Ask the developer a question!

[CraigStern]

No more than the fact that the characters speak English implies the historical antecedents which led to the creation of the English language.

Which is to say, no.

[CraigStern]

At the moment, I'm working with the artist on the designs for each of the character classes. There isn't much to show at the moment, but rest assured that TT is still being worked on.

[CraigStern]

I 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.

It looks like you've got Cygnus's unique skills covered there.

[CraigStern]

I'm not going to officially announce Telepath Tactics until I have finished character graphics in-game. Once that happens, it will be promoted from Random Project status to Official Game.

[SmartyPants]

Is the Assassin's Cult part of the Shadowling military or is it independent of the government like the Black Rose?

[CraigStern]

It's an independent organization.

[Zackirus]

How exactally does killing D'kah in Mission 5 benefit you in the final mission? Also: what happens if you never defeat D'kah in the first part, what happens to him then? Finally, why does the Hero kill Cygnus in the end, or better yet, have to choice to kill him?

[CraigStern]

Killing D'Kah in Mission 5 means you don't have to deal with him during the final mission. It's just an alternate path you can take.

Finally, why does the Hero kill Cygnus in the end, or better yet, have to choice to kill him?

Well, it's an RPG. A good RPG gives you choices. In this case, you have the choice to eke out revenge against the man responsible for turning your homeland into a dystopian nightmare. If I didn't give people that option, they'd probably get pretty mad at me.

[SmartyPants]

Are Red Spriggats consistently the smallest spriggats, while Dark Spriggat are consistently the biggest, most powerful spriggats?

How did Cygnus know to send his acolytes to stop the resistance at Fawaz Gorge and Al'Dukkan Armory?

Can you explain what bug hutting is?  Why are there spirits and golems in the Deeper Downs?  Has the Deep Downs become like the TPA2’s “The Cave”?

[CraigStern]

1) No. See e.g. La'Man.
2) I am not going to answer this one, for reasons that should be fairly obvious.
3) Bug hunting is simply that: going hunting for shadow bugs in the tunnels of the Deeper Downs. In TSoG, as you point out, the Deeper Downs serves the same function The Cave does in TPA2: it's a location where you can get varied, randomized battles to fight. I was planning to make it a full visitable location early on in the game's development, but I eventually decided that it would be better to have fewer in-game locations with a higher density of interesting encounters in each.

[SmartyPants]

1) Men are more naturally inclined to be stronger than women, yet individual women can be stronger than individual men.  Similarly, I was wondering if different types of spriggats were more naturally inclined to be bigger and stronger than others.  Basically, I trying to find if it is a game mechanic that makes Red Spriggats the weakest and Dark Spriggats the strongest.  On a related note, does the shadowling military make blue shadowlings become healers?

2) That makes me feel kinda dumb, since it isn't fairly obvious to me.

3) Sorry for not being clear.  I was wondering if the Deeper Downs has "defective automatons" and the supposed "spirits of the Mechanics they've killed" like "The Cave".

[TheWanderingShadow]

Hey, would you mind explaining how one makes programmer's graphics and their advantage over just drawing the graphics in flash?

[Chocobo_Fan]

SmartyPants, I think what Craig is trying to say is that the answer to your question isn't obvious, but the reason why he won't give that answer is.

[CraigStern]

Maybe it's not as obvious as I thought. I hate artist's statements, and I don't want to post one here, but if you're really curious, here is the reason I won't answer that particular question:

[spoiler]There are certain things about TSoG and the events that transpire during it that I have deliberately chosen to leave ambiguous. In particular, I've avoided providing a definitive answer to the question of whether Yawah exists. In my view, spelling out a clear yes-or-no answer to this question would cheapen the game by detracting from the ideas the player is meant to grapple with; in my view, whether Yawah really exists is actually subordinate to those other ideas.[/spoiler]

[CraigStern]

Hey, would you mind explaining how one makes programmer's graphics and their advantage over just drawing the graphics in flash?

Programmer graphics is just an expression for bad placeholder art quickly thrown together by a programmer in order to test out code. You can very easily make programmer art by drawing in Flash.

As for the advantages of using placeholder art: well, quite simply, it gives you something to look at so you can make sure your engine actually works before you go to the trouble of making it pretty.