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

[vonAchdorf]

the employed programmer generally has no rights on what he codes for his employer, therefore his compensation has to include that somehow.

That's true. For purposes of this article, however, I'm just looking at this from a financial perspective. From that perspective, the rights to the game only matter in terms of the money that the game produces for the rights-holder. If owning the rights to the game does not provide wages equivalent to what one would make working on someone else's game without owning the rights, then it's a net loss.

(There are other, less hard-nosed perspectives, of course, ones which would assign a value to intangible factors like the satisfaction of complete creative control and the pride that comes from being synonymous with the game itself. Needless to say, I value these intangibles quite a lot--they're a huge part of the reason I'm an indie developer!)

Yes, you are right about using those to calculate the (hypothetical) costs of a game if done by a third party, it's just that words like "fairly" trigger me

I'm looking forward to the sales figures and hope they allow you to go full-time with your game development. You had some cautious remarks in the piece about lacking polish impeding sales numbers, but I hope, it worked out for you anyway!

In the long run, you'll probably want to move away from AIR, which will certainly require additional resources.

 

[tuluse]

A little distortion with those numbers, you point out that you don't receive full price from your sales, but as though publishers selling physical copies do. The budgets for the games you mention can probably be decreased to 1/3-1/2 what you wrote.

Also, ouch on that BMT Micro rate, go with Paypal or Amazon and you'll be paying half or less.

 

[Craig Stern]

Oh, I'm definitely not switching to Paypal--try Googling paypal screws game developer and see what shows up.

 

[tuluse]

That seems to be related to very large purchases and pre-orders.

We use paypal as our cc processing where I work and we have no problems getting our money and we only pay ~3.5%.

 

[deuxhero]

I just got the game on Steam sale after seeing this thread and remembering about it.

I can't beat the tutorial though. Whatever I do (hitting it with all 3 characters at once) the altar winds up with 1 HP and regens.

Get gud.


Seriously tho...this game is not an easy one; which is pretty refreshing. It helps t actually read the manual to understand and analyze how each class causes damage, resists spells, and moves.

And it took me a couple of tries to beat the tutorial as well. don't forget to use the spearman correctly (aka put him behind a swordsman in order to attack from a square away).

I did. The swordsman, spearman and crossbowman all attack, but the altar survives with one HP. The stones on the side of it can't be damaged, and no unit can attack diagnols, so there's no other way to position them.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I just got the game on Steam sale after seeing this thread and remembering about it.

I can't beat the tutorial though. Whatever I do (hitting it with all 3 characters at once) the altar winds up with 1 HP and regens.

Get gud.


Seriously tho...this game is not an easy one; which is pretty refreshing. It helps t actually read the manual to understand and analyze how each class causes damage, resists spells, and moves.

And it took me a couple of tries to beat the tutorial as well. don't forget to use the spearman correctly (aka put him behind a swordsman in order to attack from a square away).

I did. The swordsman, spearman and crossbowman all attack, but the altar survives with one HP. The stones on the side of it can't be damaged, and no unit can attack diagnols, so there's no other way to position them.

Your crossbow woman is probably one tile too far back. They need to be lined up directly behind each other. Ranged weapons loose strength with distance.

 

[deuxhero]

That explains that. The tutorial tutorial doesn't cover that, at least not at that point, (the main game tutorial does)

 

[Craig Stern]

The tutorial tutorial doesn't cover that, at least not at that point, (the main game tutorial does)

It used to be unnecessary, as the crossbowman couldn't target more than 3 squares away--I think that must have been changed in the tutorial at some point. I'll add in some text explaining damage fall-off.

 

[Jaesun]

A new review here, that covers the basics of the game http://truepcgaming.com/2015/06/08/telepath-tactics-review/

Concussion – Is It Worth Your Money?
Telepath Tactics is a challenging and well-designed entry in a somewhat underrepresented strategy subgenre on the PC. Despite minor issues and the rather big oversight of not allowing mid-mission savegames, it’s an easy recommendation for strategy fans and RPG aficionados alike. If you’re into turn-based tactics, you really shouldn’t waste any more action points and immediately pick up this gem. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time on the lengthy and difficult missions.​

 

[Jimmious]

A good concussion is always worth your money

 

[Crooked Bee]

Telepath Tactics’s budget is incredibly small given what we achieved with it. Compare Telepath Tactics to Fire Emblem: Awakening, for instance. Fire Emblem: Awakening costs $39.99 at full price; it reportedly needed to sell 250,000 copies at that price to be considered “worthwhile” (which we can assume means “profitable,” or something close to it). 250,000 copies sold at $39.99 equals just shy of $10 million. That’s about 200 times the budget that Telepath Tactics had (or 78 times its total cost to develop that includes my theoretical salary).

Hitoshi Yatagami of Nintendo has said that a WiiU Fire Emblem would need to shift 700,000 copies to cover the costs of development; WiiU games typically cost $49.99 or $59.99 new. Giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming the lower of these two prices, that means a WiiU Fire Emblem game would cost roughly $35 million to make. That’s about 700 times Telepath Tactics’s budget, or more than 273 times its total cost to develop.

