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[Kyzrati]

Thanks, glad to hear it--maybe you can voice the background for a future trailer intended to show how amazing everything is

I was a radio personality for three years, it's possible!

WHOA! (Did I do it right? =p)

I've never been a fan of art styles like this, but it looks really fun!

I get quite a few comments to this effect, which is good because I'm trying to expand beyond the normal audience with Cogmind. Thanks for mentioning! ::heading in right direction::

Hey, that looks like a pretty cool game, even looks suitable for something that could be polished up and published to mobile.

You know, I hadn't even thought of mobile. Maybe I should try that.

And here I thought I was stating the obvious I'd say go for it if you're into trying out mobile dev.

[saibot216]

Thanks, glad to hear it--maybe you can voice the background for a future trailer intended to show how amazing everything is

I was a radio personality for three years, it's possible!

WHOA! (Did I do it right? =p)

Nah nah nah, you gotta be REALLY impressed, like stunned. You need more emotion in your "woah"s

[Kyzrati]

Read about robots.

[JobLeonard]

You state in the blogpost that this graphic won't be part of the game, but wouldn't it be a useful illustration in the help docs you mean to add?

[Kyzrati]

Meh, I don't think it adds anything that isn't pretty apparent. Nor does it look very good, to be honest! The ASCII art for individual parts was drawn to look good only on the item info screen; when you put them all together like that it looks like... crap.

[JobLeonard]

Speak for yourself, I like it

[Kyzrati]

Ha, well, I made it so naturally I think it's sub-par!

[Muzz]

ugh ugh this looks so good. 

[Kyzrati]

Been working on fonts, and thus begins a new series of posts on the subject, starting with Fonts in Roguelikes. The first post turned out to be quite long, but includes lots information other devs will hopefully find useful.

There are many images, though most aren't directly related to Cogmind. I do, however, show the 10x10 mini-fonts in action:

[eigenbom]

Nice mini fonts

[Kyzrati]

Thanks, there's only so much you can do with so few pixels, but I do like small fonts myself They work really well with monospacing.

The text shown is actually 5x10 (chars must be FOUR pixels wide )--the associated 10x10 would be on the map, but I didn't show that yet.

[RecidivistSW]

Yeah, this is a great game for font fetishists.  Where are you getting these fonts, if you don't mind me asking?

[Kyzrati]

Out of my head

Seriously, I do reference other bitmap fonts that I find randomly around the web for inspiration, but I actually draw fonts myself--been doing it for about 10 years. In fact, right now I'm writing the next blog post about my process, so there are more details to come. A lot more fonts will be shown over the next few weeks.

[RecidivistSW]

I should have know that you are a font fetishist.  Looking forward to the blog post.

[Kyzrati]

Very much so

I love playing with font bitmaps. and have spent way too much time doing it considering I haven't really *needed* that many fonts before... Been thinking of digging up some old unused ones just for the next post (I'll see if any of them are useful for demonstration purposes). In any case, Cogmind will include a fairly wide selection of fonts. Most will generally stick to the same theme, but the styles will have their own tweaks for each size. Probably about 25 bitmaps in all (each size requires at least three fonts--text, map and art--and each size usually has at least two styles).

[Kyzrati]

Aaand, the next font post is published, this one looking more specifically at techniques for font implementation and design. Not a ton of Cogmind examples yet--those are coming next time where I'll be showing more than two dozen fonts.

Decisions decisions... just look at the difference a 1x1 vs 2x2 period makes (no other changes):

[Kyzrati]

Finally working on giving the map its own animations. Many will be of an informative nature, but I started with special effects for sensor activation (mostly fluff, but at least show you the range of your sensors).

Imp. Sensor Array (Robot Sensor):


Imp. Terrain Scanner:


Also, now that fonts are done (27!) I've moved the OP progress bar thingy up to 70% :D
Most of the remaining development is focused on content.

[JobLeonard]

Gorgeous as always!

[DuckfaceNinja]

This is by far the most creative use of font I've ever seen.   

[Kyzrati]

Check out the large number of font options in Cogmind.

A Phase Cannon diagram shown using multiple manually scaled bitmaps, 10×10 through 20×20:


Sample text using three variants of the 9x18 font:

This is by far the most creative use of font I've ever seen.   

Thanks man! The engine is pretty limited, but within those limitations it feels like there's unlimited creative space to explore :D