Due to popular demand, the game is now set to feature a single player campaign! :)
To that end, I've added in a dialog system to the game: characters can now talk during battle. Here's a video showing off the first battle of the campaign, complete with dialog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2V9jrBvbGY
"Ok. What the Hell? Why Not?"
Things are going pretty smoothly on the campaign thus far. The first level now has a complete tutorial showing you how to move, attack and end your turn, plus those bits of character development already shown in the video.
I've also added in a second scene that sets up the first quest and introduces you to the rest of the characters you'll be controlling at the outset of the game (the campaign is going to feature some dialog-only scenes to develop the characters and advance the plot).
I'll post another video in a day or two showing off the state of the campaign. In the meantime, feel free to comment! :)
Do you already have a story and setting in-mind?
The single-player campaign looks great thus far! I think TT would have been fine without it, but that campaign is what really made me resolve to get the game when I could.
Quote from: SmartyPants on July 09, 2012, 07:00:09 PM
Do you already have a story and setting in-mind?
The setting is an island in the Dundar archipelago; I have certain major aspects of the story in mind, but most are still nascent at this point.
Quote from: CraigStern on July 09, 2012, 10:50:04 PMThe setting is an island in the Dundar archipelago
Didn't Anya have a book on Dundar?
Indeed she did! Good memory. :)
Imperial Dundar, post-Imperial, or sometime else entirely?
Here is the current draft of the game's introduction--I'll let you work the situation out for yourself. :)
QuoteThe Dundar Archipelago: an enormous cluster of islands spread across thousands of square miles of ocean.
In the earliest times, each island was largely isolated, its inhabitants—if there were any—left to develop a unique culture untouched by its neighbors.
Eight hundred years ago, Ser Gilliam Dundar changed that. Making use of new sailing and navigation technologies, he led a massive army on a whirlwind conquest of the archipelago, absorbing island after island into a sprawling empire that would endure for centuries.
With no unifying culture to bind them, Emperor Dundar and his successors required a deft hand to keep tensions among the islands under control. But even a canny and watchful emperor cannot always staunch the ambitions of ruthless men...
So Dundar is isolated from major land masses (such as Cera Bella)?
Quote from: SmartyPants on July 10, 2012, 03:56:55 PMQuote from: CraigStern on July 09, 2012, 10:50:04 PMThe setting is an island in the Dundar archipelago
Didn't Anya have a book on Dundar?
Anya once said ""Now what should I pack?...Do you think I'll have any room for my
Histories of the Dundar Emperors?" "
It's analogous to island nations in the real world, in that the ocean largely limited contact with the mainland for many centuries, right up until the development of advanced, oceangoing ships.
Is the campaign mode going to be linear? Because that'd make me feel better for killing my sister, if there were no other way.
Is there going to be some measure of differentiation in the enemy units' abilities to make them less... deadly? Because I know you're a fan of semi-perma-death, so if the battles aren't made lopsided in some way (like the enemies having inferior speed, weaponry, armour, abilities, skills), the single-player campaign would be significantly harder to pull off without death on the team than any of your previous games. Of course, I wouldn't mind that -- pulling a lossless victory despite an even match using only superior tactics is challenging and fun -- but I'm just wondering if that's the route you'll take.
I'm excited about the single player campaign. :D
Regarding the need for unit differentiation, I disagree. Take a look at the Battle for Wesnoth. The units are balanced for all the players, yet it's possible to win if your strategy is good, in particular, if you locally can have a superior number of units.
Of course that using healing units will also drive you further into victory, but I often feel that healing makes things way too easy on our side. So, in my opinion, healing or even reviving units should be done after a battle is finished. That would be a nice thing to have mainly when we are attached to those units somehow, like if there is a background story or if we can train them. (Suggestion: perhaps in TT revived units will not be able to be trained after that battle.)
Quote from: bugfartboy on July 12, 2012, 01:47:33 AM
Is the campaign mode going to be linear? Because that'd make me feel better for killing my sister, if there were no other way.
It's actually not possible for either sister to kill the other during the training map; they're just sparring, and in any event, the battle ends before it's mathematically possible for either one to bring the other to 0 health.
About unit balance and permadeath: I'm considering a sort of middle way where units brought to 0 health are wounded for a few battles, but can be used again once they recover. This would provide a nice penalty for screwing up without making things too lopsided, or requiring that the enemies always have inferior units.
That said, the game does support unique units, so there will likely be at least a few battles where your units outclass the enemy's.
Quote from: CraigStern on July 12, 2012, 06:35:24 AMThat said, the game does support unique units, so there will likely be at least a few battles where your units outclass the enemy's.
Will that mean that the enemy will have their own unique units like stationary energy golems and phantom armors?
They'll have unique enemies, but no energy golems. I don't have the time or the budget to commission a bunch of unique character graphics just for the campaign mode, unfortunately.
