Ask the developer a question!

[SmartyPants]

Do you think the NSA should be collecting our email and phone records?

On a related note, do you think "Edward Snowden" would make a great name for a cryokineticists?

[CraigStern]

Do you think the NSA should be collecting our email and phone records?

Not without a warrant, no.

On a related note, do you think "Edward Snowden" would make a great name for a cryokineticists?

The simple fact that it has "Snow" in it makes it a pretty good candidate, I think.

[bugfartboy]

Well... You've made enemy AI this terrifying... How long do you predict we have before it allows for intelligent bridge construction?

[CraigStern]

Bridge construction routines for the AI are not currently on the list of things I have planned; these would be very, very difficult to code, and the time I spent on them would inevitably cut into the list of other features I have planned that will (in my opinion) have a greater impact on the game experience.

[Sythion]

Do you ever plan of re-making any of your older games using TT's current engine?

[CraigStern]

The thought haaaaaas crossed my mind a few times. However, I have new games I want to make, and making those is a higher priority for me than remaking things I've already made.

But hey: with that said, Telepath Tactics features mod support. If you wanted to remake them yourself, there's nothing stopping you.

[bugfartboy]

Is the AI clever enough to recognize and calculate the pros and cons of different tiles? Tiles that grant bonuses and penalties, I mean.

[CraigStern]

The AI accounts for tile bonuses and penalties when it checks the damage a character would do with various attacks.

[bugfartboy]

Is it possible to allow an item to be equipped to multiple slots? Four, to be precise?


~Edit~
To clarify: Not four slots at the same time.


~Edit: Part 2~
Is it possible to add and remove lighting with dialog actions?


~Edit: Part 3~
Is there any particular reason you chose to make coordinate related dialog triggers/actions work in the order of "Y" then "X", rather than the traditional "X" then "Y"?

[CraigStern]

1. No.
2. Global lighting only.
3. To keep it consistent with the scheme I use while coding the game. (Y-then-X lends itself well to certain coding techniques, particularly the use of multi-dimensional arrays, so I use that exclusively in my code.)

[bugfartboy]

What is your internet browser of choice?

[CraigStern]

Firefox; I really dislike Chrome's UI, which basically makes Firefox the only really viable remaining option.

[ArtDrake]

[I'd probably use Firefox but for a bug that really impacts fullscreen Flash gaming, which is about half of what I use the internet for anyway, apart from YouTube. And if it's not a bug, it's a really bad feature.]

I'm working on making a videogame again, mostly as a learning exercise, but I've run into an issue I thought perhaps you'd have some knowledge about -- HUDs. I've made a HUD box that serves to give information on anything you roll over with the mouse, and gets redrawn dynamically into a different format/layout of text fields to suit the particular object you're looking at. But since the text fields themselves aren't class variables, I can't directly manipulate their contents from the parent object, which has all the relevant information.

I figure I could make the dynamic textfields just dispatch an event to the parent on their creation, allowing the parent to identify and access the text fields, and store them in an array for later use [i.e., updating their contents in real time]. But that seems possibly a bit sloppy -- I like to use event dispatch access workarounds as a last resort. Do you know of a better way to resolve this access problem? Should I just go and make them class variables and have some var clutter for the sake of not having to deal with that messy workaround? :/

EDIT: Hm, maybe I should meet myself halfway here and create a class variable array to put all the dynamically generated textFields in. I just don't want sloppy code.

[Ertxiem]

I'm assuming that you want a HUD to present info for a small amount of types of stuff, something like: a) tiles, b) items, or c) units.
If you want the HUDs to be different (in info and in style) in each case, you have the possibility of having a set of HUDs (three, following my example above). When hoovering over the object (or clicking it) the required HUD would appear and the others would be hidden.

[ArtDrake]

Well, I'll need a separate one for at least three different types of astronomical body, at least two for monsters and bosses, two or more for different kinds of structures, and one for the player -- a minimum of eight distinct layouts. Technically it would be more like three and five, since the first three show up in a different setting, but I'm not sure at all whether it would be more efficient to have the four other HUDs lying around as distinct unrendered children, or to have to redraw them entirely when they're demanded in order to keep it down to one object. After all, the similarities are greater than the differences.