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51
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #45: STATUS=WINNING
« on: February 22, 2019, 06:19:14 PM »
Beta 7 stats are in :D
You can read all about general stats, wins, run length, RIF use, and robot hacks over on the forums here.
Exiles and Golems
My new stream series has found its title, and we're in the middle of an Exiles Golem run. Unlike many of my past runs, this one's kinda spoilery if you've never been to the Deep Caves :P
On that note, Valguris posted a new guide for a 2-propulsion flight hacker golem (included the extended game). It's a pretty extreme build and I'm not doing that--mine's more of a traditional blow-everything-up golem, but we're certainly seeing a lot of really unique builds recently, especially after the Beta 8 content expansion.
MTF has been streaming a lot of Cogmind, too.
and Rylan over on Discord drew a great depiction of MTF's Beta 8 "swarmer build" (another crazy new build!) being chased down on stream in Cogmind's extended game. This new build based on some Exiles tech really chewed through the end game though. (The pink one is a powerful ally.)
Dev Stuff
This week on the blog I posted a huge article on level design in Cogmind, taking the Exiles map as an example to share a complete rundown of the process and explain how it integrates with gameplay.
A Change of Pace?
I've been strongly considering starting a Patreon to accept subcription support, but I'm very undecided at the moment...
I think having something like that in the long term will be important for future Cogmind development seeing as I do a lot of extra releases without putting them into some kind of DLC, though the original plan was to maybe start that after 1.0. That said, it would take a while to build up a Patreon (or even see whether it's viable), so it might make more sense to start now.
In fact, it could even enable development of more features before 1.0, which might be better in the long run than leaving some of my ideas for later, when they're potentially less likely to happen. I have a lot of fun plans for Cogmind which I'm sure you'll enjoy one day, but I can see it also being advantageous to have all this extra stuff in the game before it reaches 1.0, if only because it'll be better received then, right? :)
In the end, I may be a commercial dev but I don't run my "business" in a commercial fashion, so that'll start to hurt in the long run. (The smart money-oriented approach would've been to release Cogmind as 1.0 by now, and collect content updates into one or more large DLCs, but I want to avoid DLC!)
So I'm thinking about possibly discontinuing the normal SITREPs and instead changing up the format in which I do things, with ideas including:
I'm not really a fan of gating content, so maybe it could even just be a completely open/public thing with no gating at all, although I imagine this would mean less potential support. Starting simple could be nice, though.
I mean, it's almost cliche to think about it, but if only a portion of Cogmind owners pitch in just $1~2 each month, it really adds up and great things are possible :D
Anyway, still just thinking about it, wondering what others think...
PS: I wonder how many readers get the SITREP title :P
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 7 and Beta 8.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
You can read all about general stats, wins, run length, RIF use, and robot hacks over on the forums here.
Exiles and Golems
My new stream series has found its title, and we're in the middle of an Exiles Golem run. Unlike many of my past runs, this one's kinda spoilery if you've never been to the Deep Caves :P
On that note, Valguris posted a new guide for a 2-propulsion flight hacker golem (included the extended game). It's a pretty extreme build and I'm not doing that--mine's more of a traditional blow-everything-up golem, but we're certainly seeing a lot of really unique builds recently, especially after the Beta 8 content expansion.
MTF has been streaming a lot of Cogmind, too.
and Rylan over on Discord drew a great depiction of MTF's Beta 8 "swarmer build" (another crazy new build!) being chased down on stream in Cogmind's extended game. This new build based on some Exiles tech really chewed through the end game though. (The pink one is a powerful ally.)
Dev Stuff
This week on the blog I posted a huge article on level design in Cogmind, taking the Exiles map as an example to share a complete rundown of the process and explain how it integrates with gameplay.
A Change of Pace?
I've been strongly considering starting a Patreon to accept subcription support, but I'm very undecided at the moment...
I think having something like that in the long term will be important for future Cogmind development seeing as I do a lot of extra releases without putting them into some kind of DLC, though the original plan was to maybe start that after 1.0. That said, it would take a while to build up a Patreon (or even see whether it's viable), so it might make more sense to start now.
In fact, it could even enable development of more features before 1.0, which might be better in the long run than leaving some of my ideas for later, when they're potentially less likely to happen. I have a lot of fun plans for Cogmind which I'm sure you'll enjoy one day, but I can see it also being advantageous to have all this extra stuff in the game before it reaches 1.0, if only because it'll be better received then, right? :)
In the end, I may be a commercial dev but I don't run my "business" in a commercial fashion, so that'll start to hurt in the long run. (The smart money-oriented approach would've been to release Cogmind as 1.0 by now, and collect content updates into one or more large DLCs, but I want to avoid DLC!)
So I'm thinking about possibly discontinuing the normal SITREPs and instead changing up the format in which I do things, with ideas including:
- splitting out some some special design and progress topics to put them on the blog instead of hiding them in SITREPs
- giving patrons advance access to blog posts
- including extra dev stuff I don't normally talk about, for example even more future plans rather than always talking about features after they're already implemented :P
- possibly some voting/polls
- possibly some little rewards
- free access to older Cogmind builds?
I'm not really a fan of gating content, so maybe it could even just be a completely open/public thing with no gating at all, although I imagine this would mean less potential support. Starting simple could be nice, though.
I mean, it's almost cliche to think about it, but if only a portion of Cogmind owners pitch in just $1~2 each month, it really adds up and great things are possible :D
Anyway, still just thinking about it, wondering what others think...
PS: I wonder how many readers get the SITREP title :P
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 7 and Beta 8.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
52
Announcements / Cogmind Beta 8 "Forbidden Science"
« on: February 11, 2019, 05:28:19 PM »
!!! ALERT: FORBIDDEN SCIENCE DETECTED !!!
Beta 8 has landed, and with 38 new special items and a new mini-faction with long-term strategic implications, it's like we're back to the good old days of Cogmind Alpha where there's plenty of new content to explore and you're not always quite sure what's out there waiting :D
At this point even if you've found everything there was to see as of Beta 7 (though very few have), once again you'll be making new discoveries every run for many more to come.
Even better, most of Beta 8's features are accessible from the early game, so everyone can get to the new fun stuff right away.
But first, grab a snack and prepare yourself for The Changelog...
Cogmind Beta 8 "Forbidden Science" (0.10.190212) changelog:
The Exiles
Wow, the last time we got a new map was back in May 2017! That was when the story was completed and the many locations planned for Cogmind 1.0 were all already in place. Apparently one of the post-1.0 plans has leaked into the world early ;)
The highlight of this release is the Exiles, a new mini-faction with which you can align yourself to obtain some benefits (and drawbacks, of course--this is Cogmind after all and there are tradeoffs everywhere!). They have their own map, which you can find hidden off the Mines. It can only appear at one depth, however, so if you don't find it at -10 it'll be on -9. I highly recommend visiting them, so try not to pass up exits to the Mines (but remember, also try to bring a Grenade Launcher along with you, to make the Mines... safer :P).
Having been working on systems and peripheral content for a long time, it was really exciting to get to add another map, and this time around I'll be doing something a little different as well: writing an in-depth blog post covering the entire map design and creation process. I haven't shared the entire process behind creating specific maps before, but this one presents a particularly good opportunity since it's not as spoilery, being at the beginning of the game while still hooking into all sorts of other content and strategic implications. (Update: Said article is now available here.)
That'll come soonish, but if you don't mind minor spoilers (stuff you'll discover before long in the new early-game map anyway) I'll at least cover some basics here to introduce the Exiles. Otherwise skip to the next section to continue with the rest of the release notes.
Upon entering the Mines containing access to the Exiles location, you'll see a log message about "something scanning the area." If you get that message, a thorough search of the map will eventually reveal the entrance. Inside you'll find many of the new NPCs and lore, as well as some new strategic options...
For one they can give you a form of "permanent sensor" ability called FarCom that's incredibly helpful since it identifies distant threats without taking up any of your precious utility slots. Beta 7 nerfed regular sensors a little bit with expanded Watcher jamming, but FarCom is an optional way around that :D (as well as some other sensor blocking mechanics). Although designed to help new players navigate and survive Complex 0b10, it does come with a serious drawback in certain optional late-game areas, so experienced players may not always want it.
That said, the Exiles also have something that both new and experienced players alike can appreciate: crazy advanced technology, some of it very... experimental.
Many of these parts have completely new mechanics. I'll leave you to discover most of them on your own, though I did previously share info about the PSU Rigger, which turns any power source into a proximity mine:
And here's an animation from a particularly powerful item which itself took three days to build!
Several of the new items actually took multiple days each because they really break the normal game rules or otherwise have rather unique effects.
In all, I think you'll enjoy working with the Exiles...
(Unless you're one of those prerelease testers who have clearly decided it's fun or worthwhile to make enemies of them xD)
There are a number of long-term strategic combinations you can work out with regard to the Exiles, but I'll go into more of those details for the blog post. Generally speaking, Beta 8 is about fun and tradeoffs, as many big decisions in Cogmind are, and the Exiles offer ways to trade an easier early game for extra mid- or late-game challenges, depending on your choices.
Beta 8, especially the Exiles, is kind of a preview of what I'd like to do a lot more of after 1.0 if there's enough support for it--add all kinds of more "extreme content" and yet more peripheral content including additional mini-factions that tie into various aspects of the world. A number of these potential elements are already referenced in the lore ;)
Mechanics
Beta 8 includes a few new mechanics and tweaks which are sure to affect some strategies.
All wheels, legs, and treads now have a "drag" stat which slows overall move speed while airborne, so the old "propulsion armor" strategy (as cheesy as it was) is no longer very effective. Here's a demo:
This will make certain stretches of speed runs (and some other types of runs) somewhat more challenging since slapping on tons of propulsion armor used to be the easiest way to protect your core and parts while flying straight for the surface, but at least core movement has been reclassified such that it isn't impacted by the drag effect, so that much is still an option, and still a potential life saver when things go south and you need to make a run for it after taking a serious beating.
On that note, the fast win score bonus formula has been tweaked again:
The bonuses were getting out of hand considering how good players have gotten at speed running. It now ramps up more quickly, but generally to a lower bonus overall, and doesn't even kick in until under 6,000 turns, so you have to be moving pretty fast to get anything, as opposed to even earning a bonus for a non-slow combat run.
If you want to read more about the drag mechanic and its background, I wrote about this topic for SITREP #41: Be The Tank.
That SITREP also covers another direct result of drag: better treads! In addition to their recoil reduction, treads now give an accuracy bonus and have improved coverage, helping them put all that integrity to good use serving as protection for other parts. Treads have always been good, but their slow speed still puts them at a significant long-term disadvantage in a lot of cases (compared to other propulsion types), so further improving their combat capabilities to make up for it is warranted. Technically this also counts as a buff to Sentries and any other bots out there on treads, many of which are already dangerous, so look out!
RIF builds continue to get improvements, too, and the latest buff for Beta 8 gives them a 100% chance to seal any Garrison Access (any security level! no hackware required!). I've been playing around with it and FarCom+RIF is a pretty neat new combination.
Quality AND Quantity
So many new options... I just noticed Cogmind has well over 100 adjustable features now! I've received a lot of requests for options over the past months, many of which now have a home in advanced.cfg for anyone else who'd like to use them.
You can find the full list in the changelog above, and below is a collection of previously demoed new options...
Machine hacks now have context help via the usual right-click or A~Z:
This puts the system on par with the item/robot stat info and the robot hacking system in terms of QoL, and could be useful for new players or infrequent players who may have forgotten certain effects :)
By request, the part swap menu includes a remove button:
With that we now have five different methods of removing a given part, because having options is nice!
The part swap menu also now shows disabled parts in orange, and includes manual tags added to unidentified parts (which originally only showed in inventory and the item info page):
The advanced autoReadyLauncher option has been super useful since introduced in Alpha 12, and now there's its opposite, autoUnreadyLaucher, to reactivate all weapons when a launcher is removed:
It's a common tactic to only attach a launcher to deal with a specific situation, then swap it out after firing--together these options remove most of the other commands involved in that process. You can generally just attach a launcher, fire, then detach the launcher, and it'll work as desired.
Active streamctrl_ robot hacks display a range within which you should stay to avoid losing control of the robot:
We've got three different advanced options for how to display Cogmind's part loss directly on the map: blinking red, blinking red 'X', or part's name in red:
Currently there is no explicit on-map display for that information to avoid potentially interfering with other indicators or tactical information nearby (plus we already have that info reflected in the log, sfx, and parts list), but this could be a pretty useful feature for some players, especially given that the majority of the combat focus has been designed to center around the map view.
Countdown timers for fabricator and repair station processes remain visible outside of FOV! \o/
There's also a log message reporting completion if not in view. Originally the machine would only showed this info while in view, but sometimes it could take a while to finish and players often prefer to leave the area and come back later, but would then be forced to calculate out the approximate turn on which it would be finished. Certainly always showing the info is better, though this wasn't done originally because it's a lot more work to separately record and display hypothetical information! I.e., the machine could be disabled or destroyed but you're not supposed to know that unless it's in view, and it has to keep displaying information as if it were still processing.
Quite a few times I've received requests for an in-game real-time clock. I've held off on it for a while since I wanted to be sure of where it could work in the HUD, and now it's found a home:
It's optional (off by default), and there's also a separate option to show a real-time run timer, for the real-time speedrunners out there.
Energy-adjusting utilities now factor into the HUD's net energy readout:
The Scan window also got some updates, including a new option to have it only show what's currently under the cursor (or kb marker), rather than the usual behavior of retaining the last object shown.
This is not default behavior, however, since keeping persistent data visible has the advantage of not losing that reference info simply by moving the cursor to perform other actions. Not to mention persistent robot scan info will update their heat/integrity values as they change, if they're still present in the window at the time, without having to put the cursor back over them or use some other method to check.
Speaking of easier access to object info, you'll no longer have to open solid terrain info to check its armor value, which appears under its name in the Scan window:
I didn't do this originally because constantly updating the Scan window as the cursor moves around would be really distracting, but later realized I could both avoid that annoyance and provide the info by only loading the terrain info after a short delay! So the cursor/keyboard marker has to be stationary for 500ms before it will show armor for that space.
Machines and other props will also show their armor value in the same place! Remember that you'll probably still want to take resistances into account before attempting to destroy something, but this is a good general reminder and should save some time.
Maintenance intel markers were switched from green to gray, so that they can be easily distinguished from Terminal markers:
I originally chose green since all the maintenance bots themselves are green, but Terminals are also green so if you have both types of intel it can be hard to spot the Terminals unless you deactivate the maintenance intel. In any case, gray is also a reasonable color for a neutral party.
Note that anyone using a higher detail level for their combat log will need to visit the options menu to reset their value on starting a Beta 8 run, because everyone's value has been reset since the option itself was renamed from the very-old-and-not-entirely-obvious "Log Calc. Detail".
Back in Action
The last few weeks of Beta 8 dev were completed while I was out of town, so it's been a while since I've been able to stream. I'm back now and clearly it's time to change that! This week I'll be streaming about 24 hours after this release announcement goes up, before returning to the normal Monday evening scheduled streams next week. Lots of new toys to play around with in Beta 8, and I wanna try out the new treads, too. Also RIF, I'm eager to do more RIF runs since I'm sure it's even cooler after the buffs in 7.1 and 7.2, plus this update.
I hope to be able to do even more releases like this in the future, though will have to focus on getting to 1.0 first and see if there's any money left to keep going! Certainly there are lots of plans to draw on, though :). In the meantime I'll be shifting gears to work on 1.0 necessities, which I'll talk more about in future SITREPs.
Special thanks to all our Beta 8 prerelease testers, who've helped ensure a smooth and balanced full release.
And thanks to everyone for your Steam reviews! In case anyone missed it, there's a pre-1.0 medium-term goal you can help with which could affect the future of Cogmind development. Check out the original announcement for more info. Reviews are very helpful for increasing Cogmind's visibility on Steam and by extension make it possible to keep bringing the updates :D
There is a week-long 10% discount on Cogmind to coincide with the Beta 8 release, available immediately on the website (includes DRM-free plus Steam key), but not until 2/13 on Steam due to limitations on their platform settings. As a heads up, this is the largest discount Cogmind will have during Early Access unless at some point Valve decides to again offer exposure for a larger discount like they did in December 2017, in which case I might take them up. (But I'm pretty sure that won't happen again.)
For Linux users, Cogmind may now be installed through Steam. Read more in the last section of SITREP #35.
As usual, this weekend will not have a SITREP so soon following a new release. The next will come the week after when we'll take the usual look at player stats from Beta 7, the huge robot hacking update with 65 hacks.
Beta 8 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and Cogmind automatically updates, Beta 7.2 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
Beta 8 has landed, and with 38 new special items and a new mini-faction with long-term strategic implications, it's like we're back to the good old days of Cogmind Alpha where there's plenty of new content to explore and you're not always quite sure what's out there waiting :D
At this point even if you've found everything there was to see as of Beta 7 (though very few have), once again you'll be making new discoveries every run for many more to come.
Even better, most of Beta 8's features are accessible from the early game, so everyone can get to the new fun stuff right away.
But first, grab a snack and prepare yourself for The Changelog...
Cogmind Beta 8 "Forbidden Science" (0.10.190212) changelog:
- NEW: Branch map "Exiles"
- NEW: Special sensor ability obtainable early on, with long-term effects
- NEW: 5 more unique named NPCs
- NEW: 3 new robots
- NEW: 38 new items (mostly uniques, many with completely new mechanics) (total = 936)
- NEW: 2 more alien artifacts
- NEW: 18 more sound effects (total = 890)
- NEW: 29 new score sheet entries (total = 799)
- NEW: Several dozen more lore entries
- NEW: Potential random NPC encounter in Materials and Mines
- NEW: Regular doors hit by EM now malfunction, remain open
- NEW: DISPOSABLE weapons have a unique log message when expended
- NEW: Quantum Capacitor and Weapon Cycler effect descriptions indicate incompatibility with autonomous weapons
- NEW: All treads grant +2% accuracy per slot
- NEW: Added random NPC encounter in Storage
- NEW: Flight/hover speed now slowed by attached inactive non-airborne propulsion parts (see new "Drag" stat on treads/legs/wheels)
- NEW: The fabled Hcp. Storage Unit has returned!
- NEW: Activating Transport Network Coupler reports the number of Haulers across the map, and the number currently in view
- NEW: -8/Mines map (inaccessible from -8/Materials)
- NEW: Manual explicitly indicates heat-based accuracy modifiers only apply when heat is positive
- NEW: Maximum Security, for times when High Security simply isn't enough
- NEW: Option to disable Cogmind self-destruction (activate in advanced.cfg: noSelfDestruct)
- NEW: Option to stop drag-dropping inventory item to non-slot location in parts list from applying autoequip assist (advanced.cfg: disableDragDropAutoEquip)
- NEW: Option to replace per-move HUD net energy display with turnwise value including movement (advanced.cfg: hudEnergyPerMoveTurnwise)
- NEW: Option to replace per-move HUD net heat display with turnwise value including movement (advanced.cfg: hudHeatPerMoveTurnwise)
- NEW: Option to show real-time clock on HUD (advanced.cfg: showClock)
- NEW: Option to show real-time run timer on HUD (advanced.cfg: showRunTimer)
- NEW: Option to show per-weapon accuracy chances in parts list only while cursor over a robot (advanced.cfg: disablePersistentAccuracyInfo)
- NEW: Option to have Scan window only show object info while cursor/examine marker is over an object (advanced.cfg: disablePersistentScanInfo)
- NEW: Option to silence all sfx played for non-plot-related global alerts with on-map indicators, such as assaults (advanced.cfg: muteGlobalAlertSfx)
- NEW: Part swap menu lists any currently disabled parts in orange, and known faulty prototypes in red
- NEW: Part swap menu includes a removal option (button or 'z') as long as source is not an empty slot
- NEW: Robots hacked with streamctrl_low/streamctrl_high now display a ring around themselves, inside which control can be maintained
- NEW: no_distress robot hack also blocks calls for local garrison reinforcements
- NEW: Item gallery export data marks non-repairable items
- NEW: Three new advanced options for on-map indicators for Cogmind part loss (see cogmindPartLossMapIndicator in manual)
- NEW: Right-click on machine hacks (or Shift-a~z) for context help describing the function of each (total = 95)
- NEW: RMB over machine Hacking or Results window closes the hacking interface
- NEW: Recycling Units automatically process parts once their contents exceed a certain threshold
- NEW: Even when outside FOV, machines processing fabrication and repairs display their on-map countdown timer, and report completion to the message log
- NEW: Having RIF installed removes one of the requirements for one of the special endings, and also affects the animation for that ending
- NEW: RIF enables 100% chance to seal any Garrison Access
- NEW: Closing an active robot hacking UI using any method other than the close button requires confirmation to avoid accidentally forfeiting the hack
- NEW: Advanced option to automatically activate all non-launcher projectile weapons on detaching an active launcher (advanced.cfg: autoUnreadyLauncher)
- NEW: Added a helpful alert message during a Warlord-related plot event
- NEW: Scan window shows solid terrain armor value if cursor or examine marker stationary for 500ms
- NEW: Scan window shows machine/prop armor value under name if sufficient space
- NEW: Recalibrator info explicitly states inability to repair alien technology, and prototypes above rating 8
- NEW: All Alpha supporter names registered since Beta 7 added to in-game list (see Credits menu)
- NEW: All Alpha item-attribution names registered since Beta 7 added to the item collection gallery
- MOD: Advanced option showMapBorders now activated by default for new players
- MOD: Core reset also clears any known manual hacking codes
- MOD: Maintenance intel markers changed from green to dark gray
- MOD: Reduced delay on all stasis weapons
- MOD: Instead of automatically opening adjacent Garrison Access doors, RIF gives 100% to open via Unlock Access command
- MOD: Recycling Unit matter cap and other parameters differ by security level
- MOD: First central database lockout check ignored, guaranteeing at least one successful indirect database hack (more guarantees on easier difficulties)
- MOD: Z-hack mapwide cutoff threshold higher on easier difficulties
- MOD: Treads minimum ability to escape stasis increased 50%, legs increased 25%
- MOD: All armored treads slowed by 10
- MOD: All tread coverage increased by 40, and base tread overweight penalty dropped from 30 to 20
- MOD: Investigators don't start accompanying some high security assaults until -3/Research
- MOD: Transport Network Coupler only works in 0b10-controlled maps, and ignores any inactive Haulers
- MOD: DISPOSABLE part label includes number of uses remaining, which may be greater than 1 for some weapons
- MOD: Can no longer swap positions with immobile allies, will push past them instead
- MOD: Immobile allies no longer follow to another map, or into chutes, nor warn about leaving them behind
- MOD: "The Most Popular Achievement" renamed to "First Step to Greatness"
- MOD: "Explosive Specialist" achievement renamed "Launcher Specialist"
- MOD: "Hehehe" achievement description explicitly indicates Datajack requirement
- MOD: "Wheee!" achievement description more specific
- MOD: "Curiosity Killed The Cat" achievement description less specific
- MOD: "Brute Force" achievement awarded even for the one Force() hack that has a second test which might fail
- MOD: Plasma Storm info displayed using same format as Potential Cannons
- MOD: Warp Cannon eventually breaks down
- MOD: Datajacks always disarm Alarm and Ambush Traps rather than have a chance to also reprogram them
- MOD: Item info window no longer repeats part name across the bottom unless there is a prefix to expand, also now appears in parenthesis
- MOD: Succeeding at hacking machine targets with an exact 0% chance no longer possible
- MOD: Manually entered schematic hack targets simply indicate "unknown schematic" if N/A, rather than distinguishing between two possibilities
- MOD: Attempted attachment of a Faulty part warns about that before most other potential issues
- MOD: Phase Shifter part list info ('q') mode ability abbreviation changed from CLOK to SHFT
- MOD: Intercept squad composition and behavior changed
- MOD: Garrison Access Trojans have no effect on Prototype bots
- MOD: Momentum damage modifier displayed in status window now rounded rather than truncated
- MOD: Zion generation parameters slightly more constrained to improve layout consistency
- MOD: Advanced renderFilter values for SHIFT_HUE now automatically wrap negative values to be within range
- MOD: Manual updated to reclassify Cogmind core movement type
- MOD: Manual clearer on conditions for increased detection chance when accessing an interactive machine multiple times (must have been previously hacked)
- MOD: Thermal Generator effect now reflected in HUD net energy readout (though may not be completely reliable)
- MOD: Traps manipulated via Terminals now count towards various trap-related score sheet stats
- MOD: Options menu "Log Calc. Detail" renamed "Combat Log Detail" (existing player setting reset!)
- MOD: Line-of-fire and explosion AOE visualization not shown on map while any info windows open
- MOD: Autosaves no longer take place while machine hacking or evolution UI open
- MOD: Autosave system restores game to turn prior to exiting a map if restoring a run that was force quit during evolution UI
- MOD: Robot info page Integrity and Temp stats prefixed by "Core" instead of "Est."
- MOD: Mass support range is inclusive before overweight penalties beyond the first penalty
- MOD: Bonus points for fast wins reduced overall; curve is steeper and only awarded below 6000 turns
- MOD: Keyboard examine mode no longer replaces weapon info ('q') mode with per-weapon accuracy readouts (only occurs in firing mode)
- MOD: Updated context help for broadcast_data/disrupt_area robot hacks to indicate their effect stacks when installed on multiple bots
- MOD: Removed Datajack Penetration from score sheet
- MOD: RIF Influence readout in HUD moved below Location
- MOD: Relay Coupler [NC] rating upped to 4
- FIX: Derelict logs providing exit/entrance intel might end up identifying the wrong access points [Valguris]
- FIX: Pre-learned intel for machines would not show log message on entering an applicable floor if no locations currently within map view [Valguris]
- FIX: Beta 7 broke score sheet hit/miss streak tallies [Valguris]
- FIX: Part list info ('q') mode did not update melee weapon damage display in real time while toggling propulsion when momentum positive [Valguris]
- FIX: Fusion Compressors and Desublimators not factored into HUD net energy readouts [Joshua]
- FIX: Random traps could spawn in special encounter rooms [Joshua]
- FIX: Recycling Unit hacking interface crashed if attempt to list contents while more than 50 parts [Joshua]
- FIX: Robots could still leave scan signal markers within FOV under rare circumstances [MTF]
- FIX: Achievement threshold achievements not earned until completion of subsequent run if threshold was reached via a subset of run-end achievements [MTF]
- FIX: "Guerilla Style" achievement could be earned via certain unintended means [Raine]
- FIX: Watcher map_route hack did not ID exits under easiest difficulty mode [Raine]
- FIX: Rare condition could allow armed hostile patrol to spawn within view at Materials depths on entering map [UlyssesB]
- FIX: Crash while using an applicable Data Core and sabotaging an explosive machine which destroys the active Terminal [UlyssesB]
- FIX: Opening part info via keyboard before hacking list appears while connecting to interactive machine superimposed item info over targets [Mojo]
- FIX: Layout(Zone) Terminal hack did not ID exits under easiest difficulty mode [Mojo]
- FIX: World seeds could randomly diverge for individual maps if a schematic or similar player-held data were also present on the map [kiedra]
- FIX: Disabled/rebooting/shut down 0b10 bots might summon reinforcements from a nearby Garrison Access [PlasticHeart, kiedra]
- FIX: Some renderFilter values for SATURATION advanced customization option could decrement by 1 when saved on exit [Bravo]
- FIX: NPC dialogue referred to traps triggered on 0b10 robots raising alert, which was no longer the case since adding Trap Extractors [KernelPanic]
- FIX: Melee attacks against aware targets still considered sneak attacks if true base hit chance is 120% [GJ]
- FIX: Some types of map labels could appear below the HUD on certain resolutions [JackNine]
- FIX: Certain renderFilter combinations could cause map to blink while accessing machine hacking UI [yoggo]
- FIX: Performing a certain action within a few-turn window during a special event would result in an unintended line of dialogue (spoiler) [Decinym]
- FIX: Allied robot info inventory list did not distinguish between faulty and non-faulty version of same prototype if contains both [Pimski]
- FIX: Possible crash on exiting game while temporary popup info still visible on map [XenoFiery]
- FIX: Potential crash if Borebot destroys itself while clearing an explosive machine [Tone]
- FIX: Ramming a hostile bot off an exit with allies in tow but outside transfer range took the exit without warning about leaving them behind [whitenitro0]
- FIX: Potential oddity during a particular extended game event interaction (spoiler) [lsend]
- FIX: Original Wizard analysis text inconsistent with new robot hacking-related lore [Heavyrisk]
- FIX: Simply targeting bots would aggro them even if outside range or the line of fire and sight are obstructed [Terminus]
- FIX: Colemak keyboard configuration included an incorrect key assignment [ericmoyer]
- FIX: Typos [Raine, Snelheid]
- FIX: Auto-replacement skipped the usual warning when attempting to swap in a Faulty part directly from the ground
- FIX: Ctrl-RMB and examine mode ('x') would not show info for open doors
- FIX: Updated weapon cycling system introduced for Beta 7.1 incompatible with advanced autoReadyLauncher setting
- FIX: Knockback resulting in triggering traps was excluded from some score sheet stats
- FIX: Part swap menu failed to include manual item tag for unidentified items
- FIX: A certain (spoiler) launcher's explosion radius visualization showed incorrectly when targeting positions near edge of map view
- FIX: Imp. Core Analyzer art contained an extra character revealed only by animation
- FIX: AI ignored additional time cost of attempting to escape various forms of stasis (Stasis Beams etc. now somewhat more effective)
- FIX: An item on a newly-unlocked Garrison Access door or newly-created shortcut exit would be inaccessible (now pushed away)
- FIX: wipe_record hack did not prevent ARCs from deploying
The Exiles
Wow, the last time we got a new map was back in May 2017! That was when the story was completed and the many locations planned for Cogmind 1.0 were all already in place. Apparently one of the post-1.0 plans has leaked into the world early ;)
The highlight of this release is the Exiles, a new mini-faction with which you can align yourself to obtain some benefits (and drawbacks, of course--this is Cogmind after all and there are tradeoffs everywhere!). They have their own map, which you can find hidden off the Mines. It can only appear at one depth, however, so if you don't find it at -10 it'll be on -9. I highly recommend visiting them, so try not to pass up exits to the Mines (but remember, also try to bring a Grenade Launcher along with you, to make the Mines... safer :P).