The first proper, large-scale battle of the campaign is now in-game and working!
Battle at Dawbry pits you against a large group of bandits raiding a small woodland village. The bandits outnumber you, but are both inferior to your own troops and scattered at the start of the battle. This battle makes full use of the much bigger map sizes supported by Telepath Tactics, as it takes place on a 40 X 15 playable area.
Battle at Dawbry is probably a little too daunting for players to start off with, so I'll probably go back and sandwich in a smaller skirmish beforehand to let players practice using their six starting characters.
Quote from: CraigStern on July 12, 2012, 11:44:18 PM
40 X 15 playable area
So how big a map can the game support exactly? 40x15 already seems much larger than TRPG2-3 and TPA1-2.
The engine gives you unlimited space. In theory, you could create a map that 9,999,999 x 9,999,999. (Of course, that would be basically unplayable, both from a mechanical perspective and a system performance perspective.)
That sounds great, I mean the flexibility of map sizes. Not the fact that, in theory, we could build a maze like map of nearly 1014 squares and put there only 2 teams (perhaps even single units), one against the other. We would die of old age before finding the enemy! :P
Quote from: Ertxiem on July 13, 2012, 02:09:21 PMWe would die of old age before finding the enemy! :P
Well...if you turned on fog of war or didn't use the minimap, then yes. :)
All right! I've added in another short cut scene after the briefing to better introduce you to the characters and start building their relationships, followed immediately by a short, very easy battle where you can get the hang of using all six characters on your team.
The game then proceeds to Battle at Dawbry, which now features (1) some dialog at the start of the battle and (2) enemy reinforcements (not respawning like in TSoG--I mean actual reinforcements).
I'll try to record a video tomorrow showing the current state of the campaign.
Sounds great! I may end up buying TT after all. (Also, looks like a female protagonist! Hooray for gender equality!)
Do you plan to include any dialogue trees, or will dialogue be purely linear?
Dialog in the Telepath Tactics campaign mode is purely linear: I'm cutting out the exploration and choice-based stuff so I can get the game out in a reasonable amount of time. (It takes something like four times as long to write branching dialog as it does to write the linear kind; and then on top of that, you have to program the game to actually remember and react to the choices the player made, or else it just feels like an empty exercise.)
Ah well. I'm sure it'll still be interesting. :)
Kinda disappointed to see that only two characters of the initial party are psy-users once again, but I suppose I'll see how it works out.
This game supports armies of unlimited size--expect to see many more characters joining the force than you saw in previous Telepath games. ;)
...As in, one of every available class? That would be awesome. :D :D :D
When you say armies of unlimited size, do you mean the number of units from which you can select to participate in a battle, or the number of units you can select?
Previous games were hard-coded with an 8-character limit for your team, and a 10-character limit for the enemy. There exists no such limitation in Telepath Tactics. Theoretically, you could have armies of hundreds fighting each other (though that would make for some really long turns).
As a practical matter, players are limited to 24 units in multiplayer; in single player, the army gets as big as I decide to make it.
Quote from: CraigStern on July 12, 2012, 01:03:49 PMQuote from: SmartyPants on July 12, 2012, 12:29:46 PMQuote from: CraigStern on July 12, 2012, 06:35:24 AMThat said, the game does support unique units, so there will likely be at least a few battles where your units outclass the enemy's.
Will that mean that the enemy will have their own unique units like stationary energy golems and phantom armors?
They'll have unique enemies, but no energy golems. I don't have the time or the budget to commission a bunch of unique character graphics just for the campaign mode, unfortunately.
For some reason, I assumed that the phantom armor and energy golem character graphics were created before you decided to get rid of them.
Is it still possible to make unique characters like Shadowling Healers and Spriggat Healers using pre-existing character graphics?
Those are likely possibilities--most of the psy attacks will have animations separate from the character using them, so you should be able to mix and match any psy-capable class with different psy abilities. At least, that's the plan--the animations aren't all done yet, so I don't want to commit to anything until I've figured out the best way to get everything working.
Awesome. That means it is possible to face spirits that use cyro blast and shadowling/spriggats that use shields.
Are shadowlings and spriggats native to the Dundar Archipelago or did they emigrate from the Shadowlands?
I prefer not to answer that one just yet. ;)
Leveling-up now works in campaign mode! ;)
Save and Load are now working, meaning (among other things) that level-ups and other permanent character changes now get carried over between battles.
In the campaign, will there be multiple factions on one map?
For example, will there be ally units that the player doesn't control?
I haven't decided yet. I'm not sure if the campaign really calls for it, honestly, and I need to avoid feature creep if I'm going to get this game done in a reasonable amount of time. We'll see.
Support for custom, player-created campaigns is now fully functional in Telepath Tactics. ;)
After players make their own campaigns, what would be the best way for them to share them with others?
