Telepath Tactics September Update

Craig Stern has recently published the September monthly update for Telepath Tactics, in which he details the work he’s done on the game during that month and also puts his own interview with the game’s composer, Ryan Richko, under the spotlight. Here’s a snippet:

new sprite variant graphics! Since I am now paying for all of the remaining graphics work out-of-pocket, I am forced to be more cost-conscious than ever therefore, where we needed a few new sprite variants for characters with unique complexions or hair, I took care of those myself. I also pixeled most of the remaining animations for the game’s variant sprites. All told, this probably saved me something in the neighborhood of $500-600 in exchange for about 6.5 hours of my time. (In theory, it would have been better to spend that time creating new battles, but y’know: the sprites needed to be made.)

…

more interface improvements! Specifically:

– I pixeled some lovely new sliders for the settings menu.
– when you select an attack, the attack name now remains at the top of the screen for as long as you take while targeting it.
– there are now proper hotkeys for Talk, Use, and Open/Close Door.
– when selecting Talk, Open/Close Door, or Use, if there is only one thing adjacent to the character that can be interacted with in that way, the game now automatically interacts with it instead of making you click a targeting reticle.
– the dialog box now dynamically rearranges itself to use the extra room at the top of the box if there’s no speaker in a given dialog branch.
– vastly improved in-game behavior during exploration mode.
– all of a character’s attacks now show in the detailed character screen in exploration mode (even if they can’t actually use said attacks while in exploration mode).
– in addition to showing an attack’s effect and accuracy, attack reticles now also display the relevant stats for your target(s), meaning that you no longer need to cancel an attack to check on the target’s health, energy, or what-have-you; see the screenies below!