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Together in Battle - the next strategy RPG from Telepath Tactics developer - now available on Early Access

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
LoL Infinitron is drunk and butthurt :lol:. Mate if you don't want us to bitch about political garbage in the game's section,then don't allow games with such obvious political charge in it. Or....are you just butthurt by our political views and your ratings represent your personal political views?
 

Craig Stern

Sinister Design
Developer
Joined
Feb 15, 2009
Messages
398
Location
Chicago
It's a fantasy universe, dude. Liberals are not a thing in this game. And you're going to get people with different skin colors in any realistic world where discrete human populations evolved with varying levels of exposure to sunlight (and thus, differing need for melanin to prevent melanoma and other skin cancers). That doesn't mean that this game has real-world racial politics in it.

Same deal for homosexuality: it occurs naturally at rates of up to 10% (see e.g.) across all cultures. So it's represented here too. That doesn't mean your characters are going to run around in Speedos, swiping on Grindr, organizing pride marches or what-have-you. They're just regular-ass people who have differing sexual preferences. There's nothing political about representing real human variation in a game set around a tournament with international reach.

Tbh, I don't even know what "obvious political charge" it is that you think this game has, but as the guy who actually made this thing, I'm telling you that you're making unwarranted assumptions. Maybe chill and wait for the game to actually come out so you can make an informed judgment.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
It's a fantasy universe, dude. Liberals are not a thing in this game. And you're going to get people with different skin colors in any realistic world where discrete human populations evolved with varying levels of exposure to sunlight (and thus, differing need for melanin to prevent melanoma and other skin cancers). That doesn't mean that this game has real-world racial politics in it.

Same deal for homosexuality: it occurs naturally at rates of up to 10% (see e.g.) across all cultures. So it's represented here too. That doesn't mean your characters are going to run around in Speedos, swiping on Grindr, organizing pride marches or what-have-you. They're just regular-ass people who have differing sexual preferences. There's nothing political about representing real human variation in a game set around a tournament with international reach.

Tbh, I don't even know what "obvious political charge" it is that you think this game has, but as the guy who actually made this thing, I'm telling you that you're making unwarranted assumptions. Maybe chill and wait for the game to actually come out so you can make an informed judgment.
LoL you are such a delusional liberal. I have no problem with the game or the shit in it. It is your game and it is your decision to include whatever you fell like including. If you like you could make a gay lizardmxn orgy simulator. The point is that i will not buy that shit because i don't like it,and i will most likely mock it. You are free to mock my views as much as you like. I just find infi's butthurt amusing :). It is pretty clear that i am not your targeted audience,as many other codexers. That said there must be libtard codexers that are interested in it. It will be unhealthy to take our opinion seriously since you have opposite and strong views to us.
 

Joggerino

Arcane
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Oct 28, 2020
Messages
4,472
You have to respect a developer who responds seriously to sentences such as "So can we kill niggers and faggots as we please?" :lol:
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
Patron
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
1,871,744
Location
Land of Rape & Honey ❤️
Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Can we talk about the real elephant in the room?

I saw a knight(?) with a lip piercing(?).

You really, really do not want facial piercings in an occupation where you can risk being hit in the face or end up grappling with someone.
 

Bohrain

Liturgist
Patron
Joined
Aug 10, 2016
Messages
1,442
Location
norf
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
The portraits really are deviantart tier. If you sacrificed alternate facial expressions and made do with a reasonably small resolution I think that comissioning new ones for maybe 15-20$ per character isn't an unreasonable expense. Customers are going to compare an indie game in presentation to stuff like Undertale and VA-11 HALL-A and seeing that portrait art will make people ignore the game. The characters themselves can be whatever, but people just won't like looking ugly things.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
It's just incredible how retarded the conversation becomes when people get obsessed with detecting woke.

Craig Stern you previously mentioned financial constraints around the art. That's understandable, but it is a pity, because the faces art really is a huge turn-off at first glance. It has that "I'm actually playing MS Paint, aren't I" feel. There's a difference between "visually unimpressive game with good gameplay that I might try" and "god the bad art draws the eye and that's the first impression I get about this game".

Going past that, the Steam page sells the unique appeal of this game as dungeoneering + social sim, but the dialogue examples you've chosen to highlight in the screenshots aren't promising on that front - they're completely forgettable. I can imagine maybe that the game has a more numbers-driven 'roguelike' approach to the social aspect too, and that I'm supposed to treat this dialogue more like, say, Dwarf Fortress lines rather than actual CRPG lines. But you can see how I have to make a generous reading of the information already to find the setup appealing.