It'll probably be easiest to distribute campaigns via .zip files. Or are you asking if I'm going to be managing some kind of player-submitted campaign repository?
I wondering if you were planning on having players exchange files among themselves, or if you were planning on storing player-sibmitted campaigns and multiplayer maps on your website.
I definitely want there to be an online repository of maps and campaigns, but I haven't decided specifically how I'm going to handle it yet.
You could attempt to draw more attention to the forums and have a thread specifically for custom campaigns? Or perhaps a subsection under the Telepath Tactics section of the forums?
I could do it on the forums, but I'm thinking it might be easier to manage if they were stored in some sort of searchable database where people could rate maps and search by name, size, etc. The question is, will I have the budget / time / ability to make a database like this? If I can find a dedicated third party that wants to run a site (a la Planet Elder Scrolls (http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.List)), that would be ideal.
A temporary way of doing it is using Rate That Topic (http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=256732.0), a mod to the forums.
Interesting; that's one possible approach. I'll keep that mind. ;)
So, I started doing a TRPG2 custom campaign in Telepath Tactics, just for fun. It was surprisingly easy to recreate the attacks, characters, and one of the battles from that game. I might release that to you guys as kind of a fun thing to play around with, if there's demand for it. :)
And so Emma Strider led the company down from Fort Longbriar under the watchful eye of General Sophia.
They were accompanied by several soldiers Emma had never met before. There was Lakshmi Bana, a crossbowman with an easy laugh and skin the color of mahogany; she was an excellent shot.
There was also Bartleby Gutentag, an Engineer who spent most of his time reading obscure technical works and scrawling notes in the margins. He seemed friendly enough, but said little.
Still, Bartleby was a chatterbox compared to Astrid Shadowhand, Sophia's silent and stalwart guardian. Emma had heard stories about Astrid. She was an assassin, dispatched by the Magistrate to quietly eliminate threats to the Empire. Shadowhand wasn't her real name: it was a moniker she'd earned from a long career as a covert killer. No one knew her real last name.
Whether from training, habit, or simply from the deadening weight of the dozens of people she'd slain, Astrid was stone-faced and inscrutable at all times. Rumor had it that she had killed every man who'd ever loved her. It was just a rumor, but Emma still made it a habit to give Astrid a wide, wide berth.
The march to the outskirts of Ploutos lasted several days. Emma was acutely aware of the General observing her, taking her measure as a captain. That suited Emma just fine. She had always been ambitious, studious--driven. This was a better opportunity to prove herself than she could have ever asked for.
On the morning of the fourth day, they arrived.
Will there be bosses, like Cygnus, Tastidian, and Nelis, who can hide their stats from scanning?
If I were, you wouldn't want me spoiling it, would you? ;)
I've just released more juicy details about the characters, the setting and the story. Read up! (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1426761469/telepath-tactics/posts/358685) ;)
The Dundar Empire has Senators, Magistrates, and many conquered people. Does Dundar Empire having any basis on the Roman Republic/Empire?
Is the Vibra Mining Company mentioned in the kickstater the same company mentioned in TSoG?
Will any characters from previous games appear Telepath Tactics? (Maybe the Nameless One?)
Does the time period of your new campaign coincide with any early games of the series?
Quote from: SmartyPants on November 29, 2012, 05:52:19 PMThe Dundar Empire has Senators, Magistrates, and many conquered people. Does Dundar Empire having any basis on the Roman Republic/Empire?
Is the Vibra Mining Company mentioned in the kickstater the same company mentioned in TSoG?
Yes and yes.
Quote from: SmartyPants on November 29, 2012, 05:52:19 PM
Will any characters from previous games appear Telepath Tactics? (Maybe the Nameless One?)
Does the time period of your new campaign coincide with any early games of the series?
I'm not prepared to answer these just yet. ;)
Given that the pantheon of gods played a large part in the lives of Romans... as a follow up to what SmartyPants said, is the single-player campaign going to have any themes pertaining to religion?
Or is this not one of the games you've chosen to use as a medium for a broad statement on the flaws of various forms of dictatorships? [That seems to be the theme thus far, but I would guess your broader statements just run in favor of personal rights and social equality?]
I would understand just fine if you wanted to leave that matter until the game comes out.
Hopefully, you'll be able to figure it out when you play. I will say that religion isn't the main focus this time around.
Quote from: Duckling on November 29, 2012, 09:38:28 PMOr is this not one of the games you've chosen to use as a medium for a broad statement on the flaws of various forms of dictatorships?
Based on Craig's disdain for Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission) and the kickstater summary about the Vibra Mining Company buying favors from the magistrate, my first guess at a theme is the use of big money in politics.
