Sometimes I need to balance large scale combat between armies. I mean I can certainly make some educated guesses based purely on numbers alone, but in the end there are a lot of factors involved, be they build-based, environmental, event-related, or whatever, so I do have to at least watch entire battles play out from start t...
2020-09-05 13:30:32 +0000 UTC View PostThey're alive! Mostly.
Unfortunately relying on a third party to handle the leaderboards clearly didn't turn out so well in the end, and with Beta 10 mostly done we really need to get official Beta 9 leaderboards up and running. Not to mention there are plenty of people out there who enjoy either aiming to rise through ...
2020-08-21 12:39:30 +0000 UTC View PostWell I can at least say that for Cogmind progress it sure is a good thing summer will be coming to an end soon enough :P
The summer months are especially tough on development since my son is out of school, meaning more activities and trips, and I also help out with the annual r/RoguelikeDev tutorial. This year there hav...
2020-08-13 11:27:51 +0000 UTC View PostLots of games have "minimaps" allowing you to view a greater area than normally visible in the game screen, although (except in maybe a few rare instances) these usually aren't games with displays limited to a strict terminal grid like we have with Cogmind. After all, you can only "zoom" so much given the restrictions of such...
2020-07-31 11:53:37 +0000 UTC View PostSo there's been an unexpected change of plans with Beta 10. As recently as last week I'd intended to put another prerelease version up on Patreon, possibly the last for Beta 10, which included pretty much everything going into the official release.
The remaining goal for that release was to simply clear out the final li...
2020-07-24 23:32:16 +0000 UTC View PostBeen two years since I did a full REXPaint release! This was originally going to simply be an incremental v1.05 combining all the little patches I've been putting out since 2018 in response to feature requests, then on a whim I decided to finally try taking a serious stab at supporting extended tilesets (fonts with more than ...
2020-07-10 04:23:27 +0000 UTC View PostContinuing where we left off with my article introducing Cogmind's new soundscape and its development, here's another explaining the closed caption-like audio log, visible SFX, and other audio options, as well as discussing some parts of the implementation process for these features.
I've embedded it in image form below...
2020-06-30 07:17:28 +0000 UTC View PostAlthough there aren't any plans to add new maps in the near term, it's guaranteed we'll see more eventually, at the very least as part of the Merchants Guild update. On the Discord patrons channel yesterday there was a question about how and where new maps might be added, so I thought I'd cover that concept in a more general ...
2020-06-24 03:30:46 +0000 UTC View PostBeta 10 is still probably a ways off from release (still lots of fixes to go, plus some new content to add...), but I do have another prerelease for you if you're playing now or want to explore some of the new features.
The main feature of X2 is that we now have SIX new RIF abilities! This means you'll ...
2020-06-16 07:14:19 +0000 UTC View PostYay, a huge milestone finally reached! I'd been putting off the remaining ambient audio content for quite a while for various (good ;) reasons, but now it's reached a mostly complete stage, and the results seem to be pretty sweet. I just streamed my first run Beta 10 today, and felt that for the most part these new sounds do ...
2020-06-02 08:52:22 +0000 UTC View Post
Woohoo, it seems to be working out so far :D
Pretty much every audible named machine got its own sound effects this week, over 100 of them. I actually did a sudden dev stream yesterday (will be up on YouTube tomorrow) to share the results so far since it would be more fun to do all that walking around in different maps ...
2020-05-22 23:22:24 +0000 UTC View Post
Heh, well I said I wasn't getting into a routine of this sort of post, but it so happens there are a number of different things going on, so here we go again :P
Beta 10 will bring a bunch of new features so it's still early in development yet, but after completing all the drone and AI work I 2020-05-16 23:15:30 +0000 UTC View Post
This latest article is a much-expanded version of similar lists I've given out before, complete with samples, anecdotes, and other info. Now it's finally all in one place as a comprehensive look at the tools I'm using, which some of you might find helpful, or to satisfy your curiosity :)
I've embedded it in image form b...
