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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsTelepath Tactics (Releasing in April 2015!)
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Author Topic: Telepath Tactics (Releasing in April 2015!)  (Read 113980 times)
Craig Stern
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« Reply #700 on: December 15, 2012, 03:09:36 PM »

I'm working on one of many necessary tweaks to enemy AI: soon, enemy units will recognize when a character is about to die on its own (whether via being in lava, via drowning, or via burning or poison) and will not waste time attacking that unit.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #701 on: December 17, 2012, 11:38:47 AM »

So! Those AI improvements (and others) are now in-game, and I've updated the alpha demo. Grab the new version here.

Grin
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Moczan
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« Reply #702 on: December 20, 2012, 04:17:32 AM »

Don't know how I could've missed it before, I'm downloading the demo right now. I will write some more once I have some more time to test it  Wink
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #703 on: December 20, 2012, 05:10:30 PM »

Cool; I'm interested to hear your thoughts!
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« Reply #704 on: December 21, 2012, 12:10:23 PM »

We just put our money where our mouth is and gave Craig 200 copies of Defender's Quest to give away as a backer reward.

Here's a full blog post on the subject:
Indie Solidarity - Telepath Tactics

This is an awesome game and I want to see it succeed. My own pledge is just a drop in the bucket, but thankfully my game is worth something, and I can make free copies of that with a magical wand Smiley
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Nostrils!
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« Reply #705 on: December 21, 2012, 03:35:41 PM »

I really want this to do well too Sad
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #706 on: December 23, 2012, 12:07:50 PM »

It's cool. Either we'll rally in the last few days, or I'll try again in a few weeks with 620 eager backers already lined up from the start of the campaign. Wink

On the development front, I'm currently working on a graphical effect to animate water and lava in a realistic-looking pattern. I'll post again when I have something to show there.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #707 on: December 23, 2012, 02:48:55 PM »

Well, I got liquid undulation working. One the plus side,

! On the minus side, on any map of significant size, it absolutely craters the frame rate. Sadly, the minus outweighs the plus. I'm going to leave this feature disabled until I can figure out a way to do it more efficiently.
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happymonster
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« Reply #708 on: December 23, 2012, 03:13:16 PM »

Maybe some kind of colour cycling, or pre-generated textures (then masked for the edges) would help?
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #709 on: December 23, 2012, 04:54:36 PM »

Oof. So, I took the whole perlin noise calculation aspect out of it by generating a sprite sheet of a perlin noise cycle for an area the size of a tile, then applying the data through the sprite sheet rather than having the game calculate perlin noise on the fly. It ran faster, but things still remained pretty darn jerky on large maps with lots of water or lava. It's obvious that the DisplacementMapFilter class itself is pretty inefficient. It's a shame; I really liked the effect. Oh well!

Maybe some kind of colour cycling, or pre-generated textures (then masked for the edges) would help?

Unfortunately, the engine does not currently support animated textures--and even if it did, creating them would be a huge pain in the butt. It's probably not going to happen. I'll have to think of some other ways to add life to the maps!
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Moczan
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« Reply #710 on: December 24, 2012, 05:52:48 AM »

Unfortunately, the engine does not currently support animated textures--and even if it did, creating them would be a huge pain in the butt. It's probably not going to happen. I'll have to think of some other ways to add life to the maps!

You could make one full cycle with perlin noise like you do now and cache the result to BitmapData, so creating them would be automatic. Also, if the problem is on big maps, only animate what's actually visible on screen, stopping animation on off-screen tiles.

