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[Kyzrati]

Cogmind's earliest 7DRL (game jam) versions have had a lot of players over the years, though despite its moddability the included fonts and tilesets were only those that I provided, which could certainly use more work.

Pilcrow has now done that work, and there are not a bunch of new options for players to try out. (Extra neat because that version is free, and some people use it kinda like a demo.)

A sample screenshot with one of the settings:

(more samples on Pilcrow's github)

And there's even a symbolic "binary" mode for those crazy enough to use it

Fitting for the theme, anyway! I might have to add a mode like this to the new Cogmind just for fun...

[Zireael]

A binary mode in current Cogmind would be loads of FUN!!!

[joey4track]

OMG binary mode! You have to be robot just to play it, haha   

[Kyzrati]

Some people who play roguelikes are practically robots already, so maybe it will be more natural

I really would like to add this feature to the new/current Cogmind, though unfortunately the text font is half as wide, i.e. non-square, meaning the text and map characters would not look identical. That's kinda problematic... It works much better in the 7DRL which is square across the board.

[Kyzrati]

Still on temporary hiatus due to my injury, which continues to push back the Steam launch despite the game itself being ready. Full dev status update on the forums. In short: Doing everything I can to recover but still unable to work for now :/

(Also: My blog made a top 50 gamedev blogs list :D)

[JobLeonard]

One the one hand, I hope you'll get well soon... on the other, you work like crazy and if this is what it takes to slow you down for your own health, I'm not sure if I should encourage you to start working again too soon

[Kyzrati]

Well, I admit it's been nice to actually take it easy for a change, though on the other hand not so easy with the growing fear of a long-term plan in chaos gnawing at my mind, too xD

[JobLeonard]

I recommend mindfullness and a more flexible, "modular" style of short-term planning

[Kyzrati]

Quick alternative wall experiments, for science!

Because it's been a while since I showed anything, I had the idea to do some images just for fun. No these aren't in the game or anything, but it's pretty quick and easy to see what Cogmind looks like with differently-styled walls, so we may as well try it out

First we have your regular small blocks:


Then larger ones:


And completely solid walls:


Solid walls without any floor dots:


And I even found the old X@COM wall code still sitting in the Cogmind code base, so here we have oriented narrow line walls:

(Mixed in there you can also see the earth still represented as # within the walls.)

I wanted to see what some wall-related animations might look like as they interact with the different cells, so I tried an Exp. Terrain Scanner on the solid walls:


And then also on the line walls:


I'm getting "better enough to work again," so things are going to start happening soonish. Steamy things. Full update about what's been going on here.

[Zireael]

Line walls look great! 

[coughlinjon]

This is the first I've seen of your game. The visuals look great You do a good job making them pop with the brightness. I typically struggle with ascii art, but yours already feels more alive than what I'm used to. I will be checking the finished product out Good luck!

[JobLeonard]

I second that line walls look goooood

[Kyzrati]

Heh, I admit I'm a big fan of line walls, too--it's what I used in X@COM to begin with (hence the code for orienting them still lying around ), though in that case it was kinda necessary since there are many types of walls and I wanted to at least have the option of using single or double lines to differentiate thickness in some cases.

They come with problems, too, the biggest being orientations giving away information the player shouldn't know yet, like what's behind a newly spotted wall, or that an end piece spotted far ahead is actually a corner (so they know one cell in advance that there's going to be a turn or junction up ahead). Changing orientations in real time to reflect actual knowledge is quite complicated (and processing intensive), so I don't really consider it a valid solution (unless I had infinite time to deal with it...).

Also the screenshot I made there is kinda cheating, making the line walls look even better than usual, because I used the debug view to reveal all the earth behind them. Players normally don't see that earth (unless they have an active terrain scanner), and without it it's just a bunch of lines that look a little bit more confusing (sorta like the solid walls, although not quite that bad since at least there's orientation...).

This is the first I've seen of your game. The visuals look great You do a good job making them pop with the brightness. I typically struggle with ascii art, but yours already feels more alive than what I'm used to. I will be checking the finished product out Good luck!

