Telepath Tactics Liberated News

Hey folks! We've got a relatively small patch this time around focused on fixing some graphical jank, fixing a few bugs, and adding in some improvements for our intrepid campaign creators! Here are the changes:

-- improved the way that certain destructible objects are displayed, particularly those which shouldn't cast a shadow (e.g. wildflowers, reeds, and spike traps) and those which are supposed to lay relatively flat (e.g. floor buttons, rubble, snare traps, iron jaw traps, and caltrops).

-- added two new attributes to units: hasShadow and laysFlat.

-- new destructible object added to the game: Rug.

-- tweaked the save slot formatting to better accommodate long scene names.

-- improved procedural terrain generation in both the map editor and proc gen battles generally.

-- the game now saves proc gen battle battle names at the start of combat, meaning that the save slot won't display "RANDOM" prior to mid-battle saving anymore.

-- adjusted the numerical calculation for status effect icons in the character screen to more accurately match up with the rounds remaining.

-- fixed: undoing a flyer's move off of a fly-only object would result in them being reset to the wrong elevation.

-- added a new skill to the game: Twirl. Switches positions with an adjacent target character. Costs no energy and ends the turn when used.

-- added a new optional parameter to RemoveFromList: stop after. This allows you to easily remove only the first X entries in a list that match a string.

-- fixed: using CombineLists when the first list was not already set would cause an error. (Now when this happens, the game auto-creates an empty list to serve as the first list.)

-- fixed: using CombineLists when the second+ list was not set would cause the game to not create the destination list at all. (Now when this happens, the game simply clones the first list to the destination.)

Hey folks! Here's another update for you with some highly requested quality-of-life features, bug fixes, balance changes to encourage greater use of knockback mechanics, some additional resources for folks making their own campaigns, and lots of little bits of polish. Here are the changes:

-- status effect icons in the character screen now display a number representing the effect's remaining duration, so you no longer have to guess how much longer a status effect will last!

-- the "shift-click to auto-move and attack" behavior can now be accomplished by simply double-clicking an enemy while you have a character selected.

-- tweaked some of the AI's move-valuing formulas to further cut down on instances where the game thinks it's a good idea to have characters attack bits of scenery.

-- fixed: the Coria cut scene (which plays immediately after the Coria Bridge battle) was missing a Recover condition, causing Emma and friends to arrive in Coria without their wounds healed or energy restored. (If Emma or Sabrina arrived with very low health and the player then unequipped a shield from them in the shop, this could result in the character's health going below 1 and the game treating them as dead for deployment purposes.)

-- added 1 space of knockback to Trueshaft and slightly lowered base damage.

-- bumped up the knockback on Kinetic Gale to 3; created a new kineticist skill called Kinetic Wind with knockback 2 to replace it for proc gen kineticist characters.

-- added a new stone golem skill: Hurl. It's basically Throw, but it goes 4 spaces and deals twice as much damage.

-- adjusted the proc gen stone golem skill progression so they start with Shove at level 1 and gain Toss or Throw in the early levels following.

-- changed the Avalanche prestige class for stone golems; instead of getting Charge, they now get to use Toss without ending the turn and get 50% off the energy cost of Throw.

-- added a new weapon trait to the pool for the highest tier of proc gen weapons: "Colossal." Colossal weapons add +1 to knockback on all skills which depend upon the weapon.

-- adjusted proc gen spriggat portrait scale to more accurately reflect their true size.

-- fixed: the tooltips for the item buttons for individual character inventories within the Reserve Supplies screen were formatted slightly differently than the tooltips for item buttons everywhere else in the game, causing them to not display the third line of text for longer item descriptions.

-- added a specific sound effect that plays when small plants are destroyed.

-- added a specific sound effect that plays when objects made of stone are destroyed.

-- added a specific sound effect that plays when trees and objects made of wood are destroyed.

-- fixed: the game wasn't saving or loading unit-specific particle effect settings. (This wasn't a problem before, as they weren't being used for anything--but now they're used to determine which destructible objects should make the above sound upon being destroyed.)

-- fixed: bonus damage from colliding with a damaging object (e.g. Spiked Barricades) was not being applied when the character had been knocked back multiple spaces due to the game checking the wrong space for purposes of "counterattack" range.

-- massively increased the speed of the "fade out" animation for menus, making it much harder to notice proc gen character portrait elements going transparent during the fade.

-- fixed: the game was creating cosmetic connectors on land tiles for bridges being built at elevations above the land.

-- fixed: the game would delete the player's saved game after losing a battle in ironman mode even if the battle lost had a "defeat scene" specified.

-- fixed: levitating characters moving onto a fly-only object, then moving off of it after Levitate wore off would sink into the ground. Flying characters now display above fly-only objects when they move onto the same space as them, the same as non-flying characters.

And here are the things added for the benefit of modders:

-- a huge variety of improvements to procedural map generation, most significantly to the placement of enemy units. Proc gen maps now spawn enemies in groups based on how many turns away from the player they are. Proc gen maps feature a new "aggressiveness" parameter that alters (a) how large each enemy group is, and (b) how many of them it will mark as Passive to start off the fight.

