TaleSpire News

Hi folks,

As we have some new faces around these parts, I wanted to let you know that we have a dev-log where we write a little about the stuff we are working on. Not as often as we'd like, but now that we are on fixes (and soon, features) again, we've been posting more frequently.

Following on from our the previous patch that had the experimental search for community mods, we've been working on tagging. Tagging should hopefully make searching for community-made creatures easier. We've had a few posts recently that touch on tagging, so I thought I'd share them here.

• TaleSpire dev-log 434
• TaleSpire dev-log 435
• TaleSpire dev-log 436

The first has a longer write-up on tags. The other two mention progress on tagging as well as news on bug-month.

Currently working on a fix for a bug in a very delicate bit of code, so it's going to take a few more days to ensure it's safe to ship.

Until then,
Peace.

Hi again folks,

In this patch, we have a few tweaks and an experimental thing we’d like to hear your opinions on.

We have:

• Set 800x600 to be the smallest resolution pickable. This avoids a case where the window became so small you couldn’t change the resolution back again.
• Fixed the stats in the radial menu so that they update immediately if another player changes them (before you’d have to close and re-open the radial menu.
• Added result counts to community mod browser folders

Now, on to the experimental thing. As we all know, using the community mod browser needs work. The search is somewhat lacking, and the experience of finding creations is sub-par.

A big part of the answer will be tagging. We are bringing tags to creatures soon™ (we’ll have a dev-log on progress by Monday, and the tagging tool is going into internal testing on Tuesday), but in the meantime, I was wondering if there were any quick wins.

The search implementation is on mod.io’s end so we can’t tweak that. The current behaviour is such that if you search “Lord of the Rings” - it will return every result where the name contains any of the following words: ‘The’, ‘Lord’, ‘of’, ‘the’, ‘Rings’.

There is another option, though. They have an option[0] where you can use % as a wildcard. That means you could search fi%b% and get results with both “fireball” and “Firebird.”

So here is the question: Is that useful to any of you? It sounds like it could be, but in theory and in practice can be very different.

To that end, I’ve added it to the game so you can try it out. By default, the search is the same as before, and the wildcard symbol won’t work. However, if you start the search with a question mark, it will switch to the mode where you can use wildcards. For example, ?fi%b% matches “fireball” and “firebird” as mentioned above.

That’s it for today. We’ll be back soon with more fixes.

Ciao

BUILD-ID: 14543672 - Download Size: Win / Linux 4.9 MB / Mac OS 7.8 MB


[0] Fellow nerds might like to check out their api docs. The two places I think are most relevant are https://docs.mod.io/restapiref/?http#get-mods and https://docs.mod.io/restapiref/?http#filtering Do let us know if you find anything interesting!

Pull up a chair, the Seats feature is here!

Campaigns need people, and seats are a new, optional way to bring those people into your adventures.

Before now, everyone who wanted to join a campaign needed to buy their own copy of TaleSpire. We heard from your feedback, especially those of you running many campaigns, that this wasn’t always feasible for your players.

Now, anyone with a full copy of TaleSpire has the ability to purchase additional seats for guests to use. Your guests then use TaleSpire - Guest Edition, which is free to download from Steam, and they are ready to go!



All features (including modding) are available to guests. The only limitations guests experience are not being able to create their own campaigns or buy seats themselves.

[h3]How to get started[/h3]
We have quick start guides both for getting started as a guest and also getting started as TaleSpire player. If you own a full copy of TaleSpire, then you want the second link.

[h3]A few common questions[/h3]

Q: Can we still get full copies of TaleSpire as we did before? 

A: Absolutely, that is not going away. This is an addition, not a replacement, and if you don’t need seats, you can safely ignore this whole announcement!

Q: My party and I already have TaleSpire. How does this affect me?

A: Not at all; nothing is changing. The Seats feature is just a new tool to help some folks bring in their players.

Q: Doesn’t this mean the GM has to buy seats for everyone? 

A: Mercifully, no. Anyone with a full copy of TaleSpire can own seats, and they bring those seats to any campaign they are in.

Q: I run five campaigns, each with four players. Do I seriously need to buy twenty seats?! 

A: Definitely not! Your seats are infinitely reusable across campaigns. They move with you automatically. That means that four seats would cover all twenty players. Remember also that you don’t need to be the one providing all the seats, anyone with the full game can bring a seat to the campaign.

[h3]Reporting issues[/h3]
While this release doesn’t appear to be that big in the game itself, we have an unrelated but extensive upgrade to the backend landing today.

As always, if you find bugs or experience issues, please reach out to us at https://feedback.talespire.com . We also haunt the Discord server, and there are thousands of lovely folks there who are a wellspring of tips, tricks, and knowledge!

[h3]That’s enough rambling from us[/h3]
We are happy to be providing a new option for getting people into TaleSpire. As with all things, it has its tradeoffs, but we hope this is handy for a good bunch of you.

With seats shipped, we are thrilled to be getting back into features and fixes and to keep driving towards the full release. We have a lot on the roadmap and we are going to deliver on all of it.

Until the next dev-log or patch, Happy adventuring!

Today, we tackle a bug that has thwarted the pasting of certain kinds of slabs.

When a slab that combined thin tiles and props was copied, this bug made it impossible to place the slab back on the grid correctly. It would be misaligned.

The following shows the difference before and after this patch.



Along with this, we fixed a case where a malformed slab could put tiles in unsupported rotations. This also allows for some data optimizations later on.

That’s all for this today. We will be back on Monday with Seats and more fixes.

BUILD-ID: 14497681 - Download Size: Win / Linux 2.9 MB / Mac OS 6.7 MB


P.S. We are not going to make a habit of releasing on the weekend. This fix was going to ship on Thursday, but our main build server decided to freak out and mess up the end of our week. 

Remember, computers can hear you, and as soon as you announce a deadline they will do their damnedest to mess that up :p

In just five days, we ship a whole new way to bring people into your adventures!

TaleSpire Guest Edition is a free-to-download version of TaleSpire, with the only restrictions being that people using Guest Edition (who we call guests) cannot create new campaigns or buy seats. Everything else, like community-made creatures, Symbiotes, and HeroForge are all available. Guests can even become GMs and help build the campaign!

For a guest to join a campaign, a "Seat" must be available for them.

Seats are a completely optional, infinitely reusable "plus-one" to a campaign. Any person who has a full copy of the game can purchase additional seats for guests to use. Using seats, a party of one GM and four players can play TaleSpire for 60% of the cost of everyone buying full copies.

It's not just about saving money, though. Seats are not tied to specific guests or campaigns, so they can be used across as many different parties as you like. This means you could GM for a hundred parties, each with four guest players, and you'd only need four seats for all four hundred of them!

We are delighted to be getting ready to ship this feature. A big thanks to you all for your patience as we wrestled this thing into existence. We've tried to make something just as useful to professional GMs as casual players. The design came directly out of your feedback, so thank you, and we hope you find it useful.

As always, we are reachable on the Discord server and socials, so feel free to ping us with any questions. We have at least one more patch shipping before the weekend, so perhaps we'll see you there.

Either way, have a great weekend. Monday is going to be fun.