2020-05-11 02:49:29 +0000 UTC View Post
Okay so despite the title here they're not all about combat. In fact, fewer than half of the new drones can actually fight. From a design perspective the goal was to add drones that would be interesting as drones, providing new mechanics or supporting strategies rather than just complementary firepower.
They're all comp...
2020-05-04 03:54:24 +0000 UTC View PostNope, not getting into any sort of monthly routine here, but this is just a collection of random goings on and I needed a title :P
As you know, last week I ended up releasing more updates for Player 2, since it's both fresh in mind and I'm currently streaming that (and enjoying it greatly and plan to do...
2020-04-20 03:00:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Time for another quick release! I've been having fun with Player 2, and both myself and other players have been noticing some things that could be better which were already piling up in my notes for Beta 10. But I've already finished...
2020-04-11 08:52:30 +0000 UTC View PostWell that took a big longer than expected! Partially because there was a release just last week, but also because this is Yet Another Long Article (plus everything's a bit slower these days coronavirus impacts...).
I've seen and gotten a lot of questions about multitile creatures over the years, so I thought it was abou...
2020-04-07 06:51:14 +0000 UTC View PostThe voting has finally come to a close, and the results are in:
Drone Overhaul is the winner, so as promised, here come lots of dron...
2020-03-23 07:33:03 +0000 UTC View PostPlayer 2 is here! Took longer than expected partially because the virus thing is having a wider range of impacts on daily life than I might expect (even if we're currently better off here than in many other places), but also because because there's a lot of work behind the scenes for this one even if the changelog isn't incre...
2020-03-18 09:43:14 +0000 UTC View PostThere is a new wizard key for Beta 9.5 (attached), as well as some new features related to the new mode.
New console commands:
Thank you for a YEAR of support on Patreon! Wow, hard to believe it's been that long already, but it's been so helpful and about time to start allocating some of this to audio resources to finally bring Cogmind to 1.0.
I still haven't started on Beta 10 proper due to all the AI work that's been going on. Recently I've b...
2020-03-03 08:27:37 +0000 UTC View Post
Sadly the Battle Royale mode I was describing earlier will not be officially released...
I spent a fair amount of time developing the fundamentals to get it playable so I could test it out, and as soon as it was semi-playable immediately real...
2020-02-18 12:31:23 +0000 UTC View Post
So last year on 4/1 we ended up with Pay2Buy as a special mode, but that wasn't actually the first idea planned for that event. Before going on to build that mode I'd actually tested another that sparked my interest at the time...
2020-02-08 02:32:07 +0000 UTC View PostRemember last year when I was talking about my repeated interest in creating a bot to play Cogmind? Well, it's sorta happening.
Not nearly to the extent I was discussing there, mind you, but these things are best approached one step at a time...
2020-01-24 02:46:16 +0000 UTC View PostIt's that time again, to vote for which of these features you want to see most in Beta 10! As a major release it will of course include many other things, but among the following optional features, I'll implement whichever you all want to prioritize:
So the leaderboards aren't up yet, but with Beta 9.4 behind us I finally had a chance to get into the stat side of things. Again much of this isn't something I can really do on my own given how it's been handled (far outside my realm of expertise), but anyway, I asked Will for some direction and got some tools that have enabl...
2020-01-09 01:48:44 +0000 UTC View PostThe promised RPGLIKE update is here, bringing with it mostly fixes but also some important balance changes as well. I've designated it as "X1" even though it's not really an experimental release and will likely be the same version that goes out next week aside from having the real version number attached. (Thought I'd keep it...
2020-01-03 13:44:44 +0000 UTC View PostA new year!
I haven't actually set a specific roadmap for all of 2020, and the further out we get the fuzzier my plans are, but we do of course have a clear direction: onward to Cogmind 1.0 :P
I can't say that it'll definitely happen this year, mainly because the audio portion has yet to be decided and that can ha...
2020-01-03 01:32:40 +0000 UTC View PostNo, sadly we still don't have operational leaderboards (out of my control...), but the backbone is there, and I'm happy to finally share it all with you! Gonna be nice once the results are actually visible.
Just a short update to let you know that I added a couple new commands to the Wizard Mode How-to list for Beta 9.3:
