We’re shooting for later in 2020. More details to come!

Last updated: January 28, 2020 06:09

We are now aiming for March (originally February but it was too ambitious)

Last updated: February 15, 2020 05:36

Yes! Not in time for the Early Access but we have been designing a fairly game independent system of processing rules so that’s something we want to attack HARD after the Early Access. When it is done it will be moddable so you can encode your role playing system’s rules into it.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

The version people are using is the Alpha. The Alpha is where we throw lots of prototypes of things to see how they feel. Naturally this means it’s very buggy and all the interactions lack good design. The Beta will be a significant step up from this.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

We hope that for v1 the release we can do this. We don’t want to force people into certain systems just to tell stories. We don’t have any concrete news for you but we have been designing all the systems with the idea that the game won’t be tied to a single system or store.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

YES. Simply select and copy some tiles and then you can paste it into discord or other text sharing service. Other people can then copy the text and paste it into the game and they get the same slab! One of our community is also making a site for this and we will possibly do something there too if it make sense for the players.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

Adding tiles and minis to the game will be easy if you know how to model them. We will be providing TaleWeaver, which is how we get content into the game. TaleWeaver is a Unity project (which works with the free version of Unity) which takes models, audio, etc and packages it up in the way TaleSpire expects Tiles will also be able to have scripts attached to them to give them behavior.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

They don’t have to be. At any point GMs can perform a GM only roll and the faces of these dice are only visible to GMs. We will also have a way for GMs to give GM dice to players so they can make rolls only the two of them can see.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

We are using Lua to script behaviors of tiles. The interface to Tale Spire will be very limited at the start of the Early Access but it will grow as we find nice, overarching ways to address what people are trying to achieve. We don’t want to have to break scripts once we have shipped so we will be adding features carefully. We think the api deserves as much thought as any other part of the tooling.

Last updated: June 24, 2019 00:22

That would be awesome, HeroForge rocks. However is is against the TOS.

Also check out our Creature-Crafter stretch goal for an in-game alternative.

Last updated: June 27, 2019 14:49

No, the base game is a low, one time cost.

If subscriptions are your jam, we are currently considering having a way to subscribe to asset pack updates as well as being able to buy single packs. This would give you an ever-growing universe of assets to work with. The nice thing is that this doesn’t need to be an either-or situation. Hopefully we can have options that cover a lot of bases.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We will start with Windows for the Early Access but we want to expand this, it just doesn’t feel feasible in the 8 months along with everything else. (One of us uses Linux as their primary OS so we feel your pain here).

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We have alpha users who have been playing the game on Linux using wine and that’s great! However we won’t be supporting it so if there are bugs they arent going to get addressed until we start supporting that platform properly.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes. We are still looking into what the most universal way to do this is. We might combine it with a way to group multiple minis into a single mini but that is just conjecture right now.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

There is this https://trello.com/b/oaBvFslQ/talespire-roadmap with the high level overview. We aren’t going to be sharing gantt charts or all that jazz but we will be providing regular dev logs and updates so you can keep abreast of what is happening.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

The audio controls will be kept separate as it means we don’t overload switching mode with too many meanings. Whilst the turn based mode is normally used for combat we are sure it’ll be used differently by different folks.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

No. You can add them via modding but we aren’t adding them as they murder the feel of the whole game and make us sad.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

You lay down big foam blocks to make the elevation and then drag out tiles to decorate them.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We love Neverwinter Nights and Baldur’s Gate so it would be super appealing. However we currently have more than enough to keep us very busy for a long time so it’s not in the plan for Tale Spire. When we have wider scripting support though I bet some people will make some interesting experiences using that.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Good question. We haven’t tried to work out the exact numbers yet so if we tried to answer now we’d just be pulling numbers out our butts, which we’d rather not do. However the whole game is $20 on KS which we hope suggests we are not interested in ransacking your wallets.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

This doesn’t have to be an either or. Our plan is to have an asset subscription for those that what it and a way to buy individual packs for those who prefer that.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

No

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

In our humble opinion far too many things treat people just as consumers. We’d rather the game was really cheap than remove the chance for someone to discover that they like creating. You never know, one week a session will be canceled last minute and one of your players might start noodling around in build mode and discover there is a story inside them they want to tell. This is worth so much more to us than splitting the product could ever bring.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Long term, yes. We still need to work out the technical details as this would need to be synced to other players.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

For the early access we know we can achieve 30x30km horizontally and 10km tall. However we want to go bigger than this and that will be addressed after the Early Access.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We never auto apply that kind of stuff for you. This means the GM always has the final say.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes!

