the D&D beholder types could be a great source of inspiration. Let's say, there's this Bloodkiss beholder that would fit well for a game-changing prodigy idea. Maybe something like loosing its elemental eyestalks and tri-beam with refunding invested points, but getting a significant boost to tentacle combat and/or another tree in it, vampiric abilities tree and something to boost its survival. It would be a game changer mechanics-wise turning the beholder into a melee-type. I used the spell merchant addon to give my beholder the tentacle tree from the demented group and double the tentacles makes its melee attacks overpowered, but quite fun. I think tentacles from the beholder trigger demented tentacles and it's absolutely devastating to everyone you attack in melee. It just works!

There's also the Death Tyrant type of beholder that could be themed around undeath; there's the combat section for every beholder type on forgottenrealms to look for ideas for ability trees. But, ideally, it would require a sprite for the skeleton beholder head coming with the evolution prodigy, I guess. But still, could be worth considering as an idea. And there's the Hive Mother beholder type that could be centred around summoning different beholderkin. Though, again, it would require some sprites for them. I think Recaiden's Dreadmaster prodigy is a great example of such summoning-themed evolution.

rexorcorum
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#7 Post by rexorcorum »

I'd imagine sprites won't be much of a problem ;) (Everything for my resurfaced long lost baby! :mrgreen: ). Ajfluffy and me were having some vague ideas for melee and psionic classes back in the days of yore (8 years ago, really!? o_O), which I have given to Werekracken, but ultimately the fork is theirs, so I prefer to stay on the aesthetic side of things. :)
~ [ RexOrcorum, a.k.a "rexo": Official Visual Magus, Addon Beautifier, Achiever, Knight of the 561 Trees, Dark Interfacer ] ~
darkgod wrote:~ [ DarkGod whips rexorcorum with Suslik (& many others as well) ] ~

Werekracken
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#8 Post by Werekracken »

Thanks for the feedback Munie. I have added your ideas to my growing list of bugs and ideas for Beholders that I may or may not implement but at least I write it all down. :mrgreen:

Teaser: I'm currently working on updating the character models with new art from the legendary Rexocorum (they look very nice), tweaking the amount of energy needed to grow (increasing it), and getting equipment (mainhand, offhand, head) to show correctly on both the Beholder and the cloaked human models. Fingers crossed on getting equipment to show correctly, it's a pain.

Update/Edit: v1.7.6 is out.

Zizzo
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#9 Post by Zizzo »

Took this for a spin; looks awesome! One small problem to report: one of our common users has reported an incompatibility between this addon and Passive Cooldowns. Specifically, you're replacing the Minimalist:displayBuffs() method, which is where Passive Cooldowns does most of its work, so no passive cooldown trackers are drawn with this addon enabled.

Fortunately, I think we can make these addons work together. I've just pushed out a compatibility release of Passive Cooldowns that splits out its work into a separate method that your method can call. All you should need to do in your addon is add the following lines at the end of your Minimalist:displayBuffs() method:

Code: Select all

	if self.drawPassiveCooldownTrackers then
		self:drawPassiveCooldownTrackers(scale, bx, by)
	end
I've tested it with a modified copy of your addon, and it successfully brings back the passive cooldown trackers.
"Blessed are the yeeks, for they shall inherit Arda..."

Werekracken
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#10 Post by Werekracken »

Done. v1.7.14 of wkbeholder has the Passive Cooldowns compatibility fix.
Thanks Zizzo! You couldn't have made that easier on me; amazing. You do great work.

Darkgobbo
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#11 Post by Darkgobbo »

I love the beholders and am sad we only ever got the mage eye version.
I so wanted a "tentacle tyrant" that was teased in the previous forum threads and the Psychic beholder is a cool idea that was thrown around as well

Also Rexorcorum's art for these has always been top notch, I tried to look for the new designs that looked almost like Aboleths from D&D but could not find them.

rexorcorum
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#12 Post by rexorcorum »

Darkgobbo wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:32 pm Also Rexorcorum's art for these has always been top notch, I tried to look for the new designs that looked almost like Aboleths from D&D but could not find them.
You are probably looking for this :mrgreen:
And the Beholders' history has been a long and complicated one, so yeah ...
~ [ RexOrcorum, a.k.a "rexo": Official Visual Magus, Addon Beautifier, Achiever, Knight of the 561 Trees, Dark Interfacer ] ~
darkgod wrote:~ [ DarkGod whips rexorcorum with Suslik (& many others as well) ] ~

