Another week, another batch of robot hacks for Beta 7 :)
Pretty much every bot has at least some function relevant to their job, as you can see above with the map_earth hack. Same thing below in tiles mode.
As one might expect, there are quite a few hacks that target Operators, given their access to so many systems...
Almost any combat bot can be hacked to find emergency access doors over a pretty wide range.
In general I haven't been working on combat bot hacks yet--I'm mainly going straight down my internal list, on which non-combat hacks come first, but based on some code I was working on it was more efficient to jump ahead and do a few search-based hacks like this one at the same time.
Back to non-combat hacks, how about forcing Haulers to both drop their inventory and safely identify all the contents for you?
And normally a Mechanic's special inventory of backup parts can't be accessed/retrieved, but there's also a hack to decompress those if you really want to :P
Lastly, a fun still shot from a very WIP animation that's a bit more involved.
More on that one next week.
A lot of these robot hacks also tie into AI behavior in some way, so I've been messing around in that bit of the code and making occasional related updates.
For example you may have noticed that a group of Engineers repairing lots of walls in close proximity might end up getting stuck, and the cluster of Engineers can grow larger and larger as there are incomplete projects in the queue but they're all waiting for each other to get out of the way. I left it that way since it's not too common, not all that important, and kinda funny when it happens (stupid Unaware!), but an easy fix popped into my head with the new behavior update that probably won't happen anymore.
Here you can see a group of very eager Engineers, unperturbed even by an eventual Scatter Rocket Array :P
Green for Cogmind
I didn't get quite as far along with robot hacks I would've liked this week, because an entire day's worth of work was spent switching the website over to HTTPS. For a basic website there are pretty simple ways of going about this, but my site includes a separate blog, wiki, and forums, all with content dating back years, so altogether it was a time-consuming operation.
There weren't any major hitches, it just took a while to go through all the different settings and required file updates to avoid "mixed content" warnings from browsers (where you are set up for HTTPS but still have bits of content that aren't secure).
In the end we're green across the board :D
The main mistake was forgetting that the game itself targets an HTTP address to upload scores, but that address no longer existed after the update, so until our Discord community pointed this out and I fixed it we lost a few leaderboard uploads--sorry about that xD
Amphouse: Wow, I had no idea the "hacking update" would be this thorough. :P
Outrunning Projectiles FTW
The past few weeks there's been a new community activity among the active Discord players: Malthusis is hosting seeded speedruns (by turn count), with most everyone also playing at the same time and reporting their rate of progress to the surface. These have been a pretty fun challenge, and force you to approach the game quite differently.
The speedrunning match records so far, recording the number of turns for each player to reach their final depth (or win):
As you can see it takes around 2,000 turns to win, or closer to 1,000 if you really know what you're doing (and/or also get really lucky :P). This is more or less in line with the relevant achievements, Speedrunner and Expert Speedrunner at 2k and 1k, respectively.
I've only joined in twice so far, the first time practically oblivious to proper speedrunning strategy (as a combat player, to me wheels are "fast," haha) so I got trashed. But at least reached the surface on my second attempt. I did a full writeup with images on the forums. The matches will continue off and on in the future (there are more planned for this weekend), so stop by the Discord if you're interested.
In other community news, I've decided to stop weekly seeds for now. There's more about this in the forums announcement, though since it is relevant to game design, I'll copy some of the discussion here:
It's worth noting that Weekly Seeds are fun in a lot of roguelikes but I don't think the straight up "everyone play the same seed and do whatever you want" approach works very well for Cogmind.
Where in other seeded roguelike runs players will generally be up against a lot of the same opponents on the same small maps with the same set of tools at their disposal, Cogmind maps are huge, not to mention all the different routes one can take through the world, and access to completely different strategies, so instead of players being forced to compete on a fairly level playing field, what you come up against can vary greatly depending on a lot of factors. (And that's even before we start adding in the effects of a rising alert level!)
In that light, we can why weekly seeds won't have all that much appeal, and how Cogmind is more suited to special/focused challenges with greater restrictions. We'll have to keep that in mind when thinking about how to approach any future activities :)
Wallhacks
ChromaticGray has put together a cool Cogmind wallpaper for Wallpaper Engine:
I made it for a ultrawide 2560x1080 monitor, but it should work fine on 1080 also.
Background map moves in parallax with the mouse, the Cogmind flickers and the weapons lights up in color on mouse over (that's why you only see top right colored).
Pretty awesome! Wallpaper Engine users can get it here.
I'd really like to put together some more wallpapers myself, but despite all the ideas and potential resources to draw from, I just don't have the time right now. So many other higher priorities and it's just little old me doing everything xD. The current wallpaper set on the website is the same I introduced over three years ago with the first public alpha!
Last time we got a bit of a kinetic buff with the introduction of knockback, but this is a decidedly more significant boost for KI combat builds. Kinecellerators are especially effective when combined with multikinetic volleys, although they could also be useful combined with certain cannons.
As with other weapon modification utilities, while active their effects are reflected in the info mode summary.
And of course there are better ones, too ;)
Hack the UI
But most of the week was spent on the robot hacking system, which is coming along nicely. As a further improvement on the earlier hacking interface samples I've been sharing, the header for any Relay Coupler hacks now highlights the remaining value to make that clearer.
I had noticed the potential issue while creating the original mockup, but didn't see any immediate fixes so decided to leave it like that for the time being. And of course as soon as I started sharing gifs there was already a comment about that value not being clear enough, so... yeah, I put some more time into finding a decent solution :)
Automatic removal of newly-depleted Relay Couplers also comes with its own animation in the parts list.
Hack the Bots
As for the hacks themselves, I was finally able to start implementing them this week, and have finished about one-third of the total. Here are a few samples of what's to come in Beta 7...
"generate_anomaly" attracts all nearby hostiles, in case you need some company (or have other nefarious purposes)
Like other enemy alert situations, in the easier difficulty modes this also highlights the position of any notified bots.
"generate_echo" is basically an instant one-off long range sensor.
Map walls? map_walls!
Overall, I'd say robot hacking allows for some fun stuff :P
If you've missed some previous SITREPs, or are looking for a one-stop overview of the new hacking system, check out the latest blog post.
As a reminder to anyone playing Beta 6, the next weeks will be your last chance to play with the current robot hacking system before it's completely replaced by the new one. So consider doing a run where you build up a massive amount of hackware, reboot everything that's a threat, and eventually in the late-game start assimilating many of the more powerful bots to serve you :D (the new system will still include assimilation, but you won't be able to amass an army of extremely powerful bots like you can now)
Aside: Don't worry about robot hacking achievements, though--I imagine we'll eventually be getting more of those related to the new system, and the old ones will either carry over or be replaced with more relevant options. There are only a few anyway.
As you can see, like knockbacks from impact weapons this can smash them right into machines, though this way you're less likely to be in the blast radius :P
This was originally envisioned as a cannons-only mechanic, but for now I have it applied to all kinetic projectiles and it'll probably stay that way through at least the prerelease testing phase to play with the interesting tactical effects of allowing even enemies with just guns to push you around. (To testers: Good luck defending bottlenecks against Swarmers!) It'll almost certainly be scaled back to its original scope for the official Beta 7 release, though.
A cannons-only approach will mean it mainly applies to Cogmind rather than everyone, unless of course you're hunting certain Behemoths ;)
Stay away from me, melee bots!
Knockback won't be of help against Brawlers, seeing as treads are immune to knockback, but Flak Cannons could be pretty useful for keeping non-treaded bots at bay since the effect is applied on a per-projectile basis.
