Hayo fellow Cogminders and Josh!
Thought I would start an early/first impressions thread going.
Before I start my early impressions I just wanted to say congratulations to Josh. I did not buy into alpha on a whim, I have been watching this game's development for a while. I have been impressed by not only the game itself, but also how well organized and proficiently executed this game's development has seemed to be from the outside. You make other small dev teams look like children messing about. Keep up the hard work Josh, your raising the bar on Roguelikes with Cogmind. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out. That being said, here are my quick impressions.
Things that have already blown my mind
- The UI
- Being able to switch between ASCII and Tiles with one button (F3) in game. This little feature really impressed me.
- Animations/graphics of weapons
- Early stages of sound already working. Can't wait to hear what kind of musical direction is taken with the background tracks/ambiance etc.
- Games already pretty addicting/awesome in alpha
- Already pretty robust in game options
- The game already has a good level of polish on it
- Good depth to the game
Things that I was mildly annoyed/frustrated/concerned by
- I fiddled with the size of the in game ASCII/Tiles in the options I believe and I wish I could make it bigger. I feel like I have to sit either close to my monitor or strain my eyes.
- The Main character tile is in my humble opinion pretty lack luster/boring (kinda petty I know T_T). Wish he was either cooler, your somehow allowed to choose your MC tile, or if there is time maybe a bit more dynamic look.
- I wish there was a toggle for item names. I cant read all the items on the floor fast enough when pressing 3 once. Specially when there is lots of loots on the ground.
Well those are my first/early impressions on Cogmind. I really do enjoy the game so far and am looking forward to seeing how much better it gets from here. What about you guys? What do you think so far about Cogmind now that you got your hands on the alpha?
Quote from: Snugglesworth on May 25, 2015, 12:07:47 PMI wish there was a toggle for item names. I cant read all the items on the floor fast enough when pressing 3 once. Specially when there is lots of loots on the ground.
You can just hold 3.
Quote from: Draxis on May 25, 2015, 01:11:21 PM
Quote from: Snugglesworth on May 25, 2015, 12:07:47 PMI wish there was a toggle for item names. I cant read all the items on the floor fast enough when pressing 3 once. Specially when there is lots of loots on the ground.
You can just hold 3.
That just causes the id's to blink on and off repeatedly for me.
Quote from: boomblip on May 25, 2015, 04:47:20 PM
That just causes the id's to blink on and off repeatedly for me.
Oh, you're right - I had thought it kept them up.
Thank you very much Snugglesworth. Happy to have your support, and hear such flattering comments. I just do my best. (Although in these early stages I sometimes don't get to all forum posts quickly enough with so much going on...)
The music/ambience will be fun when we get to it :). I have a good idea of what I want to do, but I'll also let you guys, and of course the composer, help decide what goes in in the end.
Quote from: Snugglesworth on May 25, 2015, 12:07:47 PM
I fiddled with the size of the in game ASCII/Tiles in the options I believe and I wish I could make it bigger. I feel like I have to sit either close to my monitor or strain my eyes.
This is an unfortunate drawback to Cogmind's UI, which requires a minimum grid size to show all the necessary information. Reducing the size to allow for larger individual cells isn't really an option, so the only ways around it are to use a larger monitor or select alternative font styles you find easier to read. Some of the current fonts are not as readable (that style doesn't work well at all sizes),
but there will be more options later on. We'll see how those options work for everyone who's having trouble with this (a number of other players share your concern).
Quote from: Snugglesworth on May 25, 2015, 12:07:47 PM
The Main character tile is in my humble opinion pretty lack luster/boring (kinda petty I know T_T). Wish he was either cooler, your somehow allowed to choose your MC tile, or if there is time maybe a bit more dynamic look.
This was brought up when the tileset was first created. It's tough to make a tile that is both cool and generic-looking at the same time. Kacper should weigh in on this. He and I discussed this via email before, also with some readers of the original devblog posts.
Quote from: Snugglesworth on May 25, 2015, 12:07:47 PM
I wish there was a toggle for item names. I cant read all the items on the floor fast enough when pressing 3 once. Specially when there is lots of loots on the ground.