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

 

[pakoito]

Telepath Tactics’s budget is incredibly small given what we achieved with it. Compare Telepath Tactics to Fire Emblem: Awakening, for instance. Fire Emblem: Awakening costs $39.99 at full price; it reportedly needed to sell 250,000 copies at that price to be considered “worthwhile” (which we can assume means “profitable,” or something close to it). 250,000 copies sold at $39.99 equals just shy of $10 million. That’s about 200 times the budget that Telepath Tactics had (or 78 times its total cost to develop that includes my theoretical salary).

Hitoshi Yatagami of Nintendo has said that a WiiU Fire Emblem would need to shift 700,000 copies to cover the costs of development; WiiU games typically cost $49.99 or $59.99 new. Giving the benefit of the doubt and assuming the lower of these two prices, that means a WiiU Fire Emblem game would cost roughly $35 million to make. That’s about 700 times Telepath Tactics’s budget, or more than 273 times its total cost to develop.

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

Polish and UI. Studios are not 200 people deep because of the engineering work, but all the assets needed in a short timespan.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

I don't think that you can infer the budget from the sales numbers this way. Nintendo doesn't get the whole $40 from sales outside its download store (maybe 70% max.), which would equal 7M. Deduct marketing costs, we get a reasonable budget (think what Tim Schafer did with that kind of money). The game is also developed for a platform with an install base of 50M, not wanting to spend (effectively) in-house resources on a niche game not even selling 250.000 copies seems to be reasonable. (Real) third parties could probably produce the game (or a similar title) cheaper than Nintendo, for Nintendo the opportunity costs are too high, the developers could work on a Mario title like Sticker Wars which sells 2M.

 

[Craig Stern]

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

I dunno about that--I could see them needing it. It's really expensive to pay a team of full-time developers for 2-3 years! Their games may not be deeper or more mechanically complex than Telepath Tactics, but they do have a lot more custom art assets, polish, and marketing, and all of that takes time and money to make happen.

 

[Abu Antar]

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

I dunno about that--I could see them needing it. It's really expensive to pay a team of full-time developers for 2-3 years! Their games may not be deeper or more mechanically complex than Telepath Tactics, but they do have a lot more custom art assets, polish, and marketing, and all of that takes time and money to make happen.

Plus cutscenes, devs working on DLC and so on.

FE:A was reported by Nintendo to have sold over 1 million copies some time ago. It's now at 1,5 million or thereabouts.

 

[tuluse]

I've honestly no idea why Fire Emblem would need that kind of budget. It's kinda mind-blowing, given that it's a very niche, non-AAA strategy RPG. Bloated team, I'd guess.

Well it doesn't need that much development budget. It does need it when you count

store cut
shipping costs
printing disks, packages
post release support
breakage/returns
any marketing done

And probably some things I'm not thinking of. Craig kind of plays fast and loose with his numbers, taking out the 30% steam cut from his own revenue, but not taking out the cut plus the cost of physical distribution for Nintendo. There is a reason games got way cheaper when digital distribution became a thing.

 

[Craig Stern]

You may not be aware of this, but Intelligent Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo; I would be surprised if Nintendo were exacting a Steam-style cut out of every sale, as that would basically be tantamount to Nintendo moving its own money around.

As for the rest: if you're developing a game to be manufactured and shipped on physical media, then the costs of producing and shipping it are necessarily part of your budget. I have no idea why you think these expenses shouldn't count in their development budget.

 

[tuluse]

You may not be aware of this, but Intelligent Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo; I would be surprised if Nintendo were exacting a Steam-style cut out of every sale, as that would basically be tantamount to Nintendo moving its own money around.

Nintendo owns Walmart or whatever store the games are being sold at now?

As for the rest: if you're developing a game to be manufactured and shipped on physical media, then the costs of producing and shipping it are necessarily part of your budget. I have no idea why you think these expenses shouldn't count in their development budget.

Because that's not what it costs to develop the game? If they sold it digitally on PC like you are doing, the distribution costs would be a lot smaller than what they are now. Your analysis makes it sound like they're spending all the money on art/programming/writing/design.

 

[Archibald]

"Worthwile" doesn't mean that it breaks even at 250k, Nintendo is big company that is interested in their games selling a lot and moving additional console/hand-held units. Besides as far as I remember FE numbers were in decline for years and it was basically Nintendo saying "guys, improve your numbers to at least X or we are wraping this franchise up".