Thanks! For Cogmind I always use maximum saturation, which combined with usually greater than 65% brightness makes for a pretty "popping" look . More muted colors can be used for good effect in an ASCII roguelike as well, but are much harder to get right (you have to know more about color, and I admit I am not that person xD), and besides, this is a sci-fi tech roguelike where super-bright consoles are a very appropriate style anyway :D

[joey4track]

That's one thing I've loved about Cogmind since the beginning, it's always reminded me of the bright green glow from my grandpa's TRS-80 Model 4P. As a kid in the 80's that thing was magical to me.

[Kyzrati]

Well, it's been over two years so I finally updated the gifs shown in the OP!

Various destructive scenes... (hundreds of particle effects with accompanying audio)

Some inventory management with ASCII art and... destruction and repair

It's tough to make gifs that really reflect all the different systems and the overall experience that emerges from the ways they work together, so I just settled for common gameplay stuff that simply looks cool

These newer gifs aren't hugely different in content from the older ones, though I'd since improved some animations, changed to a more easily readable default font, and decided to go with gifs that were a little busier by comparison. That last bit might cause them to turn off some potential players, but it's probably more important to reflect that the game is fairly complex with a lot of moving parts.

[Kyzrati]

I've hit a certain button around here...


Yep, it's time.

Release should be some time in October, but I still have plenty to take care of before then and can't yet set a specific date. Note that it'll be "Early Access"--as mentioned before I think it's worth just putting it out like that and continuing to add some new features rather than finishing up the last little bits of polish that must be done before I'd call it 1.0 and doing a full release first.

Pretty soon I'll see about putting up a Coming Soon page on Steam to help raise awareness. That'll be announced here (etc.) when it happens.

This weekend I'm also submitting to IGF 2018. Not much chance of Cogmind being recognized there (too niche!), but it's something I've always wanted to do so why not :D

There's also a new release coming out next week, which is done but I prefer releasing early in the week xD

[JobLeonard]

 

This weekend I'm also submitting to IGF 2018. Not much chance of Cogmind being recognized there (too niche!), but it's something I've always wanted to do so why not :D

Too niche for the Independent Games Festival?! I think not.

[Kyzrati]

Haha, you kidding me?! Traditional roguelikes are a niche within a niche!

I'd be surprised to get any kind of recognition compared to games that would be played and enjoyed by many more people, including those leveraging "modern" graphics and backed by small teams of artists ("indie" is a pretty broad definition these days--there's a lot of dev money going into it now).

Not to mention the judges won't have enough time with Cogmind to discover what it's really like anyway--all the best stuff is hidden, or at least takes experience to reach/find and I've never shown any of it before . And the most easily accessible elements like my extensive UI work would unlikely be appreciated by those unfamiliar with terminal games, I don't think (so, most people!).

But hey, I'm willing to be proven wrong

[JobLeonard]

I guess it all boils down to "do the judges immediately think "Nethack" in response to "traditional Roguelike" or not?"

Because if so, even if it's not their niche, they'll know enough to be impressed by this game

I'm not saying you'll win IGF, but I'm pretty certain you'll get more recognition that you're thinking your are going to get.

[Kyzrati]

Cogmind Beta 2.2 "Shields for All" is out, with revamped treads, wheels, and... shields :D. Basically they're all more fun and useful. Also 17 new items!

Release notes/images.

Beta 2.2 (0.10.170926) changelog:

* NEW: 17 new items (several with new mechanics)
* NEW: 2 new minor encounters in Mines
* NEW: Many terminals now also contain random item schematics
* NEW: Hack failure output also displays the chance of success, including for indirect hacks
* NEW: "Survival Tips" added to beginning of manual, including in-game reminders to check them out
* NEW: Researchers also react to spotting ramming/kicking/crushing attacks
* NEW: Attempted ramming/kicking/crushing attacks in view of a Researcher displays warning, as with other attacks
* NEW: run.log records the number of loaded rebinds and keyboard layout changes
* NEW: A few straggler Alpha supporter names registered since Beta 2 added to in-game list (see Credits menu)
* MOD: All multislot parts immune to severing
* MOD: Swapped support of Imp. Q-thruster and Cld. Q-thruster
* MOD: Cmb. Antigrav System coverage lowered from 55 to 35
* MOD: Hyp. Gauss Rifle and Hyp. Railgun recoil set to 1
* MOD: Adjustments to lore CSV and HTML output to avoid confusion between two particular categories with the same name
* MOD: Removed all references to "direct fire" weapons from utility effect descriptions to avoid confusion
* MOD: Ramming/kicking/crushing damage is capped at 100, before the damage roll
* MOD: Remote Shield Generators renamed to Remote Shields
* MOD: Remote Shield (and similar utility) effects no longer stack with each other, regular Force Fields, or other shielding effects
* MOD: VFP coverage tripled
* MOD: Art for many shield utilities swapped around to suit new sets
* MOD: Energy Mantle renamed to Remote Force Field
* MOD: Quantum Shroud renamed to Energy Mantle
* MOD: Looping through Access-depth Garrisons no longer advised
* MOD: Network Hub bonus increased, but multiple hubs provide diminishing returns
* MOD: On-map item labels always show rating where applicable, even if Tactical HUD off
* MOD: Robot salvage in caves does not self-destruct in the easiest difficulty mode
* MOD: "Armored" items renamed to use "Arm." new prefix
* MOD: Removed Com. Heavy Treads
* MOD: Dur. Treads and Dur. Medium Treads replaced by Armored variants
* MOD: Spiked and Heavy tread variants now move at same base speed as regular treads
* MOD: Base penalty for overweight treads increased from 20 to 30
* MOD: Heavy tread variants have increased support
* MOD: Many special tread-based robot variants switched to new types of treads
* MOD: Most wheel stats adjusted, particularly even lower overweight penalty and somewhat lower coverage
* MOD: Imp. Spread Laser range increased from 8 to 10
* MOD: Ambush traps no longer appear in Materials
* MOD: Allied drones ordered to return to their bay will always do so even if under fire and otherwise attempting to flee
* MOD: Tutorial message memory no longer completely resets itself when new additions are made (file format changed)
* FIX: Opening a hacking window within 5s of loading a game that logs an internal warning shows a line of garbled characters behind window [DDarkRay]
* FIX: Crash on triggering a trap while sound card disabled [mungomongol8]
* FIX: Crash if Phasing AFG resulted in an item overlapped with a non-cardinally adjacent door attempting to close [GJ]
* FIX: Crash if allied drone parked at edge of map view spotted a self-destructing part just outside view [GJ]
* FIX: Tread crushing effect description did not cap chance value, causing largest tread type in world to display incorrect percentage [GJ]
* FIX: Schematic(Matter) was accessible via indirect hack (albeit meaningless) [GJ]
* FIX: Rewiring of disrupted robots via datajacks was possible even on hack-immune bots [GJ]
* FIX: Relative value coloring of regenerative plating inverted [GJ]
* FIX: Cannibalization Units could in some cases restore parts to greater than max integrity [GJ]
* FIX: Actual botnet effect was lower than advertised in the tooltip [GJ]
* FIX: Newly allowed inventory item ID retention on core reset was also identifying previously unknown prototypes [Sherlockkat]
* FIX: A random dialogue encounter still referenced an old renamed NPC class [Sherlockkat]
* FIX: An earlier adjustment to a Zion encounter could cause certain allies to join before intended contingent on map layout [Sherlockkat]
* FIX: Typo in newly added dialogue [Sherlockkat]
* FIX: Typo in lore export category named after a major NPC [lsend]
* FIX: Multiple core resets would erase artifact knowledge without restoring it [lsend]
* FIX: Missing period in Propulsion Shielding description [Amphouse]
* FIX: Prototypes, Schematic(), and Analysis() terminals hacks listed incorrect chance of success (somewhat lower than advertised)

Also hopefully this week there will be more news on the Steam front. (I'm waiting for them to get back to me...)