This will be fixed soonish. I originally wanted to make it so you could hold the key to keep them up, but that didn't play nicely with the input scheme so I had to put it on a timer. I'll be changing the behavior a bit and we'll see how that works for everyone. Now that you mention it, I think I just conjured up a hack that will enable it to be held down...
Finally bought the alpha. And i must say i'm impressed. Although i was hoping for a great game this is even better than i thought.
Few minor nitpick: when you are looking at an item from the ground (with right click) you can't rightclick on another item. Also similarly if you inspect some value in that window it should be possible to exit out of that window more quickly/fluidly...
On the other note - now i want to make a mod/game that allows to build factories like this :)
Welcome Warmist! Glad it exceeds your expectations--I promise to continue exceeding them throughout the year :)
Quote from: Warmist on May 27, 2015, 04:01:35 AM
Few minor nitpick: when you are looking at an item from the ground (with right click) you can't rightclick on another item. Also similarly if you inspect some value in that window it should be possible to exit out of that window more quickly/fluidly...
These and a few other suggestions will be going into the game at some point. They're on a list of about 10 items that have been repeatedly mentioned over this past week.
This has started me thinking that I should put up a public sticky list of suggestions already accepted for implementation... (I'll get to work on that in my copious spare time =p)
I wouldn't worry too much about making a public list - the cynic in me says you'll still see it suggested by someone new every day. Hell, even I filed a bug report on something that had already been reported. D'oh!
Quote from: Kyzrati on May 27, 2015, 12:14:44 AM
Thank you very much Snugglesworth. Happy to have your support, and hear such flattering comments. I just do my best. (Although in these early stages I sometimes don't get to all forum posts quickly enough with so much going on...)
-snip-
I appreciate the reply. Gotta give credit where credits due as far as the flattering comments go. Just don't let the little criticisms/nit picky stuff that me and countless others will no doubt pile on phase you. Just a part of the whole process. Keep being awesome! 8)
Yep, all part of the process. This is my first commercial game, but (very fortunately) I have experience releasing games and implementing feedback before, so this should go fairly smoothly.
I suppose I'll dump my impressions in now that I've had a full* day with the game.
The Good
The game is pretty.
Particle effects are all great and the ASCII art gallery looks great. Can't comment on the tiles, I ditched them as soon as I could.
Transparency is mostly solid.
Stats are all there up front, and the controls are very well organized in the help screen.
Falling apart is cool.
Being able to rebuild him and having the technology is great. Literally becoming your enemy feels awesome.
Stealth is neat.
The information gathering bits are cool and zipping around at light speeds is fun.
The Bad
Meta-knowledge plays a key factor in hacking.
Knowing the commands in one thing, but express knowledge of every bot and item type down to the letter is Nethack tier. What's more, you can't access the gallery while inputting the commands, so you have to alt-tab or have a superb memory. AND the terminal punishes you for misspelling. I'd have put this in the Subjective category if meta-knowledge elimination weren't described as a design goal.
Most of the fonts are hard to read.
This has been brought up before, I'm just adding my name to the list of people saying it. I find 14/Crisp and 18/Narrow the easiest to read, but both are on the small side.
Controls aren't in the manual.
There's no external way to view the controls before you play. While ? is standard to roguelikes, esc is standard for just about every other game. I'm glad I've played a lot of roguelikes, otherwise finding the menu would have sucked.
The Entirely Subjective
Firefights are for the most part boring.
Making ranged combat fun in a roguelike is hard. DoomRL did it by having dodging be a key component. Caves of Qud and DCSS have neato magic effects. In Cogmind, you're punished for moving and most weapons do the same thing. AND you can't wield 6 katanas at once, or swing+shoot at melee range.
Falling apart feels terrible.
Few things are worse than feeling entirely helpless. The second systems start to fall off things start to suck. You don't just loose your power, you loose all your tactical options. What's more tearing enemies apart actively hurts you. What should be the fun part of blowing robots apart is bad all around for you since you loose the salvage.