So I'm wondering what you feel is the central appeal of the game that maybe isn't being communicated as well. In the Steam page, for me the interesting part is the procedural side. Is there an example of how, say, "in TiB, your dwarf fighter might spawn with a deep craving for beermaking which consumes his nights, and here's a cool way this actually interacts with his combat performance by day, and then I am scouring the dungeons for resources to keep him happy..."?
 

Craig Stern

Sinister Design
Developer
Joined
Feb 15, 2009
Messages
398
Location
Chicago
I can imagine maybe that the game has a more numbers-driven 'roguelike' approach to the social aspect too, and that I'm supposed to treat this dialogue more like, say, Dwarf Fortress lines rather than actual CRPG lines.

It's not just numbers-driven; a better way of describing it would be "combinatorial." There are loads of little elements, independently chosen, that add up to create a rich portrait of who your characters really are.

For a whole variety of reasons that it would take a long time to properly explain, hand-written dialogue is a very "expensive" way to express character in a game like this--you get relatively little mileage out of it compared to the effort put in, in part because you have to be very careful to write them in ways that avoid contradicting other traits a character might possess. (I hired a writer at one point to help me flesh out dialogue variants, and she ran headlong into this issue constantly.) The individual lines are not meant to be impressive in and of themselves; in fact, it would be counterproductive for them to stand out too much, as repetition of particularly memorable lines will be glaringly obvious to the player! Instead, the role of proc gen character dialogue here is to buttress a cumulative impression of who your characters are, driven by nonverbal behaviors and reactions to ongoing events.

Okay, so what does this look like in practice? I'll give you one possible example among literally trillions:

Brutus Humblebone. On the recruitment screen, you'll see that he is a swordsman with an eidetic memory, allowing him to level up quickly; but that he also suffers from insomnia, meaning that he recovers health and energy less reliably from rest.

There's a lot about him you won't know from looking at that screen. For instance: he is a narcissistic and blunt ex-novelist from Claverbush, a small town on the mainland. He grew up poor with his mother, father, and three sisters. He gets along well with his sisters, but not his parents. Brutus loves sapphires because they remind him of the ocean, and horror stories because they offer him a cathartic release for his deepest fears. You'll probably see him relax with a horror novel from time to time in the evening--but otherwise, you won't know any of this until he talks to other characters. (And because he is narcissistic and blunt, his dialogue will range from self-aggrandizing to judgmental as he reveals things about himself and his past.)

Because he has insomnia, Brutus will sometimes be unable to sleep and will try to tire himself out by practicing late at night. This will net him experience, but at the cost of energy. Because he loves horror novels, he will sometimes spend the evening in his tent, recovering morale by reading a truly frightful book. And because he is an ex-novelist himself, Brutus can undertake the "write a novel" project. This will produce occasional mini-events in the evenings describing his progress (or lack thereof). Eventually, he will complete the project and produce a usable item called Bruce's Novel, which will appear in your inventory. You can give it to a character to read to raise their morale, or else sell it for a good chunk of money.

Characters who become familiar enough with him will nickname him: "Brutie," say, or "Brutes." They'll do things together, like spar. When Brutus gets close enough to someone, he'll reveal his deepest secret: he's never felt empathy for other people. He likes to adopt different personas and push boundaries, just to see what he can get away with. Brutus likes the other character, though. If Brutus and the other character get to be really close, he will start to teach them combat skills out of concern for their safety.

Things can happen to Brutus. He might find out that his mother is gravely ill and request time off to go visit her. He might fall ill himself, hampering his ability to use special skills in combat. He might have a change of heart about being a swordsman and ask your permission to change to a new class. Another character might fall in love with him, and he might brutally reject them--or he might not, and they might go on a date.


So what's the appeal of all this? To my mind, it's that over time, you get to unwrap all these layers of your characters and learn about them even as they learn about each other--you see them grow and you start to care about them and get invested in keeping them safe even as the game's battles get ever more complex and dangerous. It is, in a phrase, proc gen Fire Emblem (but far more dynamic).
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Yeah, there's two questions here. The first is about presentation: are you putting your strongest bits forward on Steam? Three screenshots with generic throwaway dialogue may not be it. I can see the challenge in translating something like that Brutus example to promo material, though.

