Mustawd
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But the question is, this improved version will be free for owners of the original version? if not, it's going to be a full price or get a discount?
Craig Stern
But the question is, this improved version will be free for owners of the original version? if not, it's going to be a full price or get a discount?
If there is an option to save while in battle, I will buy it immediately.
There are some random elements in the game.
Is the AI's movement completely deterministic or does it have fuzziness?
this improved version will be free for owners of the original version? if not, it's going to be a full price or get a discount?
I feel a bit cheeky. I had a gut feeling that that was one of the changes.If there is an option to save while in battle, I will buy it immediately.
That's the plan! I've been reworking the way the game stores data with this feature in mind.
There are some random elements in the game.
Is the AI's movement completely deterministic or does it have fuzziness?
There is a bit of fuzziness in the AI to help keep the enemy from being too predictable with its moves.
this improved version will be free for owners of the original version? if not, it's going to be a full price or get a discount?
I hope to do something like that, yeah! For Kickstarter backers or people who bought the game direct from me, I can definitely make that happen; for other post-KS purchasers, though, I'm not 100% sure if there's a way for me to just send out keys to existing owners through Steam or GOG. I know that Steam will let me verify keys, but ideally I'd like a distribution method that doesn't involve hand-checking hundreds or thousands of people individually. We'll see what I can make happen!
- The new engine has a much better camera system. Camera movement is smoothed now, meaning that the old, jerky camera movement of Vanilla Telepath Tactics is now gone. (The new camera zooms in close during attack sequences, too, to give you a nice view of the action!)
- The new engine supports numerous display resolutions, and does not get super zoomed-out or hard-to-read on larger monitors.
- Character portraits have been redone in higher res! They now support a wide variety of different facial expressions during dialogue, not just a single default one.
...
- Characters now support combat barks for a whole bunch of different combat actions, not just a single monologue spoken upon death.
- In the original game, I gave each piece of equipment a list of character classes that could use it (sometimes alongside species or level requirements), then had the game list which of your characters met all the requirements. It was cumbersome and confusing. I've now scrapped this approach in favor of masteries: each piece of equipment requires a certain mastery, and any character with the correct mastery can use it! Have Light Armor mastery? You can equip light armor. Have Main Gauche mastery? You can equip main gauches. Et cetera!
- The AI has been redone! It now processes enemy moves faster, and supports a new mode in which it is even smarter than in the original Telepath Tactics! But even cooler, it's now customizable--I can now have different enemy commanders behave differently from one another (e.g. focusing more on defense or more on aggression, or by behaving more predictably or less predictably)!
- Status effects have been rebalanced so that they all provide dramatic effects lasting no more than a few rounds. (I'm looking at you, Blinded and Slowed.)
This was a core principle of the game's marketing (the fourth of six reasons "to pay attention to Telepath Tactics" was "it actively takes gender-related tropes and flips them around") and design, so I doubt you'll see any changes in that. From the design post, it sounds like watching Anita Sarkeesian's videos were a watershed moment for Craig, which probably explains why the difference between the games.My main gripe with this game is the incredibly silly & childish femmie storyline, which is surprising considering I loved the story in earlier Telepath game.
I'm sorry, but this comes across as unbearably pretentious. Especially in light of things like this: http://telepath.wikia.com/wiki/Skills_(Telepath_Tactics)5. The game’s world is unusual.
The Lord of the Rings was published in 1955. That was 60 years ago, and RPGs have been steadily plagiarizing J.R.R. Tolkien ever since. If I had a dollar for every time I had to fight an orc or a giant spider in an RPG, I could retire wealthy; if I received an extra dime for every time I had the choice of playing as a human, an elf, or a dwarf, I could buy a small island to live out said retirement on.
What I’m saying is, I’m bored to death of fantasy settings simply rehashing the exact same fantasy ad infinitum. The Telepath universe gets away from that over-familiar stuff and into things that are just a little more…weird.
Also significant is the fact that there is no magic, only various disciplines of psionics. Writing stories in a setting without magic presents a particular challenge. RPGs with magic can explain inconsistencies with nonsensical magical MacGuffins and by resort to A Wizard Did It; the Telepath universe allows for no such luxuries. Because nothing can be explained away by magic, there are limited opportunities for hand-waving, and everything must make sense in itself.
(the fourth of six reasons "to pay attention to Telepath Tactics" was "it actively takes gender-related tropes and flips them around")
yada yada
No, it doesn't just "happen" to be that way. As you wrote previously, "[t]he bottom line is, it t[ook] work–actual conscious effort–" for you to write the gender politics in to Telepath Tactics. Undertaking that hard work was important to you because:It's...just a straightforward revenge story that happens to have largely female protagonists.
You then added:Speaking personally as a game developer, I loathe the thought of contributing to a games culture in which there are hardly any female role models. I imagine a young girl sitting down to play games and rarely ever seeing that the hero is of her own gender. Over the years, I imagine her subconsciously internalizing that pattern. Girls don’t get to be the hero; boys get to be the hero. It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. Why would I want to contribute to something so insidious? It’s just horrible.
To the extent the Codex falls within the culture you're trying to adjust, it is probably better to meet the arguments head on. Telepath Tactics makes a conscious decision to tell a story where men are weak and in need of saving by strong women, and it does so because you wanted to counterbalance "insidious" tropes that made present women as always being on the receiving, and never the giving, end of heroic intervention. Hard to object to your decision to make the game that way, but I don't think you should back away from it as a decision when someone says he didn't like it.The numbers don’t lie. Women are every bit as much a part of the gaming ecosystem as men, and yet they receive only a small fraction of the leading roles. Is it any wonder that many women are upset? (I can assure the reader that men would not be happy in a world where male characters were constantly getting kidnapped or killed in games to set up the plot, and yet were actually heroes in only 1 out of every 30 titles.) This phenomenon is unrealistic, it makes no business sense, and–perhaps most importantly–it’s just plain wrong.
