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Yearly Archives: 2021

Spicing Up Primary Maps 1: Cargo Convoys

One of the core principles of Cogmind’s original level design was to split the world into two types of areas: the main complex vs. branches. I wrote about this concept here on the blog shortly before Cogmind’s first alpha release, but one function of this approach is to provide a tamer more predictable central route […]

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Extreme Infowar: Active Sensor Suite

While earlier in Beta 11 development I already revisited and expanded Cogmind’s selection of parts geared towards information warfare, there was a need for yet another new one to complement the upcoming Heavy class. This time it’s a big one with even more (big!) benefits but also more (big!) drawbacks! Introducing the Active Sensor Suite… […]

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“Desire Paths” for a Robot World

desire path (n.) — a planning term referring to a path made by walkers or cyclists, as opposed to one that is officially planned For years I’ve always been interested in making some kind of utility that allows you to see paths that were traveled by robots, partially because it just seems like a neat […]

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Design Overhaul 3: Damage Types and Criticals

With fundamentals like storage and propulsion out of the way, it’s time to turn our attention to weapons! Originally there weren’t any plans for sweeping updates to weapons and I just wanted to rebalance them in a few areas, but as you’ll see here, a few smaller ideas ended up snowballing into something decidedly bigger… […]

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Design Overhaul 2: Propulsion

The previous design overhaul discussion covered storage capping and its changes to the core gameplay, but the first experimental build we played around with also included major changes to another even more fundamental aspect of any build: propulsion. Although not all of the experiments panned out in this case, after a number of revisions I […]

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