The second is about the design decisions. I'm not convinced that traits like 'writing a novel' or 'lacking empathy' are interesting / suitable ones to deploy in a procedural dungeoneering game, because these seem to be the kind of traits that require deeper hand-drawn contexts and characters rather than Dwarf Fortress or Sims-style Maslowian "Need meat" "Need sex". But I certainly think it's an interesting thing to try, and that's what I'll be watching for from the game/thread.
 

Citizen

Guest
Craig Stern Is the art on the screenshots final? Character busts in dialogues don't look good honestly, TT portraits were definitely better
 

Fargus

Arcane
Joined
Apr 2, 2012
Messages
2,349
Location
Moscow
LoL Infinitron is drunk and butthurt :lol:. Mate if you don't want us to bitch about political garbage in the game's section,then don't allow games with such obvious political charge in it. Or....are you just butthurt by our political views and your ratings represent your personal political views?

Fagtron just being Fagtron. Nothing new. He gets annoyed when someone mocks libtard\degenerate shit in rpgs.
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
LoL Infinitron is drunk and butthurt :lol:. Mate if you don't want us to bitch about political garbage in the game's section,then don't allow games with such obvious political charge in it. Or....are you just butthurt by our political views and your ratings represent your personal political views?

Fagtron just being Fagtron. Nothing new. He gets annoyed when someone mocks libtard\degenerate shit in rpgs.
Ahh i don't think that he is a fag,most of the times he is butthurt when people talk politics in the game forum,which i get it. Also i think that he is more chad than the other mods/admins.....even if he is a jew and have his own agenda :).
 

Mustawd

Guest
7cFajJr.png
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
bro ok let me help you out here.
I've gone through over 25,000 games on my steam queue. I enjoy many absolute trash games, I am in many ways the average person you(and most devs) want to market their game to.

You need to hire someone who does good porn art to redo your character portraits.
If a game doesn't catch my eye by being unique, cool sci-fi, or having big explosions then they fall back on the appeal of attractive females.

Goodluck.
 

Alter Sack

Magister
Joined
Dec 22, 2019
Messages
2,201
Considering telepath tactics I am certain that the basic gameplay will be pretty solid.

But like other members already said, you should really change the portraits because they look really repulsive and might deterr people from buying your game. They make your game look amateurish and cheap (what it almost certainly istn't).

On another note weren't you pretty ill some years ago (kidney issue) or do I confuse you with another developer?

If not I hope that you are good now.
 

baud

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 11, 2016
Messages
3,992
Location
Septentrion
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
Considering telepath tactics I am certain that the basic gameplay will be pretty solid.

But like other members already said, you should really change the portraits because they look really repulsive and might deterr people from buying your game. They make your game look amateurish and cheap (what it almost certainly istn't).

On another note weren't you pretty ill some years ago (kidney issue) or do I confuse you with another developer?

If not I hope that you are good now.

the dev of quest for infamy have kidneys issues (was on dialyse since quite some time and recently had a transplant), maybe you're confused with him?
 

baud

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 11, 2016
Messages
3,992
Location
Septentrion
RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
It's a fantasy universe, dude. Liberals are not a thing in this game. And you're going to get people with different skin colors in any realistic world where discrete human populations evolved with varying levels of exposure to sunlight (and thus, differing need for melanin to prevent melanoma and other skin cancers). That doesn't mean that this game has real-world racial politics in it.

if you go with the Muh Realism card, you'd also have to explain how all those people coming from discrete population groups from all over the planet find themselves together to fight for the player. And same for the non-humans characters, who would have evolved in different areas from the humans and so on
 

Alter Sack

Magister
Joined
Dec 22, 2019
Messages
2,201
Could be the case. I remember that he already had a transplant and didn't want to get another from his wife until he really knew what the underlying issues were.

Could have sworn it was craig but alas that doesn't seem to be the case. I am sorry for the confusion.
 

vazha

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2013
Messages
2,063
Is there a chance you'd add a game mode free of your romance stories [censured] "C&C" with just the combat and nothing but the combat?
Or just a skip the whole scene button for everything that happens out of the combat?

You can just click through and ignore it, but pretty much the same thing will happen as if you just mindlessly click through responses in Baldur's Gate: you're probably going to end up with pissed off party members that eventually leave. It doesn't stop being C&C just because you don't like the visual presentation or diversity in the cast. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Could you incorporate some characters / backgrounds that from your viewpoint are complete immoral racist & rapist & intolerant & insensitive & bigoted & whateverist assholes, so we normal people can play them? Please?
 

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