As part of this update, knockbacks from both kinetic and impact damage will be capable of causing robots to hit another robot behind them, damaging and displacing the second robot.
Manual Upgrade
Manual hacking of robots is already a thing, but it's a pretty simple system that's always been used purely as a way to enter random codes you might collect as a result of certain encounters. There's not much of a need to type out any commands to begin with, considering there's a complete context menu that appears to recall all the codes, as seen here using the old hack list:
But with the number of hacks increasing significantly in Beta 7, some keyboard players might be more likely to prefer entering hacks by typing them out rather than finding them in the menu. Of course no one's going to bother if you have to type out an entire command, so like manual machine hacking we'll need to facilitate the process! For this I added both autocompletion and a command buffer. Demo (the parse_system effect at the end is just a placeholder for things to come):
It kinda sucked to have to switch the whole manual robot hacking system over from its original simple architecture (which already worked nicely) to one that could support these new features, and many hacks were involved, but hey everything once again works as expected so I won't complain! Blooper:
In adding that command buffer, technically the third, I passed by the debug buffer which showed all the commands I'd recently used while testing out the robot hacking features (specifically making sure all the proper hacks appeared while hacking different types of robots). It was kinda interesting to skim that :)
While at it I also added an advanced option to alter the default cost-wise method of sorting Coupler-based hacks:
With all this peripheral work done, next week it's finally time to, oh I dunno, actually implement some hacks xD
Be The Hacker (Part 3)
Part 1 gave an intro to the robot hacking system, Part 2 covered more of its principles and basic functionality, so now we're here with the third part to take a closer look at one of the essential requirements for a serious bot-hacker: Relay Couplers.
Most hacks require a target-appropriate Coupler to pull off, and as you've seen in previous screenshots all these hacks appear in their own box with a "Coupler" header.
The numbers off to the right aren't the percentages you might expect given the other/previous systems, but are instead static costs for executing each hack. That cost is directly deducted from the Relay Coupler value seen at the top and the hack takes effect, period. So Couplers are expendable, and each has its own "remaining value" before it is depleted. You can carry or attach as many Couplers as you want, and if you have more than one applicable Coupler for the current target robot their values are combined into a new total.
As you can see, the new system is easier to balance by forcing a trade of valuable slot/inventory space for guaranteed hacking effects, whether you want them to play a non-combat role, a supporting role, or a fully confrontational "I own you all" role.
As mentioned before, hack costs are static--there is currently no way to influence the cost via utility or other means, and allowing for the modification of costs would make it easy for robot hacking to creep into OP territory again. Better to have only one variable at play, the Coupler value, which can in some cases be higher than normal so that there's room to get more out of a single Coupler!
I've generally avoided consumables in Cogmind's design, at least in the traditional sense, but Couplers don't really fit that sense anyway since they have multiple uses and are also quite flexible in what they can be used to accomplish.
Coupler value is a factor of two elements: its source, and the type of robot it applies to. An individual [Behemoth] Coupler won't let you do much, though you could combine more than one to do just about anything! A lone [Grunt] Coupler, on the other hand, will last for a lot more hacks, depending on what you want do accomplish. There are five ways to acquire Relay Couplers, two of which I'll leave for your to discover, but here are some of the main ones:
Straight to the source! Like previous and current versions of Cogmind in which Garrison Relays play a role in robot hacking (albeit through a different mechanism), so do they under the new system. Venture into a Garrison itself and blow up relays to collect the most valuable Couplers inside.
Destroying Garrison Access locations will net you some Couplers as well. They're partially used and thus not as valuable, but at least they're fairly easy to acquire!
If lucky you can also find special caches in a Garrison containing lots of high-value Couplers, but don't count on it :P
That wraps up the series on the new robot hacking system for now. I'll do a compilation on the blog at some point, and will of course continue sharing progress reports as the hacks themselves are fleshed out, among other features to come :D
Achievements Forever
If you're interested in how achievements are decided and implemented, and didn't see the series on my blog earlier, you can check out "Designing and Building a Robust, Comprehensive Achievement System" on Gamasutra. I put it there this week and it was pretty well received, even being featured on the front page for a time :D
256 is enough for now, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more later ;)
We've gone a step further than the designs and mockups and plans of earlier, and now have a fully operational robot hacking interface. Note that's with an emphasis on interface, because none of these commands actually do anything yet, but certainly the foundation for interacting with them needs to be in place to facilitate their implementation. So with the UI out of the way, here are some more samples...
Unlike their current state, Engineers will be hackable.
Here's an example of hacking a Recycler, also demonstrating what it looks like when some required tools are unavailable.
As you can see, non-combat classes have their own class-specific hacks, the total number of which will even exceed combat hacks, making for a lot of strategic options.
Next I need to actually code all the effects!
Spice of Life
Cogmind's 8x8/Mini font is mostly for my own purposes, and fun (hey you can play in a 480p window!), but lsend used it in combination with his 3440x1440 monitor in portrait mode to screenshot one of the largest maps in the world (kinda spoilery if you look closely, but you'd need to break out the magnifying glass :P).
This week Cogmind also got a spot in a Strategy Gamer article listing some good games doing Early Access right. You can see them here.
I haven't been streaming lately, but an increasing number of frequent players over on the Discord community have been getting into it and picking up the slack. More recently we have a lot of people newer to streaming, but all of them do winning runs and special challenges:
Last time I gave an intro to the new hacking system, so let's pick up where that left off. I was just about to get into the principles underlying the new system. It needs to...
Decouple machine and robot hacking. Even just machine hacking alone provides a wide range of extremely effective abilities, so there's no reason to keep both types of hacking under the same umbrella of supporting parts. Thus robot hacking shouldn't be based on standard hackware, we'll need something else.
Control the snowball effect seen with early robot hacking. Sufficient stacking of machine hackware makes pretty much any hack a success, and this is fine for players willing to invest that kind of slot use, but applying the same approach to robots makes it far too easy to eliminate any and all danger by accumulating more and more allies, or at least nearly effortlessly taking out enemies. We'll need upper limits on what is possible.
Remove much of the RNG. Under the old system, anything but a good robot hacking setup is too unreliable--you have to hit with a Datajack, penetrate to their system, and then there's still the final hack chance to succeed at. RNG works well for machine hacking, but with robots the time element is much more limiting, and the consequences of failures are too dire, especially for bots that are not necessarily set up for combat! Too much RNG in a system like this makes planning much more difficult, thus keeping the RNG would basically work against the combat hacker style itself. Removing the RNG here will be very good for balance.
Overall there are more limiting factors in the new robot hacking system, but by extension that means it can be more effective! More effective is more interesting, as it also increases the range of possibilities. The goal is not to become OP, it's to gain tools for solving a subset of unique situations and challenges.
The hacking process starts similar to how it exists now: Datajacks are still a thing, and you have to both hit the target and penetrate to its system, but after that the processes diverge significantly. Robot hackers will often want to make use of a new type of Hackware dedicated to robot hacking: Relay Couplers. As Hackware these are destroyed on removal in normal fashion, and even have limited uses, but they enable all the best hacks.
Even successfully attaching a Relay Coupler requires an installed RIF, mentioned last time, otherwise...
Couplers come in a variety of types (there are 12) and must match the target's class to gain access to high-level hacks for that target. For example a "Relay Coupler [Grunt]" is used to hack Grunts. The one exception is Relay Coupler [NC], which applies to all non-combat bots, so that one alone will be more widely applicable.
The alternative approach would've been to have Hackware that enables specific hacks, rather than targeting specific bots, taking the system in a completely different direction, but I believe it's far more interesting to be able to do almost any kind of hack to a specific kind of robot than the same hack to any robot.
Note that not all hacks require a Coupler, however, or even an RIF. So Datajacks will still have some robot hacking purpose aside from their other functions. The new Parse behavior will serve that purpose alone, as it's free and always works, usable on almost any robot. (I'll demonstrate that later once it's implemented.) There are also some cost-free hacks that still require an RIF, for use against non-combat bots.
More about Relay Couplers and hacks in Part 3 next week :)
This week I let the partially-implemented robot hacking system simmer for a while to instead focus on other developments.
Guessing Game
First up is a rather common feature for classic roguelikes, the ability to tag items with player-specified text as a memory aid. Tagging is usually a part of the item identification process, and due to the nature of Cogmind's items and ID system it's almost never useful, hence the absence of a tagging feature all these years. However there are a handful of special cases towards the end of the game where you may know what a particular unidentified item is (based on where you found it) but not want to immediately attach-ID it.
Here are a couple silly examples of tagging inventory items.
And here's a more realistic use (albeit with a silly tag), also demonstrating how the tag appears in the item info window itself.
I'm sure this feature could also be used for just fun screenshots and jokes, too ;)
Infinite Power
There are already a ton of ways to get data directly from Cogmind, or indirectly through the wiki or about leaderboard player performance, but one of the external pieces of data we don't yet have is robot stats.
I certainly don't want to make players record individual data points from the game to populate the wiki, so for that and other uses I've added a command line option that automatically generates a CSV file containing all the robot data. The item gallery CSV export has already been used to generate the wiki's item pages, but there's been no corresponding feature for robots, until now :)
Here's a sample excerpt of the export, which in its entirety includes 179 lines and over 8,000 data fields o_O
Obviously there are going to be massive spoilers in the complete file, but people who do this will be aware of that fact :P
Again, you don't need any of this to play since object data is available in game, but some players like to have it around as an external reference.
In other data news, we have yet another performance analysis vector, this time from PlasticHeart who's set up a page that shares graphs describing peak state part occurrences among winners, allowing you to more easily see what they were using at their strongest before going on to win.
For example here are the most often equipped utilities--you can see the importance of storage!
The contents will naturally be skewed towards flight in general, because they can pull off wins much more quickly :P (It'd be interesting to compare this data set to another that only takes each player's highest scoring win to see if/what is different.). Flight players may not use so many Lrg. Storage Units, but they'll rank extra high here because combat players often use several at once!
The page is not yet automated, but is based on recent Beta 6 scores.
Note there are somewhat bigger spoilers in other graph categories in terms of item types you might see in the late game!
The Right Tool for the Job
One of my main Cogmind dev tools, which I started releasing freely five years ago, has been updated. You can read details in the REXPaint 1.04 release notes.
People have been making cool art, maps, mockups and all sorts of things with it...
On that note, if you've dreamed of making a roguelike of your own and need some extra motivation/resources/structure, that event I mentioned last week has begun! Check out the first week of the tutorial/code-along series for beginners and experts alike.
Just think, this can happen to you just like it happened to me years ago when I first got into this :P
Be The Hacker (Part 1)
Although I didn't work on hacking this week, it's about time to reveal some more details about how this new system will work, to avoid rampant speculation based on just the tidbits I've been handing out so far :P
First a bit of history.
Back in the pre-Alpha days (2015 and earlier), robot hacking was never fully realized, since ideally it would be designed to fit in with all the other systems but there had really been almost no playtesting since the 7DRL and three quarters of the world had yet to be created, so there wasn't much to go on at the time. Rather than build up something large right away, a better long-term approach would be to just add a smaller functional placeholder that could be tweaked or possibly replaced when necessary as the rest of the game took shape.
So then, as now in Beta 6, there were just a handful of general options running the spectrum from "temporarily disable" to "permanent assimilation." As it was clearly an underdeveloped system tangential to everything else going on, Alpha players almost entirely ignored robot hacking for a long while, exploring other mechanics instead.
Then came late Alpha, and it was discovered that a Cogmind could stack Hackware like there's no tomorrow and literally own anything in the complex, especially later in a run. Here's an example of this type of build, in a screenshot shared by zxc:
A +247% to hacking and the ability to hack robots around corners before they even know you're there? That sounds mighty OP xD (zxc used such a build in early 2017 to achieve the highest ever Cogmind score, a record which still stands to this day)
Certainly it takes skill to set up, but roguelikes should technically get more challenging as a run progresses, not easier, and that's generally how Cogmind works except when it came to strategies abusing this mechanic :P
Flight hackers had their fun with magic wands for a while, then of course I had to nerf it, explaining the diminishing returns of high-level robot hacking over the length of a run as a result of the system adapting its defenses. That said, even the nerf itself was just a temporary band-aid, because clearly much bigger changes were necessary as part of a new system, and that point would be coming in late Beta given that all the other systems were pretty much done.
And that's where we are now, preparing to welcome the last major system. ("last" on the list, but don't worry I have more secrets planned, plus of course there's always this which might happen :D)
I've been collecting and mulling over ideas for how to revamp the robot hacking system for more than a year now. There were quite a few reasonable possibilities to think through, but also a lot of potential pitfalls! Devs are unlikely to get a system absolutely perfect the first time, but as long as it has a solid foundation it can be tweaked and expanded without too much trouble if necessary. So this foundation is extra important. I've never spent this long designing a single system before (17 hours just designing!), and it's gone through lots of iterations and refinements (all on paper) as it starts to look both relatively balanced and interesting.
It's also worth pointing out that I'm very glad I didn't move on this system earlier, or try to have a complete extensive system available from Alpha 1. It would have had a negative, limiting impact on other developments, and much about the current state of Cogmind's world and content has enabled me to make smarter choices about how to best integrate robot hacking into it all, be it the tactics, strategy, or lore. In short, doing this earlier would've meant more wasted effort and less pleasing results.
So what is this new system already?!
Well, last time I showed you that UI animation, and that's where it all begins. With this machine.
Some of you noticed a certain "RIF Installer" in the Scan window of that earlier gif, and this is what it looks like. Every garrison will now contain one of these, and it's your choice whether to use it and deal with the consequences, and of course take advantage of the benefits!
You'll only have to do it once, and the first garrison appears on -8, so that would be your earliest opportunity, though you can do it at any time. You still get all the other benefits of a garrison on top of that, and there will be another advantage particular to robot hackers that we'll get to later.
RIF stands for "Relay Interface Framework," and with that you'll theoretically have access to dozens of ways to manipulate other robots via the Complex-wide garrison relay network. Like a number of other major strategic decisions, however, this comes with a drawback as it will prevent you from forming certain... alliances ;)
Such is the cost of effectively linking up with 0b10 to facilitate access to their systems. And from this point you can probably infer that the new robot hacking system only works on Unaware! This is just the first of several limiting factors--robot hacking will be quite useful, but not a panacea. It'll be what an interesting system should be: very effective when used creatively, but also challenging you to create manageable situations to begin with. Unlike the Alpha approach of "it's an enemy, overload/assimilate it!!!" there will be many unique encounters and different methods of approaching each. As with other strategies, planning ahead will be very beneficial, and to me that also really fits the theme of a robot hacker, whether a stealth hacker or combat hacker or anything in between.
Planning ahead will also be facilitated by the fact that the new system will be removing much of the RNG from robot hacking :D
But more on that and other details next time--there's still tons more to explain, and this is a good stopping point.
