Greetings, tactics fans! As you may have noticed, Valve recently designated Telepath Tactics Liberated "playable" on Steam Deck. With that designation comes new fans eager to play the game on Steam Deck--and with them, reports of issues unique to that platform.
As you know, I developed TTL for Windows: I never received a developer Steam Deck from Valve, and I didn't have the opportunity to test the game on Steam Deck before Valve marked it playable. However, I'm nothing if not motivated to make fans happy! So I went ahead and bought a Steam Deck with my own money to test the game out and fix issues.
This latest patch primarily addresses display and control-related problems that were holding the game back on Steam Deck. (Special shout-out to user janichbumbelby for offering detailed feedback on this!) Here are the specific changes I've made so far:
-- the game now auto-switches to gamepad controls upon starting up if it detects that it's running on Steam OS.
-- new feature: when in battle in gamepad control mode, the game now treats mouse wheel movement as an impetus to focus on the actions bar and scroll through the action-bar buttons. You can configure the Steam Deck's track pad to register clockwise and counterclockwise circles as mouse wheel input for this purpose.
-- fixed: the cursor indicator was appearing in the wrong spots on certain menus (primarily on the title screen and save game screen) when the game was running in resolutions other than 1920 x 1080. In the Steam Deck's native 16:10 resolution of 1280 x 800, these menus were all but unnavigable. Now they work as intended in all resolutions.
-- save slots once again highlight when they're moused over, and now engage in this same highlighting behavior when the gamepad cursor is moved over them to further eliminate any visual ambiguity.
-- fixed: the right joystick was mapped to the wrong axes for Steam Deck (and XBox 360) gamepad controls, preventing proper independent panning of the battle camera.
-- fixed: the text overlay box had incorrect scaling settings for 16:10 resolutions.
-- fixed: the gamepad control graphic was incorrectly scaled for 16:10 resolutions.
-- fixed: the gamepad controls screen was showing incorrect info for the shoulder buttons. The left shoulder button is bound to Next Unit, while the right shoulder button is bound to Auto-Skill On Target (i.e. if you press it when a character is selected, your selected character will attempt to use an appropriate skill on whatever unit the selector is presently overlapping, independently moving into range if they can and they need to).
-- extended the "snap the selector to an attack tile containing a valid target" gamepad behavior so that if no characters are in skill range, the game will instead default to snapping the selector to a space containing a destructible object.
-- when using a gamepad and ending a character's move, if there are no attack targets in range and the character is on top of an item sack, the game will now auto-focus the cursor on the Grab button in the actions bar for more convenient sack-grabbing.
-- fixed: when in battle using gamepad controls, the game was overriding give tiles with move tiles after selecting the Give option on an item in the character screen, making it impossible to successfully give another character items during battle.
-- fixed: when ending a battle scene in gamepad mode, the selector would pop back up on the battlefield as the scene faded out.
-- new in 1.0.42a: when using a gamepad and ending a character's move, if there is an adjacent unit the character can talk to, the game will auto-focus the cursor on the Talk button in the Actions Bar.
-- fixed in 1.0.42a: the shop tutorial text overlay didn't fully fit onscreen in 16:10 display resolutions.
-- refactored the menu-switching code in the gamepad navigator class as of 1.0.42a to fix issues with tooltips not appearing on the element selected when first opening a menu. (I am pleased to report that this worked.)
-- fixed in 1.0.42a: when using a gamepad, the cursor arrow would continue to be visible in the bottom-right of the screen after ending the player's turn.
-- fixed in 1.0.42a: when using gamepad controls, the auto-equip confirmation window in the reserve supplies screen wasn't gaining focus upon spawning.
-- fixed in 1.0.42a: when using gamepad controls, exiting the shop was still shunting focus to the dialogue window rather than the exit confirmation window.
-- fixed in 1.0.42a: when navigating a dialogue tree, the gamepad logic would not consider replies above the last-chosen reply to gain focus when the number of available replies shrank upon reaching a new dialogue branch, making it so that you could inappropriately invoke the last-chosen reply from the previous branch by simply hitting "A."
-- fixed in 1.0.42b: using the gamepad "character screen" button (Y) in the reserve supplies screen only showed the character screen for whomever was first in the character roster.
-- fixed in 1.0.42b: gamepad L3 and R3 inputs did not undo or rotate, respectively, if focus was in the actions bar.
-- fixed in 1.0.42b: when in gamepad mode, menus in cut scenes were double-counting presses of the cancel button (B).
And here's a regular bug fix unrelated to Steam Deck:
-- upon destroying an object with fly-only passability resting on stairs suspended over a hazard tile, the game would drop the stairs into the hazard as though they had been resting atop the object. This is now fixed.
That's all we've got for now, folks. Thanks as always for supporting the game; it means a lot to me!
Tactically yours,
Craig