Telepath Tactics Liberated News

Greetings, tactics fans! This is the first of a new series to highlight some of the stellar custom campaigns from members of the Telepath Tactics Liberated community.

Kicking things off, we have Bohman's Kite Tricks from ManiaFig, a creative solo campaign that tasks you with controlling a single bowmaster and kiting the enemy to achieve victory. You'll have to manage his available actions, energy, inventory, traps, and positioning to succeed. I play through about 50 minutes of it here with commentary:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Next month, I'll be selecting another wonderful campaign to showcase--but in the meantime, feel free to peruse the available campaigns over on the Telepath Tactics Liberated Workshop for yourself! (Or just browse and download new campaigns from in-game.)


--Craig

Hi folks! Some relatively small fixes and improvements for this week's patch as I gear up for the first monthly Player Campaign Showcase. Here are the changes:

-- the game now allows characters to stack multiple tags of the same type (e.g. Range Bonus or Bonus Damage).

-- defeating all enemies in Crypt Diving no longer ends the map early.

-- reduced the lighting intensity of self-lit objects to adjust to the overall increased bloom and color intensity of recent versions of the game.

-- spirits now cast a glow onto the battlefield. (Note that existing premade spirits will need to have their species reselected in the Character Creator in order to glow.)

-- updated the Guide with documentation on directly accessing and editing Special Stats for units: name, facing, coordinates, class name, and so on.

-- the engine now supports spawning units on the battlefield using script ID in lieu of load ID.

-- fixed: when initiating a player's turn immediately following an AI player's turn, if the game had found no viable moves for the AI army, the game would not have characters regain energy from resting.

-- fixed: using a Move skill to move directly onto a space containing an item sack would not cause the Grab button to cease being red.

-- fixed: attacks targeting Energy were also affecting maximum energy, including self-focus skills like Soul Suck.

-- fixed: damage dealt to characters through Energy underflow caused by Drain-style attacks did not cause the target to play a Hurt animation.

-- fixed: damage dealt to characters through Energy underflow caused by Drain-style attacks was not being counted towards the attacking player's score.

That's all for this update. I'll be posting the first Showcase in the next day or two; keep an eye peeled for it!

In this week's update, we have a bevy of improvements and bug fixes--and the first monthly campaign showcase is now just over one week away!

[h2]The patch[/h2]

This patch sees a constellation of improvements to the game's algorithms for calculating moves that won't pay off in the same turn; in particular, the game's method for pathfinding along long, circuitous paths has been improved dramatically. (This is most noticeable on maps like Rescuing Meridian).

On top of this, we have some more AI and gameplay improvements, a variety of small bug fixes, and one essential bug fix for the script/dialogue editor:

-- AI improvement: when calculating the consequences of attacking a target with an OnDeath skill, the AI now accounts for damage not just to the attacker, but to the attacker's allies as well.

-- shifted reinforcement spawns forward one turn in Coria Bridge Battle so enemies now appear at the start of the player's turn.

-- the game now lets you place traps and build objects on spaces containing item sacks!

-- characters submerged in water or lava are now able to swim onto boulders or other Flying-passability objects within the water or lava.

-- fixed: Hide was in the skill progression for both Blackguards and Whispers, rendering the Whisper promotion choice redundant.

-- fixed inaccurate item description for Partial Plate.

-- fixed: upon Frozen status ending, the stat effects from Frozen were being redoubled instead of reversed under some circumstances.

-- fixed: actions that trigger a script in exploration mode (like grabbing a loose item sack) could result in the game initiating a drag-pan without the player clicking.

-- fixed: the game was inappropriately playing the "thud" sound effect when defeating a character on the same space as a destructible object, as though the character had been dropped from a height.

-- fixed: non-flying characters were being placed too low when spawning atop boulders or other Flying-passability objects in water or lava (or ending up there via the use of Move skills).

-- fixed: move skills like Leap were treating destructible objects with a passability of Shoot Through as though they had a passability of Flying.

-- fixed: if a flying character gained the Levitating status effect and it wore off when over water, the character would fall into the water despite the fact that their base movement type remained Flying. (Granted, there is zero reason for a flying character to receive Levitating status in the first place, but there you have it.)

-- fixed: the game would show skill targeting tiles on land spaces containing Flying-passability objects for characters using Swim even though these spaces could not be moved onto.

-- fixed: rotating a character at the tail end of a lengthy skill animation would sometimes cause the character to repeat that animation from the start.

-- fixed: the dialogue editor could throw range errors when editing scripts or dialogue after narrowing the visible selection of scripts or dialogue via the search bar.

[h2]The Monthly Showcase[/h2]

I'll be conducting our first monthly showcase of player-created campaigns on May 14th; if you have a campaign you've been working on, make sure to upload it to Steam Workshop in the next week to be eligible for consideration. ;) I'm excited to see what everyone's been working on!


--Craig

We're now sitting a month and a half after release. Telepath Tactics Liberated has had a lot of changes since our last big update, currently sitting on 23 patches full of features, improvements, and bug fixes.