Cogmind is currently 10% off through July 5th, both on Steam and DRM-free from the site. As mentioned before, unless I get some kind of a deal from Valve (unlikely to happen again) there aren't any plans to discount by more than 10% during Early Access, which could go on for quite a while because the list of potential content is basically endless xD
The IDE's wait is over! I'm now back to real coding again. With the new robot hacking system fully designed, this week it was time to actually start building it all.
Last time I shared an initial mockup of the UI layout, which has since changed significantly. It's getting closer to what it'll probably look like, and I noticed it was kinda fun to see how the idea was changing as I played with it, so here it is as a time lapse:
That's still just a mockup--more changes are likely before I piece that bit together. (Also note that as a mockup, the contents themselves will not fully make sense and aren't quite realistic, so don't try to read too much into it :P)
I haven't needed the UI yet since none of the hacks themselves have been implemented, but the system's foundation is getting pretty solid. First up was adding the new mechanics for getting access to robot hacks in the first place. I'll be covering the system and its design in more detail later on, but know that you'll not have access to most hacks unless you do... this first:
You'll also need to collect this new type of hackware!
Still a long way to go before this collection of features is done, but it'll be worth it.
Seeing as I'm retiring the old robot hacking system, may as well share a shot of its spreadsheet calculations that I used to aid in its design some years ago:
This is common in design, to have spreadsheets where you can enter hypothetical values and see how they affect outcomes. I'm by no means a math whiz, but predictions like this make the testing and balance effort go so much more smoothly. Without something like this, grounding the design in too many guesses would be a recipe for wasted dev time!
The new spreadsheet I've already put together has a larger and more complex data set :P. It helped me set all the base values earlier this week--now I "just" have to code all those hacks...
PARSE
Many of you are probably aware that the current robot hacking scheme includes a relatively easy command, PARSE, one that I was initially planning to remove under the new system.
I've decided to keep it, while adjusting and improving it at the same time to make it more useful.
It'll still basically open up an extra page of info about the target, and you'll still do it via Datajack, but it'll be both freely available and you'll be able to do it to almost any bot. So my question to you is whether or not there's anything in particular you might want out of this new PARSE data?
I already have a new mockup complete with some fresh ideas of my own that have convinced me it'll be worth keeping, but thought I'd bring it up to see if there's any other input before I work on that.
Markov
There has been some recent talk of putting Cogmind's lore into a markov chain generator to see what kinds of things could result, and although interested I didn't have any time to play with it myself. Then a couple days ago Raine did just that and shared some results with us. Pretty funny stuff...
It's fun guessing where each piece of this new "lore" originated.
That's some nice tech...
And this sounds like a different game entirely xD
Unfortunately some of the others, including some good ones, can't be shared without clearly spoiling parts of the game :P
Now You Make a Roguelike
Last year on r/RoguelikeDev we held our first annual "Tutorial Tuesday" event, a couple months of weekly assignments for building your own roguelike, along with a primary tutorial to guide complete beginners and also help provide structure for other devs using their own libraries and languages. There were lots of participants and it was a great success.
We're doing it again for 2018!
It starts next week, so if you want to try your hand at roguelike development and need that extra push to help you get started and build momentum, consider joining! It'll take just a day or less of your time each week, and by the end you'll have your own roguelike you can build on :D
Lots of other people will be doing the same steps during the same weeks, so there'll be other devs who can possibly help answer your questions if you have any, and obviously there's the motivation of working on a project alongside a bunch of other people. You can get help on the sub in the upcoming weekly threads, or more immediately via our Roguelikes Discord in the dev channels.
The schedule and more info can be found in the announcement.
If you don't have a preferred language or library, it'd be a good idea to get a head start on the first week by checking out the python tutorials linked last year. We'll be following a different libtcod tutorial this year, but you'll want to know some of the language first.
Note that libtcod is the library I first used when I began creating roguelikes years ago, and it makes things very easy for you, taking care of all the heavy lifting so you can focus on adding all your cool roguelike ideas :D
As per the roadmap, the next major feature is robot hacking, and I've finally reached the final stretch of the design phase. Just the design phase!? This is a huge system, and building it for both balance and fun on the first go is going to take some doing. I've already spent more time just designing the system than any other in the game. It's for the better, though--the design seems to be coming along well after all this refining... Soon it'll be time to put it into practice!
I don't have much to share for it yet, except for one of the latest mockups:
This is a rough WIP and could still change alot. (I haven't really spent much time delving into the UI aspect yet, just planning the underlying system and all its related mechanics and capabilities.)
Later I'll be writing a lot about this feature, but don't want to share too much too early--let's wait until things are more certain :P
In other features, a little glowing `@` marker will pop up to show the direction of Cogmind when offscreen.
No one asked for this, probably because the map will never hop around on its own without your explicit command (and there's also always the commands to recenter the view), but I can see it occasionally being helpful to know this. In particular while working on hacking ideas I saw one new potential situation where it could become useful, so put this system together yesterday.
And as someone who never uses the Evasion window (it's useful! just not the way I play), I needed someone else to remind me that it still contained a modifier for "Cloaking," even though Cloaking Devices were repurposed and based on the actual part name associated with that mechanic it should be called "Phasing," so that's fixed for Beta 7:
Note that as of this week over on our Roguelikes Discord we now have three #cogmind channels instead of two. There are just too many deep spoilers, too spoilery even for the regular hidden "spoiler" channel xD. This will allow people who don't want to unwittingly learn about all the extended end-game content to still have a place to talk freely about the many other branches.
Painting with ASCII
I finally got a chance to update the online gallery for REXPaint, one of my main Cogmind dev tools. If you like Cogmind's aesthetic or other retro-ish art and games, you'll probably like what you see there :D
Some of the newer samples:
Stream of Robots
Having already done a number of Cogmind Beta 6 streams recently (still happy with that Pure Core challenge coming through with a win!) I switched over to do another POLYBOT-7 run, only my second so far... and won again! This time it was New Game+ mode, so harder than last time.
I did a little summary of that, including links to the videos if you're interested. (For those of you who haven't heard about it before, POLYBOT-7 is my free Cogmind spin-off project.)
I've done "so much" streaming this past month that I got invited to become a Twitch Affiliate. Hahaha... My channel is basically me playing the games I make. Now I just need more games xD. Hm, I've never streamed X@COM ;)
Honestly I don't plan to do a ton more streaming or change what I do--I basically stream in a more concentrated burst in the weeks after release, then rest the channel while putting as much time as I can into developing the next release. But hey as an Affiliate I guess we could get a custom emote!
If you'd like to read some more Cogmind-related material, this week for r/RoguelikeDev's latest FAQ Friday I wrote a bit about naming things. (There are a few small spoilers in there, but it mostly avoids spoilery material.)
Time to get busy with the stuff we all actually care about!
That said, there wasn't a ton of "proper" progress this week since I still had to catch up on personal chores neglected during Beta 6 development xD
Still plenty to share with you today...
91% Achieved
Last time I reported that 87.9% of our 256 achievements had been earned by at least one player, and now that number is up to 91.0%. That leaves 23 achievements that haven't yet been earned by anyone, nearly half (11) of which are various types of wins. That set will naturally take a little while longer to complete since wins can require dedicated non-overlapping strategies. By comparison already 26 (70%) of the win-type achievements have been earned so far.
All but two of the remaining 23 are unhidden.
I should mention that among the unhidden ones, Executioner ("Evolve 7 weapon slots.") cannot actually be earned as you might expect due to a bug in the check. It is technically possible, but requires a special item used under the right conditions--kudos if you can figure that out before the achievement is properly fixed for Beta 7 ;) (Collateral Damage and Watch This! are also broken--you'll have to wait for Beta 7 for the fixed versions of these.)
Here's the full list of achievements no one has earned yet:
Watch This! ~~ Sneak attack a Watcher and destroy it in one hit.
Executioner ~~ Evolve 7 weapon slots.
Cannon Specialist ~~ Destroy 100 hostiles with at least 90% of damage dealt by cannons.
Explosive Specialist ~~ Destroy 100 hostiles with at least 90% of damage dealt by explosives.
Pyromaniac ~~ Cause 20 hostiles to meltdown.
Collateral Damage ~~ ???
Curator ~~ Reach 100% gallery collection.
Superachiever ~~ Earn 75% of achievements.
Perfect Achiever ~~ Earn all other achievements.
Gladiator ~~ Destroy 200 hostiles via melee.
Desperate Times ~~ Enter a main complex map at -3 or above as a naked core with no inventory items, and find an exit (do not have to remain naked).
Fearless ~~ Enter a Garrison with below 10% core integrity and survive it.
MAIN.CPP ~~ ???
Inspector Gadget ~~ Win while only evolving utility slots.
Hardcore ~~ Win with 400 hostiles destroyed but no more than 4 utility slots.
One Last FU ~~ Win after entering an Access garrison.
Partners In Destruction ~~ Win fighting alongside the Warrior.
The Little Core That Could ~~ Win without attaching any propulsion.
Look Ma, No Swapping! ~~ Win the Fragile Parts challenge mode.
Unstoppable ~~ Win the Gauntlet challenge mode.
Stunt Win ~~ Win the Inhibited Evolution challenge mode.
This Only Looks Like Junk ~~ Win the Scavenger challenge mode.
Master Trapper ~~ Win the Trapped challenge mode.
As you can see, a number of of the win achievements also happen to be challenge modes, which will be easier to access once there's an in-game menu for them. Right now it's mostly long-time players who are going for those anyway (and they've already completed the hardest ones, so these others are just a case of when they want to win them).
Hardcore, One Last FU, and Partners In Destruction are probably the only three remaining achievements that are tougher and we won't see a lot of players accomplishing.
The following achievements have only been earned by a single player each:
I Wish There Was More ~~ Reach 100% lore collection.
Shutout ~~ Seal, jam, or destroy all Garrison Access machines in Access.
WMD ~~ Destroy 100 robots in a single turn.
Most Wanted ~~ Trigger high security 4 times.
Full Golem ~~ ???
Traitor ~~ Kill Warlord in his base and escape.
Mad Max ~~ Win with 200 hostiles destroyed and without attaching any propulsion except wheels.
Grand Amoeba ~~ Win the Devolution challenge mode.
Terminals Are For Geeks ~~ Win the Simple Hacker challenge mode.
Super Mutant ~~ Win the Unstable Evolution challenge mode.
Again there are a few challenge modes since not many players have gotten around to trying those, but the majority are simply more difficult achievements.
All other achievements have been earned by at least two or more players.
Many thanks to Ape3000 for putting these together!
Challenge Runs
Since I haven't been doing fun stuff like designing and coding, in between other work I've managed to fit in more streaming than usual to take a break and try some things I haven't gotten to share on stream before.
Here I jumped down a Chute because that's often a good idea :) (in this case alert was getting high after blowing up way too much stuff and having trouble locating an exit)
Hello and goodbye.
Then this week I streamed another challenge, Pure Core (no inventory allowed!), and won this one \o/. You can find the full summary on the forums, which also links to YouTube.
I can't show any of the later screenshots from this run because spoilers, but here's my drones finding some exits out of -6/Factory, although I didn't take these until I'd later identified them because I had a particular destination in mind and didn't want to get sidetracked considering I couldn't carry an inventory but was playing a combat build anyway! :P
Now that there are enough runs building up, and some are of a different type than others, I've split my YouTube channel into multiple playlists to help make it more obvious what's what.
I'll start to cut back on streaming as Beta 7 work gets underway in earnest now that all these other things are out of the way. (Although I'm thinking of doing another POLYBOT-7 stream soonish.)
Guidance
Pimski has translated PlasticHeart's flight prep guide from Japanese, so if you're interested in how to get a flight build up and running, check that out! Certainly don't ask me, because I am a combat player even when it's a bad idea xD. That said, flight builds are generally an easier way to learn more about the mid/late-game, and how you'll probably get your first win if you haven't already.
Expert players have also been working together on a comprehensive "community guide" that covers all the branches and lots of content and strategies, so hopefully that will be out at some point as well.
Little Stuff
So far I only have a few tiny things to share in terms of features for Beta 7...
Some very special parts cannot be repaired by Repair Stations, but you won't know that unless you remember the few rules involved, or actually try to repair it and the station says it's not possible. I've wanted to do something about this for a while, so I've found a way to fit that information into the UI as a new indicator (which is also described directly in the context help).
In an even more minor modification, the robot speed format now matches Cogmind's own format while in Tactical HUD mode, rather than always showing it as both percentage and in time units.
I've been planning out the next major feature to come, which is at this point mostly ready for the implementation stage, but there'll be no details on that for a while.
A slightly less minor thing: EA contacted me to say they'd like to put Cogmind on their platform (including Origin Access). EA sucks, but I dunno, I guess it could be good for publicity. Hard to say exactly what kind of benefits it might have since I doubt they'll give me any kind of real numbers to make a decision based on...
This is the third major company to contact me since the Steam release, but I'm still just plugging along by myself :P
There's been a fair amount of achieving going on in the past 10 days :)
Of our 256 achievements, so far all but 31 have been earned by at least one player. That's 87.9% of the total. At this point the highest achievement rate by individual players is around 66%.
Looking at the top of the global achievements list...
It's mostly what we'd expect, although worth pointing out it's kinda funny that The Most Popular Achievement will unlikely ever actually reach #1. Uninvited Guest in particular is an achievement that everyone will get on their first run, and technically speaking we'll always have new players joining who haven't yet finished a run to get the, um, "most popular" :P
Crack Shot and Storm Trooper are also both very common scenarios when just starting out (especially Storm Trooper among beginners who haven't yet learned how to maximize accuracy).
All these are pretty basic achievements though--all the really fun stuff is still a lot lower on the list as different players aim for different goals. We'll look at some of those another time.
I may also later add the global percentages to the in-game UI for players connected to Steam.
Speaking of achievements, remember that collage I made for the Beta 6 release? Just a fun gif related to that: To create the background I added a debug command in the game's console which creates a new window over everything and randomly fills it with achievement icons, automatically saving a whole bunch of screenshots that I could then pick from.
Trippy, eh? :D
Data Miner
As usual following a major release, I've collected a bunch of stats to share.
It'll be fun to look at achievement progress across the entirety of Beta 6 once the next release is out, but let's not get ahead of ourselves xD
Community <3
Our community has been quite active lately! (And not necessarily tied to this particular release :P)
A group of expert players have begun collaborating on a sort of detailed "complete guide" to Cogmind. There's nothing to show yet, but it's taking shape. It's also going to be chock full of spoilers.
The spoiler-free "guide" I wrote, a.k.a. the 60-page manual, has also been reformatted to a very nice PDF version for Beta 6 by Phragmented.
It's available as both a standard PDF document with chapters, and a printable booklet. You can download both here.