Mouse UI is meh
Already made a thread about this but I'll sum it up here for completeness. Using a mouse is like trying to use a keyboard with 4 buttons instead of a mouse.
In Conclusion
I like the game. There are a lot of solid core concepts in it I like, and the attention to details that a number of roguelikes gloss over is stellar. But there's a lot of room for improvement, hopefully things will improve as the alpha, beta, gamma, and zeta dev cycles happen :P
*not full as in an 8 hour workday, just the world rotating oncish with however long played during that time
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Meta-knowledge plays a key factor in hacking.
Actually i can't understand that either... Though i have not ventured deep enough to talk about balance or understand from where did some people find the list of commands but when you have that list it basically invalidates all the choices in the menu?
I was hoping for a some sort of hacking mini game there (though read few devs/reviewers ranting on hacking minigames) e.g. submitting commands that increase chances and maybe reduce alert levels of other actions by figuring out what was wrong with them when used (like when it says "triggered node purge" typing something like "nodes.reinit_cache()").
The other impression or possible way i thought this will work is that you would have a lower level access to same things i.e. you would have more choice with what you get (less alert with less data - maybe only one location of transporter instead of all?).
Quote from: Warmist on May 28, 2015, 01:40:20 AM
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Meta-knowledge plays a key factor in hacking.
Actually i can't understand that either... Though i have not ventured deep enough to talk about balance or understand from where did some people find the list of commands but when you have that list it basically invalidates all the choices in the menu?
I was hoping for a some sort of hacking mini game there (though read few devs/reviewers ranting on hacking minigames) e.g. submitting commands that increase chances and maybe reduce alert levels of other actions by figuring out what was wrong with them when used (like when it says "triggered node purge" typing something like "nodes.reinit_cache()").
The other impression or possible way i thought this will work is that you would have a lower level access to same things i.e. you would have more choice with what you get (less alert with less data - maybe only one location of transporter instead of all?).
I don't see this so much as a problem as a seperate option. To really utilize hacking you have to spec out your character for it. If you're packing hacks that just takes away room for combat and evasion. It's just another variable you have to consider and I quite like it.
My problem with hacking is that in some levels you just really don't have a chance to do anything useful. If you can hack a schematic for something you need, good luck finding a fabricator and not blowing it up in a firefight. If you find a repair station, good luck with it being good enough level to actually repair anything. I think the distribution of terminals/fabs/repair/scanalyzers needs to be fixed up a bit rather than the mechanics. But perhaps some help info in the manual commands would be useful to players just getting started too. I dunno.
Well, the good things are good so I only really need to address the other stuff as I can :)
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Meta-knowledge plays a key factor in hacking.
Knowing the commands in one thing, but express knowledge of every bot and item type down to the letter is Nethack tier. What's more, you can't access the gallery while inputting the commands, so you have to alt-tab or have a superb memory. AND the terminal punishes you for misspelling. I'd have put this in the Subjective category if meta-knowledge elimination weren't described as a design goal.
Making manual hacks more easily accessible via menus and such was a feature I considered before, but decided to leave out for now because the entire thing was considered kind of "extra" for the really hardcore hacker players, not for general use. But then as soon as everyone knows about this feature it seems to become a pretty essential/standard way to want to play, or at least everyone seems to believe they're
the way to win :/.
I play the game almost completely without manual commands because the only one you really should use to win in certain situations is "Alert(Purge)". That's it. All the others are highly optional; I can win without any of them.
Now if a player's goal is to become a really good hacker and build robots, I can see how the manual system may be a little tedious. An alternative would be to completely remove manual hacking of standard commands, but that would imbalance the hacking game, and make it a lot less exciting. A better solution suggested by nsg21 that somewhat addresses this issue is to allow your buffered commands to carry over between games. (Did you know about the command buffer accessible via up/down so you don't have to retype previous commands?)
Or another solution for entering robot model names specifically because I know they're not exactly easy to remember as is.
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Most of the fonts are hard to read.