In today's update, version 1.0.23, we've got one big new feature to announce: online multiplayer! As of today, Telepath Tactics Liberated now lets you play downloadable multiplayer campaigns like Multiplayer and The PVP of Emma Strider with your Steam friends over the internet using Steam's Remote Play Together. Just open the game, hit Shift+Tab, and invite them to play with you.

That's not all, though. Starting a couple of updates back, I began implementing changes to improve the game's graphics in battle. You may have noticed that the game's terrain suddenly looks a lot more consistent with the character sprites and vegetation, that character drop shadows are a whole lot more noticeable, and that the game's colors just feel more vivid. It isn't your imagination!

Here's the old look:



And here's the new, improved look:



The past three weeks have seen numerous AI improvements, the addition of graphics quality settings, code optimization, and loads of little quality-of-life features added to the campaign creation suite. That's all been covered in previous update posts, though. What's new in version 1.0.23 other than online multiplayer?

-- the Stunned status effect now drops a unit's drowning resistance by 100, effectively doubling drowning damage for most characters.

-- skills which depend upon a weapon but do no damage (such as Feint) no longer degrade the weapon when used.

-- tamped down the strength of the back cover modifier in the AI somewhat.

-- the back cover modifier is no longer applied for moves where the user can continue moving after using their skill.

-- incorporated back cover considerations into the AI's retreat routine.

-- updated the auto-loot wording on the victory screen to help distinguish it from sacks grabbed manually.

-- within the creation suite's dialogue editor, you can now browse and edit an unlimited number of actions per branch in the Edit Branch window. (Previously, users were limited to only 6 actions per branch.)

-- new script action: SaveChar. This tells the game to mark a particular character for saving even if that character is not recruited to the player's army. This allows you to have the game remember the condition of allied or enemy units between maps, and lets you create persistent proc gen characters who don't join the player's roster.

-- fixed: using the mouse wheel to zoom in or out in the dialogue editor while within the map editor would also zoom the camera within the map editor.

-- fixed: the materials and quality parameters for generated equipment in the GenerateUnit and GenerateUnique script actions weren't being passed through to the character generator, resulting in all generated equipment for proc gen units being of uniformly poor quality.

-- fixed an issue that was causing the skills learned at each level to be learned in reverse order.

-- fixed a range error in the code caused by using a knockback skill on a unit subject to a Hold.

-- fixed a null error when player-controlled characters tried to move out of a Hold space created by a character of another army.

-- altered graphics for the Wildflower and WildflowerAlt objects to make them look better with the new, deeper drop shadows.

-- fixed: chests and other destructible objects shoved or pulled into water/lava would disappear below the waterline, then reappear inside the ground if pulled back out.

-- fixed: chests and other destructible objects shoved or pulled into water/lava were not spraying water or lava particles, as the game was detecting those objects already present on the space and incorrectly assuming that they were landing on top of themselves.

-- fixed: the game was double-playing the "thud" sound upon units swimming onto land/being pulled out of water.

-- fixed: in some instances, it was possible for character portraits in the reserve supplies screen to remain shaded based on their desire for an item even after the item was no longer moused over.

That about covers it for this update. As always, thanks for playing! If you're enjoying the game, please don't forget to leave a review and help spread the word! I'm just one guy with a day job and a $0 marketing budget, after all--your help means a lot. :)


Yours in tactics,

Craig

In today's update, we have a nice little improvement to the game's graphics, some AI improvements, a few new quality-of-life features in the campaign creation suite, and a handful of minor bug fixes! Here they all are:

-- improved the positioning and visibility of blob shadows under characters and destructible objects, helping to visually anchor 2D characters and objects in the scene.

-- the AI now considers the presence of cover to guard its back when weighing different locations it can attack from. (The more defensive the AI profile, the more it will care about this.)

-- changed values for the Defensive AI profile to make it care more about danger relative to the rewards of attack opportunities.

-- fixed a scripting error in Five Guardians.

-- buffed the base Psy of all proc gen psy users in the main campaign to bring their utility closer to that of premade characters.

-- fixed an off-by-1 error in the custom cut scene menu code that would cause page selectors to show up when there was a single full page of buttons.

-- fixed: the game was not saving proc gen characters added to the player's roster during battle.

-- fixed: the game was not parsing tags using operations properly within the context of the GenerateUnit and GenerateUnique script actions.

And finally, we have a few long-awaited improvements to the campaign creator:

-- the map editor now supports placing multiple characters on the same space and offers a way to easily switch between them in the unit properties window! This should make placing and editing multiple waves of reinforcements from the same spot a breeze.

-- added a sort button for scenes in the campaign editor! This allows you to toggle between the default alphabetical sorting and a new "scene order" sort in which the game does its best to guess the intended order of scenes in the campaign based upon the "next scene" attribute contained in each scene. (Needless to say, this will work a whole lot better if you specify the next scene for each map and cut scene than if you don't.)

-- new special character supported: PICKFROMLIST{}. Allows you to specify a custom list variable by name; the game will then automatically pick a random entry from that list and display it.