Having been working on systems and peripheral content for a long time, it was really exciting to get to add another map, and this time around I'll be doing something a little different as well: writing an in-depth blog post covering the entire map design and creation process. I haven't shared the entire process behind creating specific maps before, but this one presents a particularly good opportunity since it's not as spoilery, being at the beginning of the game while still hooking into all sorts of other content and strategic implications. (Update: Said article is now available here.)
That'll come soonish, but if you don't mind minor spoilers (stuff you'll discover before long in the new early-game map anyway) I'll at least cover some basics here to introduce the Exiles. Otherwise skip to the next section to continue with the rest of the release notes.
Upon entering the Mines containing access to the Exiles location, you'll see a log message about "something scanning the area." If you get that message, a thorough search of the map will eventually reveal the entrance. Inside you'll find many of the new NPCs and lore, as well as some new strategic options...
For one they can give you a form of "permanent sensor" ability called FarCom that's incredibly helpful since it identifies distant threats without taking up any of your precious utility slots. Beta 7 nerfed regular sensors a little bit with expanded Watcher jamming, but FarCom is an optional way around that :D (as well as some other sensor blocking mechanics). Although designed to help new players navigate and survive Complex 0b10, it does come with a serious drawback in certain optional late-game areas, so experienced players may not always want it.
That said, the Exiles also have something that both new and experienced players alike can appreciate: crazy advanced technology, some of it very... experimental.
Many of these parts have completely new mechanics. I'll leave you to discover most of them on your own, though I did previously share info about the PSU Rigger, which turns any power source into a proximity mine:
And here's an animation from a particularly powerful item which itself took three days to build!
Several of the new items actually took multiple days each because they really break the normal game rules or otherwise have rather unique effects.
In all, I think you'll enjoy working with the Exiles...
(Unless you're one of those prerelease testers who have clearly decided it's fun or worthwhile to make enemies of them xD)
There are a number of long-term strategic combinations you can work out with regard to the Exiles, but I'll go into more of those details for the blog post. Generally speaking, Beta 8 is about fun and tradeoffs, as many big decisions in Cogmind are, and the Exiles offer ways to trade an easier early game for extra mid- or late-game challenges, depending on your choices.
Beta 8, especially the Exiles, is kind of a preview of what I'd like to do a lot more of after 1.0 if there's enough support for it--add all kinds of more "extreme content" and yet more peripheral content including additional mini-factions that tie into various aspects of the world. A number of these potential elements are already referenced in the lore ;)
Mechanics
Beta 8 includes a few new mechanics and tweaks which are sure to affect some strategies.
All wheels, legs, and treads now have a "drag" stat which slows overall move speed while airborne, so the old "propulsion armor" strategy (as cheesy as it was) is no longer very effective. Here's a demo:
This will make certain stretches of speed runs (and some other types of runs) somewhat more challenging since slapping on tons of propulsion armor used to be the easiest way to protect your core and parts while flying straight for the surface, but at least core movement has been reclassified such that it isn't impacted by the drag effect, so that much is still an option, and still a potential life saver when things go south and you need to make a run for it after taking a serious beating.
On that note, the fast win score bonus formula has been tweaked again:
The bonuses were getting out of hand considering how good players have gotten at speed running. It now ramps up more quickly, but generally to a lower bonus overall, and doesn't even kick in until under 6,000 turns, so you have to be moving pretty fast to get anything, as opposed to even earning a bonus for a non-slow combat run.
If you want to read more about the drag mechanic and its background, I wrote about this topic for SITREP #41: Be The Tank.
That SITREP also covers another direct result of drag: better treads! In addition to their recoil reduction, treads now give an accuracy bonus and have improved coverage, helping them put all that integrity to good use serving as protection for other parts. Treads have always been good, but their slow speed still puts them at a significant long-term disadvantage in a lot of cases (compared to other propulsion types), so further improving their combat capabilities to make up for it is warranted. Technically this also counts as a buff to Sentries and any other bots out there on treads, many of which are already dangerous, so look out!
RIF builds continue to get improvements, too, and the latest buff for Beta 8 gives them a 100% chance to seal any Garrison Access (any security level! no hackware required!). I've been playing around with it and FarCom+RIF is a pretty neat new combination.
Quality AND Quantity
So many new options... I just noticed Cogmind has well over 100 adjustable features now! I've received a lot of requests for options over the past months, many of which now have a home in advanced.cfg for anyone else who'd like to use them.
You can find the full list in the changelog above, and below is a collection of previously demoed new options...
Machine hacks now have context help via the usual right-click or A~Z:
This puts the system on par with the item/robot stat info and the robot hacking system in terms of QoL, and could be useful for new players or infrequent players who may have forgotten certain effects :)
By request, the part swap menu includes a remove button:
With that we now have five different methods of removing a given part, because having options is nice!
The part swap menu also now shows disabled parts in orange, and includes manual tags added to unidentified parts (which originally only showed in inventory and the item info page):
The advanced autoReadyLauncher option has been super useful since introduced in Alpha 12, and now there's its opposite, autoUnreadyLaucher, to reactivate all weapons when a launcher is removed:
It's a common tactic to only attach a launcher to deal with a specific situation, then swap it out after firing--together these options remove most of the other commands involved in that process. You can generally just attach a launcher, fire, then detach the launcher, and it'll work as desired.
Active streamctrl_ robot hacks display a range within which you should stay to avoid losing control of the robot:
We've got three different advanced options for how to display Cogmind's part loss directly on the map: blinking red, blinking red 'X', or part's name in red:
Currently there is no explicit on-map display for that information to avoid potentially interfering with other indicators or tactical information nearby (plus we already have that info reflected in the log, sfx, and parts list), but this could be a pretty useful feature for some players, especially given that the majority of the combat focus has been designed to center around the map view.
Countdown timers for fabricator and repair station processes remain visible outside of FOV! \o/
There's also a log message reporting completion if not in view. Originally the machine would only showed this info while in view, but sometimes it could take a while to finish and players often prefer to leave the area and come back later, but would then be forced to calculate out the approximate turn on which it would be finished. Certainly always showing the info is better, though this wasn't done originally because it's a lot more work to separately record and display hypothetical information! I.e., the machine could be disabled or destroyed but you're not supposed to know that unless it's in view, and it has to keep displaying information as if it were still processing.
Quite a few times I've received requests for an in-game real-time clock. I've held off on it for a while since I wanted to be sure of where it could work in the HUD, and now it's found a home:
It's optional (off by default), and there's also a separate option to show a real-time run timer, for the real-time speedrunners out there.
Energy-adjusting utilities now factor into the HUD's net energy readout:
The Scan window also got some updates, including a new option to have it only show what's currently under the cursor (or kb marker), rather than the usual behavior of retaining the last object shown.
This is not default behavior, however, since keeping persistent data visible has the advantage of not losing that reference info simply by moving the cursor to perform other actions. Not to mention persistent robot scan info will update their heat/integrity values as they change, if they're still present in the window at the time, without having to put the cursor back over them or use some other method to check.
Speaking of easier access to object info, you'll no longer have to open solid terrain info to check its armor value, which appears under its name in the Scan window:
I didn't do this originally because constantly updating the Scan window as the cursor moves around would be really distracting, but later realized I could both avoid that annoyance and provide the info by only loading the terrain info after a short delay! So the cursor/keyboard marker has to be stationary for 500ms before it will show armor for that space.
Machines and other props will also show their armor value in the same place! Remember that you'll probably still want to take resistances into account before attempting to destroy something, but this is a good general reminder and should save some time.
Maintenance intel markers were switched from green to gray, so that they can be easily distinguished from Terminal markers:
I originally chose green since all the maintenance bots themselves are green, but Terminals are also green so if you have both types of intel it can be hard to spot the Terminals unless you deactivate the maintenance intel. In any case, gray is also a reasonable color for a neutral party.
Note that anyone using a higher detail level for their combat log will need to visit the options menu to reset their value on starting a Beta 8 run, because everyone's value has been reset since the option itself was renamed from the very-old-and-not-entirely-obvious "Log Calc. Detail".
Back in Action
The last few weeks of Beta 8 dev were completed while I was out of town, so it's been a while since I've been able to stream. I'm back now and clearly it's time to change that! This week I'll be streaming about 24 hours after this release announcement goes up, before returning to the normal Monday evening scheduled streams next week. Lots of new toys to play around with in Beta 8, and I wanna try out the new treads, too. Also RIF, I'm eager to do more RIF runs since I'm sure it's even cooler after the buffs in 7.1 and 7.2, plus this update.
I hope to be able to do even more releases like this in the future, though will have to focus on getting to 1.0 first and see if there's any money left to keep going! Certainly there are lots of plans to draw on, though :). In the meantime I'll be shifting gears to work on 1.0 necessities, which I'll talk more about in future SITREPs.
Special thanks to all our Beta 8 prerelease testers, who've helped ensure a smooth and balanced full release.
And thanks to everyone for your Steam reviews! In case anyone missed it, there's a pre-1.0 medium-term goal you can help with which could affect the future of Cogmind development. Check out the original announcement for more info. Reviews are very helpful for increasing Cogmind's visibility on Steam and by extension make it possible to keep bringing the updates :D
There is a week-long 10% discount on Cogmind to coincide with the Beta 8 release, available immediately on the website (includes DRM-free plus Steam key), but not until 2/13 on Steam due to limitations on their platform settings. As a heads up, this is the largest discount Cogmind will have during Early Access unless at some point Valve decides to again offer exposure for a larger discount like they did in December 2017, in which case I might take them up. (But I'm pretty sure that won't happen again.)
For Linux users, Cogmind may now be installed through Steam. Read more in the last section of SITREP #35.
As usual, this weekend will not have a SITREP so soon following a new release. The next will come the week after when we'll take the usual look at player stats from Beta 7, the huge robot hacking update with 65 hacks.
Beta 8 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and Cogmind automatically updates, Beta 7.2 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
53
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #44: Code 403
« on: February 01, 2019, 04:11:53 PM »
Beta 8 is feature complete :D
It's not ready for release just yet, but a feature freeze is in effect as it goes into final testing. The next release is dubbed "Forbidden Science," and you'll be able to get your hands on this science when it releases the morning of February 12th (my time, which means the evening of the previous day for many players :P). I'll also be getting back to streaming that day and/or the day after.
Today I've got a batch of feature demos to share, mostly interface-related, along with art and other news.
Quality AND Quantity
The main new content for Beta 8 having been completed a couple weeks back, since then I've been able to turn my attention towards smaller matters, like a collection of UI options and other QoL features to continue improving the experience. Here we go...
Machine hacks now have context help via the usual right-click or A~Z:
This puts the system on par with the item/robot stat info and the robot hacking system in terms of QoL, and could be useful for new players or infrequent players who may have forgotten certain effects :)
By request, the part swap menu includes a remove button:
With that we'll have five different methods of removing a given part, because having options is nice!
The part swap menu also now shows disabled parts in orange, and includes manual tags added to unidentified parts (which originally only showed in inventory and the item info page):
The advanced autoReadyLauncher option has been super useful since introduced in Alpha 12, and now there's its opposite, autoUnreadyLaucher, to reactivate all weapons when a launcher is removed:
It's a common tactic to only attach a launcher to deal with a specific situation, then swap it out after firing--together these options remove most of the other commands involved in that process.
Active streamctrl robot hacks display a range within which you should stay to avoid losing control of the robot:
We've got three different advanced options for how to display Cogmind's part loss directly on the map: blinking red, blinking red `X`, or part's name in red:
Currently there is no explicit on-map display for that information to avoid potentially interfering with other indicators or tactical information nearby (plus we already have that info reflected in the log, sfx, and parts list), but this could be a pretty useful feature for some players, especially given that the majority of the combat focus has been designed to center around the map view.
Countdown timers for fabricator and repair station processes remain visible outside of FOV! \o/
There's also a log message reporting completion if not in view. Originally the machine would only showed this info while in view, but sometimes it could take a while to finish and players often prefer to leave the area and come back later, but would then be forced to calculate out the approximate turn on which it would be finished. Certainly always showing the info is better, though this wasn't done originally because it's a lot more work to separately record and display hypothetical information! I.e., the machine could be disabled or destroyed but you're not supposed to know that unless it's in view, and it has to keep displaying information as if it were still processing.
Quite a few times I've received requests for an in-game real-time clock. I've held off on it for a while since I wanted to be sure of where it could work in the HUD, and now it's found a home:
It's optional (off by default), and there's also a separate option to show a real-time run timer, for the real-time speedrunners out there.
Energy-adjusting utilities now factor into the HUD's net energy readout:
The Scan window also got some updates, including a new option to have it only show what's currently under the cursor (or kb marker), rather than the usual behavior of retaining the last object shown.
This is not default behavior, however, since keeping persistent data visible has the advantage of not losing that reference info simply by moving the cursor to perform other actions. Not to mention persistent robot scan info will update their heat/integrity values as they change, if they're still present in the window at the time, without having to put the cursor back over them or use some other method to check.
Speaking of easier access to object info, you'll no longer have to open solid terrain info to check its armor value, which appears under its name in the Scan window:
I didn't do this originally because constantly updating the Scan window as the cursor moves around would be really distracting, but later realized I could both avoid that annoyance and provide the info by only loading the terrain info after a short delay! So the cursor/keyboard marker has to be stationary for 500ms before it will show armor for that space.
Machines and other props will also show their armor value in the same place! Remember that you'll probably still want to take resistances into account before attempting to destroy something, but this is a good general reminder and should save some time.
The threshold for overweight calculations is now inclusive rather than exclusive, so everyone gets +1 support before going double/triple/quadruple(?) overweight...
Maintenance intel markers were switched from green to gray, so that they can be easily distinguished from Terminal markers:
I originally chose green since all the maintenance bots themselves are green, but Terminals are also green so if you have both types of intel it can be hard to spot the Terminals unless you deactivate the maintenance intel. In any case, gray is also a reasonable color for a neutral party.
The very last thing I did for Beta 8, since I had some extra time, was add a pair of new alien artifacts for fun, and science :)
Fun With Bugs
The last couple weeks of dev also involved some dedicated bug fixing, clearing out all the reports since Beta 7.
None were very difficult, although for one in particular I added a visualizer for the Entity (robot) spawn blocking layer of generated maps to confirm a suspected cause of unintended behavior. Technically, on maps belonging to 0b10, most armed enemies are not allowed to spawn within a certain distance of the starting point, but UlyssesB shared a screenshot of exactly that happening on the very first floor. This occurred right around a special encounter room (the part cache), so I initially thought it was simply not blocking spawns to that room. But the engine blocks all random spawning in those areas, so that couldn't be it... Then I checked the actual spawn order and noticed the patrol spawn location (based on its leader) wasn't even in the room itself as I'd thought, but just outside it. This particular encounter happens to clear away the nearby wall as part of its behavior, so what had happened was it cleared the wall, opening the way for a patrol to spawn right there where the wall had been!
The visualizer showing a patrol spawning next to the player:
(the squad leader spawned as the middle 's' there, and the others appear next to them since they're not constrained by that particular spawning rule)
Anyway, in the end the solution was to just additionally spawn-block any walls that are opened up (normally cells that start as walls don't need to explicitly block spawning since walls block spawning anyway!). For comparison this is the fixed version on that map:
And it's a good thing I had a visualizer because the initial solution I coded worked in this particular case but wasn't implemented well enough and still left a potential hole for different patrols (which I wouldn't have noticed had I not activated the visualizer again to look at the results).
For devs, the less here is that data visualization are super useful :)
In another recent happening in dev land, this isn't a bug but more a development goof, but check out this interesting looking "map"
This looks absolutely nothing like what was supposed to happen, but during my first attempt to enter a new area I was working on, something went wrong and I ended up in that place. It was supposed to be a certain static environment, but instead I got a sparse and windy weird cave system.
From The Fans
@nyrdal shared some really cool fan art depicting my winning ninja melee build streamed back in October:
And Zyalin has graced us with some Beta 8 hype art:
It's based on this song.
Fellow roguelikedev and Cogmind player VedVid pointed out last week that Poland's largest gaming portal did a quick video on "Games without graphics that will consume your life" xD
Cogmind is in there, along with other well-known roguelikes such as ADOM, Dwarf Fortress, and Caves of Qud.
And that's it for today. The next announcement will cover the true meat of this release, as we give you... FORBIDDEN SCIENCE!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
It's not ready for release just yet, but a feature freeze is in effect as it goes into final testing. The next release is dubbed "Forbidden Science," and you'll be able to get your hands on this science when it releases the morning of February 12th (my time, which means the evening of the previous day for many players :P). I'll also be getting back to streaming that day and/or the day after.
Today I've got a batch of feature demos to share, mostly interface-related, along with art and other news.
Quality AND Quantity
The main new content for Beta 8 having been completed a couple weeks back, since then I've been able to turn my attention towards smaller matters, like a collection of UI options and other QoL features to continue improving the experience. Here we go...
Machine hacks now have context help via the usual right-click or A~Z:
This puts the system on par with the item/robot stat info and the robot hacking system in terms of QoL, and could be useful for new players or infrequent players who may have forgotten certain effects :)
By request, the part swap menu includes a remove button:
With that we'll have five different methods of removing a given part, because having options is nice!
The part swap menu also now shows disabled parts in orange, and includes manual tags added to unidentified parts (which originally only showed in inventory and the item info page):
The advanced autoReadyLauncher option has been super useful since introduced in Alpha 12, and now there's its opposite, autoUnreadyLaucher, to reactivate all weapons when a launcher is removed:
It's a common tactic to only attach a launcher to deal with a specific situation, then swap it out after firing--together these options remove most of the other commands involved in that process.
Active streamctrl robot hacks display a range within which you should stay to avoid losing control of the robot:
We've got three different advanced options for how to display Cogmind's part loss directly on the map: blinking red, blinking red `X`, or part's name in red:
Currently there is no explicit on-map display for that information to avoid potentially interfering with other indicators or tactical information nearby (plus we already have that info reflected in the log, sfx, and parts list), but this could be a pretty useful feature for some players, especially given that the majority of the combat focus has been designed to center around the map view.
Countdown timers for fabricator and repair station processes remain visible outside of FOV! \o/
There's also a log message reporting completion if not in view. Originally the machine would only showed this info while in view, but sometimes it could take a while to finish and players often prefer to leave the area and come back later, but would then be forced to calculate out the approximate turn on which it would be finished. Certainly always showing the info is better, though this wasn't done originally because it's a lot more work to separately record and display hypothetical information! I.e., the machine could be disabled or destroyed but you're not supposed to know that unless it's in view, and it has to keep displaying information as if it were still processing.
Quite a few times I've received requests for an in-game real-time clock. I've held off on it for a while since I wanted to be sure of where it could work in the HUD, and now it's found a home:
It's optional (off by default), and there's also a separate option to show a real-time run timer, for the real-time speedrunners out there.
Energy-adjusting utilities now factor into the HUD's net energy readout:
The Scan window also got some updates, including a new option to have it only show what's currently under the cursor (or kb marker), rather than the usual behavior of retaining the last object shown.
This is not default behavior, however, since keeping persistent data visible has the advantage of not losing that reference info simply by moving the cursor to perform other actions. Not to mention persistent robot scan info will update their heat/integrity values as they change, if they're still present in the window at the time, without having to put the cursor back over them or use some other method to check.
Speaking of easier access to object info, you'll no longer have to open solid terrain info to check its armor value, which appears under its name in the Scan window:
I didn't do this originally because constantly updating the Scan window as the cursor moves around would be really distracting, but later realized I could both avoid that annoyance and provide the info by only loading the terrain info after a short delay! So the cursor/keyboard marker has to be stationary for 500ms before it will show armor for that space.
Machines and other props will also show their armor value in the same place! Remember that you'll probably still want to take resistances into account before attempting to destroy something, but this is a good general reminder and should save some time.
The threshold for overweight calculations is now inclusive rather than exclusive, so everyone gets +1 support before going double/triple/quadruple(?) overweight...
Maintenance intel markers were switched from green to gray, so that they can be easily distinguished from Terminal markers:
I originally chose green since all the maintenance bots themselves are green, but Terminals are also green so if you have both types of intel it can be hard to spot the Terminals unless you deactivate the maintenance intel. In any case, gray is also a reasonable color for a neutral party.
The very last thing I did for Beta 8, since I had some extra time, was add a pair of new alien artifacts for fun, and science :)
Fun With Bugs
The last couple weeks of dev also involved some dedicated bug fixing, clearing out all the reports since Beta 7.
None were very difficult, although for one in particular I added a visualizer for the Entity (robot) spawn blocking layer of generated maps to confirm a suspected cause of unintended behavior. Technically, on maps belonging to 0b10, most armed enemies are not allowed to spawn within a certain distance of the starting point, but UlyssesB shared a screenshot of exactly that happening on the very first floor. This occurred right around a special encounter room (the part cache), so I initially thought it was simply not blocking spawns to that room. But the engine blocks all random spawning in those areas, so that couldn't be it... Then I checked the actual spawn order and noticed the patrol spawn location (based on its leader) wasn't even in the room itself as I'd thought, but just outside it. This particular encounter happens to clear away the nearby wall as part of its behavior, so what had happened was it cleared the wall, opening the way for a patrol to spawn right there where the wall had been!
The visualizer showing a patrol spawning next to the player:
(the squad leader spawned as the middle 's' there, and the others appear next to them since they're not constrained by that particular spawning rule)
Anyway, in the end the solution was to just additionally spawn-block any walls that are opened up (normally cells that start as walls don't need to explicitly block spawning since walls block spawning anyway!). For comparison this is the fixed version on that map:
And it's a good thing I had a visualizer because the initial solution I coded worked in this particular case but wasn't implemented well enough and still left a potential hole for different patrols (which I wouldn't have noticed had I not activated the visualizer again to look at the results).
For devs, the less here is that data visualization are super useful :)
In another recent happening in dev land, this isn't a bug but more a development goof, but check out this interesting looking "map"
This looks absolutely nothing like what was supposed to happen, but during my first attempt to enter a new area I was working on, something went wrong and I ended up in that place. It was supposed to be a certain static environment, but instead I got a sparse and windy weird cave system.
From The Fans
@nyrdal shared some really cool fan art depicting my winning ninja melee build streamed back in October:
And Zyalin has graced us with some Beta 8 hype art:
It's based on this song.
Fellow roguelikedev and Cogmind player VedVid pointed out last week that Poland's largest gaming portal did a quick video on "Games without graphics that will consume your life" xD
Cogmind is in there, along with other well-known roguelikes such as ADOM, Dwarf Fortress, and Caves of Qud.
And that's it for today. The next announcement will cover the true meat of this release, as we give you... FORBIDDEN SCIENCE!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
54
Everything REXPaint / Reload All Images feature (patch for v1.04)
« on: January 29, 2019, 04:17:18 PM »
This'll be in the next "official release," but I got a feature request for this so here's an interim patch(edit: feature now included in all versions as of v1.50) which adds some functionality: File reloading!
Normally if there are changes to your images directory while REXPaint is open, to see all those changes in RP's browser you'd have to restart the program. Now there's a button at the bottom of the browser, "R" for reload. Just click that and everything will be reloaded to reflect the current state of the file system (you can also use a new hotkey: Ctrl-Shift-r).
You'll get a warning if you have any unsaved progress or images, since of course doing this will erase that. The reloading process will do its best to restore the original state of the browsing window, such as selected image, visible images, last selected image, and folder collapse states, but of course this isn't always possible since it could encounter missing files or different folder structures.
Note that as per other patches since the last official release, this one needs to update your skins.xt file since a new entry was added there for another feature from an earlier patch.
Normally if there are changes to your images directory while REXPaint is open, to see all those changes in RP's browser you'd have to restart the program. Now there's a button at the bottom of the browser, "R" for reload. Just click that and everything will be reloaded to reflect the current state of the file system (you can also use a new hotkey: Ctrl-Shift-r).
You'll get a warning if you have any unsaved progress or images, since of course doing this will erase that. The reloading process will do its best to restore the original state of the browsing window, such as selected image, visible images, last selected image, and folder collapse states, but of course this isn't always possible since it could encounter missing files or different folder structures.
Note that as per other patches since the last official release, this one needs to update your skins.xt file since a new entry was added there for another feature from an earlier patch.
55
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #43: Pwning the Early Game
« on: January 11, 2019, 05:19:11 PM »
Welcome to a new year of Cogmind!
It's been so long in the making I've started to have visions of even grander major updates, and we end up getting Cogmind 2019, Cogmind 2020, and so on until my permadeath, ha.
In the New Year's spirit I streamed Holiday Mode last week on January 1st, building around a very specific weapon available that day (and on New Year's Eve), the RPDS. Some very potent fireworks were on display, including plenty of unnecessary carnage.
It was an interesting time with different challenges from a more regular run.
FYI an RPDS does... this :D
Or in ASCII:
Remember you can turn back your system clock to start a run on one of those days (or any of the other Holiday Mode days--potential drops are described here), and this feature will be available until the next release.
Note that even now that the event is over, the "ELF" variant bot is still in the regular game. That was an oversight while putting together the new build, in that the regular game picked up on that new bot and replaced the usual Saboteur class Imp with the ELF. Oops xD. They have the same loadout anyway, it's just a different name. Don't let their elfish charms disarm you--they're just as deadly and scary as Imps ever were!
Pwnage
For a long time now I've wanted to do a video that demonstrates how to reliably get through the early game, since it's not all that hard but some players have trouble figuring out how to overcome the various challenges there and end up either having to switch to another difficulty mode or playing the majority of their runs in the early game, which honestly is just the very tip of a much more varied Cogmind experience!
Once you're good at it the first few floors only take maybe ten minutes as you prep for the mid-game challenges, so I wanted to share some of the main tactics that ensure you'll make it through. We've had some other early-game tutorials on video before, but I wanted something of my own that I covered what I thought was most important.
Well we can check that off the list :D
I streamed "Pwning the Early Game" this week, and already a bunch of players have been finding it useful, so that's reassuring.
Although I normally talk a lot of strategy in my streams, this was quite different from the usual since it was focused purely on the essentials for the first floors. I first spent about half an hour describing most of the main UI and basic mechanics, essentially an intro to the game, then did a slow run through the first several floors, talking about strategy, combat tactics, and different robots, systems, and AI. After that I concluded with four more quick runs through the early game, putting everything learned into action to reliably reach Factory. (There are time stamps in the YouTube description.)
Not Spoilers
Well, speaking of the early game... let's talk a bit about Beta 8! Why? Because that's its biggest area of focus :D
I haven't really talked about it yet, and while I want to wait until the main announcement to go into details, it's relevant here so let's go.
With Beta 8, in the the early game you'll often have a way to find unique items, and these items can affect your entire play style, if not for an entire run then at least for a while. I mean I guess even regular items and prototypes (and especially artifacts) can already do that for you, but any time unique items are added this is a chance to provide opportunities like that.
For example, among the new items that are being added, there's the PSU Rigger. As per its name, it can be used to rig any power source to explode like a proximity mine. This one's going to be pretty fun to use :D
I can already smell the cheese connoisseurs approaching now...
(Aside: I've actually teased this item in a couple previous screenshots, that and other Beta 8 features, and it's fun to do this without talking about them to see if/who notices ;))
This kind of stuff has always been part of my long-term plan for Cogmind (because having worked on it for over five years now we're apparently not quite yet in the "long term" xD). Basically expanding the game with new ways to experience and interact with the same world, adding smaller amounts of content with outsized impacts on a run, albeit optional, of course. I have tons more item concepts and avenues for obtaining them in various parts of the world, but these things will be introduced over time, mostly after the actual 1.0 (assuming I can still afford it :P).
Now don't get too excited about the Beta 8 gear--you won't be able to pick and choose items, but I can guarantee there are going to be some fun and interesting new experiences coming.
Work on Beta 8 has been pretty smooth lately, just time-consuming as there are some rather complex additions for this update. Some random dev snapshots...
