Developer's Log

[CraigStern]

The game now prevents you from saving an army as totally empty when setting up a Local Match.

[CraigStern]

I have now finished documenting every area of modding currently supported by the game.

The manual now has complete instructions covering everything from dialog to custom tilesets to creating new character animations. There's 24 pages worth of documentation in there now; check it out! :)

[CraigStern]

I've been doing a lot of corresponding with artists over the past few days.

On the coding front, I'm thinking of ways to give folks more flexibility to create non-combat scenarios. To that end, I just added in a new condition called Kill-All Victory. It has only one parameter, which can be set to either true or false. (The game has this set to true by default.) If you set this to false, this will turn off the game's built-in behavior of granting victory to a player once it detects that the battlefield is absent of any of that player's enemies.

This could be used for a battle where the player has a few turns to prepare before the enemy arrives. (This could also be important to implementing a possible future exploration mode.)

[CraigStern]

I thought this would be hard to add, but guess what? I figured out how to make a really simple exploration mode work in Telepath Tactics with just 10 minutes of tinkering. It's really darn basic, but it gets the job done.

Just like Kill-All Victory, Exploration Mode is a condition with only one parameter: true or false. Here's how you turn it on:

Code Select Expand

<Condition>Exploration Mode,true</Condition>

When exploration mode is turned on, it automatically turns off the Kill-All Victory setting, turns off features like undo, rotate and end turn, makes it so none of your characters lose steps while moving, and gives everyone a move range of 10. (It's kinda like this, except without the limited move range and without ending your turn on you every three seconds.)

This is going to become a lot more robust once I add in player-triggered conversations and space-dependent dialog/script triggers--but for now, it's a start. :D

[CraigStern]

Telepath Tactics has a new dialog trigger in-game: OnTalk. This lets the player trigger conversations between characters voluntarily by moving characters adjacent to each other and selecting "Talk" from the Actions Bar. (Think support conversations from Fire Emblem.)

OnTalk has only two parameters: the names of two characters. (These are the characters that can initiate the conversation by being adjacent and hitting Talk.)


The installers have been updated.

[CraigStern]

I fixed the descriptions of Shove and Pull so they don't both use the word "back"; added a keyboard shortcut for Done (Shift + D).

[CraigStern]

I've just tested it out, and the new trigger OnReachingSpace is now fully functional. It takes at least two parameters: Y coordinate and X coordinate. If you only use those two, it triggers the associated conversation as soon as any character moves onto that space.

Optionally, you can use two more parameters: character name and team number. If you use any String for the third parameter, it will make it so only a character with the name you type there can trigger the conversation on that space. If you use any number for the fourth parameter, it will make it so only a character from that team number can trigger the conversation on that space. (To use the fourth parameter and not the third, just leave the third blank.)

Documentation has been added to the manual; the installers have been updated online.

[CraigStern]

Just fixed that annoying thing where it would flash the wrong image for a fraction of a second on the New Match screen; it now has a nice little loading animation that plays while it's fetching the correct image.

[CraigStern]

There are two new conditions: Defeat Scene and Victory Scene.

By dfault, when you lose a battle, the battle restarts. Defeat Scene changes that: instead of restarting, it instead progresses to whatever scene you choose for the condition's one parameter. Thus, you can have the game continue when the player loses, possibly branching or even leading to a bad ending.

Victory Scene, in turn, is actually just duplicative of the nextBattle attribute set at the top of every map's XML file; it tells the game to go to a certain scene when the battle is won. It's included purely for use with the ChangeCondition dialog action to dynamically change the next scene during the course of battle.

[CraigStern]

The victory screen now animates, tallying your score right before your very eyes! It's a neat effect, and very satisfying to watch. (I was inspired to add this by memories of the end level score tally in the original Sega Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog.)

I've also updated the score system slightly: a win now gives you 150 points by default, and the point penalty for each turn that passes before victory is reduced to 4. The manual has been updated to reflect the changes.

The installers have been updated as well!

[CraigStern]

Yesterday was one of my infamous playtest parties, where I invite friends over and we play the game together over beer and pizza while I sit with a notepad and pen taking notes on bugs and suggestions. It was--as usual--really helpful. Among the changes which I've made since yesterday:

-- I've tweaked the victory score screen a bit so it's faster counting the damage numbers (which frequently go into the hundreds).
-- Clicking the victory tally screen before it's done counting now causes it to skip to the end and display all of the final numbers; a second click exits the battle.
-- Destructible objects which have been set on fire now actually burn. (They take damage at the end of every round, after every player has gone.)
-- Shield abilities no longer heal destructible objects.
-- Added support for looping background sound effects; fixed a bug that briefly broke the volume sliders in the options menu.
-- Added a new particle type: Coins.

[CraigStern]

A couple more bug fixes:

-- The Impale animation had an opaque background; that has been fixed.
-- There was a bug that was causing the game to hang instead of displaying the Defeat screen; that's been fixed.
-- Bugs that crept in and were affecting Surrender and Quit Game have now been fixed.

I have a few more things I want to do to get this build ready for Indiecade, but I'm making good progress; I feel optimistic that everything will be ready by next Friday! :)

[CraigStern]

Update! I have finally cast the much-disliked Right-Click Context Menu into the fires of Mount Doom. In its place, right-clicking an empty spot on the battlefield now deselects the current character.

To handle the functions that were previously in the right-click menu, there is a new menu accessible from the Actions window. Whenever no character is selected, click the "Gear" button that appears--it will open the new menu.

The installers have been updated.

[CraigStern]

Last night, I added in the first batch of item icons into the game, then coded the inventory screen so it displays item icons whenever they are available (if they aren't, it displays the item's name instead).

The game has also been updated with attack animations for shadowlings and lizardmen.

The installers have been updated.

[CraigStern]

Just added a new dialog script action: GoTo. It has one parameter: branch number. That's it. It lets you run actions, then jump to another branch when they're done; just make sure you put the GoTo action last.