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4201

Ideas / Re: Comparison View - a second data window

« on: May 26, 2015, 12:22:10 AM »

I wanted to add to this discussion for reference: Note that right now an effective way to do a basic comparison of all parts that are both attached and in your inventory is to use 'q' mode, which shows data strips for each of them.

4202

General Discussion / Re: First Recorded Win Per Build Compilation

« on: May 26, 2015, 12:17:48 AM »

I don't even know the final goal of the game or how levels there are or... well, in fact I don't know shit aha

Haha, well, you can start piecing together the background story by hacking terminal records. Later on the story will be a bit more interactive and require less proactive effort on your part (though you'll only understand some of the details by parsing records).

But a major element of the game is exploration and discovery, so not know what's going on is normal right now

The story can wait until you know how to kick butt and have time/hacks to spare at terminals!

4203

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Re: Seeding not working (maps still random)

« on: May 26, 2015, 12:04:02 AM »

The same seed should absolutely generate the same dungeon. It's what I used for testing, even. That's all it affects--the generation of maps and their contents throughout the game.

And... wow, I just went to test it and it didn't work. Well damn, no idea how that happened since it was working perfectly not long ago.

Moving this to bugs and will solve.

Edit: It was likely some last minute changes to the seeding system that I made while working on the trailer (I was using some hacks to force a specific map to generate repeatedly regardless of other conditions or seeds).

4204

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Re: Log window covers the Cogmind

« on: May 25, 2015, 11:48:52 PM »

Yeah, the purpose of the log expansion is just for parsing the last many turns, not to continue playing. It's true you can theoretically do it because input is still accepted, but with half your map view covered that's pretty dangerous.

I'd rather leave it as is to discourage that.

4205

Ideas / Re: Tutorial messages are not logged to a log file

« on: May 25, 2015, 11:38:26 PM »

That was intentional. Honestly I don't remember doing it, but I think it makes sense for most people. You apparently really like to read through your logs and learn from them, though, so perhaps that "verbose log" mode I was talking about could also include tutorial messages!

4206

General & Off-Topic / Re: Introduce Yourself!

« on: May 25, 2015, 11:36:28 PM »

Welcome everyone!

In my experience (some of which is based on data) I'd say Kasaris does fall at the lower end of the roguelike audience age spectrum. That's slowly changing, however, with more and more "roguelites" appealing to a wider and younger audience.

I do a bit of programming, and made my own silly little roguelike that I like to mess around with when I have time.

Hey Zach, glad the blog was able to draw you in (though honestly attracting an audience was only one small part of its many purposes!).

If you ever want to share what you're working on, we have Sharing Saturday every week on /r/roguelikedev! Me and other /r/roguelikedevs will also be hanging out in #rgrd on quakenet this Saturday (5/30).

When I'm not playing videogames I'm probably programming something, setting up a new NAS, turning a netbook into a firewall, or anything generally computer nerdy.

I love how roguelike players are often nerdy tech people. It makes being a roguelike dev so much easier, and so much more fun .

Can't wait to get some Cogmind tournaments going so I can lose but have some fun checking out everyone's builds!

Yeah, I was really hoping to set that up soon but we need some bug fixes first (and QoL features), and there hasn't been time yet :/. Obviously later on you guys can feel free to run your own tournaments. Cogmind is seedable, too, so that should be fun

Just got a forum account a day or so after getting the game so that I could join discussions. I particularly like the addition of the fabrication of parts and allies to the original 7DRL mechanics.

Don't forget to fill out the form that was linked in the original email--I don't think your data was in there unless you just added it within the last hour or so.

My favorite genres are RTS, TBS, Simulation, and Roguelikes. A bit harder for me to single out any specific games as I tend to drift from one to another over time.

I do hope there's a lot of crossover between Cogmind fans and TBS, so that everyone's happy when I eventually switch back to making the new X@COM

-How did you learn about Cogmind?
I found out about Cogmind after seeing a post from the blog on IndieDB about four months ago

Glad I started posting on Indie DB . I didn't want to attract a wider audience too early, but late last year I just started taking 1.5 years of blog posts and spamming them onto IndieDB one every three days. That got a a lot of people interested pretty quickly. Happy that you saw it!

-What other roguelikes do you enjoy?
I really enjoy The Ground Gives Way!  I tried getting into ToMe, but I'm finding it a bit of chore.

I've been chatting with BtS lately (he just got Cogmind, too!) about game design. At its core TGGW is kind of like a fantasy Cogmind.

To be honest I don't like the overall design of ToME, but many players have a taste for it so that's good for DarkGod.

4207

Ideas / Re: Score uploading/bone files

« on: May 25, 2015, 12:24:57 PM »

I see that the Cogmind is uploading scores to the server, are there plans for a public ladder or online listing of the scores?

I do hope to have this in the future in some form, yes. Right now it just stores your score sheets on gridsagegames.com.

I'm not doing anything with them yet, but later on we can analyze them to get metrics useful for balancing the game, or just fun

They'll also be used when we have tournaments, but I've yet to set all that up. I think my original plans for a tournament next month may have to be postponed because I'm still too busy with the non-dev stuff. Cogmind's popularity has exploded a little more than I anticipated...