Quote from: CraigStern on March 14, 2012, 09:25:31 AMI actually decided that I would pull Phantom Armor from Telepath Tactics--it doesn't fill a useful gameplay niche, so I'm going to focus on the other classes instead. As for what it is...well, there's a decent chance that it will appear in a future, single player game using the Telepath Tactics engine, so we can discuss that if and when that happens. :)
Now that you are creating a campaign, does that mean there a decent chance that will get to see the Phantom Armor?
If we fundraise well, it could be part of a stretch goal, but it wouldn't fit in the budget otherwise.
Problems with the demo update:
*There are now two Astrid Shadowhands
*When Shadowhand leaps on a tree, she fuses with it.
Ah, I'll fix the two Shadowhands issue. Thanks!
Quote from: SmartyPants on December 16, 2012, 06:43:07 PM*When Shadowhand leaps on a tree, she fuses with it.
Er, is this something new? Or are you just referring to the fact that the game displays her at the same height regardless of whether she is on top of an object?
It is nothing new. I just decided to mention it when I have a picture to show what I was talking about.
I think bracketed actions should be changed, honestly. Even if you're planning to incorporate sprite work in their place later on, the demo is THE first thing the potential Kickstarter investor will base their opinions on, so the placeholder needs to be adequate enough for them to not be disturbed by.
For example, in the first battle, instead of:
[Grant, the platoon's cryokineticist, leans into the room.]
Have Grant's character spawn on the map.
Instead of:
[She touches her fingers to her forehead, eyes closed in concentration. After a moment, she speaks.]
...no. We will retake the weapons depot ourselves.
[She smiles.] Let us see what stuff you are made of, Emma Strider!
Have the box say:
Hm... No. We will retake the weapons depot ourselves.
(Next box)
Heh. Let's see what stuff you're made of, Emma Strider!
The "Hm..." is all you need for contemplation, and the "Heh.", for a smile.
Second qualm: can you program the map such that when the mouse pointer goes to the edge, the map moves with it?
Third qualm: you need to link the current manual to the Kickstarter page, placed right before the demo!
Welcome to the forums, Tactless. Read the rules, play the games and enjoy your stay.
Edit: I like the bracketed actions. It gives the feeling of a theatrical script (and the extra info it gives, helps me being involved on what's going on).
Regarding the division of the text in more boxes may give a different rhythm to the plot. It can be good at the cost of more clicks.
Scrolling when placing the mouse at the edge of the maps is a good idea.
Thanks for the suggestions, Tactless; I'll link the manual right now!
I intend to add in edge-of-screen panning as an option in a future build; personally, I kind of hate it, but obviously YMMV. ;)
Bracketed descriptions aren't placeholders--they're actually something I've deliberately used in previous games. I'm rather fond of them, as they let me add more writerly detail to scenes than you normally see in RPGs.
I too like the bracketed actions. It makes the game seem more like a literary work and game, instead of a game with some storytelling. The bracket actions also shows characters' emotions and personalities that can't be shown with just dialogue.
Also, it would be nice if you would level up some characters for the second demo battle. The characters from the weapon depot battle aren't nearly as useful as newly introduced characters who start at a much higher level.
The Kickstarter updates are slowing down. Maybe you could have an update that further describes more of the steampunk and fantasy elements to those unfamiliar with Telepath RPG series. Something like a quick discription of shadowlings, spriggats, golems, lizardmen, and/or spirits.
Does the inclusion of a dialog trees having bearing on what can happen in the campaign? (i.e. can choices determine what teammates one gets or battles one fights?)
Quote from: SmartyPants on January 07, 2013, 09:01:32 PM
Does the inclusion of a dialog trees having bearing on what can happen in the campaign? (i.e. can choices determine what teammates one gets or battles one fights?)
The engine supports that; whether or not I'll be taking advantage of it remains to be seen. ;)
Quote from: CraigStern on January 07, 2013, 10:30:34 PM
The engine supports that; whether or not I'll be taking advantage of it remains to be seen. ;)
Does this mean that the creators of custom campaigns will be able to take advantage of branching dialogue?
Ja, that's what that means.
Yes, branching dialog is supported. And because you can add scripts to dialog with things like character recruitment, character death, and progression to various other scenes, you can effectively fork the game in a ton different ways via branching dialog. (Give the player a choice of two or more characters to recruit; a choice of multiple routes to take, each with its own associated battles; and so on.)
For better storytelling in cutscenes, would it be possible to be able to pick between different movement speeds? For example: Having a character run into a room will allow character to show more urgency compared to another character moving at normal walking speed.
Why do people call the mercenary peddler "Mad Aziz"?
He has a reputation as a fearless fighter, so much so that he is rumored to be a bit mad.
What is the "Atropolis" that Alvin mentioned?
I wouldn't worry too much about the lore in the Kovit campaign right now; I'm going to be starting from scratch with a new campaign soon, and I can't guarantee that all of the stuff I mentioned before will make it over.