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes. We love this for having the PC connected to a TV in player mode and a laptop in GM mode.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Nice idea! We might do this when we revise the UI for the stats system. When the feature suggestions site is up you should suggest this there.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We’ve had GM flashlights in the alpha for a while but we will also be adding rulers, area of effect indicators, and other ways for both GMs & players to point things out.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Absolutely, we are reworking the emote system right now and those would be a great fit.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

It’s hard to not say the dice :D Dice are so fun to roll that we had to implement cinematic mode just to stop players from rolling while the GM narrates. It was like herding cats.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

It would be amazing right? An AR system that really leaned into the in room experience would be the best.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Not for the Early Access by that would be insanely cool. We’ve always wanted to do cool twitch integrations so that people could interact from the streams (GameBridge anyone?).

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We did do some testing and it didn’t feel great in game. We could do more experimentation with it but its not in the roadmap for the Early Access.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

The dice will be customizable for the campaign so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Three people right now. Two full time, one part time.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

No, not based on the Kickstarter. That money is for funding the current team for 8 months. If the game does we’ll in the Early Access there are a few people we would love to approach but that is all dreams and fairy dust for now.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We already hide minis based on line of sight. We aren’t planning on doing this for tiles but we have the fog of war system for handling that part.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We have ways to jump quickly to players to see what is happening. If they are in different boards it’s trickier unless you have multiple GMs.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

It will be. The code is basically there already but we need a decent UI for it. This will be woven in the GM tool layer

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Depends on the game being played and the rules the GM is deciding. For those reasons we are leaving that stuff in the GMs hands. Time is simple in some cases but fiendishly troublesome to automate in others. Better to be simple and robust than complicated and wrong.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

There are emotes that animate the mini as a whole but not per limb stuff. We found that this keeps the feel we are going for and makes it WAY easier for modders to bring in content that feels like it fits.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Nope, but for the Early Access you will be able to use TaleWeaver to make predefined ones.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Definitely. We are still experimenting with the presentation of this so it feels nice but it’s coming.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Three years if you include the various experiments and prototypes that were rather different from the game as it is now.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes. There are a few places that inventories make sense. On the creatures is a given but also it’s nice for the GM’s to have an inventory where they keep things they are actively working with, like tiles and monsters.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We’d want a way that means people aren’t tied into one system. Steam Workshop may play a part in this of course, it’s a bit early to say.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Absolutely, we are always open to talking to interested companies. The roleplaying game space is so cool and there is so much room for more cool tools and services. Of course our first and foremost responsibility is the backers.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

For now props and tiles can’t be scaled but creatures have a few sizes they can be scaled to.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Not yet but it seems like there are popular approaches out there so we will look into those. No promise for the Early Access but we have it on the wishlist.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes, very yes.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Totally. Making cyberpunk, modern and other kinds of sets would be amazing but we will need to have a solid foundation first so it’s not going to be before the Early Access begins.

We do have a stretch goal for cyber punk assets though. If we hit that then we can definitely do it.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We are definitely looking to make the emote system be able to handle some kinds of status effects. This system will be expandable so I can’t give a fixed list of what possible yet but that work is already well underway so you can expect news on that fairly soon after the campaign.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes. We already have names but we are expanding this. It’s heavily related to the GM system

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

You will be able to in the Early Access

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes, this is part of the atmosphere system so you will have a small palette of weather effects you can enable and disable as you like.

