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KickStarter Telepath Tactics Liberated - deterministic tactical RPG inspired by Fire Emblem

mindx2

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I'm just popping to let y'all know that as of today, I have finished getting every last cut scene and battle working in the new engine. Telepath Tactics: Liberated Edition* is now playable from beginning to end! :)

* not sure if I'm gonna stick with this name

Available where?
We're talking about the previous game without the romances and wokeshit, right?
Those "woke" concerns aren't really relevant to the game. Besides a disproportional number of female characters I don't remember any romances or "in my face" wokism. What I do remember is having a lot of fun with the strategic battles and early in it's release the mind-numbingly long turns! Craig eventually fixed that problem. I'm looking forward to this remaster and have avoided replaying it ever since I found out he was redoing it.
 

JarlFrank

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You mean the little clarinet "speech" sound? Already done. There are separate volume settings for sound effects, music, and dialogue sounds--just set that third one to zero and you're golden.

Is there also an option to make text appear instantly instead of typing out? I utterly abhor the typeout style of presenting dialogue.
 

Infinitron

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In the original Telepath Tactics, characters promoted at level 20: but in the new version, you can promote them early if you manage to find a Book of Power! Every last character in the game has branching promotion options, too. :)
 

vonAchdorf

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The only "woke" thing in the game was that Craig wanted to turn the typical male / female ratio on its head. Really innocent in these days. There is no preaching, just Craig doing in his own game what he thinks was right. I enjoyed the game and the passion which went into it and Craig was always very honest and open about his intentions.
 
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Darth Canoli

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Craig Stern
My bad, i thought it was released already.
  • How about font size, is there any options to increase it?
  • Also, skip text with something else than the mouse, like pressing spacebar or another key to get an auto-skip in order to not have to read your "prose" and not killing mouses/keyboards over it?
I was a fan of your early browser telepath games (if that's you) on armorgames/kongregate back when a lot of good games where released there.
 

Craig Stern

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That's dope; I love hearing from fans of the OG Telepath browser games! (And yeah, that's me.) :)

The Escape key functions like clicking in dialogue (provided there aren't branching replies). Font size is not customizable; it is chosen in concert with the UI design and in dialogue, specifically, with an eye to helping readability while still fitting in lengthier passages.
 

Darth Canoli

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That's dope; I love hearing from fans of the OG Telepath browser games! (And yeah, that's me.) :)

The Escape key functions like clicking in dialogue (provided there aren't branching replies). Font size is not customizable; it is chosen in concert with the UI design and in dialogue, specifically, with an eye to helping readability while still fitting in lengthier passages.

Well, if you have readability in mind, it's probably good enough.

As for Esc working like clicking, sorry to be pushy but does that mean you have to hit the escape key until your fingers fall off or the escape key is destroyed or can you just keep pressing the key?
Also, bindable keys would be just great because i don't want to mess too much with the escape key.

Pressing CTRL or ALT (not hitting it constantly) to automatically skip the text would be just perfect.

My younger self was a saltier version of fluent cutting games (and particularly free ones) some slack but UI issues are a choke-point for me nowadays.
 

Craig Stern

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As for Esc working like clicking, sorry to be pushy but does that mean you have to hit the escape key until your fingers fall off or the escape key is destroyed or can you just keep pressing the key?

As of right now, there's no "keep it held down to keep advancing" functionality--the game actually specifically avoids that because it tends to result in people accidentally skipping dialogue they meant to read! I can probably program something where the game starts auto-advancing if the key is still held down after a sufficient delay, though. I'll add it to The List.
 

Darth Canoli

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As of right now, there's no "keep it held down to keep advancing" functionality--the game actually specifically avoids that because it tends to result in people accidentally skipping dialogue they meant to read! I can probably program something where the game starts auto-advancing if the key is still held down after a sufficient delay, though. I'll add it to The List.

An auto-save after the combat results or better, before the story bits and an option to auto-skip (with a button or not) in the options menu would work even better (everyone gets a better experience).

So, if you messed up and want to read the story, you just pick your auto-save.
 

Craig Stern

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An auto-save after the combat results or better, before the story bits and an option to auto-skip (with a button or not) in the options menu would work even better (everyone gets a better experience).

Oh, the game already auto-saves every time it loads a new scene--so we should be set on that front!
 

Craig Stern

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What about that arena game you were working on, Mr Craig Stern ?

Together in Battle is still coming! I just reached a point where I realized that it would only be a few months of work to remake the Telepath Tactics campaign in-engine, so I decided to switch tacks and finish that up. I'll be releasing Together in Battle to early access (where I'll likely keep working on it for quite some time, building it out with more content and features and such) once Telepath Tactics: Liberated Edition is out.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Coming March 14th:



https://sinisterdesign.net/announcing-telepath-tactics-liberated/

Announcing Telepath Tactics Liberated!
I’m pleased and excited to announce Sinister Design’s next game release: Telepath Tactics Liberated!

Key-Art-w-Logo-1024x587.png

For those who never played Telepath Tactics, Telepath Tactics Liberated is a deep and engaging strategy RPG built upon the combat mechanics of Telepath games past, albeit with layers and layers of tactical depth poured on.

Featuring a cast of dozens of engaging characters, a well-told story, 72 classes, more than 150 skills, branching promotions, and mechanical depth still not seen in any other strategy RPG to date, Telepath Tactics Liberated is an SRPG fan’s SRPG.