Visualizing the ambient sound from a new area:
Hm, a curious new UI animation, what could it mean? :)
Other News
I was chosen for the "Best Developer" award by Spitball Sessions! You can read about that here, and check out their GOTY 2018 podcast. I am honored, and will continue trying to do my best :D. Thanks to everyone for your support (and reviews! they really keep the game going in Steam's algorithms so that I can add more features rather than having to worry about wrapping it up sooner).
And if you're using Proton to play Cogmind, it'd be great if you could contribute to the database.
I guess this is also a notice for those of you who didn't already know: Although Cogmind isn't marked as supporting Linux on Steam, manually activating it for Steam Play does allow you to purchase and download and play normally! There shouldn't be any issues as I've fixed the few Wine-related bugs on Cogmind's side before it even came to Steam, and have added other QoL features specifically for Linux players. (If you do run into the no audio issue there's a workaround--not sure if they've fixed that in Proton itself yet.)
The biggest "Other News" we've got here is that we'll be going on our annual family vacation next week for winter/Chinese New Year. I really wanted to have Beta 8 out by now, but it's still not there yet. Being out of town for a few weeks I won't be streaming for the next month or so, and although it's a long "vacation," technically it's more of a workcation since I'll still be setting up office and doing a fair bit of regular work on Cogmind as well.
It feels really good to be caught up on all the personal and/or non-Cogmind things that were getting in the way these months, though, and to have the Roguelike Celebration behind us, since that trip and preparing for my talk and all the other related work really ate up a ton of time and resulted in the additional backlog of other chores I had to get out of the way xD
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
It's been so long in the making I've started to have visions of even grander major updates, and we end up getting Cogmind 2019, Cogmind 2020, and so on until my permadeath, ha.
In the New Year's spirit I streamed Holiday Mode last week on January 1st, building around a very specific weapon available that day (and on New Year's Eve), the RPDS. Some very potent fireworks were on display, including plenty of unnecessary carnage.
It was an interesting time with different challenges from a more regular run.
FYI an RPDS does... this :D
Or in ASCII:
Remember you can turn back your system clock to start a run on one of those days (or any of the other Holiday Mode days--potential drops are described here), and this feature will be available until the next release.
Note that even now that the event is over, the "ELF" variant bot is still in the regular game. That was an oversight while putting together the new build, in that the regular game picked up on that new bot and replaced the usual Saboteur class Imp with the ELF. Oops xD. They have the same loadout anyway, it's just a different name. Don't let their elfish charms disarm you--they're just as deadly and scary as Imps ever were!
Pwnage
For a long time now I've wanted to do a video that demonstrates how to reliably get through the early game, since it's not all that hard but some players have trouble figuring out how to overcome the various challenges there and end up either having to switch to another difficulty mode or playing the majority of their runs in the early game, which honestly is just the very tip of a much more varied Cogmind experience!
Once you're good at it the first few floors only take maybe ten minutes as you prep for the mid-game challenges, so I wanted to share some of the main tactics that ensure you'll make it through. We've had some other early-game tutorials on video before, but I wanted something of my own that I covered what I thought was most important.
Well we can check that off the list :D
I streamed "Pwning the Early Game" this week, and already a bunch of players have been finding it useful, so that's reassuring.
Although I normally talk a lot of strategy in my streams, this was quite different from the usual since it was focused purely on the essentials for the first floors. I first spent about half an hour describing most of the main UI and basic mechanics, essentially an intro to the game, then did a slow run through the first several floors, talking about strategy, combat tactics, and different robots, systems, and AI. After that I concluded with four more quick runs through the early game, putting everything learned into action to reliably reach Factory. (There are time stamps in the YouTube description.)
Not Spoilers
Well, speaking of the early game... let's talk a bit about Beta 8! Why? Because that's its biggest area of focus :D
I haven't really talked about it yet, and while I want to wait until the main announcement to go into details, it's relevant here so let's go.
With Beta 8, in the the early game you'll often have a way to find unique items, and these items can affect your entire play style, if not for an entire run then at least for a while. I mean I guess even regular items and prototypes (and especially artifacts) can already do that for you, but any time unique items are added this is a chance to provide opportunities like that.
For example, among the new items that are being added, there's the PSU Rigger. As per its name, it can be used to rig any power source to explode like a proximity mine. This one's going to be pretty fun to use :D
I can already smell the cheese connoisseurs approaching now...
(Aside: I've actually teased this item in a couple previous screenshots, that and other Beta 8 features, and it's fun to do this without talking about them to see if/who notices ;))
This kind of stuff has always been part of my long-term plan for Cogmind (because having worked on it for over five years now we're apparently not quite yet in the "long term" xD). Basically expanding the game with new ways to experience and interact with the same world, adding smaller amounts of content with outsized impacts on a run, albeit optional, of course. I have tons more item concepts and avenues for obtaining them in various parts of the world, but these things will be introduced over time, mostly after the actual 1.0 (assuming I can still afford it :P).
Now don't get too excited about the Beta 8 gear--you won't be able to pick and choose items, but I can guarantee there are going to be some fun and interesting new experiences coming.
Work on Beta 8 has been pretty smooth lately, just time-consuming as there are some rather complex additions for this update. Some random dev snapshots...
Visualizing the ambient sound from a new area:
Hm, a curious new UI animation, what could it mean? :)
Other News
I was chosen for the "Best Developer" award by Spitball Sessions! You can read about that here, and check out their GOTY 2018 podcast. I am honored, and will continue trying to do my best :D. Thanks to everyone for your support (and reviews! they really keep the game going in Steam's algorithms so that I can add more features rather than having to worry about wrapping it up sooner).
And if you're using Proton to play Cogmind, it'd be great if you could contribute to the database.
I guess this is also a notice for those of you who didn't already know: Although Cogmind isn't marked as supporting Linux on Steam, manually activating it for Steam Play does allow you to purchase and download and play normally! There shouldn't be any issues as I've fixed the few Wine-related bugs on Cogmind's side before it even came to Steam, and have added other QoL features specifically for Linux players. (If you do run into the no audio issue there's a workaround--not sure if they've fixed that in Proton itself yet.)
The biggest "Other News" we've got here is that we'll be going on our annual family vacation next week for winter/Chinese New Year. I really wanted to have Beta 8 out by now, but it's still not there yet. Being out of town for a few weeks I won't be streaming for the next month or so, and although it's a long "vacation," technically it's more of a workcation since I'll still be setting up office and doing a fair bit of regular work on Cogmind as well.
It feels really good to be caught up on all the personal and/or non-Cogmind things that were getting in the way these months, though, and to have the Roguelike Celebration behind us, since that trip and preparing for my talk and all the other related work really ate up a ton of time and resulted in the additional backlog of other chores I had to get out of the way xD
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
56
Strategies / Cogmind: Pwning the Early Game (upcoming stream)
« on: January 06, 2019, 11:23:49 PM »
Tomorrow/Monday on Twitch at around 8pm ET (GMT-5) I'll be doing a different kind of stream than usual, not a regular (or challenge) run of Cogmind, but instead focusing on teaching the early game, mainly for new players and those who are having trouble surviving.
It'll start out with an intro to the interface and many of its features, then we'll move into strategy, playing through a bunch of early-game segments talking about how to kick robot butt and what is likely to work or not work. Maybe see you there!
(The video will be posted to YouTube the day after for anyone who'd like to check it out but can't make it.)
Edit: And here it is! (with a few timestamps in the YouTube description
)
It'll start out with an intro to the interface and many of its features, then we'll move into strategy, playing through a bunch of early-game segments talking about how to kick robot butt and what is likely to work or not work. Maybe see you there!
Edit: And here it is! (with a few timestamps in the YouTube description
)57
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #42: 5A-N7A Report
« on: December 28, 2018, 04:23:46 PM »
Hope you're all enjoying the latest special release! The timed event has been in progress for 9 days now, but there are still 4 more to go. Since the original announcement was cryptic to avoid spoiling it, today I thought I'd cover a bit of what's included.
The original plans for this mode were somewhat different, as I started imagining elaborate possibilities via scripting and new NPCs with dialogue and whatnot. But I didn't want it to siphon off too much time from Beta 8 development, so scaled it all back to something much more manageable--a bunch of new themed items in the starting area. In the end it took just a day and a half to set up Holiday Mode and add 17 new parts, some with completely new mechanics. (There was also a little visit by an NPC on 12/24, which some players apparently noticed ;))
When you wake, the Scrapyard is filled with Presents.
These essentially work like Scrap found in the caves, in that you can step on them to search through (open!) them and see what's inside.
Here's a list of possible unique presents that appear in various combinations on different days, along with their description:
Various gifts in action...
I've arranged it so that during these final four days all the unique event-only items from the previous will also appear again at some point, in case you missed any.
That said, there is also one item which has not yet appeared on any day! It's also probably one of the greatest. This item will appear on both 12/31 and 1/1, to welcome the new year the only way we know how ;)
Although score data from the event is not being included in the leaderboards, since the lore and achievements you collect during the event do contribute to your player history, Holiday Mode can give you a leg up (or offer new strategies) going after some of the really hard achievements, or exploring more challenging areas of the world. So it's a good opportunity for that, in case you're not using it like this already :P
As stated before you can technically access this event later once Beta 8 is released by rolling back to a previous branch, but if the intent is to contribute to your player data you probably wouldn't want to that too far into the future since it could erase other gains you might've made. (On the other hand if the intent is pure fun then yeah, it'll always be accessible for that :D)
Earlier I mentioned the speed with which this release was put together, and there were some funny side effects of the haste... As a special event on a separate branch of the game without a need to future proof the work, adding content was much faster, but also meant that I wouldn't bother to extensively test all the potential related effects. Quality control was limited to testing individual items to make sure they at least performed as advertised.
Well, the game picked up on the ELF being a variety of Saboteur and began dispatching ELFs along with assaults instead of the usual Imps, which is kinda funny but appropriate (as appropriate as being attacked by an ELF during the holidays can be, anyway :P). Vacation Slips allow you to step outside the normal flow of time, but by doing that it turns out there's no energy generation or heat dissipation and you have to manage as best you can like that for 50 "turns" (they're still good, and at least it's interesting trying to take advantage of them with certain builds!)
These are the only two issues I know about, and are the kinds of things that normally would've been caught within a day of public testing, but I wanted to surprise even testers with this build, too :)
Channel Cogmind
This week I streamed Holiday Mode, and my normal stream time happened to fall on December 25th so we got to use a somewhat larger selection of Fun Stuff. I focused on the Elven Gift Factory, essentially creating a hovering "Christmas Trapper Build."
The end part is spoilery since the run headed into part of the extended game, but there's no spoilers elsewhere, mostly just fun and games :)
Actually, the stream even started out with some fooling around in the Scrapyard. You don't normally get such powerful scanning gear in the starting area, so it was interesting to watch the tunnelers at work, then lay a bunch of traps for our uninvited guests...
I'll be doing another Holiday Mode stream next week at the usual time, this one with a dedicated "RPDS build" :)
Last week the Gunslinger run came to its epic conclusion. The final day was super spoilery, but it was by far my highest scoring run ever (115k!). Many robots were harmed in the making of that video.
It was so epic I ended up doing a full writeup anyway (with images).
In People Who Aren't Me Streaming Cogmind, check out this great clip from one of MTF's runs xD. So perfect.
And in the last SITREP I mentioned Gold Plated Games' first playthrough of Cogmind. Audish does an annual review series of various roguelikes called "Roguemas," and he selected Cogmind to try among this year's batch, so it was cool to finally be a part of that. His review is here.
While on the subject of reviews, I should mention that POYLBOT-7, the free Cogmind-like I released earlier this year, made a Best Free Games of 2018 list on PC Gamer, so that was pretty cool :D
Road to Beta 8
There's not as much progress to show now, since I'm working on the main plot of Beta 8 (i.e., spoilers :P), though here are a couple things...
I needed to debug a new mapgen feature, and that required having a visual way to quickly tell one cave from another as far as the generator was concerned (for some special cases where logically separate caves might be directly attached to one another), so I added that in real quick.
I've never done a visualization like this but always wanted to after seeing so many other devs produce pretty color-based ID systems. Doing this is pretty easy: Just use HSV coloring and start with a low hue, then increase the hue for each subsequent object by some static amount for each one. Knowing the number of objects in advance also makes it possible to prevent colors from overlapping, since the hue interval can be set based on that known.
For something else I was working on recently I had to look into historical bug reporting figures, and came up with some stats:
There's the Top 10 earners of "bug points," based on some macros run on changelog data. Since the first release in 2015 there have been 460 total reports (including duplicates and simple things like typos, but also of course some major stuff as well) submitted by 118 unique players. These figures exclude the outstanding issues to resolve for Beta 8, which aren't in the changelog yet but I'll be getting to them all at the end of this dev cycle, as usual. Thanks everyone for helping making Cogmind be the best it can be!
The next SITREP will be on 1/12, when I hope to bring to you... I don't know what since I'm working on secret stuff in the meantime, but I guess I'll have to just do some non-secret stuff so I have at least something to show :P
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
The original plans for this mode were somewhat different, as I started imagining elaborate possibilities via scripting and new NPCs with dialogue and whatnot. But I didn't want it to siphon off too much time from Beta 8 development, so scaled it all back to something much more manageable--a bunch of new themed items in the starting area. In the end it took just a day and a half to set up Holiday Mode and add 17 new parts, some with completely new mechanics. (There was also a little visit by an NPC on 12/24, which some players apparently noticed ;))
When you wake, the Scrapyard is filled with Presents.
These essentially work like Scrap found in the caves, in that you can step on them to search through (open!) them and see what's inside.
Here's a list of possible unique presents that appear in various combinations on different days, along with their description:
- Vacation Slip ~~ Everyone needs some time off occasionally.
- Tree Searcher ~~ Ah, that feeling when you find the perfect tree... then hack it down.
- Elven Gift Factory ~~ Unlimited surprises await your enemies.
- Gaudy Lights ~~ They can't hit what blinds them!
- 5A-N7A's Little Helpers ~~ Very helpful for you. Not so much for everyone else.
- 5A-N7A's Bag of Holding ~~ Don't worry, everything gets bigger again when you take it out.
- 5A-N7A's Eye ~~ Spot all those naughty bots from afar.
- 5A-N7A's GPS ~~ 5A-N7A was using GPS before there was GPS.
- 5A-N7A's Snowblower ~~ Ho ho ho!
- RD-1PH's Nose Cone ~~ Being nosy is half the battle.
- Winter Coat ~~ Warm and fuzzy. But more importantly, immune to all those pesky programmers who are most definitely not on vacation even though they should be.
- Striped Cane ~~ Peppermint is good for making friends. Or with a huge amount you can also pound bots into scrap.
- Black Coal ~~ Drop this to the ground and run. Don't look back. You have 10 turns to escape the blast radius (8). So naughty.
- Propulsion/Utility/Weapon Slot Expander ~~ Yeah you'll get more slots later, but early presents are good presents.
Various gifts in action...
I've arranged it so that during these final four days all the unique event-only items from the previous will also appear again at some point, in case you missed any.
That said, there is also one item which has not yet appeared on any day! It's also probably one of the greatest. This item will appear on both 12/31 and 1/1, to welcome the new year the only way we know how ;)
Although score data from the event is not being included in the leaderboards, since the lore and achievements you collect during the event do contribute to your player history, Holiday Mode can give you a leg up (or offer new strategies) going after some of the really hard achievements, or exploring more challenging areas of the world. So it's a good opportunity for that, in case you're not using it like this already :P
As stated before you can technically access this event later once Beta 8 is released by rolling back to a previous branch, but if the intent is to contribute to your player data you probably wouldn't want to that too far into the future since it could erase other gains you might've made. (On the other hand if the intent is pure fun then yeah, it'll always be accessible for that :D)
Earlier I mentioned the speed with which this release was put together, and there were some funny side effects of the haste... As a special event on a separate branch of the game without a need to future proof the work, adding content was much faster, but also meant that I wouldn't bother to extensively test all the potential related effects. Quality control was limited to testing individual items to make sure they at least performed as advertised.
Well, the game picked up on the ELF being a variety of Saboteur and began dispatching ELFs along with assaults instead of the usual Imps, which is kinda funny but appropriate (as appropriate as being attacked by an ELF during the holidays can be, anyway :P). Vacation Slips allow you to step outside the normal flow of time, but by doing that it turns out there's no energy generation or heat dissipation and you have to manage as best you can like that for 50 "turns" (they're still good, and at least it's interesting trying to take advantage of them with certain builds!)
These are the only two issues I know about, and are the kinds of things that normally would've been caught within a day of public testing, but I wanted to surprise even testers with this build, too :)
Channel Cogmind
This week I streamed Holiday Mode, and my normal stream time happened to fall on December 25th so we got to use a somewhat larger selection of Fun Stuff. I focused on the Elven Gift Factory, essentially creating a hovering "Christmas Trapper Build."
The end part is spoilery since the run headed into part of the extended game, but there's no spoilers elsewhere, mostly just fun and games :)
Actually, the stream even started out with some fooling around in the Scrapyard. You don't normally get such powerful scanning gear in the starting area, so it was interesting to watch the tunnelers at work, then lay a bunch of traps for our uninvited guests...
I'll be doing another Holiday Mode stream next week at the usual time, this one with a dedicated "RPDS build" :)
Last week the Gunslinger run came to its epic conclusion. The final day was super spoilery, but it was by far my highest scoring run ever (115k!). Many robots were harmed in the making of that video.
It was so epic I ended up doing a full writeup anyway (with images).
In People Who Aren't Me Streaming Cogmind, check out this great clip from one of MTF's runs xD. So perfect.
And in the last SITREP I mentioned Gold Plated Games' first playthrough of Cogmind. Audish does an annual review series of various roguelikes called "Roguemas," and he selected Cogmind to try among this year's batch, so it was cool to finally be a part of that. His review is here.
While on the subject of reviews, I should mention that POYLBOT-7, the free Cogmind-like I released earlier this year, made a Best Free Games of 2018 list on PC Gamer, so that was pretty cool :D
Road to Beta 8
There's not as much progress to show now, since I'm working on the main plot of Beta 8 (i.e., spoilers :P), though here are a couple things...
I needed to debug a new mapgen feature, and that required having a visual way to quickly tell one cave from another as far as the generator was concerned (for some special cases where logically separate caves might be directly attached to one another), so I added that in real quick.
I've never done a visualization like this but always wanted to after seeing so many other devs produce pretty color-based ID systems. Doing this is pretty easy: Just use HSV coloring and start with a low hue, then increase the hue for each subsequent object by some static amount for each one. Knowing the number of objects in advance also makes it possible to prevent colors from overlapping, since the hue interval can be set based on that known.
For something else I was working on recently I had to look into historical bug reporting figures, and came up with some stats:
There's the Top 10 earners of "bug points," based on some macros run on changelog data. Since the first release in 2015 there have been 460 total reports (including duplicates and simple things like typos, but also of course some major stuff as well) submitted by 118 unique players. These figures exclude the outstanding issues to resolve for Beta 8, which aren't in the changelog yet but I'll be getting to them all at the end of this dev cycle, as usual. Thanks everyone for helping making Cogmind be the best it can be!
The next SITREP will be on 1/12, when I hope to bring to you... I don't know what since I'm working on secret stuff in the meantime, but I guess I'll have to just do some non-secret stuff so I have at least something to show :P
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
58
Announcements / Cogmind Limited Edition Holiday Mode 2018
« on: December 20, 2018, 04:07:06 AM »
While the great Beta 8 is still under construction, in the meantime I have something else special for you! In fact a lot of special stuff...
Effective immediately through January 1st, 2019, every day Cogmind will feature different new content, much of it with a notably holiday theme. There are 17 new unique parts, among other "gifts" :D
Unlike my normal announcements I won't be listing the content or showing any screenshots/gifs here to spoil it, but there's some really fun stuff (including new mechanics). Some of the content is randomized in case you start more than one run in a single day, though the majority of the brand new stuff is organized and defined by date. All of the special Holiday Mode content is available right from the beginning of a run though, so there's no going out and searching for it--start up and see it right away.
Much of the content for this update is actually special parts that will only exist for this release, accompanied by a number of rare or unique items that can be found elsewhere in the world of Cogmind but that you may not have encountered before. You'll be able to distinguish between the two because the former don't have unique art, instead using a common placeholder (you'll know it when you see it :P). You don't have to worry about collecting the temporary parts for your gallery (since they won't exist in future releases), although you can technically use this opportunity to help flesh out your gallery of other parts, and of course get further or to new areas with the help of some of these amazing new toys.
Technically you can skip ahead in this event by changing your system date, but in the manner that we normally treat spoilers in the community, if you do this please don't openly share advance info on future content with others in case they don't want to know yet.
Technical Points
Limited Edition
You may notice the version number is still Beta 7.2. That's because this special release was developed using a completely separate branch of the game, as this allowed me to prepare this for you all very quickly without worrying about taking my normal (internal) steps to future proof the whole thing with good documentation and clean code. Despite the amount of stuff in here, it only took a day and half :) (Don't worry, though, I did test everything and it seems to be in working order!)
So this is technically not the same branch that Beta 8 is being built upon, and this content and other related changes made to the game to support it will disappear with the next release. There is no changelog--as far as future players are concerned, it never happened ;)
Tips
The opening area might be a bit overwhelming. To quickly get set up, you could follow these general steps:
Note that a small portion of the items may not be amazing, since those are randomly chosen from among existing items, but a lot of the items for each day were handpicked, especially all the special new ones.
Thanks for being a great community, enjoy the holidays :D
Effective immediately through January 1st, 2019, every day Cogmind will feature different new content, much of it with a notably holiday theme. There are 17 new unique parts, among other "gifts" :D
Unlike my normal announcements I won't be listing the content or showing any screenshots/gifs here to spoil it, but there's some really fun stuff (including new mechanics). Some of the content is randomized in case you start more than one run in a single day, though the majority of the brand new stuff is organized and defined by date. All of the special Holiday Mode content is available right from the beginning of a run though, so there's no going out and searching for it--start up and see it right away.
Much of the content for this update is actually special parts that will only exist for this release, accompanied by a number of rare or unique items that can be found elsewhere in the world of Cogmind but that you may not have encountered before. You'll be able to distinguish between the two because the former don't have unique art, instead using a common placeholder (you'll know it when you see it :P). You don't have to worry about collecting the temporary parts for your gallery (since they won't exist in future releases), although you can technically use this opportunity to help flesh out your gallery of other parts, and of course get further or to new areas with the help of some of these amazing new toys.
Technically you can skip ahead in this event by changing your system date, but in the manner that we normally treat spoilers in the community, if you do this please don't openly share advance info on future content with others in case they don't want to know yet.
Technical Points
- This version's saves are not compatible with the original Beta 7.2 (the save version had to be increased in order to allow this update to add a bunch of content). As usual you can just finish your current run before updating, or if on Steam and it automatically updated yours you can use the legacy branches to roll back and finish your previous save/run first if you like (or do it later).
- You CAN earn achievements while this mode is active! This might be another reason to play it ;)
- Holiday Mode does not upload scoresheets (these runs will therefore not appear on the leaderboards).
- Holiday Mode is incompatible with challenge modes (if any are active, the challenge takes precedence).
- Holiday Mode ignores the advanced quickStart option.
- Holiday Mode will automatically activate for new runs started in this 12/20~1/1 period, but requires that you've played at least 10 runs before! We wouldn't want to confuse new players too much :P. If you haven't hit the 10-run requirement and want to force Holiday Mode anyway, you can run Cogmind with the "-forceHoliday" command line parameter. Note that even then it still requires that you've done at one run behind the tutorial mode, having made it to the smaller version of the Scrapyard (technically you can get around this requirement as well by turning off the tutorial in the options, but I wouldn't really recommend jumping right in to the special mode without first having done a few regular runs to learn the basics!)
- If it's activating automatically but you want to play "regular Cogmind" during this event period, run the game with the "-noHoliday" parameter to turn it off (or, again, roll back to the previous release via its legacy branch).
Limited Edition
You may notice the version number is still Beta 7.2. That's because this special release was developed using a completely separate branch of the game, as this allowed me to prepare this for you all very quickly without worrying about taking my normal (internal) steps to future proof the whole thing with good documentation and clean code. Despite the amount of stuff in here, it only took a day and half :) (Don't worry, though, I did test everything and it seems to be in working order!)
So this is technically not the same branch that Beta 8 is being built upon, and this content and other related changes made to the game to support it will disappear with the next release. There is no changelog--as far as future players are concerned, it never happened ;)
Tips
The opening area might be a bit overwhelming. To quickly get set up, you could follow these general steps:
- Open up everything you see
- Attach any alien artifacts (these are consumables)
- Fill your power and propulsion slots (try to avoid using airborne propulsion, though you can stash it away for later)
- Attach any Storage Unit(s)--there'll be at least one lying around (and maybe a special one!)
- Collect most utilities and weapons (especially any that are clearly new and use the placeholder "holiday art" I mentioned earlier)
- Go have fun!
Note that a small portion of the items may not be amazing, since those are randomly chosen from among existing items, but a lot of the items for each day were handpicked, especially all the special new ones.
Thanks for being a great community, enjoy the holidays :D
59
Stories / The Gunslinger run, and my first attempt at Extended Cogmind
« on: December 19, 2018, 02:21:04 AM »
Just finished the run that's been the subject of my Twitch channel for the past month, and it's been quite the epic journey! You can find all four relevant streams archived on YouTube, linked below. (The latter two/second half is also far more SPOILERY than any runs I've done in the past.)
I wasn't planning on doing a writeup for this run, hence the lack of summaries for previous streams, but it was quite a memorable run so may as well do a written rundown here as well :D
Part 1
The stated goal of this run was to focus on a gunslinger build, i.e. doing damage purely by multiple guns and nothing else, being able to hit multiple targets with a single volley. So I went with 4 weapon slots early on, and chose legs as my propulsion.
The early game was easy, as usual, and I came out of it with a lot of Cld. Pulse Rifles, which really carried well through the middle game (being able to augment them with a Particle Charger helped, too :P).
I got the Gunslinger achievement on dropping into the Lower Caves on -6, where a squad of Swarmers were waiting in ambush and I took out three in a single volley :D
Originally this was going to be an all-out combat run, but ended up finding a few infowar utilities and I kept attaching more and more, so ended up doing "smart combat" instead, equipped with both an interpreter and scan processor, and swapping in a sensor array and terrain scanner when not in combat. (These lasted the entire run, until I tossed them at the very end when they were no longer necessary.)
This is the latest shot I have of Part 1, before heading into the caves to seek out Warlord, part of my long-term plan. I wanted to get help from both R17 and Warlord for this run, to both trivialize Research and also be able to farm some good gun parts from Executioners.
(^At that point I was lamenting the fact that I had not yet earned the Gun Specialist achievement, because if I wasn't going for that I would have gladly and immediately attached four prototype slashing weapons! Instead they were left behind...)
Part 2
Part 2 was all about setting up the alliances, starting with Warlord. Here we're making our escape, although after this shot instead decided to go around the back exit, which was to the north.
Made it to the exit just in time. More enemy reinforcements incoming...
Extension was on the next depth, which meant rescuing A7, building the E. Grunts, and clearing out all of the Cetus guards to make way for our... other friend.
And for combat bots, facing the CGs means getting stocked up on some nice OOD gear, so from this point on (through the end of the run) we were on treads. This is the end of Part 2, as we entered Research:
Part 3 (mostly spoilers!)
With friends tearing the place up, -3/Research was easy, and we entered Quarantine, aiming for The Bounty! This is not an in-game thing, mind you, but Cogmind player MTF challenged me to take down an Alpha 7, and originally we were going to do that in Testing where one is guaranteed, but lo and behold, just inside the Q entrance we came across a dormant Alpha 7! (of course guarding some top-notch loot--an ST, which will come in handy later ;))
Took it down with the Com. HERF Cannon brought for that purpose (well, HERF cannons are good to carry around at any time for the purposes of taking down almost any bots xD).
So MTF honored his bounty and purchased four copies of Cogmind to hand out, which is much appreciated, thank you MTF! (MTF said he might do this for some future streams, who knows)
Having all that infowar on top of good combat gear made it much easier to pick fights and safely explore Quarantine for its goodies, which included a Core Reset Matrix that was applied in order to identify and locate all the artifacts.
With help from Warlord (who sadly died rather early while facing down a bunch of squads on his own), we ripped apart -2/Research. (Almost hacked GM even, but didn't have a Datajack and couldn't find one on short notice :/) The farming goal was definitely achieved, here having an Exp. Targeting, Exp. Target Analyzer, and several Helican Railguns, which are amazing KI weapons.
Lots of nice other loot, too (these treads lasted through the end of the run).
Since we owned Research, that made the branches at that depth much more enticing, so into Testing we went...
And in an amazing stroke of luck, we quickly found not one but two rewirable protovariants! Unbelievable.
Well, by this point we've also got Tesla launchers and both SHELL and AEGIS, which together make you practically unstoppable if you play your cards right, so the stream decided we should head into Section 7, which I've personally never been to on any run before, on or off stream. So this outta be interesting...
From here on out, the Sigix Broadsword was also an MVP. A regenerating weapon that also shields other parts from lots of damage is great, and often times I was using it to just slash enemies to death rather than firing guns (having by this point finally earned that Gun Specialist achievement!).