We wont be supporting snow setting on things though.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes, we want to show fog of war, line of sight and the area the player is viewing. The only hard bit here is not overloading the UI so it feels like a soupy mess of tools.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Not yet. It would be a big task so it’s definitely a post release feature if we do it. I’m trying to design systems with this feature in mind though.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes. We’ll be adding the code to handle this before Early Access. The team speak English and Norwegian so we will start there but will announce more language support as it arrives.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

It’s not finalized but I’d like a system like subtitles files so the community can provide alternate translations to mods separate of the mod itself. We’ll keep you posted as this develops.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes. A GM can select an creature and make them unique. This means that their information is stored on the campaign rather than just in the board. This is ideal for when something happens to a throw-away monster which means they now become a recurring character.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

You will be able to set up and tint your characters outside of any campaign. You can then put them in a campaign at which point that campaign has a fresh copy of that character and all the events that befall them don’t effect the original. Kind of like a template if you prefer that.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes but the feature is coming in two parts. By the early access we will be have foam blocks which you can tunnel into. This means you way down terrain and cut into it to make your underground regions. Doing this is going to give us the experience we want in making tunneling tools so then we will implement the feature that lets you tunnel down through the play space without having to place foam blocks first.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yup

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Tiles can be rotated by 90 degrees around the vertical axis. Props can be attached to the surfaces of tiles wherever the created put an ‘attachment point’. The prop can be rotated in 45 degree increments around the axis of the attachment point.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We play tested it and it doesn’t fit the feeling of what we are going for. There are other great systems that do allow this though, please check out Tabletop Simulator, they do great work!

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes, props by default dodge out of the way of creatures so that they never block gameplay

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Yes, we will providing high level tools so it isn’t tedious.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

We will be chopping away walls dynamically to make sure you can see and interact with your creatures. This wont interfere with line of sight calculations or fog of war

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Man that question is so perfect it’s almost like I wrote it.. which I did. To answer my artifical question: - NDI Support for getting video chat in-game. - Wall climbing creaturess - Selecting and moving groups of minis - Sexy effects for significant rolls (e.g. Nat1, Nat20, etc) - Top-down/map view - Little status icons ala JRPGs - An in board hourglass (it just sounds cool ok :p) - timed events - Global in-game clock and calendar - The rule system - Flip a selection of tiles horizontally - Atmosphere boundaries (so you can have rain only outside without having to turn it on/off - Spawning images and text to show players - Hex grid - Angled walls - Plenty more, the ones above are just ones we have already discussed directly with people who helped us in the alpha.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Baggers here, I forgot to add the details for the pack. As people have now backed it I cannot change the reward text but I can provide futher info in the campaign story. We will do this asap.

In short the hero pack is an additional five heros that are only available to Kickstarter backers at the ‘Hero’ reward level and above. You can use these in campaigns with your fellow adventurers even if they didn’t back at that level.

We expand on this more completely soon. Thanks for bearing with us

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

Blast. You are correct, Kickstarter wont let us rename the reward level now that is has been backed, but we will update the graphic so that it is correct.

Thanks to @CapnCrawford for spotting this.

Last updated: June 25, 2019 17:04

The stretch goal for the rule system is priced to give us R&D time too so I can’t answer fully but I can give the angle we are taking as we approach this.

The golden rule is that we must not ever take control away from the GM. This means the heart of this stretch goal will be a system that, based on the situation on the board, presents all the relevant material from the rule ‘codex’. The material presented should have easy ways to move from what is shown into an action.. so for example, if it’s ‘X does Y damage based on Z roll’ then it should be trivial to summon the required dice and apply the damage to the target.

This makes it a sort of interactive database of the game being played which is filtering the codex based on the state of the game.

We will be providing a ruleset for 5e both for us to prove the system but also as an example of how to use the system.

Naturally we this is early in the lifecycle of the feature. As we iterate on it we will post dev logs so you could see how this grows.

Last updated: July 22, 2019 15:40

I’m afraid not. Our models are optimized for games, so are much lower poly and instead have a ton of detail in the normal maps. HeroForge is probably your best bet though, they are awesome!

Last updated: August 02, 2019 06:58