There's been a fair number of players streaming this week, including... me :). I was going to stream last week but a household emergency put a stop to that, so this week it was finally time for some Beta 6. I streamed twice, a single run spread across two days, and won it. Just barely. In epic fashion. So it was definitely worth it :D. It got pretty slow at certain points with all the talking and strategizing, but we came out on top in the end. There's a full summary of part 1 and 2 on the forums, including links to YouTube.
zxc also spent a while streaming and uploaded his 701-turn speedrun to YouTube. Speedrunning is in vogue again now that there are a couple of achievements for it :P
Probably the community news with the biggest OMG factor is that Ape3000 has continued expanding and refining his wonderful player progression graphs yet further, and they now include everyone on the leaderboards! Some more samples:
There are over 20 graphs for each player. Check your own progress on the website. (Don't bother looking at mine, because unlike most players I don't migrate my data between versions and have always started with a fresh build each release :P)
As a reminder: If you don't want to upload your score data you can still create the graphs yourself if you can run the scripts found here.
After 6 Comes 7
Fortunately there's a ton to play with in Beta 6, because Beta 7 will probably take a while.
Lots to do with the new robot hacking system (still in planning stages), but there are also some external factors at play...
Rather than working on Cogmind, I've already had to spend much of my dev time this week dealing with the new GDPR thing coming out of the EU. This involved lots of research and subsequent updating of my website, forums, blog, mailing lists, etc... At least it's a nice initiative and a worthy cause.
Anyway, yay that's mostly done at this point, but next week I'll be consumed by... taxes.
As you can see the upcoming week is going to be pretty boring :/
For this reason I'm going to skip next week's SITREP and focus on getting these and other annoying chores out of the way before really focusing on the next release. I'll still be around in chat, though, and will almost certainly stream again before the next SITREP, so maybe I'll see you there :)
Cogmind made a Top 100 indie games list. There are so many good games out there now that these lists are pretty subjective, but hey I'm not gonna complain! (Sure has been a while since Cogmind had any coverage from any major news outlet, though xD)
Today also marks the third anniversary of Cogmind's public Early Access program! With other games this might not be something worth celebrating, implying that it's taking forever to finish the game, but Ive put in over 6,000 hours of work in that time, and although it would've been appropriate to launch 1.0 last year I decided not to. For the time being I'd rather just keep making major additions to the game for free, which makes more sense to do under EA rather than "full release." After all, traditional roguelikes that keep getting updates for a long time are great, and it's hard to stop working on this when there are so many more ideas and it's "only" been five years so far :P
Time to start achieving! While Beta 6 brings with it a ton of other improvements and tweaks, the big new thing is a large collection of achievements to earn, 256 of them spanning six categories. All players have equal access to the achievements system, regardless of whether or not on Steam. More info below!
NEW: 256 achievements (available both on Steam and in offline/DRM-free versions)
NEW: 35 new score sheet entries (total = 697)
NEW: Achievement names and their icon appear over the map when earned (deactivate or change duration in advanced.cfg: achievementPopupDuration)
NEW: Achievements earned reported in message log (toggle in advanced.cfg: showAchievementMessages)
NEW: Achievements earned specifically at end of a run appear in new area to right of end game stats
NEW: Achievements newly earned throughout a run listed towards end of score sheet
NEW: Composite achievement percent listed among score sheet meta data and and scorehistory.txt
NEW: Achievements browsing UI (contents sortable and filterable)
NEW: Bidirectional automatic syncing between achievements in your local game meta data and Steam records
NEW: Optimized startup time, reducing it by about one-third
NEW: RTS-style map panning in true fullscreen mode, and new menu option for controlling speed
NEW: Added to manual's Key Holding section a mention of holding "wait" key while waiting for a hostile
NEW: Updated Dismemberment immunity trait description with explicit notice that it does not prevent the side effect of slashing weapons
NEW: Optional Terminus style map glyphs for size 12 and 14 ASCII mode players (see manual under Advanced UI > Fonts)
NEW: Optional classic IBM VGA style map glyphs for size 14 ASCII mode players (see manual under Advanced UI > Fonts)
NEW: Datajack descriptions explicitly indicate their base chance to rewire traps (10%)
NEW: Score sheet records number of moves per propulsion type
NEW: Game over screen shows total number of new achievements earned during run
NEW: challengeSuperGauntlet description in manual explicitly mentions lack of garrisons at -10/-9
NEW: Two challenging (spoiler) plot points that didn't originally earn bonus points now do
NEW: "Records" submenu added to game menu, containing links to Gallery/Lore/Achievements data
NEW: Export achievements data to TXT, HTML, or CSV for external reading/processing (exports based on selected filters/sorting)
NEW: Pre-attack warning about Researchers in view takes effect even if previously scanned (can disable in advanced.cfg: alwaysWarnAboutResearchers)
NEW: Core Analyzer effect description explicitly states that critical hits and disruption effects are also applied to affected cores
NEW: Dedicated section about achievements added to the manual
NEW: Multiple previous autosaves from current run are stored in parallel (adjust number of saves in advanced.cfg: autosaveCount)
NEW: While manual hostiles/allies/parts labels active, panning the map view automatically calls up same-category labels where applicable
NEW: Escape also clears active map object labels even if disableEscMenuAccessKeyboard/disableEscMenuAccessMouse true
NEW: Traps with damaging AOE effects now include salvage mod in their description
NEW: Gallery item info includes description for those items which have them (e.g. important for traps)
NEW: Melee weapon info explicitly lists the disruption stat (only two melee weapons have that property)
NEW: Projectile weapon info explicitly lists the spread arc stat (very few weapons use that relatively new mechanic)
NEW: Extreme slow movement warning also applies when attempting to swap positions with allies
NEW: Items crushed by cave-ins reported in message log
NEW: Safe to hold a wait key while waiting for System Backup Module (etc) to reduce corruption to 0% (autoblocks command for 2s on task completion)
NEW: Use '>' on top of a Drone Bay to automatically release all its drones without attaching it (RMB on self for mouse users)
NEW: Melee Analysis Suites increase minimum damage of melee weapons
NEW: Specific amount of corruption caused by impact destruction revealed in manual and context help
NEW: Manual includes step-by-step Attack Resolution section outlining defensive order of operations once an attack hits a robot
NEW: All Alpha supporter names registered since Beta 5 added to in-game list (see Credits menu)
MOD: Cave Seal allied faction priority changed
MOD: Removed "Parts Merge Repaired" from score sheet since no longer possible for now
MOD: Removed "Zionite Hack Detections" from score sheet since no longer possible
MOD: Removed "Impact Corruptions" from score sheet under Highest Corruption (unused)
MOD: Timer length doubled on the "final" Archives event
MOD: Log message for critical strikes on immune robots only shown if the attack hits armor (which still confers the damage bonus)
MOD: While using any LOW_CONTRAST renderFilter, on-map resource alerts override default color with black lettering
MOD: While using any LOW_CONTRAST renderFilter, path visualization shown lighter to be more visible against brighter background
MOD: Part range circles and robot motion trails appear much more nicely when combined with LOW_CONTRAST background settings
MOD: While using showMapBorders option combined with a LOW_CONTRAST renderFilter, map edges displayed with a brighter line rather than modified wall color
MOD: While using ` or dedicated mapshift mode, if LOW_CONTRAST renderFilter active the surrounding known cells are brightened even more than usual
MOD: Floor foreground darkened more than usual under LOW_CONTRAST renderFilters to make FOV edges easier to distinguish