Also worth mentioning here is that Zyalin did some great art while watching the stream, drawing my build, with a twist:
Oh right, upon entering S7 (where the stream ended), we immediately happened upon an Integrity Redistributor, which is absolutely amazing when you've got a lot of very valuable parts, but they've seen some wear and tear.
So all those good parts are now topped off:
Part 4 (mostly spoilers!)
Well this part didn't go to plan any more than the end of Part 3, in a good way ;)
Section 7 loot wasn't great, but still decent enough and worth the trip. Picked up a pair of integrated dissipators so I didn't need to use any cooling parts, and also a second Integrity Redistributor for later.
Not much else worth mentioning there since I didn't go into the more dangerous deeper zone. I might've done that if I could place a slip node, but I left those behind earlier on, thinking I wouldn't need them (since there was no plan to visit S7, where one can come in especially handy).
I did have a stroke of nice luck when I purged alert 4 times out of 5, starting with a 30% chance on the first! Beta 7.2 machine hacking FTW ;) (didn't screenshot the last one)
On entering Access, this build was so powerful (mainly through the SHELL+AEGIS=GOD combo, not to mention the other awesome parts) that it seemed like a waste to not take it to Command. Plus I've never actually visited Command with the intent to take out big old MC, only a few times in the past to use it as an emergency escape route when Access was going poorly. So that was the new goal.
Access wasn't too bad, especially since it wasn't long before hacking the Command location. That said, it was far on the other side of the map, and the way there had quite a few encounters. The Build basically crushed everything, and when groups became a problem, Tesla had our back.
(I think my SHELL was corrupted and dropped to the ground here, but the regen plating, shield, and SB were good enough for the time being.)
SB is also great as a "key" for accessing any area you might need, so getting into Command via the back door wasn't hard. This is good because it enabled me to hole up in there before leaving while purging all that corruption (which many times came in handy on a long-term combat build like this!).
The Command plan was to map out paths to both of the Garrisons, replicate the Sigix Terminator (taken from the spot guarded by the Alpha 7) so that we'd have two of them, and fire one into each Garrison. The first immediately triggers high security, but with a path mapped and cleared, the trip to the second shouldn't take too long, even on treads, and any assaults met along the way could be dealt with using the Teslas.
Once all the defenders are cleared, we'd have free reign over the floor and could then safely dig a little tunnel into MAIN.C's chamber (circumventing his guards) for the final confrontation. That's mostly how it all worked out, though there was a bit of catch at the end there... We'll get to that.
Here the path has been cleared to the second (northern) Garrison:
And KA-BOOM, where'd everyone go?
Then rushed southward, took out a few assaults on the way, cleared the other Garrison (and a handful of survivors), and cut through to MC's chamber. Here's the build when going in:
There are lots of ways to improve on it, but simply having SHELL+AEGIS gives a lot of leeway for mediocrity elsewhere ;)
This particular showdown, however, did not go as planned.
Phase 1 was easy enough, but phase 2 did not want to fall fast enough, and we ended up running out of all 600 matter! (even with an armor analyzer, the mechanics of which aren't broken anymore :P)
Fortunately this build is insanely tanky, so this still wasn't the end of things. We rammed him to get some more matter and hopefully destroy some parts, only managing to take out his Exp. Targeting that way. At this point MAIN.C was down two guns, with three left plus that infernal cannon. And there was no way without a lot of matter that we could sustain enough damage to hope to take him down (MC is mostly resistant to TH, with a regenerating core...)
So the idea was to run back to the eastern side of Command where earlier fights had left plenty of matter lying around, and suck all that up for a second round of combat (obviously being plinked by MC in the meantime).
Here it is, we're back in action with plenty of matter. ROUND 2!
Well, we ended up completely disarming MAIN.C, no weapons left, so... of course he took off running at light speed and there's no way we could both catch him and deal enough damage.
Needed a new plan...
We scavenged several Stasis Projectors and waited in ambush, but it turns out those are not at all effective against enemies you actually want to hold for any length of time (they sure work well on you, though xD--I'll probably revisit these because it would've been nice if it worked here).
For posterity, the Stasis meme build:
In any case, after that failed the new idea was to just load up 5x KI weapons at once and let out volleys every time he'd pass by in a frenzy. He still had five hover units, but those didn't last long to all these weapons, as he got slower and slower and eventually, finally, fell.
(This long drawn out recovery process wouldn't have worked very well if we hadn't already taken out both Garrisons, making reinforcements impossible.)
(It would've been hilarious if MAIN.C was fitted with a backup laser by the Mechanics still hanging around, but he never dropped out of flee mode so that couldn't happen.)
After that it was just a matter of taking out a few prototypes that had scattered on MAIN.C's death, working our way back up to the originally heavily guarded exit, only to find it had become an empty graveyard.
Won!
And not just a regular win, either, it was my first "+" win, and also my first visit to S7, and first attack on Command. I've never aimed for any of these goals before so that's maybe not saying a whole lot in terms of skill, but it was certainly interesting and a lot of fun :D
I also earned a whopping 20 achievements, not bad since I'd already reached 50% by the time this run started. And this is by far my highest score ever (thanks to nuking all those bots in Command). I generally get wins with about 30k, and my highest ever is about 45k back when I used to farm Access with combat builds in Alpha.
One of the other interesting stats pulled out of this run is that despite its length, and focus on combat, only 46 parts were lost the entire time!
I wasn't planning on doing a writeup for this run, hence the lack of summaries for previous streams, but it was quite a memorable run so may as well do a written rundown here as well :D
Part 1
The stated goal of this run was to focus on a gunslinger build, i.e. doing damage purely by multiple guns and nothing else, being able to hit multiple targets with a single volley. So I went with 4 weapon slots early on, and chose legs as my propulsion.
The early game was easy, as usual, and I came out of it with a lot of Cld. Pulse Rifles, which really carried well through the middle game (being able to augment them with a Particle Charger helped, too :P).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I got the Gunslinger achievement on dropping into the Lower Caves on -6, where a squad of Swarmers were waiting in ambush and I took out three in a single volley :D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Originally this was going to be an all-out combat run, but ended up finding a few infowar utilities and I kept attaching more and more, so ended up doing "smart combat" instead, equipped with both an interpreter and scan processor, and swapping in a sensor array and terrain scanner when not in combat. (These lasted the entire run, until I tossed them at the very end when they were no longer necessary.)
This is the latest shot I have of Part 1, before heading into the caves to seek out Warlord, part of my long-term plan. I wanted to get help from both R17 and Warlord for this run, to both trivialize Research and also be able to farm some good gun parts from Executioners.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(^At that point I was lamenting the fact that I had not yet earned the Gun Specialist achievement, because if I wasn't going for that I would have gladly and immediately attached four prototype slashing weapons! Instead they were left behind...)
Part 2
Part 2 was all about setting up the alliances, starting with Warlord. Here we're making our escape, although after this shot instead decided to go around the back exit, which was to the north.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Made it to the exit just in time. More enemy reinforcements incoming...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Extension was on the next depth, which meant rescuing A7, building the E. Grunts, and clearing out all of the Cetus guards to make way for our... other friend.
And for combat bots, facing the CGs means getting stocked up on some nice OOD gear, so from this point on (through the end of the run) we were on treads. This is the end of Part 2, as we entered Research:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Part 3 (mostly spoilers!)
With friends tearing the place up, -3/Research was easy, and we entered Quarantine, aiming for The Bounty! This is not an in-game thing, mind you, but Cogmind player MTF challenged me to take down an Alpha 7, and originally we were going to do that in Testing where one is guaranteed, but lo and behold, just inside the Q entrance we came across a dormant Alpha 7! (of course guarding some top-notch loot--an ST, which will come in handy later ;))
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Took it down with the Com. HERF Cannon brought for that purpose (well, HERF cannons are good to carry around at any time for the purposes of taking down almost any bots xD).
So MTF honored his bounty and purchased four copies of Cogmind to hand out, which is much appreciated, thank you MTF! (MTF said he might do this for some future streams, who knows)
Having all that infowar on top of good combat gear made it much easier to pick fights and safely explore Quarantine for its goodies, which included a Core Reset Matrix that was applied in order to identify and locate all the artifacts.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
With help from Warlord (who sadly died rather early while facing down a bunch of squads on his own), we ripped apart -2/Research. (Almost hacked GM even, but didn't have a Datajack and couldn't find one on short notice :/) The farming goal was definitely achieved, here having an Exp. Targeting, Exp. Target Analyzer, and several Helican Railguns, which are amazing KI weapons.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Lots of nice other loot, too (these treads lasted through the end of the run).
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Since we owned Research, that made the branches at that depth much more enticing, so into Testing we went...
And in an amazing stroke of luck, we quickly found not one but two rewirable protovariants! Unbelievable.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Well, by this point we've also got Tesla launchers and both SHELL and AEGIS, which together make you practically unstoppable if you play your cards right, so the stream decided we should head into Section 7, which I've personally never been to on any run before, on or off stream. So this outta be interesting...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
From here on out, the Sigix Broadsword was also an MVP. A regenerating weapon that also shields other parts from lots of damage is great, and often times I was using it to just slash enemies to death rather than firing guns (having by this point finally earned that Gun Specialist achievement!).
Also worth mentioning here is that Zyalin did some great art while watching the stream, drawing my build, with a twist:
Quote from: Zyalin
This is Bounty-Bot-7, made up from a recycled sentry core. Upgraded by the powerful KYZ-Guidance-Unit for real-time insider knowledge, and comes with a Backseat-Mounted MTF-Combat suite for maximum bounty potential.
Oh right, upon entering S7 (where the stream ended), we immediately happened upon an Integrity Redistributor, which is absolutely amazing when you've got a lot of very valuable parts, but they've seen some wear and tear.
So all those good parts are now topped off:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Part 4 (mostly spoilers!)
Well this part didn't go to plan any more than the end of Part 3, in a good way ;)
Section 7 loot wasn't great, but still decent enough and worth the trip. Picked up a pair of integrated dissipators so I didn't need to use any cooling parts, and also a second Integrity Redistributor for later.
Not much else worth mentioning there since I didn't go into the more dangerous deeper zone. I might've done that if I could place a slip node, but I left those behind earlier on, thinking I wouldn't need them (since there was no plan to visit S7, where one can come in especially handy).
I did have a stroke of nice luck when I purged alert 4 times out of 5, starting with a 30% chance on the first! Beta 7.2 machine hacking FTW ;) (didn't screenshot the last one)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
On entering Access, this build was so powerful (mainly through the SHELL+AEGIS=GOD combo, not to mention the other awesome parts) that it seemed like a waste to not take it to Command. Plus I've never actually visited Command with the intent to take out big old MC, only a few times in the past to use it as an emergency escape route when Access was going poorly. So that was the new goal.
Access wasn't too bad, especially since it wasn't long before hacking the Command location. That said, it was far on the other side of the map, and the way there had quite a few encounters. The Build basically crushed everything, and when groups became a problem, Tesla had our back.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(I think my SHELL was corrupted and dropped to the ground here, but the regen plating, shield, and SB were good enough for the time being.)
SB is also great as a "key" for accessing any area you might need, so getting into Command via the back door wasn't hard. This is good because it enabled me to hole up in there before leaving while purging all that corruption (which many times came in handy on a long-term combat build like this!).
The Command plan was to map out paths to both of the Garrisons, replicate the Sigix Terminator (taken from the spot guarded by the Alpha 7) so that we'd have two of them, and fire one into each Garrison. The first immediately triggers high security, but with a path mapped and cleared, the trip to the second shouldn't take too long, even on treads, and any assaults met along the way could be dealt with using the Teslas.
Once all the defenders are cleared, we'd have free reign over the floor and could then safely dig a little tunnel into MAIN.C's chamber (circumventing his guards) for the final confrontation. That's mostly how it all worked out, though there was a bit of catch at the end there... We'll get to that.
Here the path has been cleared to the second (northern) Garrison:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And KA-BOOM, where'd everyone go?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Then rushed southward, took out a few assaults on the way, cleared the other Garrison (and a handful of survivors), and cut through to MC's chamber. Here's the build when going in:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
There are lots of ways to improve on it, but simply having SHELL+AEGIS gives a lot of leeway for mediocrity elsewhere ;)
This particular showdown, however, did not go as planned.
Phase 1 was easy enough, but phase 2 did not want to fall fast enough, and we ended up running out of all 600 matter! (even with an armor analyzer, the mechanics of which aren't broken anymore :P)
Fortunately this build is insanely tanky, so this still wasn't the end of things. We rammed him to get some more matter and hopefully destroy some parts, only managing to take out his Exp. Targeting that way. At this point MAIN.C was down two guns, with three left plus that infernal cannon. And there was no way without a lot of matter that we could sustain enough damage to hope to take him down (MC is mostly resistant to TH, with a regenerating core...)
So the idea was to run back to the eastern side of Command where earlier fights had left plenty of matter lying around, and suck all that up for a second round of combat (obviously being plinked by MC in the meantime).
Here it is, we're back in action with plenty of matter. ROUND 2!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Well, we ended up completely disarming MAIN.C, no weapons left, so... of course he took off running at light speed and there's no way we could both catch him and deal enough damage.
Needed a new plan...
We scavenged several Stasis Projectors and waited in ambush, but it turns out those are not at all effective against enemies you actually want to hold for any length of time (they sure work well on you, though xD--I'll probably revisit these because it would've been nice if it worked here).
For posterity, the Stasis meme build:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
In any case, after that failed the new idea was to just load up 5x KI weapons at once and let out volleys every time he'd pass by in a frenzy. He still had five hover units, but those didn't last long to all these weapons, as he got slower and slower and eventually, finally, fell.
(This long drawn out recovery process wouldn't have worked very well if we hadn't already taken out both Garrisons, making reinforcements impossible.)
(It would've been hilarious if MAIN.C was fitted with a backup laser by the Mechanics still hanging around, but he never dropped out of flee mode so that couldn't happen.)
After that it was just a matter of taking out a few prototypes that had scattered on MAIN.C's death, working our way back up to the originally heavily guarded exit, only to find it had become an empty graveyard.
Won!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And not just a regular win, either, it was my first "+" win, and also my first visit to S7, and first attack on Command. I've never aimed for any of these goals before so that's maybe not saying a whole lot in terms of skill, but it was certainly interesting and a lot of fun :D
I also earned a whopping 20 achievements, not bad since I'd already reached 50% by the time this run started. And this is by far my highest score ever (thanks to nuking all those bots in Command). I generally get wins with about 30k, and my highest ever is about 45k back when I used to farm Access with combat builds in Alpha.
One of the other interesting stats pulled out of this run is that despite its length, and focus on combat, only 46 parts were lost the entire time!
Spoiler: Score: 115,382 (click to show/hide)
60
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #41: Be the Tank
« on: December 14, 2018, 04:45:32 PM »
Art, mechanics, streams, IndieDB Top 100... the year ain't over yet!
Quite a few new items coming to Beta 8, still adding yet more:
Most of these were actually appended to the art preview selected for the "Year 5 of the Cogmind" annual review, though one of those is previously unseen.
While we're looking at art, check this out:
Anyone remember what that is? After its removal back in early 2016, it's finally making what is likely to be a much-anticipated comeback among players who've used it before ;)
I've been working on a whole bunch of stuff for Beta 8, though most of the new content is under wraps until the release. Instead I can show this mysterious animation as updated for compatibility in optional low-contrast modes:
But there are also some interesting new mechanical developments to get specific about. Let's dive right in...
Is that a Leg in Your Pocket?
I always wanted a simplified propulsion system in Cogmind, which is why from the very beginning (2012!) propulsion itself has had no mass, regardless of whether active or inactive. This makes it much less complicated to juggle even more propulsion considerations on top of all the other parts you have to think about.
Of course it also resulted in the interesting side effect of so-called "propulsion armor," or sometimes attaching useless deactivated propulsion simply for its coverage and integrity. As a pretty unique quirk to Cogmind's systems that you can learn to use to your advantage in some situations, I've never felt a strong need to do anything about it.
Then suddenly some weeks ago I wasn't even thinking about this topic (or even propulsion) at all and for some reason the idea of adding a "drag" mechanic popped into my head. I liked the principle of having inactive non-airborne propulsion slowing down flight and hover, and started to like it even more as I continued thinking about how this could indirectly help further differentiate treads and aid heavy combat builds. With a new mechanic to limit certain kinds of propulsion armor and the potential for temporarily cheesing tread-specific benefits, treads could be buffed such that it's easier to make extremely "tanky" builds with lots of treads, which almost become a build's armor, among other benefits.
So all treads, legs, and wheels will come with a new stat, "drag," which kicks in only when these parts are inactive while airborne. Note the addition of a new stat here doesn't lengthen the item info, just takes the place of the "mod/extra" stat where appropriate ("mod/extra" is only used for airborne propulsion, so that same stat slot for non-airborne propulsion is instead "drag," essentially how some weapons may have a Heat Transfer stat or a Spectrum, but not both). Also note that drag values are not all over the place--they're actually static by propulsion type.
Now, balance-wise, the idea behind drag is not to prevent propulsion armor completely (in which case it could just be blocked!), but instead simply have a speed cost associated with it, one that some players might be willing to pay under certain conditions.
Here's a demo of the mechanic in action:
As with any brand new mechanic, we'll have to see how everyone responds with their builds, but in short, treads will become that much more unique (especially compared to legs, which have always offered similar capabilities), and propulsion armor won't be so common anymore. (Drag will not impact core movement, by the way!)
Freeeeeedommmmmm!
Drag is liberating. It's introduced a lot of design freedom to make treads shine at what they should do best: Enable you to effectively crush hordes of bots. (Okay well literally crushing them under your treads is already possible, but you know what I mean :D)
To that end, treads will be better putting their generally massive integrity to work protecting your other parts, gaining about 40 coverage each. This pushes average tread coverage much closer to that of light armor, and armored treads will be about on part with light armor in terms of how well they shield other parts.
On the offensive side, each tread slot gives a 2% bonus to accuracy. So the average tread build will have something like 6-8% better accuracy for all weapons, or even 10%+ for those going with a truly tanky build using a greater number of treads defensively as well (or to carry a ton of stuff--we might be seeing more... really heavy stuff in the future ;)).
Treads will also have a reduced overweight penalty (though still not as good as wheels).
In the end there are a lot of strategic implications here. As a combat player I know I can't wait to take a Beta 8 tank out for a spin :P
First Time's a Charm
Over the past couple weeks we've had several people stream their first runs of Cogmind, with the community around to help and enjoy that initial experience all over again.
Tone, a seasoned roguelike player generally found playing NetHack, streamed his very first Cogmind run while myself and a bunch of other Cogmind players were hanging out there for much of it. Here's the first day, and here's the second. (I hear the videos will probably be up on YouTube later, at which point I'll update with more links.)
Although it was his first run he, uh, won :P. Many (most?) viewers had already won before so there was certainly a fair amount of backseating, but it was a fun slow crawl spanning more than 13 hours (unusually long for a Cogmind run, but the whole thing was all streamed, after all, and he was learning on the way). It also got plenty hairy in a few places. First run and all :)
I also continued my ongoing stream run this week, Part 3 of Cogmind the Gunslinger:
WARNING: Unlike most of of my streams, the entirety of Part 3 is super spoilery--front to back special late-game events and branches.
The stream actually included a first for me as well, as it headed into one of the few areas of the world I've personally never explored before!
During Part 3 I achieved the bounty set by MTF, who challenged me to confront a certain rare late-game enemy. True to his word, MTF immediately purchased 4 copies of Cogmind to hand out on stream :D (MTF says this might happen again in some future run, I'll just have to keep my game in top shape, unlike my earlier RIF stream which got crushed late in Factory before I could reach the bounty location xD)
While watching the stream, Zyalin drew my combat build, with a twist :P
Zyalin says:
Last week Gold-Plated Games also checked out Cogmind for the first time, with both myself and the community in tow (unexpectedly :P). Fun times.
Top 100
Thanks to all of you who voted, Cogmind is in IndieDB's Top 100 :D (for the fifth year in a row)
Voting for the Top 10 started this week (and votes have been reset), but I don't think it's really worth bothering to compete against the really big mainstream games for those slots. Anyway, you can vote again and/or check out all the other indie games.
Steam's Winter Sale is coming up next week, and as usual Cogmind will be 10% off. (Not 25% like last year--Valve doesn't plan to feature Cogmind on their front page like they did last time, so as per my promise I'm sticking to only 10% discounts during EA.) Of course the discount is mirrored on both Steam and my own site.
The sale isn't the only thing coming up next week though. Stay tuned for something special for everyone ;)
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
Quite a few new items coming to Beta 8, still adding yet more:
Most of these were actually appended to the art preview selected for the "Year 5 of the Cogmind" annual review, though one of those is previously unseen.
While we're looking at art, check this out:
Anyone remember what that is? After its removal back in early 2016, it's finally making what is likely to be a much-anticipated comeback among players who've used it before ;)
I've been working on a whole bunch of stuff for Beta 8, though most of the new content is under wraps until the release. Instead I can show this mysterious animation as updated for compatibility in optional low-contrast modes:
But there are also some interesting new mechanical developments to get specific about. Let's dive right in...
Is that a Leg in Your Pocket?
I always wanted a simplified propulsion system in Cogmind, which is why from the very beginning (2012!) propulsion itself has had no mass, regardless of whether active or inactive. This makes it much less complicated to juggle even more propulsion considerations on top of all the other parts you have to think about.
Of course it also resulted in the interesting side effect of so-called "propulsion armor," or sometimes attaching useless deactivated propulsion simply for its coverage and integrity. As a pretty unique quirk to Cogmind's systems that you can learn to use to your advantage in some situations, I've never felt a strong need to do anything about it.
Then suddenly some weeks ago I wasn't even thinking about this topic (or even propulsion) at all and for some reason the idea of adding a "drag" mechanic popped into my head. I liked the principle of having inactive non-airborne propulsion slowing down flight and hover, and started to like it even more as I continued thinking about how this could indirectly help further differentiate treads and aid heavy combat builds. With a new mechanic to limit certain kinds of propulsion armor and the potential for temporarily cheesing tread-specific benefits, treads could be buffed such that it's easier to make extremely "tanky" builds with lots of treads, which almost become a build's armor, among other benefits.
So all treads, legs, and wheels will come with a new stat, "drag," which kicks in only when these parts are inactive while airborne. Note the addition of a new stat here doesn't lengthen the item info, just takes the place of the "mod/extra" stat where appropriate ("mod/extra" is only used for airborne propulsion, so that same stat slot for non-airborne propulsion is instead "drag," essentially how some weapons may have a Heat Transfer stat or a Spectrum, but not both). Also note that drag values are not all over the place--they're actually static by propulsion type.
Now, balance-wise, the idea behind drag is not to prevent propulsion armor completely (in which case it could just be blocked!), but instead simply have a speed cost associated with it, one that some players might be willing to pay under certain conditions.
Here's a demo of the mechanic in action:
As with any brand new mechanic, we'll have to see how everyone responds with their builds, but in short, treads will become that much more unique (especially compared to legs, which have always offered similar capabilities), and propulsion armor won't be so common anymore. (Drag will not impact core movement, by the way!)
Freeeeeedommmmmm!
Drag is liberating. It's introduced a lot of design freedom to make treads shine at what they should do best: Enable you to effectively crush hordes of bots. (Okay well literally crushing them under your treads is already possible, but you know what I mean :D)
To that end, treads will be better putting their generally massive integrity to work protecting your other parts, gaining about 40 coverage each. This pushes average tread coverage much closer to that of light armor, and armored treads will be about on part with light armor in terms of how well they shield other parts.
On the offensive side, each tread slot gives a 2% bonus to accuracy. So the average tread build will have something like 6-8% better accuracy for all weapons, or even 10%+ for those going with a truly tanky build using a greater number of treads defensively as well (or to carry a ton of stuff--we might be seeing more... really heavy stuff in the future ;)).
Treads will also have a reduced overweight penalty (though still not as good as wheels).
In the end there are a lot of strategic implications here. As a combat player I know I can't wait to take a Beta 8 tank out for a spin :P
First Time's a Charm
Over the past couple weeks we've had several people stream their first runs of Cogmind, with the community around to help and enjoy that initial experience all over again.
Tone, a seasoned roguelike player generally found playing NetHack, streamed his very first Cogmind run while myself and a bunch of other Cogmind players were hanging out there for much of it. Here's the first day, and here's the second. (I hear the videos will probably be up on YouTube later, at which point I'll update with more links.)
Although it was his first run he, uh, won :P. Many (most?) viewers had already won before so there was certainly a fair amount of backseating, but it was a fun slow crawl spanning more than 13 hours (unusually long for a Cogmind run, but the whole thing was all streamed, after all, and he was learning on the way). It also got plenty hairy in a few places. First run and all :)
I also continued my ongoing stream run this week, Part 3 of Cogmind the Gunslinger:
WARNING: Unlike most of of my streams, the entirety of Part 3 is super spoilery--front to back special late-game events and branches.
The stream actually included a first for me as well, as it headed into one of the few areas of the world I've personally never explored before!
During Part 3 I achieved the bounty set by MTF, who challenged me to confront a certain rare late-game enemy. True to his word, MTF immediately purchased 4 copies of Cogmind to hand out on stream :D (MTF says this might happen again in some future run, I'll just have to keep my game in top shape, unlike my earlier RIF stream which got crushed late in Factory before I could reach the bounty location xD)
While watching the stream, Zyalin drew my combat build, with a twist :P
Zyalin says:
Quote
This is Bounty-Bot-7
made up from a recycled sentry core
Upgraded by the powerful KYZ-Guidance-Unit for real-time insider knowledge
and comes with a Backseat-Mounted MTF-Combat suite for maximum bounty potential
Last week Gold-Plated Games also checked out Cogmind for the first time, with both myself and the community in tow (unexpectedly :P). Fun times.
Top 100
Thanks to all of you who voted, Cogmind is in IndieDB's Top 100 :D (for the fifth year in a row)
Voting for the Top 10 started this week (and votes have been reset), but I don't think it's really worth bothering to compete against the really big mainstream games for those slots. Anyway, you can vote again and/or check out all the other indie games.
Steam's Winter Sale is coming up next week, and as usual Cogmind will be 10% off. (Not 25% like last year--Valve doesn't plan to feature Cogmind on their front page like they did last time, so as per my promise I'm sticking to only 10% discounts during EA.) Of course the discount is mirrored on both Steam and my own site.
The sale isn't the only thing coming up next week though. Stay tuned for something special for everyone ;)
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
61
Everything REXPaint / REXPaint on Hacker News, Gigazine
« on: December 14, 2018, 01:33:19 AM »
Rather unexpectedly, this week someone posted REXPaint to Hacker News and it became a top post 
As one might expect, this brought a lot of traffic and downloads...
Then not long after that it was picked up by Gigazine, a popular web news site in Japan. (I had one Cogmind player and RP user in Japan contact me saying they were in their office that day just checking the news, and--surprise!--up popped REXPaint, haha!)
On that note, before the news even appeared another user ULuFu posted a Japanese guide to getting started with REXPaint, which I've also added to the resources page.
Anyway, just thought I'd record these events here for posterity
As one might expect, this brought a lot of traffic and downloads...
Then not long after that it was picked up by Gigazine, a popular web news site in Japan. (I had one Cogmind player and RP user in Japan contact me saying they were in their office that day just checking the news, and--surprise!--up popped REXPaint, haha!)
On that note, before the news even appeared another user ULuFu posted a Japanese guide to getting started with REXPaint, which I've also added to the resources page.
Anyway, just thought I'd record these events here for posterity
62
Announcements / Cogmind Beta 7.2 "Terminal Love"
« on: December 04, 2018, 05:49:51 AM »
Another mini-update while Beta 8 is still under construction! While small, there's some very important stuff in here, and the good news is saves are compatible so you can switch immediately even if you've got a run in progress to take advantage of the improvements :D
While I was originally planning to include some quick fixes along with a different special release scheduled for later this month, last week a newly-introduced machine hacking bug was discovered, and I just couldn't let that one sit out there in public for so long. For Beta 7 I had changed up the machine hacking behavior to improve consistency for those using a fair bit of hackware (in particular System Shields and the like), but in the process inadvertently made it more difficult for those without hackware to do much at machines! So if any of you combat players have been shaking your fist at all those early failed machine hacking rolls, it's rightly so, and I'm happy to say things are back to normal now :D. Well... they're back to normal (actually, even better than before!) if you update to Beta 7.2, which I recommend you do immediately.
The good news is saves are compatible with Beta 7.1.
Let's see what else we get with this update...
Cogmind Beta 7.2 "Terminal Love" (0.10.181204) changelog:
Robots now flash when hit by projectiles. Some kind of explicit hit feedback was requested not too long back and although it's not a feature I personally need in my runs, I must admit it's been well-received by those who've seen it so far, so here it is!
(Ignore the fact that enemies just sit there and take it--that's just using debug mode to demo the feature :P. Also, they're not really dying because I'm intentionally using a somewhat weak weapon against late-game Programmers.) It's on by default, but like many QoL features you can toggle it in the advanced options if it bothers you for whatever reason.
You can see this and other features discussed in my 7.2 stream from earlier today, during which I continued the gunslinging run:
It feels really good as a combat bot to be able to do some free hacking again ;). Part 3 will be streamed next week at the same time, and the run is hot--we've met up with just the right allies to basically own the late-game, plus have an amazing loadout of our own (don't examine this at full size if you want to avoid a few little spoilers):
As a little bonus for Beta 7.2, I know from experience that the new RIF system introduced in Beta 7 and expanded in Beta 7.1 is still a little tough to rely on in the late-game, so I've also added a new formula that gives bonus value to Relay Couplers based on depth. The further you get, the better the couplers, regardless of their source.
Enjoy! :D
While I was originally planning to include some quick fixes along with a different special release scheduled for later this month, last week a newly-introduced machine hacking bug was discovered, and I just couldn't let that one sit out there in public for so long. For Beta 7 I had changed up the machine hacking behavior to improve consistency for those using a fair bit of hackware (in particular System Shields and the like), but in the process inadvertently made it more difficult for those without hackware to do much at machines! So if any of you combat players have been shaking your fist at all those early failed machine hacking rolls, it's rightly so, and I'm happy to say things are back to normal now :D. Well... they're back to normal (actually, even better than before!) if you update to Beta 7.2, which I recommend you do immediately.
The good news is saves are compatible with Beta 7.1.
Let's see what else we get with this update...
Cogmind Beta 7.2 "Terminal Love" (0.10.181204) changelog:
- * NEW: Relay Coupler base value higher based on depth
- * NEW: Robots flash when hit by projectiles (toggle in advanced.cfg: flashProjectileVictims)
- * MOD: Tweaked composition of squads attacking W base
- * FIX: Machine hacking was more difficult than intended in Beta 7/7.1 [Suslik]
- * FIX: Armor Integrity Analyzer effect protected user's armor rather than helping during attacks on armored targets [kiedra]
- * FIX: Researcher pre-attack warnings would not always trigger if certain utilities were attached (broken by Beta 7.1) [Raine]
- * FIX: Advanced option alwaysWarnAboutResearchers description missing from manual
Robots now flash when hit by projectiles. Some kind of explicit hit feedback was requested not too long back and although it's not a feature I personally need in my runs, I must admit it's been well-received by those who've seen it so far, so here it is!
(Ignore the fact that enemies just sit there and take it--that's just using debug mode to demo the feature :P. Also, they're not really dying because I'm intentionally using a somewhat weak weapon against late-game Programmers.) It's on by default, but like many QoL features you can toggle it in the advanced options if it bothers you for whatever reason.
You can see this and other features discussed in my 7.2 stream from earlier today, during which I continued the gunslinging run:
It feels really good as a combat bot to be able to do some free hacking again ;). Part 3 will be streamed next week at the same time, and the run is hot--we've met up with just the right allies to basically own the late-game, plus have an amazing loadout of our own (don't examine this at full size if you want to avoid a few little spoilers):
As a little bonus for Beta 7.2, I know from experience that the new RIF system introduced in Beta 7 and expanded in Beta 7.1 is still a little tough to rely on in the late-game, so I've also added a new formula that gives bonus value to Relay Couplers based on depth. The further you get, the better the couplers, regardless of their source.
Enjoy! :D
63
Announcements / Voting Now: IndieDB Game of the Year 2018
« on: December 02, 2018, 05:13:59 PM »
IndieDB has begun voting for Indie of the Year 2018, and I'd appreciate it if you head on over to the Cogmind page and give it a click!
The voting happens in two phases, first (now) just to determine the Top 100 group, then those 100 compete for one of the Top 10 spots. It's not really worth going for a top 10 slot since there are too many games with huge following that compete for those (it's a popularity contest, after all, and Cogmind's audience is pretty niche!), but I'm pretty sure we can make the Top 100 again. Cogmind has been in the Top 100 for several years now thanks to fans helping vote it past the first round, which is pretty good considering there are well over 10,000 games on the platform. Thank you! (This is nice as a fairly easy way to get a little extra exposure when we've got as much support as we generally do.)
Registration isn't required.
I won't be posting a dedicated reminder about the next phase, but will mention it in the news assuming Cogmind makes it past round one.
(Also if you haven't done so yet, for those of you with Cogmind on Steam, leaving a review is really helpful! (We're also working towards a specific goal
))
(Also, on IndieDB go vote for your other favorite roguelikes that have an IndieDB page--you can vote for more than one game!)
This week I'll be posting my annual dev review, so be on the lookout for that
The voting happens in two phases, first (now) just to determine the Top 100 group, then those 100 compete for one of the Top 10 spots. It's not really worth going for a top 10 slot since there are too many games with huge following that compete for those (it's a popularity contest, after all, and Cogmind's audience is pretty niche!), but I'm pretty sure we can make the Top 100 again. Cogmind has been in the Top 100 for several years now thanks to fans helping vote it past the first round, which is pretty good considering there are well over 10,000 games on the platform. Thank you! (This is nice as a fairly easy way to get a little extra exposure when we've got as much support as we generally do.)
Registration isn't required.
I won't be posting a dedicated reminder about the next phase, but will mention it in the news assuming Cogmind makes it past round one.
(Also if you haven't done so yet, for those of you with Cogmind on Steam, leaving a review is really helpful! (We're also working towards a specific goal
))(Also, on IndieDB go vote for your other favorite roguelikes that have an IndieDB page--you can vote for more than one game!)
This week I'll be posting my annual dev review, so be on the lookout for that
64
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #40: 10k
« on: November 23, 2018, 04:30:12 PM »
New parts, new art, more streaming, an interview, a blog post... it's been busy around here!
First, how about some new item teasers :D
I don't want to spoil the surprises, but can at least say this has been a very productive couple of weeks. More on that later.
In more immediate news we have the Thanksgiving sale period, for which Cogmind is 10% off for another half a week or so, both on Steam and the website. (Reminder: This is the lowest EA discount we'll have, barring extra promotion from Steam in exchange for a slightly higher discount, though the chances of that don't seem very high anymore.)
The Steam Awards have also begun, and the community consensus so far has been to vote for "Most Fun with a Machine," so consider adding your vote to the pool!
One of the more exciting (scary?) milestones that was hit this week: I've hit the 10,000-hour mark with Cogmind development!
The "little project" that started in 2013 is still going full speed ahead, all these years later... At some point I'll be doing a blog series on this, making all my time records public alongside an in-depth analysis of the data.
For now, though, there's the much more important Beta 8 to attend to!
It's a Mystery
Beta 8 is adding a bunch of brand new mechanics, including some which are very... out-of-the-box stuff, meaning I've been very busy breaking things left and right as I treat the code base to new experiences :)
As much as I'd enjoy sharing the more exciting advances, I'd like the future Beta 8 release to recapture a little more of the "surprise factor" that we used to get with Alpha releases back in the day, where each one always included chunks of unannounced content.
I do, however, have a few shots taken during development so far which I'll present here without necessarily much in the way of explanation.
Using the Lightning Gun to test a new mechanic, and it started open walls like doors! o_O (this is not the mechanic, just an unexpected side effect xD)
Weapons with the DISPOSABLE tag are getting a counter number. Wasn't needed before seeing as all disposable weapons are single-use, but... who knows ;)
Cogmind pushes past immobile allies rather than swapping with them.
Teach me your secrets!
Here's some stuff which is not actually in the game, but was used or encountered while working on certain features:
There's More Where That Came From
Continuing on the tail end of that massive surge of fan art from last time, here's some more :)
Don't get the wrong idea, this is most certainly not happening, but PlasticHeart sure has just the right concept to get your imagination running wild. #ChooseYourFaction
JackNine brings another cogmic, this one about "turn matters"
Zyalin continues to impress with more concept bots, like these "super derelict bros"
And if Recyclers give you nightmares, what about this "T-70 Combat Excavator"?
The Gunslinger
RIF is dead, long live The Gunslinger!
Last week we finished the RIF run in its fourth stream, which ended rather early on -4, but such is the potential result of playing Cogmind inflexibly, as it further ups the challenge. Still, sticking to a certain conduct is fun so I plan to do more of this in the future.
Part 3 (summary w/images):
Part 4 (summary w/images):
Since Part 4 came to an end before time was up that day and I wanted to play some more, we started up a separate stream. Despite intending to do quick-play runs with decisions made more for fun rather than optimization, that stream went on for another couple hours, and its second run even spanned 24 maps! It had some pretty epic moments, summarized here and available on YouTube below:
Fast forward to this week and a fresh run has begun! This time it's a guns-only combat run, as we go for some related achievements and try out the gunslinging modifications in Beta 7. Using four guns to destroy three Swarmers in a single attack? Check :D
Zyalin was busy during the stream as well, drawing this "Gunslinging Ladybot" to go along with the theme!
Part 2 coming next week, same time (Twitch ~7pm ET).
Extended Cogmind
John Harris interviewed me for Extended Play, talking about Cogmind and related stuff. It's a very long interview which spanned a couple years of intermittent questions, and was very interesting to participate in. At this point I dont' even remember all the topics we covered , but it touches on a lot of different areas.
Normally I write articles featured on Gamasutra, not have an article written by someone else about me there :P. Alternatively you can check out the same interview on his own blog, or find it in John's retro magazine Extended Play (Issue #2), which contains an assortment of other content, too.
Over on my blog I do have a new article, this one on how I recently solved a rare long-standing bug in Cogmind that might affect players using manual seeds, causing some maps to possibly have different content than expected. "Debugging Mapgen Seed Divergence" offers a relatively detailed look at both the definition of this type of problem and how to isolate it, showing the steps taken along the way.
And that's all I've got for this SITREP! Plenty more work to do on Beta 8, and as always it'll be quality and quantity over speed, so no dates to announce yet.
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
First, how about some new item teasers :D
I don't want to spoil the surprises, but can at least say this has been a very productive couple of weeks. More on that later.
In more immediate news we have the Thanksgiving sale period, for which Cogmind is 10% off for another half a week or so, both on Steam and the website. (Reminder: This is the lowest EA discount we'll have, barring extra promotion from Steam in exchange for a slightly higher discount, though the chances of that don't seem very high anymore.)
The Steam Awards have also begun, and the community consensus so far has been to vote for "Most Fun with a Machine," so consider adding your vote to the pool!
One of the more exciting (scary?) milestones that was hit this week: I've hit the 10,000-hour mark with Cogmind development!
The "little project" that started in 2013 is still going full speed ahead, all these years later... At some point I'll be doing a blog series on this, making all my time records public alongside an in-depth analysis of the data.
For now, though, there's the much more important Beta 8 to attend to!
It's a Mystery
Beta 8 is adding a bunch of brand new mechanics, including some which are very... out-of-the-box stuff, meaning I've been very busy breaking things left and right as I treat the code base to new experiences :)
As much as I'd enjoy sharing the more exciting advances, I'd like the future Beta 8 release to recapture a little more of the "surprise factor" that we used to get with Alpha releases back in the day, where each one always included chunks of unannounced content.
I do, however, have a few shots taken during development so far which I'll present here without necessarily much in the way of explanation.
Using the Lightning Gun to test a new mechanic, and it started open walls like doors! o_O (this is not the mechanic, just an unexpected side effect xD)
Weapons with the DISPOSABLE tag are getting a counter number. Wasn't needed before seeing as all disposable weapons are single-use, but... who knows ;)
Cogmind pushes past immobile allies rather than swapping with them.
Teach me your secrets!
Here's some stuff which is not actually in the game, but was used or encountered while working on certain features:
There's More Where That Came From
Continuing on the tail end of that massive surge of fan art from last time, here's some more :)
Don't get the wrong idea, this is most certainly not happening, but PlasticHeart sure has just the right concept to get your imagination running wild. #ChooseYourFaction
JackNine brings another cogmic, this one about "turn matters"
Zyalin continues to impress with more concept bots, like these "super derelict bros"
And if Recyclers give you nightmares, what about this "T-70 Combat Excavator"?
The Gunslinger
RIF is dead, long live The Gunslinger!
Last week we finished the RIF run in its fourth stream, which ended rather early on -4, but such is the potential result of playing Cogmind inflexibly, as it further ups the challenge. Still, sticking to a certain conduct is fun so I plan to do more of this in the future.
Part 3 (summary w/images):
Part 4 (summary w/images):
Since Part 4 came to an end before time was up that day and I wanted to play some more, we started up a separate stream. Despite intending to do quick-play runs with decisions made more for fun rather than optimization, that stream went on for another couple hours, and its second run even spanned 24 maps! It had some pretty epic moments, summarized here and available on YouTube below:
Fast forward to this week and a fresh run has begun! This time it's a guns-only combat run, as we go for some related achievements and try out the gunslinging modifications in Beta 7. Using four guns to destroy three Swarmers in a single attack? Check :D
Zyalin was busy during the stream as well, drawing this "Gunslinging Ladybot" to go along with the theme!
Part 2 coming next week, same time (Twitch ~7pm ET).
Extended Cogmind
John Harris interviewed me for Extended Play, talking about Cogmind and related stuff. It's a very long interview which spanned a couple years of intermittent questions, and was very interesting to participate in. At this point I dont' even remember all the topics we covered , but it touches on a lot of different areas.
Normally I write articles featured on Gamasutra, not have an article written by someone else about me there :P. Alternatively you can check out the same interview on his own blog, or find it in John's retro magazine Extended Play (Issue #2), which contains an assortment of other content, too.
Over on my blog I do have a new article, this one on how I recently solved a rare long-standing bug in Cogmind that might affect players using manual seeds, causing some maps to possibly have different content than expected. "Debugging Mapgen Seed Divergence" offers a relatively detailed look at both the definition of this type of problem and how to isolate it, showing the steps taken along the way.
And that's all I've got for this SITREP! Plenty more work to do on Beta 8, and as always it'll be quality and quantity over speed, so no dates to announce yet.
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
65
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #39: Artlike
« on: November 09, 2018, 04:10:23 PM »
Since the 7.1 release last week I've been hard at work on Beta 8, with a bunch of that time spent in REXPaint on new art. Some of you may know what that means... yet more parts!
That's just a small sampling to whet your appetite ;)
Fortunately it's not just me who's been up to producing art, so we can also feast our eyes upon Cogmind-related works from the community! There's been quite a lot of it over the past few weeks...
Hall of Heroes
Zyalin has been enjoying the world's atmosphere so much that he's chosen to share his impressions of the Heroes of Zion. These are only minor NPCs which don't play a part in the plot lines, but they have a lot of personality, making them good candidates for portraits. Over the past few weeks he's been sharing them with us over on Discord, having just recently finished the series.
ME-RLN
1C-UTU
7V-RTL
NK-0LA
P1-3CE
AD-0RF
99-TNT
CL-ANK
12-ASH
Having finished the heroes, Zyalin has continued drawing more bots, though now simply inspired by the world rather than anything directly from the game.
There's Zerbe-RIF:
A scary escaped prototype which has reportedly "stolen the last copy of NetHack" xD
And this great derelict with what could be a stolen pair of nice legs and a whole bunch of duct tape!
Datasheets
Not too long ago KernelPanic initially started sharing pixel art conversions of Cogmind's ASCII parts (their first attempt at pixel art, no less!):
Also eventually experimenting with new styles:
But then the parts started finding their way into these cool data sheets:
"Halloween version" for the Recycler :P
Cogmics
Pioneered by PlasticHeart, I've shared a few before but so-called "cogmics" have recently become a wider thing in the community, with at least 5-6 separate people (lost count xD) using their own cogmic style to share Cogmind jokes about the world, strategies, or even the community itself. Here are a few I've picked out...
PlasticHeart cogmics:
Gotta hate those surprise ARCs! (or any number of other surprises when opening doors without sensor data xD)
Using the new 7.1 RIF to loop garrisons (this one was specifically drawing Pimski doing it in -1/Access for what has become the second-highest ever scoring Cogmind run, which you can see on the leaderboards now).
New players are generally inundated with good advice on arrival on the Discord, but sometimes there are jokes as well :P
Lots of strategy discussion and sharing regarding established builds...
Decinym's impression of discovering nothing desirable after using CRM ("alien magic," haha xD):
Same scenario depicted by Zyalin (apparently Core Expanders are an artifact hunter's worst enemy :P)
Zyalin draws Raine as she goes for the Mad Max achievement, then accidentally picks up a prototype flight unit next to the wheel she wanted. Oops!
Allied Operators are great, by Zyalin.
8FPS lamenting the Beta 7 fix which blocked the cheese tactic of safely crushing a certain major NPC via treads without the usual repercussions.
Most recently, JackNine has been sharing some polished cogmics with a completely new perspective. (These include fun little details that are worth a second look, too :D)
Remember that Mines encounter?
(for me it's especially funny JackNine would make this connection, since a separate event I've been planning to add to the caves at some point is a more direct reference to this classic scene)
ASCII vs. tiles, Halloween edition!
How to deal with "programmers" :)
Many thanks to everyone for your artistic contributions! Some of the artists have been uploading their creations to the Images section on Steam, though not all so I thought I'd share some of my favorites as part of a progress update :D
Apostle of RIF
The Apostle of RIF is alive and well [enough]! We've survived another two parts with the RIF build, hacking and fighting up to -5/Upper Caves at this point after making the desired visit to Extension to rescue a certain someone (and then backstab them--sorry bud!).
The written summary of the run (w/images) continues in the same forum thread.
Part 4 is coming next week at the usual time (Monday evenings EST, after the DST change in the US the time is around 7pm).
Also on Twitch, our own emote was approved ;)
I dunno though, I might end up switching it to :wheel:, which'd go along better with my streams since I've been doing a lot of wheel-based runs. (That said, some of the future runs I have planned are more likely to be back on legs.)
Scraps
My "How to Make a Roguelike" talk at the Roguelike Celebration is now also available in text form on the blog. It's a comprehensive primer on how to get started with roguelike development, with guidance and tips in 5,500 words and 84 images!
I also cross-posted it to Gamasutra, where it was received quite well and even got featured on their front page as the top article :)
You can see the screenshot they chose was from POLYBOT-7, woohoo.
In other artlike news, Rex Quantum has scrapped together a printed Cogmind manual using leftover office supplies. How appropriate :P
Overall there won't be as many progress updates prior to Beta 8, if only because a good chunk of this dev time is going towards new content that'd be nice for everyone to explore on their own. Also a heads up: This is stuff that'll be accessible near the start of a run, so unlike a lot of other big content updates it won't require that you already be able to reach the mid- or late-game areas. Stay tuned for more!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
That's just a small sampling to whet your appetite ;)
Fortunately it's not just me who's been up to producing art, so we can also feast our eyes upon Cogmind-related works from the community! There's been quite a lot of it over the past few weeks...
Hall of Heroes
Zyalin has been enjoying the world's atmosphere so much that he's chosen to share his impressions of the Heroes of Zion. These are only minor NPCs which don't play a part in the plot lines, but they have a lot of personality, making them good candidates for portraits. Over the past few weeks he's been sharing them with us over on Discord, having just recently finished the series.
ME-RLN
1C-UTU
7V-RTL
NK-0LA
P1-3CE
AD-0RF
99-TNT
CL-ANK
12-ASH
Having finished the heroes, Zyalin has continued drawing more bots, though now simply inspired by the world rather than anything directly from the game.
There's Zerbe-RIF:
A scary escaped prototype which has reportedly "stolen the last copy of NetHack" xD
And this great derelict with what could be a stolen pair of nice legs and a whole bunch of duct tape!
Datasheets
Not too long ago KernelPanic initially started sharing pixel art conversions of Cogmind's ASCII parts (their first attempt at pixel art, no less!):
Also eventually experimenting with new styles:
But then the parts started finding their way into these cool data sheets:
"Halloween version" for the Recycler :P
Cogmics
Pioneered by PlasticHeart, I've shared a few before but so-called "cogmics" have recently become a wider thing in the community, with at least 5-6 separate people (lost count xD) using their own cogmic style to share Cogmind jokes about the world, strategies, or even the community itself. Here are a few I've picked out...
PlasticHeart cogmics:
Gotta hate those surprise ARCs! (or any number of other surprises when opening doors without sensor data xD)
Using the new 7.1 RIF to loop garrisons (this one was specifically drawing Pimski doing it in -1/Access for what has become the second-highest ever scoring Cogmind run, which you can see on the leaderboards now).
New players are generally inundated with good advice on arrival on the Discord, but sometimes there are jokes as well :P
Lots of strategy discussion and sharing regarding established builds...
Decinym's impression of discovering nothing desirable after using CRM ("alien magic," haha xD):
Same scenario depicted by Zyalin (apparently Core Expanders are an artifact hunter's worst enemy :P)
Zyalin draws Raine as she goes for the Mad Max achievement, then accidentally picks up a prototype flight unit next to the wheel she wanted. Oops!
Allied Operators are great, by Zyalin.
8FPS lamenting the Beta 7 fix which blocked the cheese tactic of safely crushing a certain major NPC via treads without the usual repercussions.
Most recently, JackNine has been sharing some polished cogmics with a completely new perspective. (These include fun little details that are worth a second look, too :D)
Remember that Mines encounter?
(for me it's especially funny JackNine would make this connection, since a separate event I've been planning to add to the caves at some point is a more direct reference to this classic scene)
ASCII vs. tiles, Halloween edition!
How to deal with "programmers" :)
Many thanks to everyone for your artistic contributions! Some of the artists have been uploading their creations to the Images section on Steam, though not all so I thought I'd share some of my favorites as part of a progress update :D
Apostle of RIF
The Apostle of RIF is alive and well [enough]! We've survived another two parts with the RIF build, hacking and fighting up to -5/Upper Caves at this point after making the desired visit to Extension to rescue a certain someone (and then backstab them--sorry bud!).
The written summary of the run (w/images) continues in the same forum thread.
Part 4 is coming next week at the usual time (Monday evenings EST, after the DST change in the US the time is around 7pm).
Also on Twitch, our own emote was approved ;)
I dunno though, I might end up switching it to :wheel:, which'd go along better with my streams since I've been doing a lot of wheel-based runs. (That said, some of the future runs I have planned are more likely to be back on legs.)
Scraps
My "How to Make a Roguelike" talk at the Roguelike Celebration is now also available in text form on the blog. It's a comprehensive primer on how to get started with roguelike development, with guidance and tips in 5,500 words and 84 images!
I also cross-posted it to Gamasutra, where it was received quite well and even got featured on their front page as the top article :)
You can see the screenshot they chose was from POLYBOT-7, woohoo.
In other artlike news, Rex Quantum has scrapped together a printed Cogmind manual using leftover office supplies. How appropriate :P
Overall there won't be as many progress updates prior to Beta 8, if only because a good chunk of this dev time is going towards new content that'd be nice for everyone to explore on their own. Also a heads up: This is stuff that'll be accessible near the start of a run, so unlike a lot of other big content updates it won't require that you already be able to reach the mid- or late-game areas. Stay tuned for more!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
66
Announcements / Cogmind Beta 7.1 "RIF+"
« on: October 26, 2018, 05:31:51 PM »
Boo! Surprise update!
Originally the next planned release was Beta 8, but 1) I already had a bunch of confirmed RIF features-to-be, 2) did the whole Roguelike Celebration trip which is going to push back the Beta 8 release date, and 3) really wanted to start streaming a new dedicated bot-hacking run and would prefer that it be fairly different from the one last month.
So early this week I suddenly decided to put out a quick 7.1 and give you all the RIF features now. Better than keeping them on hold for a bunch of other unrelated content, eh?
Beta 7.1 has technically been available since Tuesday, though we're just getting the release notes now. Let's see what's up...
Cogmind Beta 7.1 "RIF+" (0.10.181023) changelog:
RIF Updates
The Relay Interface Framework was only just added in Beta 7, bringing with it dozens of new hacks to pave the way for new playstyles. But the initial design focus there was primarily to expand the robot hacking system, with only partial thematic integration with the rest of the world.
7.1 gives a RIF-installed Cogmind some new capabilities that really help highlight the fact that you sorta become part of Complex 0b10. Strategically speaking, the RIF buffs tie the framework even closer to alert management and Garrisons. RIFfing was already connected with these elements since hacking bots has no effect on alert at all and you can hack Operators to lower alert, plus you get Relay Couplers (and the initial RIF) from Garrisons themselves. But as you can see in the changelog there are now even more Garrison connections.
For one, you can now "sense" nearby Garrison Access points (essentially like Zion-integrated terminals when you're imprinted), and when you approach them the door automatically opens.
While inside a Garrison, you'll also no longer cause passive alert increases over time. As long as you can deal with the locals, Garrisons almost become a safe spot for you! This is doubly true once you have the RIF installed and can use couplers to take out bots relatively silently via hacking.
It's also easier to leave whenever you want to, since none of the Garrison exits will be remotely locked when you try to use them.
Outside Garrisons, one of the major new features is that with RIF you get the precise alert level updated in real-time! A new red entry appears on your HUD, as you can see at the top of this screenshot taken from my stream this week after raiding several Garrisons :P
"Influence" is the specific number usually converted to a more understandable (and mechanically meaningful) alert level. You've always been able to see this mentioned in your scoresheet ("peak influence"), but this is the first time it's shown in game alongside the alert level conversion. Every action you take which affects it is reflected here. (I can smell the cheese now...)
Halving the cost of the purge_threat hack on Operators is yet another alert-optimizing buff for RIF users :D
Taken together, all these new mechanics could make RIF even more desirable for a number of hybrid builds, not to mention simply make pure bot-hackers much more reliable. Whole new strategies will be born from this.
Oh yeah, and by request the lone Garrison Access usually found on -8 is now forced to security level 1 so that RIF is that much more accessible early on (like other interactive machines at that depth it used to have a 15% chance to be SL2, which could be hard to hack open).
If you want to see how a pure RIF build is put together and deals with challenges, this week I started that new stream and it's been great so far:
There's a summary of the run here. Part 2 will be streamed next week.
But I Don't Wanna be Researched!
Another hacking-relevant issue to tend to was Researcher behavior, as they didn't much like you datajacking them or their friends, which is unnecessarily harsh if you're going to go through the trouble of using RIF over other strategic options that doing so closes off. So they'll now completely ignore datajack use and are fair game for manipulative hacks.
On a related note, non-hostile Researchers won't be alerted by nearby distress calls, which could similarly have pretty disastrous consequences when a Researcher just sitting behind a wall suddenly pops out and scans you without warning.
Other Stuff
Weapon cycling is the main related UI feature that got an overhaul (the partial implementation included with Beta 7 was apparently broken anyway). For Beta 7 Remote Datajacks became solo-fire weapons, so there was a greater need for the weapon cycling command/button to do something other than simply toggle everything off and on. Now it'll actually cycle through projectile, guided, datajack, and melee weapons, also treating each datajack and melee weapon as a separate option.
The system built for 7.1 is a lot more robust, as you can see here ;)
There were a number of other things in recent weeks I've told people are coming "next release," but note that means the major release that will be Beta 8, not this little surprise release xD. I did include a number of fixes with 7.1, stuff that I just happened to have already done, but there's still plenty more on the docket, as well as a backlog of other feature requests and basically tons of stuff to do overall!
Beta 7.1 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and have autoupdates enabled, Beta 7 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
Originally the next planned release was Beta 8, but 1) I already had a bunch of confirmed RIF features-to-be, 2) did the whole Roguelike Celebration trip which is going to push back the Beta 8 release date, and 3) really wanted to start streaming a new dedicated bot-hacking run and would prefer that it be fairly different from the one last month.
So early this week I suddenly decided to put out a quick 7.1 and give you all the RIF features now. Better than keeping them on hold for a bunch of other unrelated content, eh?
Beta 7.1 has technically been available since Tuesday, though we're just getting the release notes now. Let's see what's up...
Cogmind Beta 7.1 "RIF+" (0.10.181023) changelog:
- NEW: RIF adds precise real-time alert level readout to HUD
- NEW: RIF automatically detects nearby Garrison Access points
- NEW: Garrison Access automatically open for Cogmind with RIF upon stepping adjacent to door location
- NEW: If RIF installed, alert level no longer increases passively while inside a garrison
- NEW: Garrison exits automatically open if Cogmind has RIF installed
- NEW: Manual indicates BRIGHTNESS renderFilter can be used to increase brightness as well
- NEW: Weapon cycling (' or [CYCLE] button) treats all guided, melee, and datajack weapons as separate options
- MOD: While RIF installed, Unlock Access hack at Garrison Access always has a 100% chance
- MOD: -8/Materials Garrison Access is always lowest security level
- MOD: Relay Coupler [Swarmer] base value increased 40%
- MOD: Operator purge_threat hack cost dropped from 20 to 10
- MOD: A certain 5-letter bot that starts with a G (spoiler) now has the Disruption immunity
- MOD: Non-hostile Researchers are not alerted by distress calls
- MOD: Researchers ignore Datajack attacks against both self and allies
- MOD: Thermal Generator effect description adjusted so it's harder to mistake for a type of heat sink
- MOD: Tactical HUD mode energy readout displays both values separately even when stationary and movement turnwise deltas are identical
- MOD: Non-zero ambient heat display is shown outside Tactical HUD mode as well, if applicable
- FIX: Enumerate(Coupling) terminal hack gave no results [Valguris]
- FIX: Dropped salvage would not remain in map knowledge if Cogmind stepped out of view prior to any FOV update [Valguris]
- FIX: Melee sneak attacks were impossible against Researchers [GJ]
- FIX: Loading a "Fragile Parts" run wouldn't apply the rules in subsequent sessions beyond the first [GJ]
- FIX: -exportRobots command line argument inaccessible in release build [Raine]
- FIX: Tactical HUD mode energy readout failed to show inventory-stored energy when stationary and movement values are identical [Trione]
- FIX: Easiest difficulty mode didn't reduce the number of Garrison Access machines by 1 as intended
- FIX: Drone Bay info in parts list sometimes didn't reflect correct number of remaining drones
RIF Updates
The Relay Interface Framework was only just added in Beta 7, bringing with it dozens of new hacks to pave the way for new playstyles. But the initial design focus there was primarily to expand the robot hacking system, with only partial thematic integration with the rest of the world.
7.1 gives a RIF-installed Cogmind some new capabilities that really help highlight the fact that you sorta become part of Complex 0b10. Strategically speaking, the RIF buffs tie the framework even closer to alert management and Garrisons. RIFfing was already connected with these elements since hacking bots has no effect on alert at all and you can hack Operators to lower alert, plus you get Relay Couplers (and the initial RIF) from Garrisons themselves. But as you can see in the changelog there are now even more Garrison connections.
For one, you can now "sense" nearby Garrison Access points (essentially like Zion-integrated terminals when you're imprinted), and when you approach them the door automatically opens.
While inside a Garrison, you'll also no longer cause passive alert increases over time. As long as you can deal with the locals, Garrisons almost become a safe spot for you! This is doubly true once you have the RIF installed and can use couplers to take out bots relatively silently via hacking.
It's also easier to leave whenever you want to, since none of the Garrison exits will be remotely locked when you try to use them.
Outside Garrisons, one of the major new features is that with RIF you get the precise alert level updated in real-time! A new red entry appears on your HUD, as you can see at the top of this screenshot taken from my stream this week after raiding several Garrisons :P
"Influence" is the specific number usually converted to a more understandable (and mechanically meaningful) alert level. You've always been able to see this mentioned in your scoresheet ("peak influence"), but this is the first time it's shown in game alongside the alert level conversion. Every action you take which affects it is reflected here. (I can smell the cheese now...)
Halving the cost of the purge_threat hack on Operators is yet another alert-optimizing buff for RIF users :D
Taken together, all these new mechanics could make RIF even more desirable for a number of hybrid builds, not to mention simply make pure bot-hackers much more reliable. Whole new strategies will be born from this.
Oh yeah, and by request the lone Garrison Access usually found on -8 is now forced to security level 1 so that RIF is that much more accessible early on (like other interactive machines at that depth it used to have a 15% chance to be SL2, which could be hard to hack open).
If you want to see how a pure RIF build is put together and deals with challenges, this week I started that new stream and it's been great so far:
There's a summary of the run here. Part 2 will be streamed next week.
But I Don't Wanna be Researched!
Another hacking-relevant issue to tend to was Researcher behavior, as they didn't much like you datajacking them or their friends, which is unnecessarily harsh if you're going to go through the trouble of using RIF over other strategic options that doing so closes off. So they'll now completely ignore datajack use and are fair game for manipulative hacks.
On a related note, non-hostile Researchers won't be alerted by nearby distress calls, which could similarly have pretty disastrous consequences when a Researcher just sitting behind a wall suddenly pops out and scans you without warning.
Other Stuff
Weapon cycling is the main related UI feature that got an overhaul (the partial implementation included with Beta 7 was apparently broken anyway). For Beta 7 Remote Datajacks became solo-fire weapons, so there was a greater need for the weapon cycling command/button to do something other than simply toggle everything off and on. Now it'll actually cycle through projectile, guided, datajack, and melee weapons, also treating each datajack and melee weapon as a separate option.
The system built for 7.1 is a lot more robust, as you can see here ;)
There were a number of other things in recent weeks I've told people are coming "next release," but note that means the major release that will be Beta 8, not this little surprise release xD. I did include a number of fixes with 7.1, stuff that I just happened to have already done, but there's still plenty more on the docket, as well as a backlog of other feature requests and basically tons of stuff to do overall!
Beta 7.1 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and have autoupdates enabled, Beta 7 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
67
Announcements / How to Make a Roguelike
« on: October 23, 2018, 08:55:48 PM »
As mentioned in the latest SITREP, I went to the Roguelike Celebration this year and gave a talk on How to Make a Roguelike:
It came out pretty well and serves as a general guide for getting into development, covering a wide range of topics including language, scope, core mechanics, 7DRLs, resources, hooks, and general tips.
In addition I've now published that same talk in written form, so that if you're interested in starting your own roguelike project and prefer getting your info via text and images rather than listen to the whole 27 minutes, you can now do that. It's pretty similar to the video version.
It came out pretty well and serves as a general guide for getting into development, covering a wide range of topics including language, scope, core mechanics, 7DRLs, resources, hooks, and general tips.
In addition I've now published that same talk in written form, so that if you're interested in starting your own roguelike project and prefer getting your info via text and images rather than listen to the whole 27 minutes, you can now do that
. It's pretty similar to the video version.
68
Stories / Apostle of RIF - Building a bothacking powerhouse
« on: October 23, 2018, 12:29:37 AM »
Serious robot hacking time! (YouTube, and VOD while it lasts)
I actually did do a robot hacking stream right after Beta 7 released last month, considering this is the release's flagship feature, and even though it was an exciting one (and a win) the audio sucked so I've definitely wanted to give it another go.
But 1) I didn't want it to be so much like the other one, 2) there were already a bunch of RIF updates planned for Beta 8, and 3) I did the whole Roguelike Celebration trip which is going to push back Beta 8 and didn't want to keep everyone waiting so long for RIF updates to come along with the other new stuff.
So I suddenly decided to do a quick 7.1 release and put out the RIF stuff now, so that I could use it in the stream right away (and also give it to everyone else!). I guess we can call this... "stream-driven development"
Overall the idea was tie RIF closer to alert management and Garrisons, since after all you're sort of a part of Complex 0b10 once you install it.
7.1 is a surprise release I did immediately before streaming it, and we'll get to the changelog/release notes this weekend, but first, the run!
-10 and -9 were pretty uneventful, since I raced through both just grabbing the first parts we needed: storage and a launcher. I plan to use wheels pretty much the entire run to minimize all slot types except utilities in order to maximize capacity for storage, couplers, some infowar, and armor when there's room/necessity.
-8/Materials, however, took for-e-ver because I literally explored the entire floor before finding the lone Garrison. At least Electrolasers made short work of everything in my way, although in this particular situation I did have to pull out the launcher and make a mess of the place
The Garrison was so hard to find that I was just about to give up and leave when it popped up via terrain scanning. The stream was going crazy hoping that I'd notice the Garrison tucked away in a nearby tiny room, or at least see them yelling about it, haha.
Just look at this layout--literally the last room I hadn't seen, right there next to the exit I was about the leave from.
Inside the first Garrison things went smoothly. As predicted my [non-armored] wheels got blown off and I had to switch to legs there for a bit, but before leaving I had plenty of nice wheels taken from unpowered ARCs.
Somewhat less expected was the fact that I'd somehow inadvertently dropped an Imp. Datajack we'd found earlier (somewhere in -8?), so this wouldn't be much of a bothacking run without the ability to actually use my RIF and all these couplers... Then inside the Garrison itself we happened upon a stash of... Remote Datajacks, believe it or not!
Whew, back in the Factory with RIF, datajack, and couplers... (the garrison brought us up to -7)
After about 900 turns of hacking around the floor we came across another Garrison Access, and RIF synergizes with garrisons so well... hey why not go into another one
So another Garrison fell and the stockpile of couplers continued to grow. All the new RIF mechanics really helped... Here is an allied Swarmer about to come around the corner to help out the temporarily allied Sentry against some incoming Grunts, and right after this a couple more Grunts came up from the south and it was a big mess of hacking and destruction
And you know what we did no -7/Factory once we got back to it? Dove into another Garrison xD. Right at the entrance we even got a great stash of super couplers...
Made it through that Garrison just fine and got spit out on -6/Factory, where the stream is on pause until next week! Check out that inventory...
Yeah I just have a basic Particle Gun because I'm not really fighting at the moment... The Gauss Cannon was pretty awesome for when I had to shoot things, especially the melee bots I didn't have couplers for since it has knockback.
Here's the route so far:
I would've taken the Mines early on, mainly to drop the alert, but didn't find the exits before regular ones so didn't bother. And ever since then sticking to Garrisons has been rather effective. Alert has been high up around level 3/4-ish a lot, but bringing it down hasn't been too problematic...
We'll see what happens next week!
I actually did do a robot hacking stream right after Beta 7 released last month, considering this is the release's flagship feature, and even though it was an exciting one (and a win) the audio sucked so I've definitely wanted to give it another go.
But 1) I didn't want it to be so much like the other one, 2) there were already a bunch of RIF updates planned for Beta 8, and 3) I did the whole Roguelike Celebration trip which is going to push back Beta 8 and didn't want to keep everyone waiting so long for RIF updates to come along with the other new stuff.
So I suddenly decided to do a quick 7.1 release and put out the RIF stuff now, so that I could use it in the stream right away (and also give it to everyone else!). I guess we can call this... "stream-driven development"
Overall the idea was tie RIF closer to alert management and Garrisons, since after all you're sort of a part of Complex 0b10 once you install it.
7.1 is a surprise release I did immediately before streaming it, and we'll get to the changelog/release notes this weekend, but first, the run!
-10 and -9 were pretty uneventful, since I raced through both just grabbing the first parts we needed: storage and a launcher. I plan to use wheels pretty much the entire run to minimize all slot types except utilities in order to maximize capacity for storage, couplers, some infowar, and armor when there's room/necessity.
-8/Materials, however, took for-e-ver because I literally explored the entire floor before finding the lone Garrison. At least Electrolasers made short work of everything in my way, although in this particular situation I did have to pull out the launcher and make a mess of the place
Spoiler: Oops, surrounded! (click to show/hide)
The Garrison was so hard to find that I was just about to give up and leave when it popped up via terrain scanning. The stream was going crazy hoping that I'd notice the Garrison tucked away in a nearby tiny room, or at least see them yelling about it, haha.
Just look at this layout--literally the last room I hadn't seen, right there next to the exit I was about the leave from.
Spoiler: That was close... (click to show/hide)
Inside the first Garrison things went smoothly. As predicted my [non-armored] wheels got blown off and I had to switch to legs there for a bit, but before leaving I had plenty of nice wheels taken from unpowered ARCs.
Somewhat less expected was the fact that I'd somehow inadvertently dropped an Imp. Datajack we'd found earlier (somewhere in -8?), so this wouldn't be much of a bothacking run without the ability to actually use my RIF and all these couplers... Then inside the Garrison itself we happened upon a stash of... Remote Datajacks, believe it or not!
Spoiler: Saved! (click to show/hide)
Whew, back in the Factory with RIF, datajack, and couplers... (the garrison brought us up to -7)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
After about 900 turns of hacking around the floor we came across another Garrison Access, and RIF synergizes with garrisons so well... hey why not go into another one
So another Garrison fell and the stockpile of couplers continued to grow. All the new RIF mechanics really helped... Here is an allied Swarmer about to come around the corner to help out the temporarily allied Sentry against some incoming Grunts, and right after this a couple more Grunts came up from the south and it was a big mess of hacking and destruction
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
And you know what we did no -7/Factory once we got back to it? Dove into another Garrison xD. Right at the entrance we even got a great stash of super couplers...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Made it through that Garrison just fine and got spit out on -6/Factory, where the stream is on pause until next week! Check out that inventory...
Spoiler: All your bots are belong to us (click to show/hide)
Yeah I just have a basic Particle Gun because I'm not really fighting at the moment... The Gauss Cannon was pretty awesome for when I had to shoot things, especially the melee bots I didn't have couplers for since it has knockback.
Here's the route so far:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I would've taken the Mines early on, mainly to drop the alert, but didn't find the exits before regular ones so didn't bother. And ever since then sticking to Garrisons has been rather effective
. Alert has been high up around level 3/4-ish a lot, but bringing it down hasn't been too problematic...We'll see what happens next week!
69
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #38: Celebrating Roguelikes
« on: October 19, 2018, 05:22:59 PM »
I'm back! It was well worth taking the break to participate in this year's Roguelike Celebration, which was awesome as always. You can read (and see!) all about the event in the summary on my dev blog.
I gave the opening talk, "How to Make a Roguelike," which touches on most of my roguelike-related projects, but more importantly should help guide you down the path to creating one of your own, plus it talks about (and shows!) a bunch of other neat roguelikes as well:
I'm now super energized and ready to get cracking on Beta 8. This past week I've already started chipping away at the next release, but that was just debugging a few rare new issues. Next week it'll be time to add fresh new features :D
There's always more to be working on, that's for sure. PlasticHeart has illustrated what that's like :P
That said, we'll get to requests a little later--the next couple weeks of work is top secret stuff no one knows much about ;)
Chop Chop
Now that I'm home again, it was also time to fire up the stream and smash some bots. Quite literally this time as we did a melee run! It was my first serious full melee run and *gasp* we won \o/
I wrote up a summary on the forums (w/images) and VODs are available on Twitch if you want to have the chat commentary, or you can also see them on YouTube.
The route for the part 1 was pretty circuitous as we headed into the caves to get some benefits to make surviving the late-game easier:
Anyway, that was a victory by randomly pieced together melee build, and it was already pretty deadly (we got the Melee Specialist achievement!). More focused players can build out their selection of utilities with a bit of fabrication and become practically unstoppable (melee is a reliable strong way to deal with the extended end game).
Getting Steamy
A couple days ago I realized that as of this week Cogmind has already been on Steam for one year! Time flies when you're doing releases :)
That brings us to a total of three and half years of major public releases, five of which have happened since the EA launch last October. Ever since I first wrote it, the Early Access notice on the store page has always indicated "at least six months" of EA, and that fact has yet to change so I've never updated it.
It's still true today :P
There's plenty more to come, though one general trend I've noticed which might still affect pre-1.0 development is that despite the early discussion we had here about whether or not to change the default difficulty setting, I'm starting to think it'd be a better idea to not completely scare off some potential new players with the way things are now.
By default Cogmind is meant to be a challenging game, one that can be learned and very reliably won by those who get good at it. It's done that job well, and for others there are always lower difficulty settings to get more out of the game with less experience, although there is also a separate group of players in the middle who would probably enjoy the game a lot more if they didn't play on the default difficulty, but refuse to change the settings because actively lowering a difficulty setting is not something as many people are willing to do in video games!
At this point it's probably worth experimenting with a lower default difficulty, forcing players to make a choice to raise the difficulty only if they consider it too easy. This change would be accompanied by renaming the difficulty levels as well. Merely changing the feeling of those settings and how players interact with them will probably be better for everyone.
There are alternative approaches that can work well, like having no default and making the choice part of an explicit menu before the first play (or before each run), but that's not compatible with Cogmind's hyper focus on immersion.
On a similar note, we could even add some sort of so-called exploration mode? (Even easier than the current easiest mode, not really meant as much of a challenge at all.) I mean we're almost certainly going to get a form of Wizard Mode eventually anyway, a feature found in many traditional roguelikes, and that's no different from having a dedicated mode where combat is even easier and the world is much easier to explore. This could somewhat lift the veil of mystery surrounding portions of the story by expanding the number of players who experience its intricacies, but technically at this point pretty much everything has been discovered by at least some players who've explored every nook and cranny...
Well that was a bit of a diversion...
Anyway, back to the main idea (the duration of Early Access in case you forgot xD), we should probably try to hit 1.0 sooner rather than later so that there's still some money left for post-1.0 updates. Although with Cogmind the distinction between Beta and "released" is almost arbitrary at this point, we'll probably get a new batch of of players for 1.0 and they'll naturally be hoping for more updates in the now-typical "games as a service" environment. Heck, I'm certainly happy to keep at this for years to come. Sadly I don't think we'll hit the review threshold I announced earlier as a way to indirectly fund the new faction and its maps and mechanics, but maybe we'll find another way. I've been considering alternative ideas for funding down the line, but that's definitely a topic for the future.
Thank you all for your continued support during this year on Steam, here comes another one :D
Beta 7 Notice: Following the release, Phragmented has updated the PDF manual in both standard and booklet form. The latest can be downloaded from the forum thread.
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
I gave the opening talk, "How to Make a Roguelike," which touches on most of my roguelike-related projects, but more importantly should help guide you down the path to creating one of your own, plus it talks about (and shows!) a bunch of other neat roguelikes as well:
I'm now super energized and ready to get cracking on Beta 8. This past week I've already started chipping away at the next release, but that was just debugging a few rare new issues. Next week it'll be time to add fresh new features :D
There's always more to be working on, that's for sure. PlasticHeart has illustrated what that's like :P
That said, we'll get to requests a little later--the next couple weeks of work is top secret stuff no one knows much about ;)
Chop Chop
Now that I'm home again, it was also time to fire up the stream and smash some bots. Quite literally this time as we did a melee run! It was my first serious full melee run and *gasp* we won \o/
I wrote up a summary on the forums (w/images) and VODs are available on Twitch if you want to have the chat commentary, or you can also see them on YouTube.
The route for the part 1 was pretty circuitous as we headed into the caves to get some benefits to make surviving the late-game easier:
Anyway, that was a victory by randomly pieced together melee build, and it was already pretty deadly (we got the Melee Specialist achievement!). More focused players can build out their selection of utilities with a bit of fabrication and become practically unstoppable (melee is a reliable strong way to deal with the extended end game).
Getting Steamy
A couple days ago I realized that as of this week Cogmind has already been on Steam for one year! Time flies when you're doing releases :)
That brings us to a total of three and half years of major public releases, five of which have happened since the EA launch last October. Ever since I first wrote it, the Early Access notice on the store page has always indicated "at least six months" of EA, and that fact has yet to change so I've never updated it.
It's still true today :P
There's plenty more to come, though one general trend I've noticed which might still affect pre-1.0 development is that despite the early discussion we had here about whether or not to change the default difficulty setting, I'm starting to think it'd be a better idea to not completely scare off some potential new players with the way things are now.
By default Cogmind is meant to be a challenging game, one that can be learned and very reliably won by those who get good at it. It's done that job well, and for others there are always lower difficulty settings to get more out of the game with less experience, although there is also a separate group of players in the middle who would probably enjoy the game a lot more if they didn't play on the default difficulty, but refuse to change the settings because actively lowering a difficulty setting is not something as many people are willing to do in video games!
At this point it's probably worth experimenting with a lower default difficulty, forcing players to make a choice to raise the difficulty only if they consider it too easy. This change would be accompanied by renaming the difficulty levels as well. Merely changing the feeling of those settings and how players interact with them will probably be better for everyone.
There are alternative approaches that can work well, like having no default and making the choice part of an explicit menu before the first play (or before each run), but that's not compatible with Cogmind's hyper focus on immersion.
On a similar note, we could even add some sort of so-called exploration mode? (Even easier than the current easiest mode, not really meant as much of a challenge at all.) I mean we're almost certainly going to get a form of Wizard Mode eventually anyway, a feature found in many traditional roguelikes, and that's no different from having a dedicated mode where combat is even easier and the world is much easier to explore. This could somewhat lift the veil of mystery surrounding portions of the story by expanding the number of players who experience its intricacies, but technically at this point pretty much everything has been discovered by at least some players who've explored every nook and cranny...
Well that was a bit of a diversion...
Anyway, back to the main idea (the duration of Early Access in case you forgot xD), we should probably try to hit 1.0 sooner rather than later so that there's still some money left for post-1.0 updates. Although with Cogmind the distinction between Beta and "released" is almost arbitrary at this point, we'll probably get a new batch of of players for 1.0 and they'll naturally be hoping for more updates in the now-typical "games as a service" environment. Heck, I'm certainly happy to keep at this for years to come. Sadly I don't think we'll hit the review threshold I announced earlier as a way to indirectly fund the new faction and its maps and mechanics, but maybe we'll find another way. I've been considering alternative ideas for funding down the line, but that's definitely a topic for the future.
Thank you all for your continued support during this year on Steam, here comes another one :D
Beta 7 Notice: Following the release, Phragmented has updated the PDF manual in both standard and booklet form. The latest can be downloaded from the forum thread.
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
70
Stories / Melee run! (streamed)
« on: October 15, 2018, 11:19:58 PM »
This was my first semi-serious melee conduct run, where the basic rule was to always be focused on melee as the method of attack, avoiding other weapons except where necessary.
I've done a few melee runs on my own (not streamed), though when I do that there's pretty much no planning involved, just lots of weapon slots, multiwielding lots of melee weapons for the followup attacks, and haphazardly charging at and chopping up everything I see.
Overall this was a great stream with a great crowd, I guess also because it's been a while since I streamed a run, as I was out of town for the Roguelike Celebration where I gave a talk.
Melee is usually a decent (or even really powerful!) strategy for the latter half of the game, but kinda mediocre in the first half because all the entry-level weapons are impact-type, and these can take a little longer to pound on targets due to their reduced chance of core damage. But hey, we have to follow the rule, right?!
So coming out the first floor we had our hammer build...
(I tried to keep on wheels most of the time, for the extra carrying capacity and because maneuverability is important for melee combat--better to avoid slow propulsion!)
Then in -9 I took an exit to what I thought would probably be the Mines, but it ended up leading to Storage! Okay, we can roll with that... Picked up a room full of allies who trashed the place, but little did I realize, my core was getting dangerously low. This is another issue to be aware of with early-game melee, since your weapons won't take any/many hits and instead that damage goes to the core.
Anyway, as soon as the HUD went red I went into emergency mode and decided to backtrack over to the Recycling exit, otherwise I never would make it out of there. There was a Sentry after me, but my last remaining ally snuck up behind it and took it out
Whew, safe. And the detour would only mean sacrificing (skipping) -8/Materials, so everything turned out okay.
Coming into -7/Factory I had some friends and a ton of melee weapons, certainly more than I needed--picking them up was kind of a joke
Shortly after that I also picked up a pair of Arm. Huge Wheels. But I ended up putting those in inventory as backups for later after finding a cache of hover units for which I dropped some storage and rebuilt for speed/stealth/melee. My long-term strategy was to visit Zion and get imprinting support to help supplement intel, allies, and maybe melee resupplies. So I ducked into the -7 caves, and this was my build for much of the mid-game:
The two Phasing Sabres picked up in Z were amazing, being some of the best mid-game melee weapons and I was still only at -7 at the time. I don't even have any good melee util support and this build one-shots almost anything. Notice that I do also have the Sensor+Interpreter combo which is something I pretty much never have, but this plus hover plus melee is a pretty deadly combo, always being in the right place at the right time
Basically what we've evolved here is a ninja build, aw yeah...
Looking at the world map, it's been a pretty circuitous route up to this point!
The stream decided that we should make a visit to DM as well, so I headed out there from -6, where I picked up Cmb. hover schematics and built a pair of them on a low-level Fabricator upon returning to -5/Factory.
With those combined with Programmer remains it should be fairly easy to remain a melee hoverbot. From there I headed straight up to -4/Factory, at the entrance of which I stopped for now, in a state more or less like the image above (+2 utility slots). Will have to finish the stream with part 2 tomorrow. I'd like to go for the Gladiator achievement, but we'll see, 200 is a lot of hostiles to cut down.
I've done a few melee runs on my own (not streamed), though when I do that there's pretty much no planning involved, just lots of weapon slots, multiwielding lots of melee weapons for the followup attacks, and haphazardly charging at and chopping up everything I see.
Overall this was a great stream with a great crowd, I guess also because it's been a while since I streamed a run, as I was out of town for the Roguelike Celebration where I gave a talk.
Melee is usually a decent (or even really powerful!) strategy for the latter half of the game, but kinda mediocre in the first half because all the entry-level weapons are impact-type, and these can take a little longer to pound on targets due to their reduced chance of core damage. But hey, we have to follow the rule, right?!
So coming out the first floor we had our hammer build...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
(I tried to keep on wheels most of the time, for the extra carrying capacity and because maneuverability is important for melee combat--better to avoid slow propulsion!)
Then in -9 I took an exit to what I thought would probably be the Mines, but it ended up leading to Storage! Okay, we can roll with that... Picked up a room full of allies who trashed the place, but little did I realize, my core was getting dangerously low. This is another issue to be aware of with early-game melee, since your weapons won't take any/many hits and instead that damage goes to the core.
Anyway, as soon as the HUD went red I went into emergency mode and decided to backtrack over to the Recycling exit, otherwise I never would make it out of there. There was a Sentry after me, but my last remaining ally snuck up behind it and took it out
Whew, safe. And the detour would only mean sacrificing (skipping) -8/Materials, so everything turned out okay.
Coming into -7/Factory I had some friends and a ton of melee weapons, certainly more than I needed--picking them up was kind of a joke
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Shortly after that I also picked up a pair of Arm. Huge Wheels
. But I ended up putting those in inventory as backups for later after finding a cache of hover units for which I dropped some storage and rebuilt for speed/stealth/melee. My long-term strategy was to visit Zion and get imprinting support to help supplement intel, allies, and maybe melee resupplies. So I ducked into the -7 caves, and this was my build for much of the mid-game:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The two Phasing Sabres picked up in Z were amazing, being some of the best mid-game melee weapons and I was still only at -7 at the time. I don't even have any good melee util support and this build one-shots almost anything. Notice that I do also have the Sensor+Interpreter combo which is something I pretty much never have, but this plus hover plus melee is a pretty deadly combo, always being in the right place at the right time
Basically what we've evolved here is a ninja build, aw yeah...
Looking at the world map, it's been a pretty circuitous route up to this point!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The stream decided that we should make a visit to DM as well, so I headed out there from -6, where I picked up Cmb. hover schematics and built a pair of them on a low-level Fabricator upon returning to -5/Factory.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
With those combined with Programmer remains it should be fairly easy to remain a melee hoverbot. From there I headed straight up to -4/Factory, at the entrance of which I stopped for now, in a state more or less like the image above (+2 utility slots). Will have to finish the stream with part 2 tomorrow. I'd like to go for the Gladiator achievement, but we'll see, 200 is a lot of hostiles to cut down.
71
Everything REXPaint / REXPaint HTML manual w/table of contents
« on: October 13, 2018, 06:13:09 PM »
Steve Landey has kindly created and shared an HTML version of REXPaint's manual, which is a bit more convenient for browsing and reference
72
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #37: Statistically Speaking
« on: September 14, 2018, 05:32:26 PM »
As usual following a major release, it's again time to review player stats from the previous Beta. The full summary is on the forums here, where you can read a breakdown of the 462 wins in recent months, how players fared with achievements (Beta 6's flagship feature), and check out some of the new stats recorded by score sheets.
Now that there are a number of ways to "change" your Cogmind, PlasticHeart has kindly put together an realtime graph showing which approaches players are taking leading up to a win, conveniently obfuscated with abbreviations so that you're not spoiled if you haven't made these discoveries yet :P
I've added links to both that graph and Ape3000's player progression graphs from the bottom of the leaderboards for easier access. (If you recall from earlier SITREPs, the latter graphs are a great way to see how your runs are changing over time.)
Beta 7 Aftermath
So the leaderboards were reset to go with the new version. New beginnings for all!
As expected, we immediately saw an increase in the number of Garrisons deaths, those being optional areas a majority of players avoided before whereas now at least one visit is now required for those seeking access to the best robot hacking potential.
Later Garrisons are quite challenging, but if you enter one of the lower ones around -8/-7 in good shape and having made preparations like having a full inventory, spare propulsion, and decent weapons (preferably backed by a launcher, too, especially EMPs), they'll fall pretty easily to a systematic attack.
Since the release I've streamed two runs on Twitch, both of which installed a RIF inside the -8/Materials Garrison. The last week was to get to know the potential of a full-on high-inventory robot hacker build. The was more of a combat-oriented run with RIF for intel support by hacking non-combat bots (the mid-game relied mostly on allies, and propulsion was all over the place, sometimes using wheels, hover, and later treads). I'm looking forward to doing more streams during Beta 7; one of my plans I've yet to get to is a melee run.
A quick note about robot hacking (before it gets brought up too much :P): There are currently a number of duration-based hacking effects that having no reminders of their AOE or whether not a given robot is affected. I'm waiting on this until the hacking system is settled, and also until we have even more hacks, as other factors will affect how that is handled. As is it doesn't have a huge impact, but is definitely a QoL issue that needs to and will be addressed later, so yeah I'm aware of it!
It's been fun seeing players take advantage of other new features, including sharing a lot of neat map exports. Most would be spoilery so I can't share them here, but this one by Mojo in the Factory turned out pretty cool:
When he's not working on stats or doing hacking runs to the end game, PlasticHeart has been sharing some fun "cogmics" as he calls them. My favorite shows some of the main alignments and by extension ways to play Cogmind. The color of each panel is... fitting :)
In other recent news, Armchair Robotics discussions have been combined into a single pinned thread on both the forums and Steam, to avoid clutter since most of the replies are happening in the corresponding r/Cogmind threads anyway. Feel free to reply in any of these composite threads, though, with questions or anything else to add. New topics will keep coming.
Also, tamagotaso has updated Cogmind's Japanese manual translation to Beta 7. Many thanks for that!
Eight'll be Great
I can't get into the details of Beta 8 yet, since there are still a couple of fairly different routes it might take. Although I haven't made a final decision on that, the roadmap which lives on the FAQ is kept up-to-date and does publicly list some hints...
As always there are tons of plans. Yet more robot hacking will be coming eventually--the system is working nicely with its 65 hacks, and it's only going to get better with more options. (First the dust needs to settle on Beta 7, but already there are more plans for RIFfers, even outside pure hacking.) In any case, the next few releases will be working to add content to the first half of the game as well.
I really can't wait to get into working on Beta 8, but there are other plans for the near term. As mentioned before I'll be going to San Francisco for this year's Roguelike Celebration, where you can find me if you want to stop by and say hi :D. I'll also be giving a little talk there, for which I still need to do some preparation. Roguecel is a chance to meet lots of other well-known roguelike devs, too, so if you're in the area it's probably worth coming. I mean, you can actually meet other people who play roguelikes, actual people in the flesh! xD
I'll be pairing that with a trip to see family, so I'm heading out to the US next week and taking a bit of a break from development. That means a hiatus on SITREPs for probably a few weeks, until we're on the other side of the Celebration. Then I've gotta deal with mega jet lag while trying to get back into the swing of things, yay my favorite.
Have fun with Beta 7, and see you around!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
Now that there are a number of ways to "change" your Cogmind, PlasticHeart has kindly put together an realtime graph showing which approaches players are taking leading up to a win, conveniently obfuscated with abbreviations so that you're not spoiled if you haven't made these discoveries yet :P
I've added links to both that graph and Ape3000's player progression graphs from the bottom of the leaderboards for easier access. (If you recall from earlier SITREPs, the latter graphs are a great way to see how your runs are changing over time.)
Beta 7 Aftermath
So the leaderboards were reset to go with the new version. New beginnings for all!
As expected, we immediately saw an increase in the number of Garrisons deaths, those being optional areas a majority of players avoided before whereas now at least one visit is now required for those seeking access to the best robot hacking potential.
Later Garrisons are quite challenging, but if you enter one of the lower ones around -8/-7 in good shape and having made preparations like having a full inventory, spare propulsion, and decent weapons (preferably backed by a launcher, too, especially EMPs), they'll fall pretty easily to a systematic attack.
Since the release I've streamed two runs on Twitch, both of which installed a RIF inside the -8/Materials Garrison. The last week was to get to know the potential of a full-on high-inventory robot hacker build. The was more of a combat-oriented run with RIF for intel support by hacking non-combat bots (the mid-game relied mostly on allies, and propulsion was all over the place, sometimes using wheels, hover, and later treads). I'm looking forward to doing more streams during Beta 7; one of my plans I've yet to get to is a melee run.
A quick note about robot hacking (before it gets brought up too much :P): There are currently a number of duration-based hacking effects that having no reminders of their AOE or whether not a given robot is affected. I'm waiting on this until the hacking system is settled, and also until we have even more hacks, as other factors will affect how that is handled. As is it doesn't have a huge impact, but is definitely a QoL issue that needs to and will be addressed later, so yeah I'm aware of it!
It's been fun seeing players take advantage of other new features, including sharing a lot of neat map exports. Most would be spoilery so I can't share them here, but this one by Mojo in the Factory turned out pretty cool:
When he's not working on stats or doing hacking runs to the end game, PlasticHeart has been sharing some fun "cogmics" as he calls them. My favorite shows some of the main alignments and by extension ways to play Cogmind. The color of each panel is... fitting :)
In other recent news, Armchair Robotics discussions have been combined into a single pinned thread on both the forums and Steam, to avoid clutter since most of the replies are happening in the corresponding r/Cogmind threads anyway. Feel free to reply in any of these composite threads, though, with questions or anything else to add. New topics will keep coming.
Also, tamagotaso has updated Cogmind's Japanese manual translation to Beta 7. Many thanks for that!
Eight'll be Great
I can't get into the details of Beta 8 yet, since there are still a couple of fairly different routes it might take. Although I haven't made a final decision on that, the roadmap which lives on the FAQ is kept up-to-date and does publicly list some hints...
As always there are tons of plans. Yet more robot hacking will be coming eventually--the system is working nicely with its 65 hacks, and it's only going to get better with more options. (First the dust needs to settle on Beta 7, but already there are more plans for RIFfers, even outside pure hacking.) In any case, the next few releases will be working to add content to the first half of the game as well.
I really can't wait to get into working on Beta 8, but there are other plans for the near term. As mentioned before I'll be going to San Francisco for this year's Roguelike Celebration, where you can find me if you want to stop by and say hi :D. I'll also be giving a little talk there, for which I still need to do some preparation. Roguecel is a chance to meet lots of other well-known roguelike devs, too, so if you're in the area it's probably worth coming. I mean, you can actually meet other people who play roguelikes, actual people in the flesh! xD
I'll be pairing that with a trip to see family, so I'm heading out to the US next week and taking a bit of a break from development. That means a hiatus on SITREPs for probably a few weeks, until we're on the other side of the Celebration. Then I've gotta deal with mega jet lag while trying to get back into the swing of things, yay my favorite.
Have fun with Beta 7, and see you around!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
73
Announcements / Cogmind Beta 7 "Hack the Planet"
« on: September 03, 2018, 05:20:23 PM »
Fat changelog? CHECK. Lots of new toys to play with? CHECK. It's time to hack the planet!
The all-new robot hacking system creates new ways to play, and is expansive enough to integrate with existing strategies. Plus Beta 7 comes with more combat buffs and a heavy dose of QoL features, requested and otherwise.
Cogmind Beta 7 "Hack the Planet" (0.10.180904) changelog:
Bot Hacking
Today the years-old, mostly marginalized placeholder robot hacking system is finally history. Now things get real, with a proper huge range of options for stealing data, influencing AIs, or otherwise getting creative. With over five dozen hacks there's something in here for everyone, and twice as many non-combat hacks as combat hacks means plenty of AI-specific hackery, especially outside of combat when sneaking around trying to accomplish various goals.
Although serious hacking works only on non-prototype 0b10 bots, datajacks can still be used on any bot, an important need for parse_system which'll help you fill out your gallery faster (all parsed components are identified and added to the item gallery if not already there), especially if you meet up with any NPCs you'd rather not antagonize.
Even more importantly, using a Datajack isn't considered a hostile action, so you can pull off all kinds of shenanigans from the shadows completely undetected if you like, or otherwise sit around ordering 0b10 bots to do stuff like give you info without repercussions.
To take full advantage of the new system, however, you'll have to visit a RIF Installer... and doing that requires entering a Garrison! The first and probably easiest opportunity is in -8/Materials, so hack open the entrance and dive in. Hopefully prepared to blow away the inevitable unwelcoming defenders :). The RIF Installer isn't too hard to find, it'll be by the entrance or one of the exits. While you're in there, make sure to destroy some relays, as what you'll get is better than the usual stuff and this'll make the trip extra worth it. And remember to pick up at least one Datajack early, that and maybe a decent amount of storage capacity to help carry all those couplers.
Most players avoid Garrisons so aren't too well-versed in dealing with their challenges, and at first I imagine we'll see a fair bit more deaths there than usual, but lower Garrisons aren't too dangerous when you're prepared. If you are keen to start robot hacking but unprepared for a Garrison dive by the time you hit it in -8, there are a bunch more Garrisons to be found in -7/Factory.
The manual robot hacking UI has gotten an overhaul to include autocompletion and a fully-featured command buffer, too, for those who prefer typing for that extra hacker feel. (Data is stored in the new /user/buffer_robot.txt file.)
Check out a large collection of hacking demos and read about all the hacks on the blog, where there's also an in-depth introduction to the system and its design.
Note there are no bothack-related achievements being introduced for now. Those will come later when the system is finalized, in case there are some tweaks down the line. The existing handful of robot hacking achievements do still apply, though, as per the changelog.
A small sampling of fun stuff you can do with hacking:
- map_route -
- generate_echo -
- map_earth -
- overload_power -
- link_fov -
- link_fov + show_paths -
- ignore_targets -
If you're not sure what a hack does, right-clicking on it (or shift-letter) opens context help with a description.
Buffs
Well the new robot hacking system is basically a big collection of unique buffs itself, but we already covered that... No wait, there's more! Datajacks themselves all got massive stat buffs, making them much faster and cheaper to use. As the key to hacking bots, they'll be much more flexible and reusable now, allowing you to pull off numerous hacks even in a combat scenario. (Note that Remote Datajacks can only be fired solo now, but that's not a drawback, just a way to prevent cheesing the delay system :P)
For a new buff unrelated to hacking we turn to GUNS. Since Beta 1 we've had the somewhat useful gunslinging mechanic, which allowed gun-only volleys to attack additional targets if the first target is destroyed, but it only took effect half the time, or more frequently if using targeting computers. Now it always does that--no computers required, so stock up on guns. This makes a gun-heavy play style even more reliable and effective in the early game, and gives another reason to consider evolving weapon slots over utilities.
The melee equivalent, where multiwielding follow-up attacks after destroying a target might switch to another adjacent target, is now also guaranteed. (Another related buff: All melee follow-up attacks incur no additional time cost aside from the weapon's halved time delay, making it quicker to get in more hits.)
Knockback has always been a thing with impact melee weapons, but now it's come to kinetic cannons as well! The chance of knocking a target back is a function of damage, range, and target size, and is checked for each projectile, so melee bots might have a hard time reaching you if you're sporting Flak Cannons :).
This pair of assault cannons does a nice job of implanting the target in an expoding reactor:
Knockback mechanics have also been updated to allow a bit of a chain reaction, where knocked robots can slam into other robots and both displace and damage them as well. This applies to both impact weapons and KI cannons, so firing a penetrating KI round down a busy corridor will make an even bigger mess than it already did :D. Technically knocking targets back will make it harder to hit them since it now counts as a "move", but they'll also have a harder time shooting at you while being knocked around, so with some targeting utilities you'll have a bigger advantage overall.
Among the new parts we have a new range of Kinecellerators, utilities for buffing your KI weapons. Entry level:
Kinecellerators are especially effective when combined with multikinetic volleys, although they could also be brutal combined with certain cannons. As with other weapon modification utilities, while active their effects are reflected in the info mode summary.
And technically this last one is a fix, but bringing it in line with the original intent is basically a buff compared to what it was before: Your first allied Operator will now give the proper full +10% to machine hacking, so \o/
Opposite of Buffs
The global alert level slowly decays over time as long as you're not causing trouble, and in the past you could repeatedly find places to hide and wait it out, eventually resetting it to zero. That won't work anymore, at least not forever, because alert decay now has diminishing returns. This will mostly be noticeable from the mid-game onwards for players who go through entire floors destroying everything. You'll have to use other methods of lowering alert, of which there are many, or just leave the floor, preferably into a more secluded floor.
That said, note the effects don't even start to kick in until after you've been on the same floor for at least 800 turns, and only if you've been causing mayhem, and even then the changes are quite minor and gradual. The main point of this change was to head off farming strategies.
In any case, it will probably still be tweaked again (alert has been tweaked in various ways throughout the years...), but let's see how the current settings play out. I'd like to do some typical combat runs myself to get more of a feel for it, but so far I've been more into playing with the hacking system since that's the Big New Thing.
Also these alert changes only affect the default difficulty level, easier modes behave as before.
Another change also meant to prevent farming is the addition of a sort of map-wise global timer for Z-hacking. You'll see. Don't worry, Z-terminals are still the optional OP crutch that system was built to be :P
The main true nerf of Beta 7 is to Sensor Arrays, and it's a situational one at that. If you use sensors you're probably aware that Watchers can jam them if close enough. Previously they had to have better sensors than you in order to achieve this effect, but now they can do it regardless of their sensor type, as long as they're in range. Sensors have always been an amazing utility, and still are, though the new rules will make certain areas more challenging. Especially in tighter late floors, players who like to rely on sensors will need to find some alternative strategies under certain circumstances (both machine and robot hacking can help here).
One-shotting ARCs was nerfed by letting them do an emergency deployment right before they're destroyed. Not many players are capable of fielding builds with enough firepower to reliably take out ARCs prior to deployment, but for those who do it won't mean an overly easy way to wade through assaults, since at least some of the bots will likely be somewhat intact to fight. The contents will generally not be in great shape, but they'll still be there :P
The QOL
Putting the quality in life!
You'll now see a little glowing blue '@' marker indicating the direction of Cogmind when offscreen.
More ALERTs! All 0b10 bot calls for reinforcements that didn't already have one now display that notification as an on-map ALERT message. Even Garrison Access points which are activated in response to calls for backup will now also display that notification as an on-map ALERT message. These things existed in the message log before, but they're kinda important so making them flash and beep will make it extra obvious that Very Serious Things are happening.
The ability to tag an item with custom text as a memory aid is a rather common feature among classic roguelikes. Tagging is usually a part of the item identification process, and due to the nature of Cogmind's items and ID system it's almost never useful, hence the absence of a tagging feature all these years. However there are a handful of special cases towards the end of the game where you may know what a particular unidentified item is (based on where you found it) but not want to immediately attach-ID it. So now you can.
To tag an inventory item with a text note, press Shift-Alt-t followed by its inventory number. This feature is generally used to tag unidentified prototypes and alien artifacts that are known based on other factors or meta knowledge, so that they're not lost in the inventory later, indistinguishable from other unidentified artifacts. Erase an existing item tag by entering an empty tag for it. An example of tagging a serious item with a non-serious tag:
(Currently it's one of the rare keyboard-only commands, but we'll eventually get mouse access as well once there are enough of these rare commands so I can find a suitable UI scheme to include it.)
There are already a ton of methods for keyboard players to interact with items, but hey we can always use one more, right? This one is another feature found more often in classic roguelikes: modal item management. Some players prefer a fully modal approach to item interaction, rather than requiring the use of Ctrl/Shift/Alt key modifiers. The new 'p' key is the answer. It opens a menu that gives access to any part-related action, so [p] -> [action] -> [letter or number of part]. Here's the reminder that appears on entering the mode:
'p' was originally used to toggle the Part Auto-Activation feature, a key I'd always planned to replace when we needed it for something more vital, and it turns out 'p' for parts is perfect for the new modal menu :D (The old hotkey has been switched to F10 so it's still available if anyone really needs to toggle it in realtime.)
We have a number of feature requests in this section, too, which I'll point out here in case they'll help others as well...
Normally the map automatically pans during movement to keep Cogmind in the center, which is important for a number of usability reasons, but if you don't like that it can now be dectivated via advanced.cfg by setting viewFollowsCogmind=0. Here's a demo comparing the two methods using more or less the same scene:
There have been several requests to not autocenter on quitting mapshift mode because players who prefer scrolling with that method then can't follow drones very far. I've made that the default behavior and there's currently no option to change it back, as this technically brings it in line with all other scrolling methods--you can use either Enter key to recenter when you need to.
For fliers, non-forced melee attacks now require confirmation, since the intent may have been to jump a bot but you forgot to deactivate your melee weapon. (This can be turned off via ignoreFlyingMeleeConfirmation in advanced.cfg, though keeping it on will probably save you a facepalm or two in the long run.) Also mainly to benefit fliers, heat flow errors due to corruption temporarily block movement (as with part rejection), otherwise long moves could suddenly be hit with a heat spike and continue along happily until something burns out xD
A quick mention because I don't have anywhere else to put it: There were a few achievements that couldn't be earned in Beta 6, but now everything is available!
Meta Fun
Fun extra #1:
With a single command you can export a full-sized PNG of the current map as you've explored it. Images are placed in a new /screenshots-maps/ directory and named with the map's name, depth, and the number of turns spent on that particular map when the export was made. This process may take a few seconds because it needs to sequentially render numerous frames across the entire map, compiling them together into a single huge PNG.
Being a collage of screenshots, image exports use whatever font and size you've currently set. The example above shows an export using size 20 tiles.
I'm interested to see what people do with it, and I imagine it'll be useful for things like certain types of guides, creative endeavors, and strategy research. We've already been seeing some really cool exports shared by players during the prerelease testing phase.
Map exporting is currently keyboard-only: Shift-Alt-m. Like the Shift-Alt-t for item tagging, this one should eventually be mouse accessible as well, but not for now.
Fun extra #2 you probably don't want to do but here we go:
There are already a ton of ways to get data directly from Cogmind, or indirectly through the wiki or about leaderboard player performance, but one of the external pieces of data we don't yet have is robot stats. I certainly don't want to make players record individual data points from the game to populate the wiki, so for that and other uses I've added a command line option that automatically generates a CSV file containing all the robot data. The item gallery CSV export has already been used to generate the wiki's item pages, but there's been no corresponding feature for robots, until now :)
Here's a sample excerpt of the export, which in its entirety includes 179 lines and over 8,000 data fields o_O
Obviously there are going to be massive spoilers in the complete file, but I imagine anyone who does this will be aware of that fact... Note you don't need any of this to play since object data is available in game, but some players like to have it around as an external reference.
This feature isn't even documented anywhere but here for now. It's command line only. Run the game with the "-exportRobots" argument, then once it starts up you have to actually move one space for the export to happen :P
Housekeeping
Special thanks to all our Beta 7 prerelease testers, who helped iron out a few issues and also sparked some tweaks before today's full release.
And thanks to everyone for your Steam reviews! In case anyone missed it, there's a pre-1.0 medium-term goal you can help with which could affect the future of Cogmind development. Check out the original announcement for more info. Reviews are very helpful for increasing Cogmind's visibility on Steam and by extension make it possible to keep bringing the updates :D. So many plans...
There is currently a 10% discount on Cogmind to coincide with the Beta 7 release. As a heads up, this is the largest discount Cogmind will have during Early Access unless at some point Valve decides to again offer exposure for a larger discount like they did in December 2017, in which case I might take them up. (But I wouldn't count on them doing that again, there being so many games out there these days :P)
For Linux users, Cogmind may now be installed through Steam. Read more in the last section of SITREP #35.
As usual, this weekend will not have a SITREP so soon following a new release. The next will come the week after when we'll take the usual look at player stats from Beta 6, our first release with [256!] achievements.
Now that Beta 7 is out I will, however, start streaming again, in fact starting shortly after this release announcement--let's play with these new hacks!
Beta 7 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and have autoupdates enabled, Beta 6 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
The all-new robot hacking system creates new ways to play, and is expansive enough to integrate with existing strategies. Plus Beta 7 comes with more combat buffs and a heavy dose of QoL features, requested and otherwise.
Cogmind Beta 7 "Hack the Planet" (0.10.180904) changelog:
- NEW: 65 new robot hacks
- NEW: Garrisons now contain an RIF Installer (required for most robot hacks)
- NEW: 12 Relay Couplers (available from numerous sources), required to execute better robot hacks
- NEW: 1 more brute force hack (secret)
- NEW: 3 new items (new mechanic)
- NEW: 75 new score sheet entries (total = 772)
- NEW: Added several encounters
- NEW: Info window for part types that cannot be repaired precedes the maximum integrity value with a *
- NEW: Derelict Logs that give an exit location for the current map when Cogmind already knows it explicitly indicate that in the log
- NEW: Blue '@' marker appears to indicate the direction of Cogmind's position when offscreen
- NEW: New kind of squad dispatch under certain conditions
- NEW: Standard robot hacks also accessible via manual entry
- NEW: Manual robot hacking UI includes autocompletion and fully-featured command buffer (data stored in /user/buffer_robot.txt)
- NEW: Option to alphabetize coupler-based robot hacks instead of based on cost (advanced.cfg: alphabetizeCouplerHacks)
- NEW: Option to not have map center on Cogmind with every move, requiring manual panning instead (advanced.cfg: viewFollowsCogmind)
- NEW: Option to disable mouse-based movement in mouse mode (advanced.cfg: disableMouseMovement)
- NEW: Vi-keys (j/k) can be used to change selected entry in item/robot info page
- NEW: Datajacks can be used on any bot
- NEW: parse_system robot hack is an additional way to add items to gallery collection (and won't aggro friendlies)
- NEW: Lower difficulty modes give Relay Couplers more uses
- NEW: Additional lore giving the new robot hacking system a background
- NEW: Shift-Alt-m exports PNG of entire current map, showing explored areas
- NEW: Worker latching onto a disabled bot now has its own sfx and color
- NEW: Assign text tags to inventory items (Shift-Alt-t + inventory item number)
- NEW: Kinetic cannons can cause knockback, where the chance is a function of damage, range, and target size
- NEW: Kinetic and Impact weapon knockback that causes one robot to hit another can damage and displace the second robot
- NEW: Additional Garrison layouts
- NEW: Export robot data with the "-exportRobots" command line argument (massive spoilers!)
- NEW: Explicit log message for failure to rewire disabled bot via Datajack
- NEW: Tutorial message reminding that items held in inventory do not themselves add to total mass
- NEW: Explicit interface message about large part non-swappability when using dedicated swap mode ('/')
- NEW: "Part Auto-Replacement" manual section expanded with an explanation of why the rules list is fairly short
- NEW: "Volley" manual section expanded with description of resource cost timing
- NEW: Non-forced melee attacks while flying require confirmation (toggle in advanced.cfg: ignoreFlyingMeleeConfirmation)
- NEW: Numpad '/' behaves as regular slash, activating part swap mode
- NEW: Heat flow errors due to corruption temporarily block movement (like part rejection)
- NEW: Hit chance modifiers due to attacker/defender recent moves reset on ramming and knockback
- NEW: Deploying ARCs list robots in message log
- NEW: Active ARCs engage emergency deployment system just before destruction (effects vary)
- NEW: Watchers can always jam sensors as long as Cogmind within their sensor range, even if using inferior Sensor Arrays
- NEW: Fully modal part management system (in addition to existing systems), press 'p' to open new menu for part toggle/attach/info/remove/drop
- NEW: Z-terminal access has limitations on each map
- NEW: All 0b10 bot calls for reinforcements that didn't already have one now display that notification as an on-map ALERT message
- NEW: Garrisons activated in response to calls for backup also display that notification as an on-map ALERT message
- NEW: All Alpha supporter names registered since Beta 6 added to in-game list (see Credits menu)
- MOD: Destroying Garrison Relays has a different effect
- MOD: Hacking Suites no longer apply to robot hacking; chance-based robot hacking system removed
- MOD: No longer any benefits from hitting target with multiple Datajacks
- MOD: Target corruption no longer a factor when hacking a robot
- MOD: Programmers no longer assimilate other Programmers
- MOD: Less garbled text results from brute force hacks, just enough to more or less fill the window
- MOD: PARSE/LINK/REBOOT/OVERLOAD/ASSIMILATE robot hacks removed
- MOD: Rewrote Hacking Robots section of manual
- MOD: Engineers far less likely to get stuck in groups when many of them try to to repair the same area
- MOD: Disarmed Researchers won't trigger an attack warning
- MOD: Machine hacking uses a new kind of RNG
- MOD: Borebot weapon once again a prototype (since it can be discovered via parse_system)
- MOD: Datajack hits against any robot are not considered an attack
- MOD: For now the "Factory Defaults," "Error 47," and "Assimilation Complete" achievements refer to the hacks reboot_system, overload_power, and formatsys_
- MOD: Robots assimilated by Programmers no longer immediately activate, require some reboot time
- MOD: Updated offensive and defensive hackware effect descriptions to reflect changes in mechanics
- MOD: All Datajacks always have a 100% to achieve system access (i.e. penetration mechanic removed)
- MOD: All melee Datajacks' attack speed increased by at least 50%
- MOD: All Remote Datajacks' stats adjusted, including significant reduction in matter cost and an increase in speed
- MOD: Dirty Datajacks don't deteriorate as quickly
- MOD: Remote Datajacks work like guided weapons in that they must be fired solo
- MOD: RIF Installer incompatible with Super Gauntlet challenge
- MOD: Removed some pieces of lore related to obsolete hacking mechanics
- MOD: Robot info window no longer also displays speed as a percent in Tactical HUD mode
- MOD: Robot hacking UI no longer closed by RMB
- MOD: Shift-cursor method of panning map now ignored while robot hacking UI open
- MOD: Robots with temporarily disabled weapons more readily return to fight once weapons reactivated
- MOD: Executioner loadout improved
- MOD: Desublimator now a prototype
- MOD: Inventory scrolling keyboard commands under advanced help displayed as "]/[" instead of "[/]"
- MOD: No turn progression or input allowed during special CRM and conduit interface animations
- MOD: itemLabelRelativeRatingCutoff option no longer applies to any items that aren't placed randomly (always labeled)
- MOD: Zhirov profile reduced from 7x7 to 5x5
- MOD: Dedicated mapshift mode (`) no longer automatically recenters on completion (Enter is another option)
- MOD: Mouse-based movement and other map commands disabled while cursor hidden in keyboard mode
- MOD: Devolution challenge scoring formula now purely depth-based rather than slot-based
- MOD: "Executioner" achievement description reworded for clarity
- MOD: Updated "Turtlemind" achievement icon
- MOD: "Hit/Miss Streak" score sheet entries changed to "Robot Hit/Miss Streak," and only shots targeting robots count towards them
- MOD: "Crack Shot" and "Storm Trooper" achievements only count shots targeting robots, and exclude melee attacks
- MOD: "Adventurous" achievement renamed to "Ooh, Shiny!"
- MOD: Mines cave-in event can no longer kill low-integrity Cogmind
- MOD: Melee follow-up attacks incur no additional time cost aside from the weapon's halved time delay
- MOD: Exit labels for offscreen exits not shown if any part of the primary label for that exit is showing
- MOD: Message on inapplicable use of '>' command refers to traps and drone bays as well, rather than just stairs
- MOD: Secondary targeting (gunslinging) by guns is now guaranteed wherever applicable (100% chance)
- MOD: Follow-up attacks when multiwielding melee weapons will always automatically switch to the next available target if any in range (100% chance)
- MOD: Materials Terminals no longer list direct hacks for robot or item schematics
- MOD: Field Recycling Units operate on purely turn-based checks rather than an action- or wait-based counter, so take effect faster if moving more slowly
- MOD: S7 guaranteed to contain 1x TR
- MOD: Core Expanders more rare
- MOD: Part Auto-Activation feature active by default on a fresh install (still available in options menu)
- MOD: Part Auto-Activation hotkey switched to F10
- MOD: Tutorial messages involving part activation updated
- MOD: While a modal input label is visible across top of map simultaneously with an interface message, the latter is pushed down to avoid overlap
- MOD: Alert level decay from passing turns has diminishing returns over time (except in easier difficulty modes)
- MOD: Revision 17 never spawns in Scrapyard if using the quickStart option
- MOD: "SW" no longer much more likely to die from impact damage
- MOD: Super Gauntlet challenge Garrison Access cannot have traps next to their interactive section
- FIX: Under default config settings, faulty/broken unidentified prototypes excluded from mass labeling, revealing their state [zxc]
- FIX: Attached faulty power sources still contributed to energy storage capacity [zxc]
- FIX: Guided weapon waypoints were retained between maps [zxc]
- FIX: Crash on destroying a machine as first action on entering a new map before machine-relevant Derelict Log data displayed [zxc]
- FIX: "Spaces Moved" entry in score sheet didn't account for robot jumping by flight propulsion [zxc]
- FIX: "Average Speed (%)" entry in score sheet included stasis escape attempts [zxc]
- FIX: Derelict intel could ID the L exit [zxc]
- FIX: Opening world map in keyboard mode unable to select a map if just left Waste or Garrison and previously visited another on the same route [Joshua]
- FIX: "Watch This!" achievement couldn't be earned [Joshua]
- FIX: "Oh No You Don't!" achievement could be earned if Cogmind last damaged Saboteur later destroyed by another non-specific attacker [Joshua]
- FIX: "No Explosion For You" achievement also earned when your missiles shot down as well, not just those fired by hostiles [Joshua]
- FIX: "Just Shoot The Terminal" achievement awarded if a hostile bot achieved the same effect via misfire [lsend]
- FIX: "Fragile Parts" challenge was only applying rules to subsequent runs after game start, not the first [lsend]
- FIX: Adjustments required to accommodate a certain possibility during special Z+M@C event [lsend]
- FIX: Scrolling map view away from certain NPCs prior to dialogue skipped their dialogue, affecting the results [lsend]
- FIX: Sticky Parts challenge also blocked inventory parts from dropping [Raine]
- FIX: Sticky Parts challenge increased inventory contents beyond capacity if using get-attach shortcut on an already full inventory [Raine]
- FIX: "Executioner" achievement wasn't obtainable by way of normal evolution [Raine]
- FIX: Several typos in various messages and context help [Mhorre, Tzan, Rumbl3, Raine]
- FIX: "Collateral Damage" achievement couldn't be earned [Mojo]
- FIX: Certain late-game special event message might be shown globally even though it should require line-of-sight [Mojo]
- FIX: As of Beta 6, prototypes in gallery info didn't show their full name at the bottom [Mojo]
- FIX: Particular garrison layout could spawn any random disabled drone type, should be N-00 Fly [Mojo, GJ]
- FIX: Ally distance warning before level exit may report incorrect number for some at edge of radius [Valguris]
- FIX: Hacking bonus from allied Operators counted first Operator against the total, starting it at +5% instead of +10% [Valguris]
- FIX: Central database lockouts in Recycling would still cause investigation dispatch [Valguris]
- FIX: Full-sized evasion readout still listed Cloaking as a bonus, renamed to Phasing to match new corresponding utility name [PhenomPhear]
- FIX: Unique swords weren't playing any hit sfx [PhenomPhear]
- FIX: "Cya!" achievement was earned by flying over only two bots [PhenomPhear]
- FIX: Tutorial messages about gallery and lore collection still mentioned old key commands [b_sen]
- FIX: Drag-swapping parts with between 19 and 30 energy would only complete the first half of the action instead of giving the low-energy warning [b_sen]
- FIX: Simultaneously using any Thermal Generator and Cryofiber Web dropped energy reserves, allowing them to even go negative [IrishDemon]
- FIX: In rare cases an unknown open cell within ally transfer range may be highlighted while leading allies and standing adjacent to exit [DDarkRay]
- FIX: Quickly pressing an up/down arrow key after closing a robot's part info window in keyboard mode would place the cursor incorrectly [Jivya]
- FIX: RMB on hidden doors wouldn't enter targeting mode, revealing their presence [Malthusis]
- FIX: Fleeing Workers continue pushing previously disabled bot even if bot rewired while fleeing [Laida]
- FIX: Reaction Control Systems dodging a trap could jump Cogmind into a neighboring phase wall [Pimski]
- FIX: Individual Researchers normally only call reinforcements once, but after a run save/load could call again immediately
- FIX: <x2> consecutive message counters would not appear if not enough room remaining in the previous message log line
- FIX: "Missiles Intercepted" score sheet entry tallied all instances rather than only Cogmind's
- FIX: "Batter Up" achievement could be earned if an enemy Brawler knocked any bot into an exploding machine
- FIX: Due to earlier changes, world map unable to display both a Waste and Garrison visit from the same map, or current Garrison marker
- FIX: Multiwielding impact melee weapons allowed attacks to continue even after target already knocked away
Bot Hacking
Today the years-old, mostly marginalized placeholder robot hacking system is finally history. Now things get real, with a proper huge range of options for stealing data, influencing AIs, or otherwise getting creative. With over five dozen hacks there's something in here for everyone, and twice as many non-combat hacks as combat hacks means plenty of AI-specific hackery, especially outside of combat when sneaking around trying to accomplish various goals.
Although serious hacking works only on non-prototype 0b10 bots, datajacks can still be used on any bot, an important need for parse_system which'll help you fill out your gallery faster (all parsed components are identified and added to the item gallery if not already there), especially if you meet up with any NPCs you'd rather not antagonize.
Even more importantly, using a Datajack isn't considered a hostile action, so you can pull off all kinds of shenanigans from the shadows completely undetected if you like, or otherwise sit around ordering 0b10 bots to do stuff like give you info without repercussions.
To take full advantage of the new system, however, you'll have to visit a RIF Installer... and doing that requires entering a Garrison! The first and probably easiest opportunity is in -8/Materials, so hack open the entrance and dive in. Hopefully prepared to blow away the inevitable unwelcoming defenders :). The RIF Installer isn't too hard to find, it'll be by the entrance or one of the exits. While you're in there, make sure to destroy some relays, as what you'll get is better than the usual stuff and this'll make the trip extra worth it. And remember to pick up at least one Datajack early, that and maybe a decent amount of storage capacity to help carry all those couplers.
Most players avoid Garrisons so aren't too well-versed in dealing with their challenges, and at first I imagine we'll see a fair bit more deaths there than usual, but lower Garrisons aren't too dangerous when you're prepared. If you are keen to start robot hacking but unprepared for a Garrison dive by the time you hit it in -8, there are a bunch more Garrisons to be found in -7/Factory.
The manual robot hacking UI has gotten an overhaul to include autocompletion and a fully-featured command buffer, too, for those who prefer typing for that extra hacker feel. (Data is stored in the new /user/buffer_robot.txt file.)
Check out a large collection of hacking demos and read about all the hacks on the blog, where there's also an in-depth introduction to the system and its design.
Note there are no bothack-related achievements being introduced for now. Those will come later when the system is finalized, in case there are some tweaks down the line. The existing handful of robot hacking achievements do still apply, though, as per the changelog.
A small sampling of fun stuff you can do with hacking:
- map_route -
- generate_echo -
- map_earth -
- overload_power -
- link_fov -
- link_fov + show_paths -
- ignore_targets -
If you're not sure what a hack does, right-clicking on it (or shift-letter) opens context help with a description.
Buffs
Well the new robot hacking system is basically a big collection of unique buffs itself, but we already covered that... No wait, there's more! Datajacks themselves all got massive stat buffs, making them much faster and cheaper to use. As the key to hacking bots, they'll be much more flexible and reusable now, allowing you to pull off numerous hacks even in a combat scenario. (Note that Remote Datajacks can only be fired solo now, but that's not a drawback, just a way to prevent cheesing the delay system :P)
For a new buff unrelated to hacking we turn to GUNS. Since Beta 1 we've had the somewhat useful gunslinging mechanic, which allowed gun-only volleys to attack additional targets if the first target is destroyed, but it only took effect half the time, or more frequently if using targeting computers. Now it always does that--no computers required, so stock up on guns. This makes a gun-heavy play style even more reliable and effective in the early game, and gives another reason to consider evolving weapon slots over utilities.
The melee equivalent, where multiwielding follow-up attacks after destroying a target might switch to another adjacent target, is now also guaranteed. (Another related buff: All melee follow-up attacks incur no additional time cost aside from the weapon's halved time delay, making it quicker to get in more hits.)
Knockback has always been a thing with impact melee weapons, but now it's come to kinetic cannons as well! The chance of knocking a target back is a function of damage, range, and target size, and is checked for each projectile, so melee bots might have a hard time reaching you if you're sporting Flak Cannons :).
This pair of assault cannons does a nice job of implanting the target in an expoding reactor:
Knockback mechanics have also been updated to allow a bit of a chain reaction, where knocked robots can slam into other robots and both displace and damage them as well. This applies to both impact weapons and KI cannons, so firing a penetrating KI round down a busy corridor will make an even bigger mess than it already did :D. Technically knocking targets back will make it harder to hit them since it now counts as a "move", but they'll also have a harder time shooting at you while being knocked around, so with some targeting utilities you'll have a bigger advantage overall.
Among the new parts we have a new range of Kinecellerators, utilities for buffing your KI weapons. Entry level:
Kinecellerators are especially effective when combined with multikinetic volleys, although they could also be brutal combined with certain cannons. As with other weapon modification utilities, while active their effects are reflected in the info mode summary.
And technically this last one is a fix, but bringing it in line with the original intent is basically a buff compared to what it was before: Your first allied Operator will now give the proper full +10% to machine hacking, so \o/
Opposite of Buffs
The global alert level slowly decays over time as long as you're not causing trouble, and in the past you could repeatedly find places to hide and wait it out, eventually resetting it to zero. That won't work anymore, at least not forever, because alert decay now has diminishing returns. This will mostly be noticeable from the mid-game onwards for players who go through entire floors destroying everything. You'll have to use other methods of lowering alert, of which there are many, or just leave the floor, preferably into a more secluded floor.
That said, note the effects don't even start to kick in until after you've been on the same floor for at least 800 turns, and only if you've been causing mayhem, and even then the changes are quite minor and gradual. The main point of this change was to head off farming strategies.
In any case, it will probably still be tweaked again (alert has been tweaked in various ways throughout the years...), but let's see how the current settings play out. I'd like to do some typical combat runs myself to get more of a feel for it, but so far I've been more into playing with the hacking system since that's the Big New Thing.
Also these alert changes only affect the default difficulty level, easier modes behave as before.
Another change also meant to prevent farming is the addition of a sort of map-wise global timer for Z-hacking. You'll see. Don't worry, Z-terminals are still the optional OP crutch that system was built to be :P
The main true nerf of Beta 7 is to Sensor Arrays, and it's a situational one at that. If you use sensors you're probably aware that Watchers can jam them if close enough. Previously they had to have better sensors than you in order to achieve this effect, but now they can do it regardless of their sensor type, as long as they're in range. Sensors have always been an amazing utility, and still are, though the new rules will make certain areas more challenging. Especially in tighter late floors, players who like to rely on sensors will need to find some alternative strategies under certain circumstances (both machine and robot hacking can help here).
One-shotting ARCs was nerfed by letting them do an emergency deployment right before they're destroyed. Not many players are capable of fielding builds with enough firepower to reliably take out ARCs prior to deployment, but for those who do it won't mean an overly easy way to wade through assaults, since at least some of the bots will likely be somewhat intact to fight. The contents will generally not be in great shape, but they'll still be there :P
The QOL
Putting the quality in life!
You'll now see a little glowing blue '@' marker indicating the direction of Cogmind when offscreen.
More ALERTs! All 0b10 bot calls for reinforcements that didn't already have one now display that notification as an on-map ALERT message. Even Garrison Access points which are activated in response to calls for backup will now also display that notification as an on-map ALERT message. These things existed in the message log before, but they're kinda important so making them flash and beep will make it extra obvious that Very Serious Things are happening.
The ability to tag an item with custom text as a memory aid is a rather common feature among classic roguelikes. Tagging is usually a part of the item identification process, and due to the nature of Cogmind's items and ID system it's almost never useful, hence the absence of a tagging feature all these years. However there are a handful of special cases towards the end of the game where you may know what a particular unidentified item is (based on where you found it) but not want to immediately attach-ID it. So now you can.
To tag an inventory item with a text note, press Shift-Alt-t followed by its inventory number. This feature is generally used to tag unidentified prototypes and alien artifacts that are known based on other factors or meta knowledge, so that they're not lost in the inventory later, indistinguishable from other unidentified artifacts. Erase an existing item tag by entering an empty tag for it. An example of tagging a serious item with a non-serious tag:
(Currently it's one of the rare keyboard-only commands, but we'll eventually get mouse access as well once there are enough of these rare commands so I can find a suitable UI scheme to include it.)
There are already a ton of methods for keyboard players to interact with items, but hey we can always use one more, right? This one is another feature found more often in classic roguelikes: modal item management. Some players prefer a fully modal approach to item interaction, rather than requiring the use of Ctrl/Shift/Alt key modifiers. The new 'p' key is the answer. It opens a menu that gives access to any part-related action, so [p] -> [action] -> [letter or number of part]. Here's the reminder that appears on entering the mode:
'p' was originally used to toggle the Part Auto-Activation feature, a key I'd always planned to replace when we needed it for something more vital, and it turns out 'p' for parts is perfect for the new modal menu :D (The old hotkey has been switched to F10 so it's still available if anyone really needs to toggle it in realtime.)
We have a number of feature requests in this section, too, which I'll point out here in case they'll help others as well...
Normally the map automatically pans during movement to keep Cogmind in the center, which is important for a number of usability reasons, but if you don't like that it can now be dectivated via advanced.cfg by setting viewFollowsCogmind=0. Here's a demo comparing the two methods using more or less the same scene:
There have been several requests to not autocenter on quitting mapshift mode because players who prefer scrolling with that method then can't follow drones very far. I've made that the default behavior and there's currently no option to change it back, as this technically brings it in line with all other scrolling methods--you can use either Enter key to recenter when you need to.
For fliers, non-forced melee attacks now require confirmation, since the intent may have been to jump a bot but you forgot to deactivate your melee weapon. (This can be turned off via ignoreFlyingMeleeConfirmation in advanced.cfg, though keeping it on will probably save you a facepalm or two in the long run.) Also mainly to benefit fliers, heat flow errors due to corruption temporarily block movement (as with part rejection), otherwise long moves could suddenly be hit with a heat spike and continue along happily until something burns out xD
A quick mention because I don't have anywhere else to put it: There were a few achievements that couldn't be earned in Beta 6, but now everything is available!
Meta Fun
Fun extra #1:
With a single command you can export a full-sized PNG of the current map as you've explored it. Images are placed in a new /screenshots-maps/ directory and named with the map's name, depth, and the number of turns spent on that particular map when the export was made. This process may take a few seconds because it needs to sequentially render numerous frames across the entire map, compiling them together into a single huge PNG.
Being a collage of screenshots, image exports use whatever font and size you've currently set. The example above shows an export using size 20 tiles.
I'm interested to see what people do with it, and I imagine it'll be useful for things like certain types of guides, creative endeavors, and strategy research. We've already been seeing some really cool exports shared by players during the prerelease testing phase.
Map exporting is currently keyboard-only: Shift-Alt-m. Like the Shift-Alt-t for item tagging, this one should eventually be mouse accessible as well, but not for now.
Fun extra #2 you probably don't want to do but here we go:
There are already a ton of ways to get data directly from Cogmind, or indirectly through the wiki or about leaderboard player performance, but one of the external pieces of data we don't yet have is robot stats. I certainly don't want to make players record individual data points from the game to populate the wiki, so for that and other uses I've added a command line option that automatically generates a CSV file containing all the robot data. The item gallery CSV export has already been used to generate the wiki's item pages, but there's been no corresponding feature for robots, until now :)
Here's a sample excerpt of the export, which in its entirety includes 179 lines and over 8,000 data fields o_O
Obviously there are going to be massive spoilers in the complete file, but I imagine anyone who does this will be aware of that fact... Note you don't need any of this to play since object data is available in game, but some players like to have it around as an external reference.
This feature isn't even documented anywhere but here for now. It's command line only. Run the game with the "-exportRobots" argument, then once it starts up you have to actually move one space for the export to happen :P
Housekeeping
Special thanks to all our Beta 7 prerelease testers, who helped iron out a few issues and also sparked some tweaks before today's full release.
And thanks to everyone for your Steam reviews! In case anyone missed it, there's a pre-1.0 medium-term goal you can help with which could affect the future of Cogmind development. Check out the original announcement for more info. Reviews are very helpful for increasing Cogmind's visibility on Steam and by extension make it possible to keep bringing the updates :D. So many plans...
There is currently a 10% discount on Cogmind to coincide with the Beta 7 release. As a heads up, this is the largest discount Cogmind will have during Early Access unless at some point Valve decides to again offer exposure for a larger discount like they did in December 2017, in which case I might take them up. (But I wouldn't count on them doing that again, there being so many games out there these days :P)
For Linux users, Cogmind may now be installed through Steam. Read more in the last section of SITREP #35.
As usual, this weekend will not have a SITREP so soon following a new release. The next will come the week after when we'll take the usual look at player stats from Beta 6, our first release with [256!] achievements.
Now that Beta 7 is out I will, however, start streaming again, in fact starting shortly after this release announcement--let's play with these new hacks!
Beta 7 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and have autoupdates enabled, Beta 6 is still available via its own legacy branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
74
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #36: The Gunslingers
« on: August 31, 2018, 05:09:23 PM »
Less than a week until the giant collection of robot hacks will be at your metallic fingertips :)
I've played the first few real runs to ever actually use the system and it's been a lot of fun, can't wait to share it with everyone! Here's the very first run of a hacker-to-be after having raided the first garrison you can find (-8):
The Beta 7 release date should be about 9/4-ish.
This week in particular I worked on a variety of little last-minute features and fixes...
You Die, Now Also You and You
"Gunslinging" is now guaranteed. It's the ability to attack multiple targets in succession if using a gun-only volley (and the first target is destroy), and it used to only happen 50% of the time, further modified by utilities.
Guaranteeing this effect was already possible later in a run with some targeting computers, but now it'll be a reliable tactic even early on, and make a difference for builds that start out by adding extra weapon slots. In the background I've always been working on plans to increase the value of non-utility slots, especially weapons, so this is one way to achieve that (although it took a player request to point this one out, thanks Jivya :D). This change also has the nice advantage of simplifying the whole secondary targeting thing.
For consistency (and because giving melee builds extra situational buffs is a long-term trend :P), multiwielding melee builds are also guaranteed to switch to additional targets after taking out the first, assuming there are follow-up attacks.
On the topic of melee combat, it turns out that some knockback code I added earlier made it possible to push robots back multiple spaces while multiwielding impact weapons, which doesn't make much sense so I had to do something about that xD. It was pretty funny, and suddenly "safer" to knock targets back into explosive machines.
One Key to Rule Them All
While technically I think the 'a' key rules them all since it handles lots of part management automatically, you can never have too many optional ways to manage your inventory! Some players would prefer a fully modal approach to item interaction like that found in other roguelikes, rather than requiring the use of Ctrl/Shift/Alt key modifiers. (Yes we're talking keyboard play here--mouse users who can do everything with the almighty cursor you can skip to the next section :P)
The new 'p' key is the answer. It opens a menu that gives access to any part-related action, so [p] -> [action] -> [letter or number of part]. Here's the reminder that appears on entering the mode:
Along with this update, the menu and other modal state identifiers that have always appeared across the top of the map view now displace the temporarily interface message if there is one, like so:
Earlier any message would temporarily overlap with the mode name, making it harder to tell which mode was active, or if one was active at all. It didn't seem to bother anyone, but then once familiar with the functions you won't be in any given mode for long at all anyway (plus there are sound cues). Still worth polishing up, though.
Autobots, Roll Out!
With everything pretty much in order, this week it was also time for automated testing. This is where bugs (especially weird emergent stuff) can be caught simply by having a large volume of random actions play out, more specifically in this case by pitting random robot factions against one another.
You can divide bugs into two main categories: Those caused by player interaction with the world which can be identified by observation upon doing XYZ, and those caused by some unknown source who-knows-where on the map. Automated testing can catch some of the former, but most important to catch before release are the latter type because inexplicable crashes might result in a lot of misdirection when it comes to players trying to report bugs without having anything to go on (as long as it's a crash the logs will include a trace to shed some light on the issue, but that might not always be enough).
Of course, that's not to mention if something can be caught right here and now via automation it's way better to let the computer do the work than bugging players! (and later me with reports that distract from progress elsewhere xD)
With so many bots and systems out there on any given Cogmind map there are tons of things going on behind the scenes, so the chance for hidden emergent bugs is high. I used to always find lots of stuff via automated testing before each update, although with Beta 7 this is the first time ever that autotesting turned up zero issues. That was nice :). It's likely because a huge chunk of the upcoming release is player-initiated hacks rather than automated systems, and thus outside the scope of autotests. Myself and others have tested all the hacks and resolved any known issues, but there's probably still room for emergent craziness to show itself. If we really need it I'll be releasing a 7.1 to correct anything serious.
For testing I generally just run four instances at a time, one for each physical core on my laptop, but this time I upped the instance count to nine just for fun. That's about 90% CPU usage right there.
I also recently added yet more on-map alerts for Beta 7, so while these tests are going on there sure are a lot of red messages piling up as turns race by.
Be with you in a few days for Beta 7, which has of course been dubbed "Hack the Planet" :D
Cogmind will be 10% off next week for the new release.
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example Beta 6 here.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
I've played the first few real runs to ever actually use the system and it's been a lot of fun, can't wait to share it with everyone! Here's the very first run of a hacker-to-be after having raided the first garrison you can find (-8):
The Beta 7 release date should be about 9/4-ish.
This week in particular I worked on a variety of little last-minute features and fixes...
You Die, Now Also You and You
"Gunslinging" is now guaranteed. It's the ability to attack multiple targets in succession if using a gun-only volley (and the first target is destroy), and it used to only happen 50% of the time, further modified by utilities.
Guaranteeing this effect was already possible later in a run with some targeting computers, but now it'll be a reliable tactic even early on, and make a difference for builds that start out by adding extra weapon slots. In the background I've always been working on plans to increase the value of non-utility slots, especially weapons, so this is one way to achieve that (although it took a player request to point this one out, thanks Jivya :D). This change also has the nice advantage of simplifying the whole secondary targeting thing.
For consistency (and because giving melee builds extra situational buffs is a long-term trend :P), multiwielding melee builds are also guaranteed to switch to additional targets after taking out the first, assuming there are follow-up attacks.
On the topic of melee combat, it turns out that some knockback code I added earlier made it possible to push robots back multiple spaces while multiwielding impact weapons, which doesn't make much sense so I had to do something about that xD. It was pretty funny, and suddenly "safer" to knock targets back into explosive machines.
One Key to Rule Them All
While technically I think the 'a' key rules them all since it handles lots of part management automatically, you can never have too many optional ways to manage your inventory! Some players would prefer a fully modal approach to item interaction like that found in other roguelikes, rather than requiring the use of Ctrl/Shift/Alt key modifiers. (Yes we're talking keyboard play here--mouse users who can do everything with the almighty cursor you can skip to the next section :P)
The new 'p' key is the answer. It opens a menu that gives access to any part-related action, so [p] -> [action] -> [letter or number of part]. Here's the reminder that appears on entering the mode:
Along with this update, the menu and other modal state identifiers that have always appeared across the top of the map view now displace the temporarily interface message if there is one, like so:
Earlier any message would temporarily overlap with the mode name, making it harder to tell which mode was active, or if one was active at all. It didn't seem to bother anyone, but then once familiar with the functions you won't be in any given mode for long at all anyway (plus there are sound cues). Still worth polishing up, though.
Autobots, Roll Out!
With everything pretty much in order, this week it was also time for automated testing. This is where bugs (especially weird emergent stuff) can be caught simply by having a large volume of random actions play out, more specifically in this case by pitting random robot factions against one another.
You can divide bugs into two main categories: Those caused by player interaction with the world which can be identified by observation upon doing XYZ, and those caused by some unknown source who-knows-where on the map. Automated testing can catch some of the former, but most important to catch before release are the latter type because inexplicable crashes might result in a lot of misdirection when it comes to players trying to report bugs without having anything to go on (as long as it's a crash the logs will include a trace to shed some light on the issue, but that might not always be enough).
Of course, that's not to mention if something can be caught right here and now via automation it's way better to let the computer do the work than bugging players! (and later me with reports that distract from progress elsewhere xD)
With so many bots and systems out there on any given Cogmind map there are tons of things going on behind the scenes, so the chance for hidden emergent bugs is high. I used to always find lots of stuff via automated testing before each update, although with Beta 7 this is the first time ever that autotesting turned up zero issues. That was nice :). It's likely because a huge chunk of the upcoming release is player-initiated hacks rather than automated systems, and thus outside the scope of autotests. Myself and others have tested all the hacks and resolved any known issues, but there's probably still room for emergent craziness to show itself. If we really need it I'll be releasing a 7.1 to correct anything serious.
For testing I generally just run four instances at a time, one for each physical core on my laptop, but this time I upped the instance count to nine just for fun. That's about 90% CPU usage right there.
I also recently added yet more on-map alerts for Beta 7, so while these tests are going on there sure are a lot of red messages piling up as turns race by.
Be with you in a few days for Beta 7, which has of course been dubbed "Hack the Planet" :D
Cogmind will be 10% off next week for the new release.
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example Beta 6 here.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
75
Announcements / SITREP Saturday #35: map.png
« on: August 24, 2018, 05:28:03 PM »
Beta 7 is around the corner! We're heading into the final phases of development for this cycle, and with all the major features done, as usual I spent a good hour organizing and prioritizing a list of what else I'd like to pack in. Looks like it'll be ready for you within two weeks.
Probably the coolest feature to show for the week is map exporting. With a single command you'll be able to output a full-sized PNG of the current map as you've explored it.
Images are placed in a new /screenshots-maps/ directory and named with the map's name, depth, and the number of turns spent on that particular map when the export was made. This process may take a few seconds because it needs to sequentially render numerous frames across the entire map, compiling them together into a single huge PNG.
Being a collage of screenshots, image exports use whatever font and size you've currently set. The example above shows an export using size 20 tiles, and here's the same map instead using size 12 ASCII:
This was originally a debug-only feature I added years ago specifically for creating images for game media (desktop wallpapers, image backgrounds, etc), though now everyone will have access to it and I'm sure it'll come in handy.
I'm interested to see what people do with it, and I imagine it'll be useful for things like certain types of guides, creative endeavors, and strategy research.
FIXed
The top priority for late-cycle dev is to clear out Beta 6 bugs, and this time around we have more than usual since it's been a while since the last release--more obscure things to report! :P
I noticed on a recent playthrough that Waste and Garrison markers couldn't both appear on the same floor on the world map, and also that it was no longer showing the Garrison marker if currently inside one. Fixed that:
Also I finally addressed the fact that two labels for the same exit can appear when it's right off the edge of the map. I've known about this for years but that section of code is really complicated and doing anything about it was problematic (not to mention that behavior did have its advantages sometimes) so I mainly ignored it, but recently got two reports about this... May as well do something about it to save everyone some time. Here's a before and after comparison:
Although most of this week was spent resolving bugs, before release I'll also be spending some time slipping in smaller new features and QoL stuff.
I got a request from someone with vision issues to make it possible to play without automatically scrolling the map as you move, so that's a new advanced option. Here's a comparison of that and normal behavior:
This mode would basically require manual scrolling, or using the recenter command manually.
Like map exports this was something I could already do on my side, originally added specifically for convenience when recording certain types of demo GIFs.
Quick Analysis
If you're looking to up your speedrunning game, zxc has put together a new spreadsheet analyzing the top runs among those participating in the weekly races.
You can find that and more speedrunning resources in the new repository thread on the forums.
All Penguins on Deck
In case you haven't heard, Valve has launched a new opt-in beta program that allows Linux players to install and play Windows games via a built-in version of Wine.
Cogmind in particular has undergone extensive playtesting under Wine (including fixes for all known issues) and the experience is on par with the Windows version, so if there are any issues it'll be on Valve's side, but even though it just launched it already seems to be working more or less okay.
For now Valve is manually whitelisting games and only has a few, but you can get around that restriction by changing this setting:
For reference there's a huge community-organized chart of games and their compatibility under the new system, where players can contribute their experiences with different games.
Anecdotally it would seem that so far Cogmind works normally with Valve's version, except there have been two cases where users with PulseAudio didn't have any sound (restarting seems like a way to get that problem to correct itself). In any case, if there are any other issues Valve will probably fix them down the line, and Cogmind's system requirements are quite simple so in general once they come out of beta Cogmind will be as smooth for everyone as it is using external Wine solutions. Valve's new thing seems to already work fine for most players though, so that's nice :)
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example Beta 6 here.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)
Probably the coolest feature to show for the week is map exporting. With a single command you'll be able to output a full-sized PNG of the current map as you've explored it.
Images are placed in a new /screenshots-maps/ directory and named with the map's name, depth, and the number of turns spent on that particular map when the export was made. This process may take a few seconds because it needs to sequentially render numerous frames across the entire map, compiling them together into a single huge PNG.
Being a collage of screenshots, image exports use whatever font and size you've currently set. The example above shows an export using size 20 tiles, and here's the same map instead using size 12 ASCII:
This was originally a debug-only feature I added years ago specifically for creating images for game media (desktop wallpapers, image backgrounds, etc), though now everyone will have access to it and I'm sure it'll come in handy.
I'm interested to see what people do with it, and I imagine it'll be useful for things like certain types of guides, creative endeavors, and strategy research.
FIXed
The top priority for late-cycle dev is to clear out Beta 6 bugs, and this time around we have more than usual since it's been a while since the last release--more obscure things to report! :P
I noticed on a recent playthrough that Waste and Garrison markers couldn't both appear on the same floor on the world map, and also that it was no longer showing the Garrison marker if currently inside one. Fixed that:
Also I finally addressed the fact that two labels for the same exit can appear when it's right off the edge of the map. I've known about this for years but that section of code is really complicated and doing anything about it was problematic (not to mention that behavior did have its advantages sometimes) so I mainly ignored it, but recently got two reports about this... May as well do something about it to save everyone some time. Here's a before and after comparison:
Although most of this week was spent resolving bugs, before release I'll also be spending some time slipping in smaller new features and QoL stuff.
I got a request from someone with vision issues to make it possible to play without automatically scrolling the map as you move, so that's a new advanced option. Here's a comparison of that and normal behavior:
This mode would basically require manual scrolling, or using the recenter command manually.
Like map exports this was something I could already do on my side, originally added specifically for convenience when recording certain types of demo GIFs.
Quick Analysis
If you're looking to up your speedrunning game, zxc has put together a new spreadsheet analyzing the top runs among those participating in the weekly races.
You can find that and more speedrunning resources in the new repository thread on the forums.
All Penguins on Deck
In case you haven't heard, Valve has launched a new opt-in beta program that allows Linux players to install and play Windows games via a built-in version of Wine.
Cogmind in particular has undergone extensive playtesting under Wine (including fixes for all known issues) and the experience is on par with the Windows version, so if there are any issues it'll be on Valve's side, but even though it just launched it already seems to be working more or less okay.
For now Valve is manually whitelisting games and only has a few, but you can get around that restriction by changing this setting:
Quote
Steam -> Settings -> Steam Play -> Enable Steam Play for all titles
For reference there's a huge community-organized chart of games and their compatibility under the new system, where players can contribute their experiences with different games.
Anecdotally it would seem that so far Cogmind works normally with Valve's version, except there have been two cases where users with PulseAudio didn't have any sound (restarting seems like a way to get that problem to correct itself). In any case, if there are any other issues Valve will probably fix them down the line, and Cogmind's system requirements are quite simple so in general once they come out of beta Cogmind will be as smooth for everyone as it is using external Wine solutions. Valve's new thing seems to already work fine for most players though, so that's nice :)
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example Beta 6 here.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on Steam or r/Cogmind, but feel free to post replies here, too :)