Darkgobbo
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#13 Post by Darkgobbo »

rexorcorum wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:57 pm
Darkgobbo wrote: Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:32 pm Also Rexorcorum's art for these has always been top notch, I tried to look for the new designs that looked almost like Aboleths from D&D but could not find them.
You are probably looking for this :mrgreen:
And the Beholders' history has been a long and complicated one, so yeah ...
YES! I love the looks of these beholders and i think they were very well done in the idea of removing the dnd essence of the beholder but keeping the weird/alien multi eye monsters that they are

thanksfortheaddons
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#14 Post by thanksfortheaddons »

A very fun caster class, love the theme.

I'm missing out on a big chunk of the goodness though (advanced trees, growth boni?), because I can't for the life of me figure out how to drain items to grow my beholder. Regularly checked the questlog after everything I tried and never got any growth points in any of my runs.

Just so I don't look stupid and lazy, here's a list of things I tried:
- checked inventory for a special item akin to Transmogrification Chest, APE, etc. Used Transmog Chest to check for a unique interaction
- checked every single character tab and the Use Talent list for an 'absorb item' skill
- collected a bunch of 'powered by arcane forces' items and transmogrified them as usual
- collected a bunch of 'powered by arcane forces' items and equipped them / dragged them through all slots / checked context menu / dropped them on the ground and checked right click menu above them / dropped them on the ground and tried to use Direct Gaze to use Draining Gaze on them
- Did all the above again with arcane randarts and the few 'proper' (=yellow) artefacts I found across runs.
- Inspired by the "Magic Stores and Libraries" comment when trying to use your cat point, I waltzed into Last Hope to check for store interactions and got immediately killed :p Fair enough, being an eldritch horror and all I should have really expected that. (Is there an equivalent to the undead cloak for beholders or are towns always hostile?)

Next run: YASD. Didn't pay attention and drowned on the way to the Sher'Tul ruins. Turns out Levitation doesn't seem to prevent drowning. Intended? (probably because there is no way of discerning being underwater and hovering over water?)
Next incarnation got killed from offscreen by an order of magnitude in a high-level dungeon trying to find an early tier 5 item (checking whether there is a tier requirement to make items eligible for absorption, because that's the only thing left I could think of)
Next run: around level 20, got 1-turn-overkilled through full health + buffs + shields by an adventurer party, again looking for high tier items. Not having any advanced trees probably hurt, but honestly I might just suck, despite loving the class :(

So.... I give up. What is the in-hindsight-probably-incredibly-obvious way of feeding on arcane items?


Also, slightly off-topic, but if anyone feels patient: how do you avoid getting 1-hit-killed from offscreen in v1.7.x? Remember being fairly comfortable with casters on NM/RL in v1.5. but routinely get destroyed nowadays.

My caster playstyle is usually focused on maintaining range and mobility (via blink/teleport) and keeping track of priority targets, all of which the Beholder naturally excels at. But even the usual trick of keeping track of the most dangerous uniques / randbosses via arcane eyes / telepathy / mini-map didn't really help against unexpected instant kills from offscreen. Help?
Last edited by thanksfortheaddons on Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Werekracken
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Re: Werekracken's Beholder Fork

#15 Post by Werekracken »

thanksfortheaddons wrote: Sun Jul 18, 2021 2:26 pm I can't for the life of me figure out how to drain items to grow my beholder
All beholders should get an innate talent called Absorb Magic. This should show up on the toolbar, but it is also in the talents list under Activatable talents.
tome-1.7.4-1626637994.png
tome-1.7.4-1626637994.png (64.87 KiB) Viewed 4039 times

It will consume Arcane powered items of any rarity (but you get more growth with higher rarity items). Once you have absorbed enough energy to grow, the minimum level of the arcane items you can consume goes up.
For example, you start at growth stage 1 and you can consume any talent level arcane items. But once you get to growth stage 2 you can no longer consume T1 arcane items.

If you are a beholder and don't have the Absorb Magic talent that would be very odd. If you are using the latest version of the addon and can confirm that you don't have the talent then maybe you can get me your te4_log.txt so we can try to figure out what went wrong?

(probably because there is no way of discerning being underwater and hovering over water?)
The addon currently uses an existing levitation flag built into the game. While I see the logic about levitation means that you should be able to levitate over the surface, I have zero desire to try to code that. How about we say that their levitation magic needs a solid surface to push against? :)

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