MOD: Updated rendering of LOW_CONTRAST renderFilters to improve visualizations for: SFX, potential cave-ins, ally transfer area, explosion targeting AOE
MOD: Improved LOW_CONTRAST animations: Sensor Arrays, Terrain Scanners, Structural Scanners, Spotter scans, Triangulator, and some processor activations
MOD: Exposed ground appears slightly lighter in low-contrast mode (applies to both tiles and ASCII modes)
MOD: Improved header line drawing on Advanced commands page animation when viewed in a low-contrast mode
MOD: Part autosorting defaults to on
MOD: Hardlight Generator effect description more specifically lists types of incompatible shields
MOD: Score sheet "Communications Jammed" entry expanded to include distress signals from non-combat to combat bots
MOD: Score Sheet "Damage Inflicted > Projectiles" entry split into "Guns" and "Cannons"
MOD: Removed turn numbers preceding special messages for machine hacking output (e.g. unique door access codes)
MOD: Gallery/Lore buttons removed from game menu top-level button list and Credits menu (still accessible via hotkeys and new Records menu)
MOD: Game menu submenu buttons horizontally centered in widescreen layouts
MOD: Default hotkey for Alpha Supporters list now '0'
MOD: Pre-Beta 3.1 cogmind.cfg file no longer converted to multifile format on importing
MOD: Game count not incremented for aborting ("quit, delete save") below -9
MOD: Total game time not incremented for self-destruction below -9
MOD: High Security response dialogue no longer delivered by ARC
MOD: Item info window simultaneously displays any description and gallery collection status
MOD: Gallery item info no longer includes fabrication stats (still available via export feature)
MOD: Label Supporter Items option no longer required for '!' marker items not yet collected for gallery (always shown by default)
MOD: Scan Cloaking entry removed from robot info window since it became accessible via the new Traits popup in Beta 4
MOD: Borebot weapon no longer a prototype to reveal its name (since it cannot be acquired)
MOD: Improved visibility of explosion count on info page for multi-explosion weapons (consistent with multi-projectile weapons now)
MOD: Derelicts of classes with variants at more than one tier list them all in Analysis() output
MOD: Prototype ID Bank terminal hack has a static base chance rather than being based on the number of prototypes, which is now based on security level
MOD: Stricter penalties if Zion repeatedly calls loyalty into question
MOD: Roster dispatches a little more likely to refill used squad slots
MOD: Tweaked targeting behavior of AOE-equipped robots
MOD: Desublimator slot count reduced to 1, mass lowered to 6
MOD: Quantum Capacitor no longer compatible with Weapon Cyclers
MOD: EMDS energy and matter costs increased
MOD: Hyp. EM Gauss Rifle spectrum changed to Fine
MOD: Base penalty for overweight hover increased from 40 to 60
MOD: Base penalty for overweight flight increased from 50 to 80
MOD: While overweight, robots running on flight propulsion lose the ability to fly over other robots
MOD: Traps always trigger while overweight, rather than using a mass-based multiplier
MOD: Investigator movement speed increased 50%
MOD: Score sheet Melee Sneak Attacks no longer counts those against broken or unpowered targets
MOD: Upload Scores option now off by default
MOD: Anonymous player scores no longer uploaded
FIX: Combining Transmission Jammer w/Transport Network Coupler to block Hauler reinforcements didn't count as Communications Jammed in score sheet [Joshua]
FIX: Additional energy capacity provided by LRC Energy Wells not automatically restored on entering a new map [Joshua]
FIX: Certain types of followers stuck in a separate unattached part of the complex could slow down the game, especially on large maps [Joshua]
FIX: Trap Extractors did not count trap for gallery collection purposes [Joshua]
FIX: Unable to insert-ID an alien artifact at a Scanalyzer if no other scanalyzable items current in inventory [Joshua]
FIX: Unable to indirectly hack analyses for a number of derelict classes [Joshua]
FIX: Unidentified prototype energy/matter containers in inventory reflected their actual contents in HUD readout if preloaded [Joshua]
FIX: Impact weapons not showing new momentum-modified damage values in inventory and part list info ('q') mode like other melee weapons [Joshua, zxc]
FIX: Core reset while info ('q') mode active later created empty schematics lists on status page and at Fabricators [Joshua, Valguris]
FIX: Followers sucked into chutes remained allied but would not follow again if you meet up with them later [Valguris]
FIX: DC usage would leave out random map locations that should be revealed [Valguris]
FIX: Active Particle Chargers destroyed or removed in info ('q') mode did not immediately modify damage data for affected weapons [Valguris]
FIX: If no unfiltered label parts in view, not possible to use '3' to call up filtered labels [Valguris]
FIX: Having two info windows open and right-clicking inside the second at the position of an object under it opened its info instead of closing [Valguris]
FIX: Core resets rendered Z-Drones unable to explore or share FOV data [GJ]
FIX: Still possible for 0b10 Decoder Chips to crash on attempting to reveal an item outside FOV under special circumstances [GJ]
FIX: Loading a Fragile Parts challenge run in progress failed to apply the mechanic [GJ]
FIX: Tiny decimal values close to zero showed as larger numbers in Tactical HUD energy-change-per-move readout [Pimski]
FIX: Researcher hostility checks did not take into account active Cloaking Devices [Pimski]
FIX: Workers pushing disabled bots on floors with only one chute located in hidden corridor could cause slowdown in Factory [Laida]
FIX: Hostile Programmers assimilating Watchers made them neutral rather than hostile [Laida]
FIX: Crushing DM with treads triggers the normal reaction [8fpsbossfight]
FIX: Under certain conditions attempting to exit Waste might warn about leaving behind more allies than known [fpsbossfight, b_sen]
FIX: Beta 4 robot label behavior update unintentionally removed all labels from non-FOV hostiles
Achievements
256 of them! I didn't have any specific target number in mind when creating this initial set of achievements--it just turned out that way based on the many different things there are to currently do in Cogmind.
When you earn an achievement there's now a pop-up in the bottom-right corner of the map.
And any earned at the end of a run will be displayed next to the stats window.
Your score sheets now also include a list of the new achievements earned that run.
Available achievements, and those earned throughout all runs, can be browsed, filtered and sorted via the new interface accessible from the game menu. As you can see in the demo below, this interface is much more functional than Steam's, offering the ability to toggle different categories, filter by unlocked state, and order in four different ways.
If you'd like to avoid spoilers, don't use third-party achievement managers that reveal hidden achievements! They will spoil achievements which have been hidden because they involve plot points. There is no need to expose and aim for any hidden achievement, as they are things you'll uncover naturally through regular play.
All achievement descriptions refer to requirements that must be completed within a single run, except where otherwise noted or obvious. For those of you who've been playing for a while already, know that only a small handful of achievements are retroactive, those which will check your lore and gallery collection progress at the end of a run, whereas pretty much everything else will only be earned the first time you do it as of Beta 6.
So how to earn all these achievements... well, many of them will come naturally via simply using different play styles, hitting all the plot points, and going for all the endings. However, some will require actually aiming for the achievement (i.e. not something you'll probably "accidentally accomplish" through normal play). All achievements are known to be completable by players who've done these things in the past--they were created based on player stats collected over the years, all of them on regular difficulty. Some of them are extremely challenging though! If you have trouble with some of the achievements, note that all of them are equally accessible regardless of difficulty setting, so just pop into the options and try some runs that way :D
As with the item gallery and lore collection, you can export your achievements via buttons at the bottom-right of the interface. convenient for those of you who'd like to review you achievements outside the game or maybe process them via other means. Three formats are supported (TXT, HTML, CSV), and whatever filters and sorting you have active at the time are reflected in the exported data! (For sample images of each of the exports, see SITREP #20.)
