Official development blog

Category Archives: GUI

Experimenting with Drone PIP

Early this month I was streaming a Cogmind run on Twitch, at one point once again sending out drones to scout around as I like to do. Drones are generally pretty fast, and I’ll often just make sure I’m in a relatively safe spot and keep an eye on what the drone(s) find while I […]

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Special Commands Menu Design

For years now I’ve been planning to eventually create a menu for accessing Cogmind’s lesser-used “special commands,” features not only requiring the keyboard, but even all assigned to Shift-Alt key combos. So these rarely needed (but still sometimes useful) features were already pretty clearly grouped together as a unit by their annoying modifier, but ideally […]

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Map Comments and Log Notes

Back in August I was watching the first Tone-MTF combo stream, and listening to them repeatedly strategize aloud so they could collaborate brought more than the usual planning talk to the forefront of the conversation, through which I noticed the occasional potential for manual map comments to be helpful. Very few roguelikes support freely adding […]

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The Map Ruler (and other overlay QoL)

As the player’s gateway to accessing the experience they’re after when they want to play a game, building a fluid and comprehensive interface is essential. Many high-priority player needs should be apparent in the earliest stages of development, and help shape the entire foundation for an interface’s design, but still other needs with lower priority […]

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Item Searching and Filtering

Many years ago, Cogmind’s predecessor X@COM pioneered the idea of using a pop-up label system in an ASCII game to identify objects like items, beneficial both to help teach new players as well as a natural quality of life improvement. This allows players to more quickly know exactly what an item is, useful when there are […]

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