-- new sound effects usable: Crowd Booing, Plant Destroyed, Stone Breaking, and Wood Breaking.

-- added an "associated feeling" parameter to the NPCsToList action, allowing the game to narrow NPCs by whether a character associates happiness, sadness, or anger with them.

-- added an "associated feeling" parameter to the -NPC:X- special character, allowing the game to narrow NPCs by whether a character associates happiness, sadness, or anger with them.


As always, thanks for supporting the game! Your support means the world to me. :)


Tactically yours,

Craig

Imagine Telepath Tactics Liberated with team management, random events, emergent relationship-building, and tighter fights. That's Together in Battle, the SRPG roguelite coming to Steam early access next year! This trailer should give you the general gist of it:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

As part of Steam Next Fest, I've put a meaty demo online for you to play for free. It'll only be up until next week, though, so make sure to check it out while it's online--and don't forget to wish list Together in Battle! 😉


Tactically yours,

Craig

Hey there, tactics fans! I took a short break from getting Together in Battle ready for Steam Next Fest (happening in just a few short weeks!) to address some lingering issues with AI performance and knock out some bugs reported over the past two weeks.

Here are the new changes and improvements:

-- due to a typo, the code that was supposed to turn off path-clearing AI behaviors in very large maps did the exact opposite, leaving slow-downs in place for large fights like Battle with Ebon Raban. This is now fixed.

-- the game now tracks how long the AI is taking to decide on a move; it will now cut the calculations short if it's taking more than a couple of seconds and the game has calculated at least one possible move. (This will make the AI a bit stupider in some situations, but the trade-off in terms of pacing is more than worth it.)

-- halved the delay after an AI character grabs an item sack before proceeding with the rest of the turn.

-- fixed: upon promoting or changing classes for proc gen golems, spriggats, and spirits, the game would overwrite the correct name of their portrait bodies, resulting in the game detecting a null portrait body and entirely replacing the portrait with a "human silhouette" placeholder.

-- fixed: the game would throw a range error in the promotion screen if you managed to promote Gunther Lathe.

-- fixed: an earlier fix that kept the game from spawning the dialogue menu when a dialogue tree was used purely to run a script with a Wait action and then EndConvImmediately, though it did fix that scenario, also ended up causing the dialogue menu to simply not spawn at all in dialogue trees that include EndConvImmediately in the initial branch following an "if"-type action, whether the end of the conversation was triggered or not. This resulted in situations where EndConvImmediately wasn't triggered but the dialogue could not be advanced, essentially freezing the game (e.g. as when leaving Fera's room without the map after Fera had left the room herself). The game now only suppresses the dialogue menu based on detection of an untriggered EndConvImmediately in the first branch if it also determines that there is no speaker, no dialogue text, and no more than a single reply option in that branch (i.e. there is no actual dialogue to display to the player).

-- fixed: in some situations, a bad move-and-hit AI move could freeze the game.

-- fixed: in some circumstances, the AddPortrait action could produce a null error.

Greetings, folks! I had some changes I wanted to make after Tuesday's patch, and it turned out that I was able to implement those changes very quickly, so I said to myself: "why not just push it out?" And so I have!

There are some cool changes to the way the game handles knockback into characters and spiked barricades, an in-game controls reference for gamepads, and more! Here are the new changes and improvements:

-- objects that deal damage when attacked (such as Spiked Barricades) now damage their attackers even when they are destroyed by the attack.

-- knocking units into damaging objects (e.g. Spiked Barricades) now not only deals the knocked-back unit regular collision damage, it also queues up bonus damage as though they'd attacked the object. (Shove them backwards into the spikes for a backstab multiplier!)

-- knocking an enemy into one of your allies can now trigger a counterattack on the enemy from that ally! (For this to work, the ally must have a melee-range counterattack available and they cannot be facing away from the enemy.) Note that your ally will still take collision damage if you do this--but the enemy will take a lot more damage overall!

-- added a gamepad controls submenu to the settings window laying out what function each gamepad button has.

-- fixed: in Crypt Diving, if turn 21 dialogue ending the battle failed to trigger due to the player already clearing all of the map's enemies, the player would simply remain stuck on the map.

-- fixed: the game would prevent characters from counterattacking AOE attacks if the attacker was facing the same direction as the would-be counterattacker, even if the attacker was not actually located behind them.

-- new script actions supported: IfGamepadGoTo and IfGamepadRun. These go to a specified dialogue branch number or run (a) specified script(s) if the player is using a gamepad to play the game.

-- added some missing documentation on how to add different types of custom images to campaigns, as well as an example custom object.


At this point, I'm pretty happy with the state Telepath Tactics Liberated is in. I'll continue to support the game, but I need going to start shifting development focus toward getting Together in Battle ready for its January 2023 Early Access debut.

If you haven't done so yet, I recommend going ahead and wishlisting Together in Battle--it's going to be something special! ;)


Tactically yours,

Craig