Like other Cogmind meta data, achievements support Steam's cloud saves, and there's even bidirectional syncing so that even without cloud saves active, if you reinstall Cogmind elsewhere it'll still download all previous achievements from the Steam database. Playing the DRM-free version then later migrating over to Steam will also upload all previously earned achievements that are not yet earned on Steam, as long as you copy over your /user/ data as with a normal version migration.
If for some reason you want to remove all your achievements, for example having earned many on lower difficulties and want to try again from scratch on a higher setting, add "resetAchievements=1" to advanced.cfg. This change cannot be reversed so you'd better be sure! The resetAchievements option is only valid for non-Steam players due to automated syncing while connected to Steam.
Finally, if you're interested in the development side of things--why some achievements are hidden, the methods and purpose behind achievement selection, how they're categorized, how the icons were created, and much more, check out the latest article on my blog.
Under the Hood
Cogmind's initial startup speed has gotten slow over the years with all that data, so I've managed to cut the time down to two-thirds of what it was by multithreading the most demanding bits, namely particles and sound effects. Here's a simple diagram comparing Beta 5 and Beta 6 on that front:
I've also expanded the autosave system to also save an adjustable number of sequential backups at a designated interval, so if (for example) a power outage at exactly the wrong time manages to corrupt your save, there'll be a backup from not long before that :)
Prior to Beta 6 Cogmind already included a couple of autosave mechanisms, the first which automatically saves your current run's progress at an adjustable interval, and another which makes a backup copy of the current save and all settings once per day. But in the aforementioned power outage scenario you'd only be able to restore progress to wherever it was the previous day (assuming the current run was long enough!).
It requires renaming the file you want to use as your current save, but you probably won't ever need this feature anyway, and old files will be deleted automatically--it's all handled silently in the background. You can also turn off the feature entirely by setting the interval to 0 (advanced.cfg "autosaveInterval"). Those of you who've been playing prior to Beta 6 may want to consider lowering the interval, since the old default value under the previous sytem was 5 (minutes), but I think with the new system it makes more sense for it to be around 3 or less. (Anyone just joining us will have the new default, but those with an old config value will not have their old value overwritten, so this is something you'd have to do manually if you like the idea of having autosaves closer to your current one.)
QoL
While you have any hostiles/allies/parts labels manually activated, more will continue appearing automatically as you pan the map! No more repeatedly hitting '3' to look for that elusive item :P
These additional labels also obey the item filters added in Beta 5.
By request, RTS-style panning is now a thing--moving your cursor to the edge of the screen can pan the map once you activate this feature in the options. It's off by default, and in turning it on you can also select the panning speed. This type of panning is of course only available in true fullscreen mode.
Part Autosorting now defaults to on, but its original default was off, so if you've been playing before Beta 6 and have not activated it manually, I'd suggest turning it on to take advantage of automated organization for your parts list. (As a reminder, if you want your parts to autosort but allow you to retain manually assigned weapon order--since that determines firing order--you can deactivate weapon autosorting behavior in advanced.cfg: partSortIgnoresWeapons.)
This feature is not only useful for increasing the effectiveness of part management, it also comes with a cool animation :D
The game menu has been rearranged to combined the gallery, lore, and achievements under a single "Records" menu at the far right. (It's likely we'll be getting some other options on that page later.)
Mechanics
There weren't a large number of mechanics tweaks or additions this time around, just some changes focused on niche cases...
Melee buff! Melee Analysis Suites now increase minimum weapon damage. This will help improve melee-focused builds, especially those which are multiwielding and/or using impact weapons. You can see the effect reflected in the info ('q') mode values.
All varieties of Drone Bays can now be activated more conveniently without even attaching them--see the new description.
This is great for those situations where you're already decked out, inventory full, and don't really want to drag along a newly discovered bay but would like a little drone buddy or three to scout ahead. Drone Bays are still often good to carry around as makeshift armor, or to recall drones for repair and storage.
We have a few more changes to moving while overweight...
The most noticeable will be for flight and hover, which have had their overweight penalties increased, making it less effective to build an intentionally overweight flight-combat build to take advantage of superior firepower while still being significantly faster than wheels and legs. Flight-combat is certainly still very viable, it'll just require more skill to pull off. Basically if you're going overweight on flight or hover you'll want to readjust your loadout, and if it's happening mid-combat due to propulsion loss you'll likely want to make those adjustments immediately (it'll help to carry backups or have more support than needed at any given point).
Flight also loses its ability to fly over hostile robots if overweight, so the point is: You really don't want to be overweight on otherwise fast propulsion :P
Aaaand reason #3: Traps have a 100% trigger chance if you're overweight! This doesn't mean much for bots on treads and legs, which always or almost always trigger traps anyway, and move slow enough that they can often spot them a ways off, but it's a big jump for relatively trap-safe flight/hover. Technically if you really hate traps you might already be using a Structural Scanner or one of the other trap detection methods to solve that problem, but again you probably want to avoid being overweight in the first place.
Visual Options
By request we have additional alternative ASCII map fonts at smaller sizes.
Terminus 12:
Terminus 14:
And my personal nostalgia-inducing favorite, IBM VGA 14:
That's one I would love to add at all sizes, but it really only works at the traditional size it was designed for. (Unlike, say, a modern fixed width font like Terminus which is pretty awesome at all sizes.)
There's also some love for those of you using a LOW_CONTRAST render filter (first added in Beta 5), courtesy of POLYBOT-7 development. A number of people have been activating low-contrast mode, though this was a hackish feature in the first place because lots of Cogmind code and scripts assumed the background is black, so it looked funky in quite a few places. For the P7 aesthetic I went in and changed that assumption in a number of places where it was more accessible. Examples below:
Path visualization is now much more visible. (All sample images are using the SLEEPY preset.)
FOV edges are somewhat easier to see.
(The following are all before-and-after gifs demonstrating adjustments.)
Activating an Optical Array.
Motion trail fading.
AOE visualization edges.
Structural Scanner and cave-in visualization.
SFX visualization.
Fixes and Little Stuff
Robot labels for those not in view were somehow completely broken by other changes a couple versions ago--those are now labeled again.
Impact weapons display damage values properly modified by current momentum. Other melee weapons were doing it right, but a typo left out the impact category...
AOE traps give their salvage modifier in their description.
Items with description info (e.g. traps) will still show it even when the Show Supporter Items option is on.
Removing an active Particle Charger, or having it destroyed, immediately updates damage for the weapon(s) it was affecting.
Forced spread weapons now list "Arc" as an explicit stat (with its own context help), as well as a clearer multi-explosive indicator.
I added a Disruption stat to melee weapon info, for the couple of late-game impact weapons that use it.
By request, the message log now reports what items were crushed by a cave-in. Nooooooo!!!
Thanks and News
Special thanks to all our Beta 6 prerelease testers, who helped clean out a few bugs that slipped through the cracks, especially bugsniper for reporting a nasty crash on seeking lots of help from Zion, and Valguris for finding several different issues.
And thanks to everyone for your Steam reviews! In case anyone missed it, there's a pre-1.0 medium-term goal you can help with which could affect the future of Cogmind development. Check out the original announcement for more info.
There is currently a 10% discount on Cogmind to coincide with the Beta 6 release. As a heads up, this is the largest discount Cogmind will have during Early Access unless at some point Valve decides to again offer exposure for a larger discount like they did in December, in which case I might take them up. (But I wouldn't count on them doing that again, there being so many games out there these days :P)
Beta 6 saves are not compatible with previous versions, but even if you're on Steam and have autoupdates enabled, Beta 5 is still available via its own branch and you can roll back to finish a run in progress first if you like.