 

[Craig Stern]

New update! We're now up to version 1.038:

This update is relatively small, but there are a few really important updates in it:

• fixed the primary remaining cause of game slowdown! It turns out that the issue was inside the third-party particle engine that Telepath Tactics uses. When the clock that determines how long particles last ticked down to 0, it seems that their emitters were not being removed; they remained present (and wholly invisible) on the battlefield, sucking up processor cycles. As battles progressed, more and more of them would stick around, and eventually they caused noticeable slowdown. Luckily, once I realized what was happening, I was able to hack together a workaround to clear these emitters every turn. It’s not elegant, but it works.
• fixed a bug where the game would not save changes made to individual character inventories on the reserve supplies screen.
• fixed a bug where the game glitched out when you tried to save manually during deployment.
• recoded a bunch of inventory management functions with copyArray() to prevent array entanglement.
• fixed a bug in which the rightmost door on the ground-level Coria tavern map was impassable due to improperly set elevation.
• the game now produces nicely formatted XML save game files. It doesn’t read them just yet, though–I’ll be transitioning over to the new XML save files in the next update.
• added a new property to one-shot sounds wherein they can be tagged with a string, and added an optional second parameter to the PlaySound script action that assigns a tag to the sound being played.
• new script action: StopSound. This stops a one-shot sound effect being played according to its tag. This can be used to support voice-acting that cuts off whenever the player skips through dialogue!
• added text about damage fall-off to the third part of the Tutorial that appears if the player takes too long figuring out how to destroy the altar.

That’s all for this time! Stay tuned for more fixes and improvements to come.

 

[Anthedon]

New update! We're now up to version 1.038:

This update is relatively small, but there are a few really important updates in it:

• fixed the primary remaining cause of game slowdown! It turns out that the issue was inside the third-party particle engine that Telepath Tactics uses. When the clock that determines how long particles last ticked down to 0, it seems that their emitters were not being removed; they remained present (and wholly invisible) on the battlefield, sucking up processor cycles. As battles progressed, more and more of them would stick around, and eventually they caused noticeable slowdown. Luckily, once I realized what was happening, I was able to hack together a workaround to clear these emitters every turn. It’s not elegant, but it works.

That’s all for this time! Stay tuned for more fixes and improvements to come.

Good riddance. Any more detailed hints as to what we might see in the future?

 

[mindx2]

New update! We're now up to version 1.038:

This update is relatively small, but there are a few really important updates in it:

• fixed the primary remaining cause of game slowdown! It turns out that the issue was inside the third-party particle engine that Telepath Tactics uses. When the clock that determines how long particles last ticked down to 0, it seems that their emitters were not being removed; they remained present (and wholly invisible) on the battlefield, sucking up processor cycles. As battles progressed, more and more of them would stick around, and eventually they caused noticeable slowdown. Luckily, once I realized what was happening, I was able to hack together a workaround to clear these emitters every turn. It’s not elegant, but it works.

That’s all for this time! Stay tuned for more fixes and improvements to come.

Good riddance. Any more detailed hints as to what we might see in the future?

Yes! This was one of the biggest issues with TT along with no mid-battle save but it doesn't sound like Craig Stern is interested in implementing that piece (changes the dynamics of game-play too much?).

 

[Craig Stern]

Good riddance. Any more detailed hints as to what we might see in the future?

Yup! Going forward, I'm planning to finish implementing the new XML save file format and fix any remaining inventory issues. I also want to fix a persistent bug in the Mac version of the map editor and for Windows users, make the map editor check for the Steam install directory if it can't find it in the normal spot. I have other things planned as well, but those ones are top priority for now.

Mid-battle save is on the wish list, but that'll be tough to implement, and I want to get the new save system locked in and debugged before I tackle that.

 

[mindx2]

#37
Death to all lag!
Posted by Craig Stern
Hey guys, I have some exciting news! I finally figured out the big thing that was causing slowdown during Telepath Tactics's longer battles: it turns out, it was caused by weird behavior by the third-party particle system that I use in the game.

I was able to narrow it down to the particle system during testing by creating a custom battle, spawning loads and loads of particles during dialogue at the very start of that battle, and then sitting around and doing nothing at all during my turn. I recorded processor usage with a profiler tool during this whole process. The results: even while absolutely nothing was happening, the processor was still working overtime to keep up with updating particle emitters that had long since ceased to actually emit particles!

This is a picture of the profiler about 45 to 50 seconds into the battle, after I'd finished generating all of those particle emitters and was just sitting there doing nothing at all:

Just look at this thing.
So now I finally knew what was responsible for all of that progressive slowdown: particle emitters sticking around the battlefield, silent and invisible, sucking up processor cycles! While it was a relief to finally know the cause of the problem, I was briefly afraid that I was going to have to attempt a fix of someone else's particle system--or worse, to code a brand new one myself from scratch. Luckily, this proved unnecessary, as I was able to hack together a quick and relatively inelegant (but nonetheless highly effective) fix as part of yesterday's version 1.038 patch.

The bottom line: game slowdown should now be all but eliminated in version 1.038. If you haven't updated recently, I'd recommend doing so!

Going forward, I'm planning to finish implementing a new save file system that's easily readable (and editable!), make some much-needed fixes to the map editor, and tackle any remaining weirdness with the game's inventory system. I also have a couple of new secret projects in the works that I'm excited about, but I'm not ready to announce those just yet. Stay tuned!

 

[Lhynn]

Telepath tactics featured on Super Bunny Hop. Craig Stern i thought your game was known more than this, i had played your telepath games long before i joined the codex. I hope this brings attention to the game, it certainly deserves it.



PS: i always wondered, did character creation do anything to you? i would kill to be able to play your games with my own character, i just cannot get invested in your main characters for some reason.