This has been brought up before, I'm just adding my name to the list of people saying it. I find 14/Crisp and 18/Narrow the easiest to read, but both are on the small side.
Yep, more fonts on the way. They won't be sci-fi fonts, but they'll be easier for some players to read.
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Controls aren't in the manual.
There's no external way to view the controls before you play. While ? is standard to roguelikes, esc is standard for just about every other game. I'm glad I've played a lot of roguelikes, otherwise finding the menu would have sucked.
That's on the way.
However, in anticipation of players needing commands the installation section of the readme does have a section on commands that tells you to use F1 or '?' to get the full list of commands when you start playing.
A larger glowing '?' in the bottom right corner in a future version will also help (right now it glows, but is a little small).
Also, when you play the game for the first time it mentions in the log with a flashing pink message (and a beep) that you should press F1 to see a full list of commands.
The thing with game design is that no matter how many ways you try to convey a piece of information, unless it's via a modal window where the only option is to look at one thing before continuing,
many players will miss it.
Even if there were a separate text file named commands.txt (which there will be), most people won't even notice or read it. But at least such a file will hopefully appeal to other players like yourself.
As for your subjective elements I can't really do anything about those since they form a core part of the mechanics :(. Cogmind isn't for everyone! But we can hope that the good outweighs the bad for players who may dislike certain aspects of the gameplay.
Thanks!
Quote from: ironpotato on May 28, 2015, 10:22:21 AM
Quote from: Warmist on May 28, 2015, 01:40:20 AM
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Meta-knowledge plays a key factor in hacking.
Actually i can't understand that either... Though i have not ventured deep enough to talk about balance or understand from where did some people find the list of commands but when you have that list it basically invalidates all the choices in the menu?
I was hoping for a some sort of hacking mini game there (though read few devs/reviewers ranting on hacking minigames) e.g. submitting commands that increase chances and maybe reduce alert levels of other actions by figuring out what was wrong with them when used (like when it says "triggered node purge" typing something like "nodes.reinit_cache()").
The other impression or possible way i thought this will work is that you would have a lower level access to same things i.e. you would have more choice with what you get (less alert with less data - maybe only one location of transporter instead of all?).
I don't see this so much as a problem as a seperate option. To really utilize hacking you have to spec out your character for it. If you're packing hacks that just takes away room for combat and evasion. It's just another variable you have to consider and I quite like it.
My problem with hacking is that in some levels you just really don't have a chance to do anything useful. If you can hack a schematic for something you need, good luck finding a fabricator and not blowing it up in a firefight. If you find a repair station, good luck with it being good enough level to actually repair anything. I think the distribution of terminals/fabs/repair/scanalyzers needs to be fixed up a bit rather than the mechanics. But perhaps some help info in the manual commands would be useful to players just getting started too. I dunno.
I agree that there needs to be more tweaking of the hacking system, especially where security levels and distribution are concerned. And I didn't really expect everyone to get into the manual commands so deeply.
Quote from: Warmist on May 28, 2015, 01:40:20 AM
Quote from: Arseface on May 28, 2015, 12:40:13 AM
Meta-knowledge plays a key factor in hacking.
Actually i can't understand that either... Though i have not ventured deep enough to talk about balance or understand from where did some people find the list of commands but when you have that list it basically invalidates all the choices in the menu?
I was hoping for a some sort of hacking mini game there (though read few devs/reviewers ranting on hacking minigames) e.g. submitting commands that increase chances and maybe reduce alert levels of other actions by figuring out what was wrong with them when used (like when it says "triggered node purge" typing something like "nodes.reinit_cache()").
The other impression or possible way i thought this will work is that you would have a lower level access to same things i.e. you would have more choice with what you get (less alert with less data - maybe only one location of transporter instead of all?).
In designing the system I tried to reduce any possibility of hacking becoming a mini-game. More often than not these turn out poorly, and hacking is really meant to be a secondary endeavor in Cogmind.
Walk up to a terminal, press a few buttons, maybe pull up a buffered manual command to hack, leave.
