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[PompiPompi]

Udderdude, the lizard man's mace actually look more realistic. It is actually most other games who tend to create unrealistic huge maces. Though, I guess big maces look better...

[Craig Stern]

craig: ah, I'd seen you mention the email thing before but hadn't really paid much attention to it. Sounds like an interesting way of doing things. Does this mean though that you can't play 'live' games and that you have to continuously go back and forth to your email to get the next move?

Right now, yes. I'm cautiously considering making a free, live online version for some Flash portals using playerIO to serve as a demo, one without any single player or email capability, and a limited number of maps. If I end up doing that, and if it works well, I'd update the final game with that capability. But I'm cautious about saddling myself with ongoing server costs for a pay-once-and-play-forever game.

[Craig Stern]

With all the basic character sprite designs being done and in-game, Telepath Tactics has been submitted to Indiecade! I feel like I've reached an important milestone in development.

As part of the submission process, I was asked to create a short gameplay video. The video shows off the assassin, the spearman, the engineer, the bowman and the crossbowman on a small lava-filled map. Here is a somewhat longer edit of the video I captured than the one I submitted with the game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_F0JgO8gJM

[Moczan]

craig: ah, I'd seen you mention the email thing before but hadn't really paid much attention to it. Sounds like an interesting way of doing things. Does this mean though that you can't play 'live' games and that you have to continuously go back and forth to your email to get the next move?

Right now, yes. I'm cautiously considering making a free, live online version for some Flash portals using playerIO to serve as a demo, one without any single player or email capability, and a limited number of maps. If I end up doing that, and if it works well, I'd update the final game with that capability. But I'm cautious about saddling myself with ongoing server costs for a pay-once-and-play-forever game.

The free version of PlayerIO should be more than enough for the demo. If small player limit scares you off, try Gamooga, their free plan doesn't have concurent online players limit at all.

[Craig Stern]

Thanks for the tip: Gamooga looks really cool. I'm particularly impressed by their system's interoperability among multiple platforms.

[Yrgkala]

Excellent pixel-art all around!

A few things about this .. his feet and boots look tiny, like he's squeezed his feet into tiny little red stockings.  And his mace looks a tad bit small, too.  His right hand also seems larger than his forearms .. not sure if that's intentional or not.  I'd advise your artist to fix it up a bit. 

I disagree with everything you say here.

[Craig Stern]

All right, I decided it was finally time to let the gaming press in on what I've been working on here.

My Sinister Design announcement: http://sinisterdesign.net/?p=1499
My TIGS announcement: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=25593.0
And the game's new official page (in progress): http://sinisterdesign.net/?page_id=1402

One of the biggest (and easiest) mistakes to make when first getting into game design is to wait until late in development to start marketing your games. This is a bad thing to do for a wide variety of reasons, perhaps the biggest of which is that people in general (and journalists specifically) are generally more receptive to hearing about things that they're already somewhat familiar with. I am starting early with this one.

[happymonster]

The screenshots on your webpage with the new character sprites look great!

[Craig Stern]

Thanks!

[ANtY]

This game so reminds me of my unfinished MOTBS, eh... I still want to make it some day.

[Craig Stern]

I've created a definitive class guide that you can see here.

In the meantime, a small update: I've adjusted character shadows a bit to avoid the appearance some of them had of floating. I've also adjusted boulder shadows so they're easier to see.

[ANtY]

I checked out that class guide and hmm... are your all units females?

edit: ah sorry I found some "hes"

[Craig Stern]

Rather than going all-male with a few token females thrown in, I've tried to split the classes roughly evenly between male and female. Upon going back and counting them all, though, it looks like I fell a little short of making that happen.

• The following classes are female: swordsman, crossbowman, assassin, pyrokineticist, mentalist, psy healer, spirit, shadowling (50% of the time).
• The following classes are male: spearman, bowman, lizardman, cavalry, engineer, cryokineticist, skiakineticist, photokineticist, shadowling (50% of the time), spriggats.
• The golems are asexual, for obvious reasons.

This leaves us with 8 female classes and 10 male classes (13 if you count the spriggat varieties as distinct classes). So unfortunately, females are actually somewhat underrepresented here.

You might wonder why I made it so shadowlings can be of either sex, but not the other classes. My answer is two-fold: (1) I have limited time and money. Creating both male and female sprites for every class would nearly double the work involved while adding little to the game itself. (2) Male and female shadowlings are visually identical to each other, so it costs nothing to simply have the game pick a sex at random. The same cannot be said for humans, spriggats or lizardmen.

[ANtY]

Sure, I'm still impressed that you have money for 4-sides animations of 22 units o.O

Anyway, human sprites doesn't really look like females till u look at them from a close distance, they could only have varied avatars for example, but is it so important? I don't think so - keep it up as it is, it's great :D

[Craig Stern]

Sure, I'm still impressed that you have money for 4-sides animations of 22 units o.O

Um, yeah. My profits from Telepath RPG: Servants of God have basically all just gone into financing the art for this new engine. (In case any of you thought I had spent it on rent or food or something.)

[Craig Stern]

Okay, new plan! Someone on my forums asked if I could put teams into the game so matches wouldn't all just be chaotic free-for-alls. Now, I'd been kicking around the idea of an alliance system for some time, but this got me motivated to suss out some details.

I've settled on a dynamic in-game alliance system, something that lends itself to political intrigue and backstabbing. Here are the mechanics as I now imagine them:

• on your turn, you can propose an alliance with another player
• on that player's turn, she receives the proposal and may choose to accept or reject it*
• allied players may win a game collectively by defeating everyone outside of their alliance
• allied characters will not counterattack each other when hit

*Something I'm considering to make this especially interesting: when the player on the receiving end of an alliance proposal makes her decision, that decision is kept secret from all other players (the player makes her decision by hitting one of two keys on the keyboard; the game provides no visual acknowledgement of which she pressed). This would open up all sorts of avenues for deception and betrayal!


Of course, none of this will be available in a 1 vs. 1 match, for obvious reasons, and will be purely optional in any event.

[Craig Stern]

Small update: I've added water particles to the game. Whenever a character is pushed or thrown into water, water particles splash everywhere. Likewise for characters pushed into lava: in that case, sparks spray everywhere. What can I say; it looks pretty cool.

[ANtY]

Small update: I've added water particles to the game. Whenever a character is pushed or thrown into water, water particles splash everywhere. Likewise for characters pushed into lava: in that case, sparks spray everywhere. What can I say; it looks pretty cool.

Do I really have to convince you to make a gif? 

[Moczan]

Small update: I've added water particles to the game. Whenever a character is pushed or thrown into water, water particles splash everywhere. Likewise for characters pushed into lava: in that case, sparks spray everywhere. What can I say; it looks pretty cool.

Do I really have to convince you to make a gif? 

Or a demo where we can push characters around on our own 

[Craig Stern]

No demo just yet, folks. I might do a closed alpha test at some point, however.

Another small update: I spent some time last night creating dust cloud particles for when a character is shoved or thrown onto dirt or grass. It took a little longer than the other particles, since clouds need to behave differently than droplets of liquid in order to look right, but I'm fairly happy with the results I got.

Do I really have to convince you to make a gif? 

You know, I never quite figured out how to make an animated gif out of game footage. But I'll post a movie later today for sure.