Dev Log

[CraigStern]

I've finally created a dedicated forum for Telepath Tactics Liberated--and with that, I'm splitting off the dev log from Together in Battle's. The games still share an engine, but it makes more sense to continue posting about Telepath Tactics Liberated progress here, I think. More to come soon!

[CraigStern]

Created a Steam page for Telepath Tactics Liberated, did a bit of marketing work!

-- got some animations going on the title screen to make things feel more lively. :)

-- fixed: the new title screen wasn't displaying properly in 16:10 resolutions.

[CraigStern]

-- added Ryan Richko's awesome new promotion music to the game.

-- promotion music and sound effects now play if a promotion is triggered in a cut scene.

-- the game now supports cross-fading between two musical tracks.

[CraigStern]

-- new tag: Immobile. Causes the AI to treat the unit as having 0 Speed.

-- Pursue and AggroGroup tags now work on units tagged with Immobile the same as they do on units tagged with Passive.

-- fixed: Tarion could easily be lured off of his island without ever engaging the bridge. He and his cohort are now Immobile until attacked.

[CraigStern]

-- spruced up the title screen animations a bit more.

-- dropped the energy cost of Guard Stance to 0 so that it isn't strictly an inferior version of Awareness.

-- improved the scripting in Tragic Reunion.

-- updated campaign-specific class info so psy users all share the same base weaknesses to Slash and/or Pierce.

-- updated campaign-specific class info so spriggats all share the same base weaknesses to Slash and/or Pierce.

-- fixed: proc gen units would be created with an Appetite stat above 0.

-- fixed some incorrect values on the title screen news ticker that left certain news items lopped off.

-- fixed: in some circumstances, the game's built-in victory check logic would inappropriately override a victory that had been set via the WinBattle or LoseBattle script actions.

-- fixed: Malcolm's portrait mask was unformatted, preventing army-color palette swapping.

-- fixed: the algorithm for counting how many turns away an enemy is in the AI was counting max attack range more than once.

-- fixed: the game was double-announcing new status effects in certain circumstances.

-- fixed: Goniff Bastid's first shop never stocked spears despite the fact that you can potentially recruit a proc gen spearman right beforehand.

[CraigStern]

-- fixed: the game was using the now-deprecated RemoveItemByName script action to remove the Map to the Mines from inventory in Coria.

-- fixed: the "does this character want this item" algorithm was inappropriately counting new equipment as offering a distinct skill advantage where the existing equipment offered no skills even if the new equipment offered no skills either. (For instance: a character would always want Leather Armor even if equipped with Leather Armor because their existing armor offered no skills.)

-- fixed: the "does this character want this item" algorithm was not updating after going into the Reserve Supplies screen and equipping new equipment to characters.

-- fixed: the auto-equip function within the Reserve Supplies screen wasn't always selecting the correct character to auto-equip.

[CraigStern]

Captured video footage for the first Telepath Tactics Liberated trailer! :)

-- toned down the power on Static Shield so it's not quite so strong.

-- toned down the Strength bonus on Marauders to balance them against Berserkers.

-- fixed: the Kinetic Pull animation was missing for Mentalists and Mindjackers.

-- fixed: pop-ups for skills affecting Max Health and Max Energy still weren't displaying the correct sprite.

-- fixed: the Marauder class description mistakenly called them Berserkers.

[CraigStern]

Finished cutting together a trailer for Telepath Tactics Liberated! It's up on the Steam page, and will be dropping on Youtube tomorrow morning. :)

[CraigStern]

-- created a unique item graphic for Lead Ointment (distinct from Thermal Paste).

-- new dialogue trigger: OnDrop. Functions as the inverse of OnGrab, with the same parameters, but it sets _NumDropped instead of _NumGrabbed and it does so upon a specified item dropping (whether through use of the Drop command or the character holding the item being defeated).

-- fixed: you could effectively skip the Out of Food Battle by dropping and grabbing an apple over and over.

-- fixed: equippable claws did not degrade with the use of claw attacks.

-- fixed: Vitalia Spring's allies had misnamed portrait data, causing blank portraits to appear.

-- fixed: the Stone Golem Fist, Shove, Smash, and Throw animations inappropriately retained positioning data, causing the character to clip through level geometry at times.

[CraigStern]

-- new dialogue trigger: OnCharScreen. Triggers dialogue when you open up the character screen. Two parameters, both optional, that will limit which character's character screen triggers the dialogue: (1) Army Number and (2) Character Name.

-- made it so the text overlay in Adelbrae Battle directing you to right-click a character to see their character screen goes away after you do the thing.

-- added new emoji: Save.

-- added a mid-battle save tutorial to Adelbrae Battle.

-- added an Undo tutorial to Caravan Battle.

-- fixed MoveCamera targets in a few early maps.

-- fixed: very large character portraits would spill over and cover adjacent portraits in various portions of the interface (most notably deployment and the reserve supplies).

[CraigStern]

-- fixed some inconsistent logic within the game engine concerning range bonuses from tags.

-- fixed: the RangeBonus tag on Lyrio was misformatted, causing it to not add to the user's skill range.

-- fixed: the ModSkillRange tag on proc gen javelins was misformatted, causing them to not add to the user's skill range.

-- fixed: the range on skill tooltips wasn't taking the RangeBonus and ModSkillRange tags for base skills into account. (E.g. javelins give RangeBonus +2 to Spear, and the game would show a range of 1-4 for Spear but not for skills depending upon Spear, such as Pinning Thrust.)

-- fixed: RangeBonus and ModSkillRange tags were applying to skills without a dependsUpon attribute even when limited to a named skill (and those which depend upon the named skill).

[CraigStern]

-- fixed: Shield skills would give the user experience even when they conferred no status effects and were used on characters who were totally unhurt.

[CraigStern]

-- you can now hold down the Escape key to auto-advance dialogue (or auto-cancel out of things); the auto-press function kicks in after half a second and registers a press for every 0.15 seconds it remains held down thereafter.

-- fixed: the formula used to adjust drag pan speed for slower machines caused the drag pan speed to become unacceptably low on faster computers.

-- fixed: the fix from 12/23 had caused large portraits to change dimensions upon being affected by the ChangeExpression script action.

[CraigStern]

-- new script action: ExpScaling. This affects the amount of experience characters receive in the game. One parameter: amount (an integer value where 100 means "100% of normal experience").

-- renamed Tactician difficulty to Veteran difficulty and created a new Tactician difficulty level with permadeath, 33% less experience awarded, and 33% higher prices in shops.

-- cut scene menus now support special characters (both in the button names and their mouseover tooltip text).

-- added icons to the various difficulty levels.

-- fixed: if a character talked in battle and the dialogue then advanced to a branch where MoveUnit was called on multiple characters (including the former speaker) and the former speaker was the first to reach its destination, the game would pop up the talk icon on the former speaker, overriden only once the other character reached their own destinations.

[CraigStern]

More marketing work today; went through my huge press mailing list and checked each entry to ensure that (a) the place still exists and (b) the contact still works there. (I also added in some entries from my older mailing list that hadn't been transferred over.)