Think Fire Emblem, but with trees and foliage you can hack through; the ability to place traps; the power to build bridges or barricades on the fly; the option to shove enemies off cliffs, to pull them into water or lava, or to hurl them into each other for crushing damage. All of that is here and more!

“But Craig,” you might say, “I played the original Telepath Tactics from 2015. What’s new in this remake?” I’m glad you asked:
  • New hand-designed maps!
  • New dialogue (including victory barks for each character)!
  • New difficulty modes!
  • 3D terrain! (Elevation effects no longer distort the map; characters visibly sink into water or lava and disappear into chasms.)
  • Beautiful hand-painted portraits with varying facial expressions!
  • Gorgeous HDR bloom lighting, attack effects, and particle effects!
  • A more visually dynamic presentation with idle animations, animated water and lava, animated smoke, vegetation that moves in the wind, etc.
  • More than 40 new skills to learn!
  • More than two dozen new classes!
  • Branching promotions!
  • Special, hard-to-get items that let you promote characters early!
  • Rebalanced characters!
  • New items and equipment!
  • 10 new status effect types!
  • Smarter AI! (You will now get shoved off of cliffs if you’re not careful!)
  • Support for saving mid-battle!
  • A vastly improved user interface, including a dedicated shop interface and a dedicated promotion interface!
  • A vastly improved camera system!
  • Attack range is displayed when you click enemies, not just move range!
  • Support for auto-move-and-attack!
  • Improved backstab mechanics!
  • The ability to shove characters into each other for damage!
  • New music by composer Ryan Richko!
  • Support for multiple different screen resolutions, including 4K!
  • Proc gen reinforcement characters who can join you under certain conditions!
  • A full-fledged campaign editing suite, not just a map and dialogue editor!
  • An improved and expanded scripting system for modding your own game logic!
It’s hard to describe with a list–even a really long one–but the game just feels better to play now.

Telepath Tactics Liberated will be coming out in mid-March 2022. Go ahead and visit the Steam page to wishlist and follow the game!

But what about Together in Battle?
Not to worry–Together in Battle is still coming, but will now be entering early access later in 2022. Since Together in Battle directly follows the events of Telepath Tactics, it simply made more sense to get the remake of Telepath Tactics out first. (And since they share an engine, all of the work I’ve put in to finishing up Telepath Tactics Liberated benefits Together in Battle as well!)
 

Craig Stern

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As of right now, there's no "keep it held down to keep advancing" functionality--the game actually specifically avoids that because it tends to result in people accidentally skipping dialogue they meant to read! I can probably program something where the game starts auto-advancing if the key is still held down after a sufficient delay, though. I'll add it to The List.

You will no doubt be pleased to hear that this feature finally made it into the game yesterday! It works really well, too. Gonna finish up adding in controller support soon. :D
 

Craig Stern

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I'm not sure you confirmed this, so is there a combat speed slider (x2, x3 ...) and a way to skip or speed up dialog and cut-scenes?

Yup! Holding down Escape now acts like an auto-press which skips pretty quickly through dialogue. There are settings for walk speed and dialogue speed, plus a toggle to turn off camera zoom if you want to shave a fraction of a second off each exchange of blows. :cool:
 

Craig Stern

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I did an interview with Game Wisdom back in December that finally dropped on Youtube yesterday evening! We talk about Telepath Tactics Liberated for maybe 20 minutes, and then it transitions into a solid hour and a half more of just riffing about strategy RPG design considerations. I had a ton of fun doing this interview.

Check it out here! :)
 

Mustawd

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I did an interview with Game Wisdom back in December

Just watched most of the podcast episode. Not bad. Very interesting dicussions. Actually made me think of a few questions:

1. There was some brief discussion of modability. Just to expand on that, will your new tactics games you're developing have modability like the original TT?

2. You mentioned Fire Emblem games a bit. Were you trying to emulate some of the waifu sim aspects of FE with romances? Just curious. Personally, I thought that part of TT was one of the weakest, but interested in your thoughts on that in general as a game mechanic.
 

Craig Stern

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Hey Mustawd! I am indeed planning on having extensive moddability in TTL. The scope of mod support is slightly different due to changes in the engine (custom logic/scripting/AI are much more robust, while custom graphics are in most regards more limited). I'm actually releasing a video tomorrow that talks about how to create custom characters/cut scenes/battles in TTL.

As for waifu sim stuff...nah. As a solo dev, I've got to know my limitations. I've got limited time and resources, so it's important for me to focus my attention where it can have the greatest impact. Designing the original Telepath Tactics, I was focused on mechanics that could more directly contribute to emergent game states through the combination of different systems. Combat is a really fertile area for this sort of combinatorial design, and so that was what I focused on for the original Telepath Tactics.

Now, it's true that with the TTL remake, I totally could have written Fire Emblem-style supports, but that would have violated my design philosophy. The fact is, FE-style romances are pretty rigid; they're basically a set of static skits that play out the same way every single time and afford some predictable stat bonuses for unit adjacency afterwards. They're amusing the first time, then stale every time afterwards. They aren't combinatorial, deeply integrated into combat systems, or subject to change based on in-game events (other than not happening at all because someone died). Put simply: FE-style romances just don't yield the same bounty of emergent play states that more combinatorial systems do. So I've avoided them.

I am interested in exploring systems for character relationships: I just want to create a new system that's dynamic and combinatorial. And hey, it just so happens that that is exactly what I'm doing for Together in Battle! ;) It's not fully ready yet, though--and even if it was, I can't just slap that onto the Telepath Tactics campaign. It wasn't designed around it.
 

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