Thanks for the quick replies, guys. And how on earth do you manage do create a game like that and still be able to reply to almost every post - that's another thing I don't get haha
Your answers make sense and about the lore, I absolutely agree that it works best with the game. I hope you didn't get me wrong on that matter, cause I actually like it alot. The only problem for me is that I actually have to pay attention for once. Probably played to many jrpgs in my younger days with a lot of smalltalk stuff that doesn't add anything to the story and is mostly pointless chatter. Or comparing it to the souls series where the lore is not required for directions, those are easy in these games: Kill more bosses :)
I know saying "I don't have time" may seem like a blatant lie looking at my cumulative playtime, even though the game is running idle quite a bit, I still spent most of this time in front of the computer hehe. I have very few games total (only around 45), compared to a VERY high playtime. There's some personal issues to my "limited time", also the reason why I haven't played in months, but stuff like that doesn't really fit in here. I'm also not sure if skill is the problem, looking at other ppl's scoresheets that include different endings, I can see that I've been to these places myself, often I just stumpled upon them, not even prepared and we all know, preparation is half the battle. Still taking it as a personal challenge though hehe. When you're saying there's stuff that's apparently so tough to handle, really good incentive. The only thing I can say about a lack of skill is, I'm unable to control High Sec for long, meaning triggering it and still keep exploring. It must be doable though, GJ is on high sec 60% of the entire run.
I'm basically concerned that I might be missing something obvious or smaller, not talking to somebody, not picking up an item (like the sigix corpse, which I almost left behind, but someone somewhere mentioned something about bringing it to the surface - I think a terminal by its side, not sure anymore). I would like to figure this out all by myself, the main reason I'm asking is that I honestly don't know where to start first, even though the list of potential leads is actually quite long. I was hoping I would get some endings accidentally, because I visit a lot of places in almost every run, but usually get side tracked or bail because of High Sec threat, knowing I can't handle it for long, especially without an exit yet.
I have an idea though, a way to squeeze some information out of you without having to spoil anything. I'll list what I know of and think is related to different endings and all I would like as an answer is yes or no. This way I can try to make a beeline for these places, which will cut down the time required for that run and hopefully bring me closer of figuring stuff out myself. I will still do that btw even if nobody answers those, but I'd appreciate it if you did :):
- Does installing RIF prevent you from getting any of the different endings?
- The locked off Caves at Zion, never entered them yet
- Section 7, I've been there by accident, but never explored the place really
- Zhirov at Archives Event, which I mentioned in prior post
- Hidden Lab beyond Armory, I think Data Miner tells you about it
- Warlord, which according to Kyz does not lead to a different ending, very surprising. I've expected something like teaming up with him and taking over 0b10 or similar
- "God Mode", some big robot, maybe you have to use the code that Data Miner gives you to "use" it, I wouldn't know where to look for the thing though. I stumbled upon a thing called "Fortress" before, I think in Testing, wanted to kill it but already hit High Sec and well you know the story by now, I bailed haha
- Command and the heavily protected corridor (probably leading to MAIN.C), not the somewhat weaker protected one leading out - that was actually my first win.
- Command and the "seals" you can break for Assembled to flood the place, I also did that on my first win, but maybe there's more to it
@Kyz: One last thing to satisfy my OCD on the need to explain myself. I bought Cogmind because it looked interesting, it's a roguelike and I like difficulty. Never ever would I have expected the lore to be a significant part of it. Since I'm mostly interested in a game's mechanics, I expect lore to be more of a filler, which it often is. Not for this game though, which I think is a great achievement. I'm sure many have told you before, but kudos for creating this piece of art.
@zxc: you don't happen to have a recorded stealth run of yours? Couldn't find anything on youTube/twitch, I'd be interested though :)
I have an idea though, a way to squeeze some information out of you without having to spoil anything. I'll list what I know of and think is related to different endings and all I would like as an answer is yes or no. This way I can try to make a beeline for these places, which will cut down the time required for that run and hopefully bring me closer of figuring stuff out myself. I will still do that btw even if nobody answers those, but I'd appreciate it if you did :):
I'll try for the Yes/No thing, though I'm not certain on the answers. To be clear this is whether a specific thing affects the ending you get or not, almost all the things have lore and some major lore.
- RIF: Yes, it prevents one (pretty sure)
- Caves: No
- Section 7: No*
- Zhirov at Archives: Not exactly (he can affect the win you get when he's not at Archives)
- Hidden Lab: No*
- Warlord: No
- God Mode: I don't think so
- Command: Yes
- Command seals: I think yes
* There is an ending you can get by visiting either of these places that you can also get another way.
I had 4 different schematics in that other save? That's surprising, coulda sworn it really just was the exp. phase shifter. But who cares anyway, the bug is now gone (well, for us players, will be hehe) - really cool stuff!
I have another small story regarding this elusive bug:
As a reminder, I'm still on the hunt for lore and especially all endings (two to go wohoo). So for the next run I really wanted the branches to have a specific layout and before I kept playing random seeds over and over, I just looked at some scoresheets to get what I was looking for - I admit this is kinda cheaty, but saves so much time. Checking the Alien Tech used, I was like - wow this gotta be a great seed and jumped in. So when I reached those interesting floors, it hit me like a truck. Aren't you forgetting something here? You idiot just hacked a dozen of terminals again for schematics, how can you be sure to get the correct mapgen!? Just to clarify, this was not mandatory for what I actually wanted to try, but good tech makes your life easier and again, I got greedy. "So what to do?" I wondered while I kept exploring, when I stumbled into the Core Reset room: "Ah yea, I totally forgot! Thanks game, this is EXACTLY what I need right now!" :D
You can now read about this in even more detail on the blog ("Debugging Mapgen Seed Divergence (https://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2018/11/debugging-mapgen-seed-divergence/)"). I took the notes from earlier and added some images, more background info, extra details...
Would this also fix the problem I had a while ago being unable to find 5H-AD0 in ZDC using a seed where someone had found him? Or is that a completely random encounter not related to the map seed? Reading the blog post it sounds like it's related to interactive machine generation and I don't think there are any of those in ZDC (but I could be wrong!)
Or is it affected by divergence on other maps in the same floor, even if not the same map?
Would this also fix the problem I had a while ago being unable to find 5H-AD0 in ZDC using a seed where someone had found him? Or is that a completely random encounter not related to the map seed? Reading the blog post it sounds like it's related to interactive machine generation and I don't think there are any of those in ZDC (but I could be wrong!)
Or is it affected by divergence on other maps in the same floor, even if not the same map?
I cannot give you a definite answer to this, Kyz will have to do that, but I might as well tell you what I know
A given seed it supposed to generate the absolute identical stuff, including random encounters. Once a seed has started to diverge, it keeps doing that for the rest of the maps. The trigger starts with a terminal trying to get you schematics (and also lore I believe) that you do not have yet, which is why the likelihood rises towards end game. While unlikely, this does not mean it cannot happen on Z-level. The only other possibility would be, that there is another trigger for this guy to show up, like talking to a specific npc or something. I don't know much about that, never been in ZDC yet.
It's definitely a case that should get confirmed with the debugged mapgen version. Cogmind has become so complex, especially code-wise, that even the dev does not remember everything right away, unless he gets pointed to it. The reason why this bug was so hard to find and who knows, maybe there is another small (and potentially very rare) issue within the mapgen process, that is not related to just the terminals.
RIF prevents you from allying with Zion and Warlord, yes.