Telepath Tactics July Update

Craig Stern has released a new monthly update on the upcoming tactical turn-based RPG Telepath Tactics, which covers “Tactics Jam”, a 6-hour workshop with Chicago-based game developers on Telepath Tactics’ mod tools, and a series of improvements for the title (the list is a bit shorter than usual because apparently Stern has been focusing on content creation and wants to avoid spoiling the game). Here’s a snippet:

Perhaps the single most exciting thing (from my perspective) that happened in July was (Tactics Jam,) a 6-hour intensive workshop I ran on how to mod Telepath Tactics. Basically, I gave a small group of Chicago game developers a guided introduction to using the map editor, and to editing data within the Telepath Tactics framework.

There was a surprising amount to cover so much so that after two hours of introduction, when I let everyone break off and start experimenting, there was almost zero overlap in terms of what people subsequently focused on! Rob Lockhart (whom you might know as the developer behind Codemancer) immediately started work on programming a Turing machine using the Telepath Tactics scripting system; Don Alsafi began constructing elaborate dialog trees in the dialog editor for an interactive adventure game; and Ryan Wiemeyer (of The Men Who Wear Many Hats) began work on a tactical campaign with Organ Trail graphics, tiles, objects, items, and attacks.

In essence, I think I’ve finally nailed one of my big goals with Telepath Tactics: to make it incredibly powerful and flexible for modders (to say nothing of developers who want to make their own, full-fledged games). Still, watching so many people work has helped motivate me to make a number of significant improvements to the map editor. The tools are good, but they can always be better!