Bone files would also be a nice extra feature, if possible.

Would that really be meaningful/noticeable with Cogmind, though? As is the maps are quite large, especially once you get out of early areas--you're likely to only see a small portion of a map before you leave it (and your entrance point is actually randomly chosen from among several possibilities).

You can try to sell me on the possibility, though I'm generally against any kind of meta that affects future games.

4208

General Discussion / Re: First Recorded Win Per Build Compilation

« on: May 25, 2015, 10:34:14 AM »

Haha, and here I saw this thread pop up and was like someone won already?! Not that it's impossible with some dedication and (this early) probably focusing on a very specific strategy, but still

PS: No more than 3 dev stages please

You didn't get the memo? After Alpha we're going Beta (2016), Gamma (2017), Zeta (2018) and then, finally, I'll start calling it 0.10

4209

Support / Re: Settings not saving..

« on: May 25, 2015, 10:28:35 AM »

Many games offer when instaling to choose where you want to have your saves etc. stored...

Interesting, I haven't encountered that before.

In any case, Cogmind doesn't have an installer (I hate them myself, but I should provide the option eventually when the potential audience grows).

There is one drawback when you store your files in the installation folder: if there are two people playing the game on the same pc, they need to have separate copies of the game... Considered the size of the game this isn't too much of an issue though

Haha, that is true, and another way to look at the benefit of user-relative data storage, which is why MS does it... but it's annoying for those who prefer having everything in one convenient place and not have to go find some differently named directory (or subdir, or subsubdir...) over in %appdata%.

As a workaround for the game being installed in the program files folder:
icacls "C:\Program Files\COGMIND" /grant %USERNAME%:(CI)(OI)F
This grants all full access to the current user. Needs to be executed with admin privileges: press Win+X -> Command prompt (admin).

(I think this issue should be gone when you release on Steam - some of my Steam games also seem to store their savegames locally)

I'm not too familiar with Steam, but I imaging it does handle local saving just fine since games are run under Steam's own privileges.

4210

Support / Re: Game Resolution

« on: May 25, 2015, 10:06:53 AM »

Bigger text increases the size of the UI proportionally (which is why they're removed as they won't fit), so an alternative option to aid readability will be to add more fonts which will offer better readability at the cost of immersion.

These will becoming no later than Alpha 2, because they're a pretty basic need, I think.

I assume the alternative size 12 font doesn't do anything to help in this case? The only temporary workaround would be to hook up to a larger external monitor. (I know, not much of a workaround .)

4211

Support / Re: New Res?

« on: May 25, 2015, 10:01:24 AM »

Yup, it was the DPI scaling after all, thanks heaps. Great fun so far, deeper than most rogue games too which is nice.

Whew, good to hear. That's new to me, too. Apparently it's possible to have Cogmind.exe turn that off itself, so I'll be adding that in a future version.

And glad you're enjoying it! I hope you guys are entertained enough for a while as I have so many non-gamedev things to do right now... really want to get back to work on the game itself.

One other question while I'm here though, is there any way to get a bigger tileset?
For whatever reason I'm limited in my options to 10 and 12 point at 1280x800 and wouldn't mind larger graphics on the map section, the font's perfectly readable though so I could take it or leave it.

Manually setting the font or the map size in the cfg seems to give me no success either.

The largest font that fits in 800px is size 12, so no bigger fonts (since the UI wouldn't fit in the interface). There will be other fonts added at all sizes eventually for better readability for some players, though they will in most cases not be stylized and therefore reduce immersion.

For the larger fonts (which go all the way up to size 24 right now, and up to 36 in the next release) you'll need a higher resolution.

4212

General Discussion / Re: Ran out of matter.

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:59:28 PM »

Kasaris has it--that's one of the main purposes of ramming (in the 7DRL there was no ramming and if you ran out of matter you lost!). It hurts, but that'll hopefully remind you to manage your matter just a little more closely next time

Does bumping peaceful robots increase alert level/attracts unwanted attention?

Not too much.

4213

Ideas / Re: Save all messages to the scores/*.txt file

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:43:53 PM »

While I wouldn't want that in there by default because it would really clutter up the log, what I can do for you is add a way to activate a "verbose log" in the options which will record more details like that.

4214

Ideas / Re: Which machines are ready for hacking?

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:35:38 PM »

Thank you for all the machine suggestions. Those are good and will help.

4215

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Re: Local keyboard layout ignored

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:30:29 PM »

Same issue here with Finnish keyboard.

I cannot use the [ ] keys to scroll the inventory.

http://frontype.com/keyboarding/540px-Computer-keyboard-Sweden.svg.png

No wonder you were asking me where that was . (Temporary workaround, by the way: Use t/m/i keys to sort your inventory and get different items to the top--it's rare that you'd have more than 15 or so items, anyway. Or I could be wrong and some of you are major packrats--Cogminds masquerading as Scavengers )

It is true Cogmind is based entirely on US keyboard values. One solution would be remappable keys, though as I've discussed elsewhere that's almost certainly not going to be a possibility.