Quote from: Warmist on May 28, 2015, 01:40:20 AM
when you have that list it basically invalidates all the choices in the menu?
No, because when you hack a manual command they are both more difficult and you cannot see the chance of success. So doing it is actually fairly dangerous.
So in that way I'm sort of surprised to such a heavy reliance placed on using many different manual commands. That's only meant for a very specific type of player (biomatter is definitely that type of player), and I believe a number of other players on the forums are possibly being influenced by a minority in that regard.
I'm still too busy with everything to be able to even read the strategies board right now so I can't say for sure. Changes that might emerge from there will come eventually, but first there is all this other stuff, and bug fixes, to tend to.
Yo, if it means anything, now that I know the difference between direct and indirect hacks I've been trying not to rely so much on manual commands. The very last hack I did in my winning run was not manual, and it sealed the game. I'm sorry if I got everyone in a tizzy over "how OP manual commands are" lol. Note to everyone: indirect hacks (i.e. manual commands) suffer a base -15% to success. 'Deep Network Scanners' can help alleviate that, though. If your Terminal has even a single good command, don't burn it out on indirect hacks. Stick to the listed commands. I only burn out Terminals now if they have nothing of interest.
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Oh look, here's that "minority" player I was referring to :P
Thanks for clarifying, because that was the intention of the design--always focus on the direct hacks available at terminals. Doing otherwise is not advisable and only for special cases where you really, really want/need something, which shouldn't run the gamut of options.
And don't let biomatter lie to you. You can't get a schematic for the B-99!
WHAT?!
Then why doesn't it say 'Schematic Not Found' like when I type in something wrong?
Hm, what does it do, then? Maybe that's a bug that needs to be fixed!!!
There are some classes of robots you're not allowed to build for mechanics reasons. Behemoths are one of them.
I'll make sure it provides an alternate message for those to let you know.
It gives me a normal fail message, as if it existed but was just a really hard hack.
Okay, thanks. I'll switch those to give a unique message. You can stop hacking them now ;). Don't hack Engineer or Carrier schematics, either.
Quote from: Kyzrati on May 29, 2015, 04:52:24 AM
Okay, thanks. I'll switch those to give a unique message. You can stop hacking them now ;). Don't hack Engineer or Carrier schematics, either.
I'm curious about engineer. Would having it allow to construct our own nuclear reactors (in lore, not in game :) ) and have our own factory?
Hehe, no. It's because they're capable of building walls, and after much pre-alpha testing that was determined to be OP. So the reasoning is purely a mechanics thing, nothing to do with lore in this case. Same with most of the other robots you can't hack (though the number is small compared to those you can).
Quote from: Kyzrati on May 29, 2015, 05:44:22 AM
Hehe, no. It's because they're capable of building walls, and after much pre-alpha testing that was determined to be OP. So the reasoning is purely a mechanics thing, nothing to do with lore in this case. Same with most of the other robots you can't hack (though the number is small compared to those you can).
Yeah it's fun to unleash tunnelers that get swarmed by engineers :D
Quote from: biomatter on May 29, 2015, 04:28:56 AM
Yo, if it means anything, now that I know the difference between direct and indirect hacks I've been trying not to rely so much on manual commands. The very last hack I did in my winning run was not manual, and it sealed the game. I'm sorry if I got everyone in a tizzy over "how OP manual commands are" lol. Note to everyone: indirect hacks (i.e. manual commands) suffer a base -15% to success. 'Deep Network Scanners' can help alleviate that, though. If your Terminal has even a single good command, don't burn it out on indirect hacks. Stick to the listed commands. I only burn out Terminals now if they have nothing of interest.
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
Schematic(B-99 Colossus)
I've been using manual commands just to get Schematics for slightly better power sources and propulsion. This method seems fairly reliable if you spend about 5 minutes working on it. After that I go back to running around and blowing things up. I have to say repair stations have saved my ass a couple of times recently. I think I like them more than the terminals at this point ;)
Edit: And of course it's an easy way to get remote datajacks. Which is pretty freaking awesome. Granted those aren't terribly hard to find lying around, but being able to produce them on a whim can be helpful.
