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[Craig Stern]

I've been tinkering with the game's AI--it now takes into the account the type of space a flying character is above when deciding whether to use a Heavy-inducing attack like Gravity Spike on it. (Characters flying over lava are especially likely to be targets due to the crazy amount of damage falling into lava does.)

I've just written knockback into the game as a formal attack attribute, and am going to rewrite the code handling Shove/Pull/Throw/etc. so it's no longer hard-coded into the game. This will allow me to write AI behavior for pushing other characters around much more easily (to say nothing of giving players even more flexibility to create new attacks).

[Craig Stern]

Confirmed: CPU-controlled Mentalists will now drop your flying characters into lava without mercy or hesitation.

[Craig Stern]

I've been making lots of little bug fixes today, as well as rewriting various parts of the engine that rely on hard-coded attack names so they refer to attributes changeable in the external Attacks.xml file.

For a change of pace, I decided to create a new map with tons of destructible terrain. It looked weird having so many bridge tiles without any shadows, though, so I went ahead and added in shadow graphics for bridges. Here's a screenie:

[Franklins Ghost]

Interesting map design, can see that would be all out war like the bridge shadows also

[Craig Stern]

I've updated the CPU AI again--it now correctly judges whether it can push/pull/throw a character into water or lava, then decides whether to do so by taking into account how much environmental damage the target is likely to take in the process. I played a match late last night where the AI was pushing and throwing my characters into lava with wild abandon; it was pretty awesome.

Interesting map design, can see that would be all out war like the bridge shadows also

Thanks, man!

[Craig Stern]

I just reworked the graphics for fog of war so you can still see the map's terrain in areas outside your field of view--just not the characters and objects actually on it. I started with a classic dithered style, but it flickered really obnoxiously when panning around the battlefield. I was able to get rid of the flicker effect by reducing the opacity of the tiles to 53% (which partly defeats the purpose, seeing as I was hoping to avoid using transparency for performance reasons, but oh well).

[Craig Stern]

Inane has just gotten me complete drafts of each unit facing in four directions! I'm especially fond of the Bronze Golem and the Lizardman:





Once we get final drafts of all the units facing in all directions, it will be time to start animating them. I'm really excited about that; I cannot wait to see all these guys in motion!

[Christian Knudsen]

The Lizardman left and right kinda look like he's facing up and down but looking over his shoulder. Very nice, otherwise!

[Franklins Ghost]

Can't wait to see them all animated

[Craig Stern]

Another small update: I've figured out a dithering pattern for the fog of war that works without me needing to drop the opacity below 100. That's now in the game, along with destructible wall, door and fence shadows. Behold!

[Craig Stern]

I don't generally play Telepath Tactics with fog of war on. However, in the process of updating the fog of war tiles, I played a few matches and discovered that some not-insignificant bugs had crept into games with fog of war. Those are now all fixed, however!

In the meantime, I've created a variant of the icy bridge map I posted above. This version is filled with lava and an explosive charge sitting in the middle of the map, ready to be detonated--in other words, it's even more crazy and high stakes than the earlier version. Here's a screenie:



I'm considering changing the placement of those boulders in order to encourage the frantic scramble for the center without forcing a drawn-out fight at one of two choke points.

[Craig Stern]

Hey folks! Sorry for the extended silence there. The truth is, I was a little stumped about how to proceed with a certain aspect of multiplayer: specifically, accurately reproducing the results of random die rolls.

I started off by recording each die roll along with the action it was associated with. Eventually, however, I realized that certain events occurred during battles which were both randomized and automatic (that is, not tied to any player action). Player spawn locations, move order, whether item drops occur, item drop positions, which space a character or item is displaced to when it falls onto/spawns on an occupied space--was I going to have to record all of those things as well? Multiplayer was quickly ballooning into a huge headache.

Today, however, I finally had a breakthrough in figuring out how to get a virtually limitless sequence of results from a random seed. Using a seed single-handedly solves the whole messy problem of making results replicable: the same seed reliably produces the same results in the same sequence. The only true point of randomization now comes at the moment of the seed's creation: from that point, it's all just generating a deterministic sequence of numbers from the seed.

I now have this new method of random number generation in-game and working. With that out of the way, it's time to continue coding multiplayer!

[Houndninja]

WOW! This looks really awesome! I think its time we saw a return to some of these tactics turn based games like worms and the metal gear acid series! some of my favourite and I look forward to playing this with friends!

[Craig Stern]

Thanks, man!

[Craig Stern]

I realized yesterday that I have more work to do before I can continue coding multiplayer. In particular, I need to reorganize the way the game looks for external assets (particularly levels and tiles).

So, here's the way it works now: I specify a base filename (tile, say, or level) and then append an ever-increasing integer to the end using a for loop. The game then checks for every filename until it reaches the end of all available files. Thus, every level and every tile  must be named with a series of consecutive integers in order for the game to recognize them (e.g. level1.xml, level2.xml, level3.xml, etc.) If there is ever a gap in the numbering, the game won't detect anything beyond the gap.

This was quick to add and worked well for the early stages of development, but this is going to be hugely problematic going forward if I leave it that way. Suppose the game ships with 8 levels (level1.xml through level8.xml). If a player creates a new level, the game won't detect it unless it's named level9.xml. That means that there are going to be a ton of custom maps all named level9.xml--a player who wants to download and use more than one player-made map is going to have to manually rename all of the files so they have consecutive numbering.

The situation also exists with tilesets, which is even worse. Not only would there be potentially dozens of files for the player to rename, he'd also have to redo any maps that referred to the tiles' original numbering. That's terrible!

After experimenting a bit yesterday, I figured out a method for automatically detecting every single file in a directory regardless of filename. The game is now updated to auto-detect every level in the Maps subdirectory and load them; I need to update the Map Editor to do the same, then figure out a method for separating the game's tilesets and detecting them successfully in a similar fashion.

[Craig Stern]

We have an art update! All of the directional character sprites are now finished to my satisfaction. Here are two I haven't shown yet--the Stone Golem and the Shadowling:

     

[Craig Stern]

The map editor has been updated to conform to the new, more flexible map detection system: it now supports loading and saving maps with any sort of filename you want.

[happymonster]

Looks great! Does this mean you are getting rid of the white directional arrows now?

[Craig Stern]

Thanks!

I'm not sure about the arrows; I'm going to add in the directional facing graphics, then see if people have any trouble figuring out character facing without the arrows. If so, they're staying in. Useability trumps pretty.

[Moczan]

Add it as an option, it's a win-win situation for everyone Generally some options to customize HUD should please both casuals and hardcores.