I could however look into detecting layouts and translating keys automatically, though I didn't have experience with this and wasn't sure if that would be an optimal solution for players with non-US keyboards. I'm also not sure yet that the engine can support it in an ideal manner. If I can get something like this to work, I could combine it with a text file parser that allows anyone to define keys to translate into other keys, though I'd have to look into what values that would take in order to be compatible with the engine.

This might take some work, but I do believe it's very important. I'll be leaving this in the open bugs board and anyone else feel free to chime in.

4216

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Re: Shift+number changes inventory order

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:20:16 PM »

You are right, I completely missed the description for the autosort option...
I still do not get the point of switching it on, though.

When I first activated the option I thought it would automatically reorder the inventory according to the last selected inventory sort mode (t/m/i), which would make much more sense to me.

The main purpose was to make it easier for you to immediately see what other similar items you may already have in your inventory. This is especially useful for large (>10) inventories where they may not be on the same page.

By contrast, t/m/i sorting is purely for comparing parts based on different criteria when you need to cull parts, or select one of something which you may already have several similar versions of.

4217

Support / Re: Cogmind on a 4K monitor

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:12:02 PM »

I uploaded a new version with the correct directory structure.

Edit: As of Alpha 1b these fonts are all included with the game.

4218

Support / Re: Cogmind on a 4K monitor

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:07:47 PM »

Oh, whoops... I'm so tired from the launch that I really should not touch anything in the game right now

I'll fix that.

And hopefully you saw this and were able to get some other larger fonts working for you Sterlin?

4219

Support / Re: New Res?

« on: May 24, 2015, 10:06:07 PM »

You're using Windows? Win8, perhaps? This is an OS settings issue, but the solution might depend on your setup.

We will probably be able to bypass it from within the game in future versions, but if that's the case for now there is an alternative solution you could try. Let us know!

As for windowed mode, you should be able to downsize to a 600px window, but that is pretty small and provides ASCII only. You won't be able to upscale beyond size 12 because the next size up after that requires 840p.

4220

Support / Re: Settings not saving..

« on: May 24, 2015, 09:59:44 PM »

edit: ok so i extracted archive to different folder (same partition) and it works now..

One of the requirements for installation is that it be somewhere you have admin privileges to allow for file saving to the local directories.

Thanks for helping me out infectedm!

@Kyzrati: I think on Windows all user-specific data should be written to %appdata%.

It's true that this is the "proper" way to do it, but I personally find it incredibly annoying when games do that. Most roguelikes store their files locally. But then of course most roguelikes are not commercial games...

If possible I'd like to keep it as is, but if it becomes a huge issue for a lot of people I could change it. (The funny thing is, once that changes we start getting queries about "where the heck is my config data?!" )

4221

Support / Re: High CPU Use

« on: May 24, 2015, 09:55:17 PM »

Thanks, guys, and @nsg21: At 5 it gets "really jerky"? I would think so, that's pretty darn low! I haven't tried low capping myself, but I imagine you'd want at least 20-30 so the effects retain a minimal appeal.

You're playing on a Core2 Duo?

Window size also plays a rather large part in determining CPU use, since most of it goes to rendering (unless you're in the Factory, where moving a lot will ramp up the AI processing since the maps are so huge).

4222

Support / Re: High CPU Use

« on: May 24, 2015, 09:02:27 AM »

While I have no knowledge about the game engine, I would think that if there is nothing happening (no user input), the cpu usage should drop to near 0%.

I always thought it was "near zero" because it hangs around 1-3% for me when minimized , and I don't exactly have a new computer (dev machine is a mid-range ASUS laptop from 2012).

Except for the occasional flickering, the output doesn't need to be redrawn at all when the user isn't pressing any keys or moving the mouse.
Maybe there is an easy way to determine if a redraw is really necessary and simply reuse the last rendered frame if not?

The game does use a bit of optimization to not do excessive repeat work. I built that part literally years ago so I... can't really discuss details I don't remember .

It could possibly be more optimized. I'm still curious how the FPS cap works for nsg21.

4223

Support / Re: Online payment via direct transfer

« on: May 24, 2015, 08:30:53 AM »

Me too. Get in here

4224

Support / Re: High CPU Use

« on: May 24, 2015, 08:29:54 AM »

10-14% for while playing isn't too bad considering it's run 100% by your CPU (both logic and software graphics)--the engine doesn't care about the video card. It will naturally be higher than pretty much any other major indie game out there because they all do their heavy lifting on the GPU.

Based on what you say I can consider the possibility of completely pausing the game while not in focus. Do you guys think that makes sense?

4225

Fixed Bugs & Non-Bugs / Re: Manual command 'repair' without an item scanned causes crash

« on: May 24, 2015, 04:13:46 AM »

Absolutely, thank you for the reminder! Adding to my bug fix notes now...

And thanks for having log uploads enabled. It could come in really handy if you find something very rare that happens in the background.