I've gotten the B-99 Schematic, but no fabricators allow you to make it.
Apparently it only takes 300 matter :P
Quote from: Warmist on May 29, 2015, 06:54:30 AM
Quote from: Kyzrati on May 29, 2015, 05:44:22 AM
Hehe, no. It's because they're capable of building walls, and after much pre-alpha testing that was determined to be OP. So the reasoning is purely a mechanics thing, nothing to do with lore in this case. Same with most of the other robots you can't hack (though the number is small compared to those you can).
Yeah it's fun to unleash tunnelers that get swarmed by engineers :D
That you can do to your heart's content :)
Quote from: Arseface on May 29, 2015, 10:09:47 AM
I've gotten the B-99 Schematic, but no fabricators allow you to make it.
Apparently it only takes 300 matter :P
Oh interesting, so you can get the schematic! Well, I'm still going to remove that because yeah you're not supposed to be able to build them. Before release I did lower all the matter costs of fabrication because it was too hard before (also time costs were higher)--needed to make it a little more accessible. Will continue to tweak. Next I'd like to make parts fabricate in caches, in the same way you can produce multiple robots at once.
And to add to my earlier replies to you Arseface, thanks for bringing up the ESC to access help/game menu thing. Last night before bed I realized I really did need to add that one, too. I originally avoided it intentionally because there can be lots of ESC-pressing and you may accidentally open it, but I think everyone's better than that... and it will catch a few extra players who don't see the other prompts.
Quote from: ironpotato on May 29, 2015, 07:47:15 AM
I've been using manual commands just to get Schematics for slightly better power sources and propulsion. This method seems fairly reliable if you spend about 5 minutes working on it. After that I go back to running around and blowing things up. I have to say repair stations have saved my ass a couple of times recently. I think I like them more than the terminals at this point ;)
I'm glad you find Repair Stations useful! I personally never use them, and was wondering if anyone else would at all, but then I'm more of a non-stop run-and-gun kind of player myself...
Quote from: Kyzrati on May 30, 2015, 02:01:43 AM
Oh interesting, so you can get the schematic! Well, I'm still going to remove that because yeah you're not supposed to be able to build them. Before release I did lower all the matter costs of fabrication because it was too hard before (also time costs were higher)--needed to make it a little more accessible. Will continue to tweak. Next I'd like to make parts fabricate in caches, in the same way you can produce multiple robots at once.
I actually thought it was kind of neat having the schematic. It lets you look at the parts log whenever. I'd rather the impossible schematics just have some sort of disclaimer. Possibly make them buildable in specific branches that cater to their uses without letting them escape.
Oh, and it was a basic single tile level 1 terminal I got it from 8)
Quote from: Arseface on May 30, 2015, 03:26:41 AM
I actually thought it was kind of neat having the schematic. It lets you look at the parts log whenever.
In retrospect I believe that's why I enabled that, as an alternative way to get their stats (as opposed to scanning via sensors).
Quote from: Arseface on May 30, 2015, 03:26:41 AM
I'd rather the impossible schematics just have some sort of disclaimer. Possibly make them buildable in specific branches that cater to their uses without letting them escape.
Oh, and it was a basic single tile level 1 terminal I got it from 8)
Take off those glasses. Not cool! (But hey, that's part of alpha, you get to sometimes do crazy stuff that won't be possible in the full game =p)
A disclaimer could be a better solution, yeah. That can be shown in the schematic info instead of the Fabrication details.
I really have to use machines and terminals damn it, I tend to go full weapon to blow shit up and I end up destroyed all the time ahah. Seriously the game is fun even if you just (try to) gun down everything. In the long run, it is not the best solution and hacking feels like being the best solution just for the possibility to repair things.
Mmmm, I think the beauty of the game is that you can play it however you'd like. I just made it to -3 on my first serious run-n-gun attempt, so I would hardly say that hacking is necessary. It's just an accessory to a different style of play.