So I’m using female protagonists.
Speaking personally as a game developer, I loathe the thought of contributing to a games culture in which there are hardly any female role models. I imagine a young girl sitting down to play games and rarely ever seeing that the hero is of her own gender. Over the years, I imagine her subconsciously internalizing that pattern. Girls don’t get to be the hero; boys get to be the hero. It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. Why would I want to contribute to something so insidious? It’s just horrible.
The numbers don’t lie. Women are every bit as much a part of the gaming ecosystem as men, and yet they receive only a small fraction of the leading roles. Is it any wonder that many women are upset? (I can assure the reader that men would not be happy in a world where male characters were constantly getting kidnapped or killed in games to set up the plot, and yet were actually heroes in only 1 out of every 30 titles.) This phenomenon is unrealistic, it makes no business sense, and–perhaps most importantly–it’s just plain wrong.
So I’m using female protagonists.
the new engine looks great! There are few solo developers out there who have been as committed to making great, original games for as long as you have, and I hope that the new year brings us more from Sinister Designs! And you shouldn't flinch from advancing your values in future games!
stuff
Honest question, wouldn't the ability to create a custom protagonist solve this feeling of representation for everyone?My decision to do a better job of representing women in TT was, in part, a response to negative feelings that were actually expressed by numerous women (and not just internet randos, but quite a few women I know personally as well) at hardly ever seeing themselves represented as heroes in games.
Honest question, wouldn't the ability to create a custom protagonist solve this feeling of representation for everyone?
Looking at the post again, perhaps I misread it. My impression was probably colored by the preceding portions regarding other aspects of writing (in which you explicitly called other writers "lazy" and other games "insidious", etc.), but even the portion about Tolkien does seem to suggest that other writers are lazier, and their stories weaker, because they "plagiarize" and "rehash" settings so as to avoid "challenge" in favor of "nonsensical" solutions and "hand-waving":I do think the interpretation you've supplied vis-a-vis my comments about Tolkien-alikes is a touch uncharitable, however. I never once called other game writers lazy or claimed that the stories of these games were weaker, let alone stated that "everyone else is lame"!
Next:The Lord of the Rings was published in 1955. That was 60 years ago, and RPGs have been steadily plagiarizing J.R.R. Tolkien ever since... simply rehashing the exact same fantasy ad infinitum. ... Writing stories in a setting without magic presents a particular challenge. RPGs with magic can explain inconsistencies with nonsensical magical MacGuffins and by resort to A Wizard Did It ... [and with] hand-waving....
Well, here is the blurb in full -- I'm not sure it quite constitutes "call[ing] out other games":This, I would assume, is what you yourself do on the official page for Primordia when you call out other games in the point-and-click adventure genre for "trial and error or endless backtracking," and intimate that they feature clunky interfaces and player-unfriendly design. Are you refuting "the classics"? Are you arrogantly implying that your game is better than they are? Of course not!
I certainly think Primordia has a "streamlined interface" (for better and worse) and "player-friendly design" when compared to the classics -- it has only two verbs (use/look) mapped onto the two mouse buttons (the Revolution interface), it has fast-travel between locations (an uncommon feature), it has an integrated hint system and automatic note-taking, and the player can't die or get dead-ended. Of course, describing Primordia's puzzles as "logical" invites (and rightly so) criticisms, sometimes harsh but almost always fair, of the many places where its puzzles aren't logical. In hindsight, I would avoid using that kind of self-congratulation even in marketing because I think it tends to backfire. Also, as I've indicated in recent posts, I think the self-flagellation (often in fact flagellation of others) by adventure developers about illogical puzzles is somewhat misplaced.Primordia is a point-and-click adventure game that combines the challenge and depth of the classics with a streamlined interface and a player-friendly design: puzzles emphasize logical thinking and exploration, rather than trial and error or endless backtracking. The game features over fifty hand-drawn rooms, dozens of distinctive characters, and gorgeous painted cutscenes.
So if you wanted to suggest I was hypocritical for "calling out" other games, you could probably do better than the Primordia feature list! (Of course, in that same interview I say that Primordia is poorly designed and has terrible puzzles compared to the classics.) You could also look at the reviews I've posted on Steam, which tend to include criticism as well as praise, and sometimes that criticism is even framed in unfavorable comparison to Primordia (for example, with respect to the voice acting in Heroine's Quest). Or you could look at my criticism of Kickstarter fundraising tactics (for instance: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ickstarters-dos-and-donts.97780/#post-3804145) and F2P monetization (for instance: https://twitter.com/WWSGames/status/928864111407939585). I certainly didn't mean to suggest that one should never criticize the flaws he sees in other games -- being a developer doesn't mean forfeiting your right your to express an opinion.The Longest Journey is shameless about this long-distance ping-pong design. Such design is inexcusable though not inexplicable ("The puzzle is too easy as is; at least make the player work for it!" "There's hardly any gameplay; at least give the player something to do!").
Over the years, I imagine her subconsciously internalizing that pattern. Girls don’t get to be the hero; boys get to be the hero. It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach. Why would I want to contribute to something so insidious? It’s just horrible.
So I’m using female protagonists.
I really liked this game (and previous telepath games actually) but the writing / story sandwiched in between the missions was an absolute cringe-fest and easily the worst part of the whole effort. The inclusion of women as front-line fighters is not 'natural', any more so than including cripples with missing limbs as front line fighters would be
I don't believe that a large portion of the audience for this game, or any sword and sorcery tactics type game is women