Official development blog

Category Archives: GUI

Designing Cogmind’s World Map

Cogmind began as a 7DRL based around a simple fight (or flight!) from your subterranean starting location directly to the surface. As the new Cogmind works its way towards 1.0, a big part of its departure from those humble origins is the significantly expanded world. (For an initial discussion about the layout of the world, […]

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An Alternative UI?

Normally when I publish a new article, the focus is on explaining the results of some new feature/mechanic/design. Today’s post is a little different because it’s about an important feature that has not yet been implemented, nor have I come to a decision on how best to handle it. I’m using this post as a […]

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UI Feedback: Map Dynamics 2.0

A while back I mentioned a design initiative based on the concept of “map dynamics,” aimed at increasing player focus on the map area as opposed to the message log or other windows. After the initial spate of related features and animations, this part of development was put on hold as the rest of the […]

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Options, Revisited

Cogmind’s game options were first covered in a post last year, but the selection has since expanded, and because their number has grown closer to what will be their final state, I went ahead and implemented the in-game interface which I’ll be introducing here. My original intent was to add a new top-level options menu accessed […]

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Map Dynamics

Continuing on the concept touched upon in the previous post about message logs in roguelikes, shifting the player’s attention from log to map works in tandem with making more information available directly on that map. I like to summarize this kind of feature with the phrase “map dynamics” (from a UI perspective, not map layout), […]

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