Back to the game, I've managed to play it. Finished tutorial, but unfortunately during 2nd map I've got automatic win before I've even managed to finish building wooden bridge. The game definitely has potential, I can't wait to try multiplayer!
What will make or break the deal is the GUI you plan to implement. I hope you are not limiting it to the floating windows and mouse overs like in the demo and the game will get a fully-fledged GUI like the game it was inspired by have.
I know it's still work in progress but AI will need some work too, especially without ally-unit passing it tends to block itself in tight passages.
Can't really tell much more right now, I will probably try to finished 2nd level again later (as I assume it was a bug), so maybe more stuff will come up.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #711 on: December 24, 2012, 07:23:43 AM »

New! You can now cycle through your available characters using the mouse wheel. Wink

Also: by popular demand, the game supports edge-of-screen panning once again, wherein moving your mouse to the edge of the screen starts the camera moving in that direction. (Personally, I strongly dislike edge-of-screen panning; I'm making it so you can toggle this functionality off.)

You could make one full cycle with perlin noise like you do now and cache the result to BitmapData, so creating them would be automatic.

Hm. Interesting thought. Let me meditate on that one.

The AI and GUI are definitely still works-in-progress. The auto-win thing was a bug I accidentally introduced in the second-to-last demo build, then removed in the latest one. (If you download and run the installer again, it'll update the demo for you!) Anyway, thanks for the feedback.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2012, 07:55:48 AM by Craig Stern » Logged

Craig Stern
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« Reply #712 on: December 24, 2012, 04:27:33 PM »

YES. I just fixed a bug that (appropriately enough) had been bugging me for weeks. The bug was weirdly specific: it interfered with the transfer of character information between battles, but only for characters that had already been through a battle previously.

Anyway, that's now fixed, so yay! Grin
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #713 on: December 25, 2012, 09:52:41 AM »

Yesterday was dedicated to polishing various interactive elements to make the game easier than ever to control:

-- I fixed a variety of small bugs relating to the interface (most notably, certain situations in which the mouse wheel would not scroll through your moveable characters).

-- The Escape key now functions the same as left-clicking or right-clicking for purposes of advancing text and clearing new turn / victory notifications.

-- Holding Shift when hitting space bar now causes the game to cycle through your characters in reverse (just hitting space cycles through them in normal spawn order).

-- You can also now right-click the character Rotate button to rotate a character counter-clockwise (left-clicking just produces clockwise rotation).


The game's demo has been updated with all of this stuff. Merry Christmas. Wink
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #714 on: December 25, 2012, 03:22:36 PM »

The Telepath Tactics Kickstarter campaign wraps up in just over 3 days; all in all, it's a pretty nerve-wracking moment for me!

I've just posted Kickstarter Update #11 talking about what it will take to meet the funding goal. Check it out!  
Hand Shake Left WTF Hand Shake Right
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #715 on: December 26, 2012, 05:33:38 PM »

Telepath Tactics now previews attack damage for every target of every attack before you actually launch the attack--and unlike the "base damage" text you get when mousing over the attack button, it shows final damage after taking into account elemental resistances and unit positioning. Frankly, it's kind of awesome.

Click here to see it in action with some AOE abilities.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #716 on: December 27, 2012, 05:03:57 AM »

An acquaintance of mine, Jared Wheeler, was kind enough to volunteer to create an algorithm for generating point lights in the game's backgrounds. I spent some time integrating it into the engine last night, and the results are really promising. Here is a screenshot showing the current implementation:



There are still tweaks to be made, but I'm already very pleased with what this has done for the ambiance of the lava levels; it should do some very nice things for indoor levels as well, I expect. More to come!
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #717 on: December 27, 2012, 06:37:54 PM »

The public demo has been updated! Avail yourself of the newest updates (including some awesome looking new lighting in the battle at Devilmouth!)

Get the Telepath Tactics alpha demos here:

WINDOWS DEMO

MAC / LINUX DEMO (you'll need AIR to install the Mac / Linux one; Linux users can nab AIR here)
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« Reply #718 on: December 28, 2012, 02:26:52 AM »

Next on the to-do list: fog of war.

Nice, looking forward to seeing it.
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Craig Stern
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« Reply #719 on: December 29, 2012, 10:11:39 AM »

Well, the Kickstarter's finally over now, and I can relax for a little while! You can find my thoughts on the experience here.
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