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[Craig Stern]

Problem: until today, whenever a counterattacking character attacked another counterattacking character, the opponent would counterattack, and then the attacker would counterattack the opponent's counterattack. Frequently, this would lead to the subject of the attack being killed and the attacker surviving, providing a huge offensive advantage for the aggressor.

Solution: I've implemented a new rule on counterattacks. As of now, a character who launches a regular attack on his turn cannot also counterattack that same turn. It makes a big difference.

I've also been hard at work fixing issues with the computer AI. Things are running quite smoothly now. I think it's at the point where I can comfortably start to work on making the CPU players less stupid.

[gecko]

THIS IS A GREAT PROJECT

[Craig Stern]

Thanks! I'm looking forward to releasing it so you (and everyone else) can play it.

[Craig Stern]

Things are running quite smoothly now. I think it's at the point where I can comfortably start to work on making the CPU players less stupid.

Oof, spoke a bit too soon there; I had to go in and fix a deeply-buried mistake in the AI code that caused the game to ignore the rotation on area-of-effect attacks launched by the computer. It was such a minor mistake, it took forever to catch. But it's caught!

In the meantime, I've also spiffed up the graphics sightly by turning those unsightly boxes surrounding each character into ovals. It gives the whole thing much less of an "everything is arranged on a grid" look:



Also, Inane is working on some truly lovely town and castle tiles, which I hope to show off in the near future.

[Craig Stern]

Fixed an issue with Feedback and Vengeance that would cause the character to "regain" health even when already at maximum.

I've also added a bunch of new names to the name arrays (we're up to roughly 115 male names and 115 female names). I've also coded in a function to generate simple combinatorial last names for each character by pairing a descriptor and a noun (or common last name ending) from two different arrays.

So, for example, the descriptor list has words like "Green," "Quick," "Half," and so on, while the the endings list has words like "son," "vale," "whistle," "bottom," and "burn." (The lists are way longer than that, but I'm just giving you an idea.) So characters get last names like Quickwhistle, Halfburn and Greenbottom. It's pretty fun.

I'm also working on enlarging the shadowling names list, and I've started working on a list of lizardman names with their own distinct style.

[Craig Stern]

I now have a list of 145 golem names typed out ("Clobberjaw," "Rumbletread," "Combusto" and "Tiny" being my favorites), as well as 78 lizardman names. I'm trying to make the lizardmen names sound alien and have a consistent sound to them without them being too duplicative--it's a challenge, which is why they're coming along more slowly.

I fixed a strange bug where textfields in my damage pop-up graphics would resize themselves seemingly at random in builds published with AIR (the issue would disappear if I published to Flash Player 10.xxx). I was able to fix this by setting the textfields' autosize property. I have no idea why that worked (or, for that matter, why it was necessary in the first place), but there you have it.

I've started working on fullscreen display support. Right now it works, but surrendering a match via the hotkey combo ctrl + shift + S reverts the game to windowed mode. I'm not sure why yet; this page seems to suggest that only Esc or ctrl + W should have that effect. At any rate, fixing this should give me something to do while I wait for the next shipment of tiles.

[Craig Stern]

Well, I fixed the issue with fullscreen mode getting switched off involuntarily-- ctrl + F now toggles fullscreen mode on and off at the player's command. It works like a charm.

We're aiming to have the castle tileset completed on or before Friday, since I'll be showing off the latest build of the game at Saturday's Indie City Games meetup. After that comes the town tileset, and we can begin work on the game's wide variety of destructible objects.

[Craig Stern]

I took a little extra time and added another feature I'd been wanting to put in: a respawn option. On the New Match screen, you can have dead characters not respawn at all (the default), or respawn after 2-8 turns.



Why even have a respawn option, you ask? Basically, it makes certain alternate game types (like Capture the Flag) more viable. Most units in Telepath Tactics go down fairly quickly, meaning that you're likely to wipe out most of an enemy's army long before you get to their flag. Allowing unit respawns with a lag makes it so wiping out the enemy's army is still desirable, but not automatically game-ending.

[Craig Stern]

Just a small tweak--the "respawn time" option disappears when "Last Man Standing" is selected as the game type, but the game still remembers the player's preferred respawn type for other game types, and auto-selects it whenever another game type is chosen.

I've decided that I am going to give each character its own inventory, and provide an option to enable randomized item drops during a match. To my mind, this will have a few benefits:

• it will add further unpredictability to the levels (obstacle and bridge creation and destruction adds some of that already, but that's all player-directed--this will add a smidge of pure chance)
• it will provide minor side objectives over the course of matches, where players have to weigh the benefit of hunting down and collecting items versus other priorities
• it will add another resource-management wrinkle to tactical decision-making ("Do I need that item?" "Which unit should I give it to?" "Should I use the item now, or save it for later?" "Should I put off using it a turn to get off an attack instead?" Etc.)

I already have a few ideas for items:

• Bandages - use to regain 6 health (self only, consumable).
• Splint - use to remove Weakened status (self only, consumable).
• Focus pills - use to regain 6 energy (self only, non-Golem, consumable).
• Whetstone - use to gain +2 to damage on physical attacks (self only, consumable).
• Binoculars - use to increase perception by 8 for a turn (self only, fog of war maps only).
• Torch - remove Freeze status from an adjacent character (consumable).
• Water Bucket - remove Burning status from an adjacent character (consumable).

[Spooner]

Your game looks lovely, but it is a bit of a shame that characters don't turn around if they have facing (the little arrow on the tile). Glad to see people still make reasonably complex turn-based games, since a lot I've seen recently are extremely simplified.

I found your devlog particularly interesting to read, since I'm making a vaguely similar game at the moment and have had very similar trials and tribulations, although I'm not so far along as you! Thanks for going into such detail.

[Craig Stern]

Thanks for the feedback!

Your game looks lovely, but it is a bit of a shame that characters don't turn around if they have facing (the little arrow on the tile).

All of the character art you see is placeholder; when finished, characters will visibly face in four different directions. I don't know yet if I will be keeping the arrows; most likely I'll have them as a GUI feature that is turned off by default. Right now, though, they are a necessity due to the unfinished character art.

[Spooner]

Oh yes, sorry! I got the impression that you'd sorted out your art woes and got the final art in place for the characters; shows how much attention I was paying (and reassured myself of my decision to be a one-man-band developer; you really sound like you've had poor luck with artists!).

Keeping the arrow might not be a bad idea in any case, but you can't see it if the warrior has its back to the screen and in any case they look a bit heavy-handed (yes, I know it is just a place-holder thingie). Maybe a more subtle indicator would be to make 90 degrees of the circle, in the direction that the person is facing in, glow or be a different colour?

I'm really curious to see how the game actually plays out tactically and how the various characters and their abilities work together and against each other.

[Craig Stern]

No worries--the art side of things is working itself out now. Inane is on the case, and doing a bang-up job. We're pretty close to having all the tilesets done; after that come the game's wide variety of destructible objects, then the characters.

[Craig Stern]

I spent some time yesterday laying the coding groundwork for in-game items. As sort of a side-effect of that, characters can now grab and carry multiple enemy flags at a time as part of their inventory. Also, mousing over characters now shows you all items in their inventory at the bottom of the pop-up display.

[happymonster]

Looking good!