We are not dead! We've been hard at work on some new features for Cosmos. Don't get too excited just yet because they aren't ready. This blog post is to give a bit of insight on why we haven't updated in so long and what we've been working on.
Our intention with Cosmos has always been to expand the RTS genre in new directions. We feel that the game we've got out at the moment does not stack up with what we intend to achieve, and we've been doing some re-tooling internally and building out some required systems to support the kind of game we want Cosmos to become.
A big chunk of the work we've been doing is around investigating how we can give prospectors a greater sense of ownership of the things they build in Cosmos. To this end, we've set up the start of a server-side data storage system that will save world states.
What does that mean? Well, with this system, we get access to gameplay scenarios that persist across game sessions. So, you the prospector can be on a world performing a mission or building a base or doing *anything* and the changes you make to the game world will stay put after you leave the game. In addition to this, because your world is saved, other players can get the information and use it to join your game while you're playing.
What are we going to do with this system? Well initially players are just going to be able to go and visit each other's bases (base building will be a thing - see the pictures below), but over time we want to expand this to be the galactic resource war Cosmos was always mean to be.
So when is it ready? Well this is the hard question. To be honest, we just don't know right now as there are some technical issues we still need to resolve, and then there are gameplay systems that need to be updated on top of that. This is a big chunk of work for a small team like us, and right now I feel it'd be irresponsible to give a hard deadline that we won't likely meet. We're taking a couple months though, and the first thing we release will probably be to validate the technology loop, after which we'll improve the aforementioned gameplay systems. But the team here believes this new direction that we’re taking Cosmos in is definitely the bold step for the RTS genre we’ve been aiming for and I truly think gamers will be delighted with the things we have planned for the near future.
Updates will be going here first though, as you guys are the ones we're building for.
Anyway, enough with the words, here is some eye candy from our art department that shows how we're expecting building upgrades to look as players advance.
Development Update 10th July 2015
Greetings, Prospectors!
Apologies for the delay since the last update. We've been hard at work and it's time to share a bit of information about what our attention is focused on.
The top two features requested on the Cosmos UserVoice page are a new game mode and fixes to pathfinding. This matches a lot of the internal feedback that we've received to-date, which all points to the need to add more gameplay and improve the solo-play experience.
With that in mind we're updating the tools we need to iterate on how units function and experiment more with different game modes, including saving and loading games, which will allow us a lot of flexibility with game setups and scenarios. Not a particularly glamorous feature from a player perspective yet, but it will allow us to add a much wider variety of gameplay and tweak it much faster!
We do have some updates to pathfinding too, which will resolve a lot of the issues around units blocking each other when trying to get to different locations. We're allowing units to pass through each other in certain circumstances, though there are some behaviours in the system that we're still ironing out. Expect the pathfinding updates in the next patch.
If you've got any suggestions for elements you'd like to see in the new game mode or new unit abilities, we're watching the forums and UserVoice every day, so you can chat to us there. Thanks for playing!
Play with the Devs!
Greetings Prospectors,
This Friday at 10:30AM AEST (5:30PM US Pacific time), the dev team will be online playing The Cosmos is MINE!
Add us on Steam or come join us in the Cosmos chat (available from the Cosmos Community Hub) for some multiplayer action. We'll also be fielding requests for upcoming features, so it's a good opportunity to chat to us about the direction you'd like to see Cosmos go.
See you Friday!
The Cosmos is MINE! Early Access v0.03 patch notes
Greetings, Prospectors!
A new update has just been deployed for The Cosmos is MINE! with some updates that everyone has been asking for on UserVoice. Thanks to everyone who has voted and to all the testers who helped us out with the update.
New Features
Multi-unit selection David took on this work as it was top of the list on UserVoice. Our initial internal implementation was just trying out shift-selection, where holding shift and clicking on units added or removed it to a selected group. It was pretty obvious that this wasn't good enough, so we added in box-selection too. Currently, we've set it up to only select units on the side of the world facing you. Units on the rear hemisphere of the world will not be selected. It will also not select structures, unless the structure is the only selectable object in the box.
Skirmish AI updates Corey added a few behaviour updates to the AI that should fix some of the issues and increase the challenge it presents. AI players now know how to dig out animus mines that are blocked by tile objects. This resolves the issue where AI players are unable to find more than a single animus mine in a match. AI players now always build animus mines at the start of the game, meaning that there should be no more games that end after 3 minutes where the AI fails to build an extractor. AI players now always build units. AI units will flee when their health is low, running back to base. Finally, AI players will use assault units to defend their own resources and attack yours.
Camera updates This was a bit further down the UserVoice list, but wasn't blocked by anything. Alex picked this task up, and added an alternate camera mode which unlocks the camera rotation so that it can move past the planet poles. We liked it so much that it is now the default camera mode. If you don't like it, you can switch back to the old camera in the options menu. When the camera is unlocked, players can use Q and E to roll the camera, and the N key to re-orient the camera rotation to north. Alex also added markers for the north and south pole to assist with orientation.
GUI updates There are also a few minor GUI updates to help with quality of life. Key mapping labels have been added to the unit abilities panel.
Bug fixes
The following issues have been fixed:
Sight radius of towers doesn't change when upgraded.
Projected animus displayed is different for teams with the same animus income rate.
Spawn locations for my units should be as close to the centre tile of the deployment zone as possible at the start of a game.
AI Causes slowdown if it gets in a loop looking for a target that always returns the same value.
Multiplayer and Solo game lobby screens do not support 720p resolution correctly
Selection rim light on Allied units is the wrong colour. It is yellow instead of teal.
Assault in passive stance will not attack units it is ordered to attack.
When AI purchases Tech unlocks they are granted immediately with no delay
Simulation slows down while Operative is deploying or moving within it's target territory
AI player doesn't order Engineers or Operatives
AI players throw a Null Ref when their first Assault units spawns
You are able to build walls on enemy units if they move onto the same tile as the wall building is about to complete
Known issues
There are certain cases where the game will slow down when engineers are trying to path to a blocked tile.
In the matchmaking lobby, clicking 'Launch' doesn't always begin a search for a game, even though the GUI shows the search as in-progress.
In the matchmaking lobby, the GUI element for teammates has some incorrectly scaled elements.
Box selection doesn't always select structures consistently for players on the same team.
AI team colours are not being assigned correctly.
The minimum sensitivity options for Drag, Scroll and Roll are too slow.
Not all engineer unit abilites are displaying the correct cost and build time
Sensor vision is not-obstructed by non-unit tile objects (it should be).
Dismissing in-game menus and popups with the ESC key is inconsistent.
Thanks to everyone who voted on UserVoice! Your feedback is extremely valuable and we're grateful for the time you've taken to give it to us.
We hope you like the new features. Please let us know what you think about them by commenting on the forums or on UserVoice!
Cosmos Developer Blog 22nd May 2015
Hi prospectors,
I'm writing this post to give everyone a bit of insight into the process that we're using to build Cosmos and the value of player feedback that we receive on UserVoice.
UserVoice is our Roadmap As much as possible, we try to rely on external information received about our game. This means when determining work priorities, UserVoice is a primary information source. What this means is that UserVoice is a fluid roadmap of upcoming features for Cosmos. In order words, if you want to see a feature in for Cosmos, make a post suggestion in UserVoice and get it voted!
Anyone can request features through UserVoice, and can vote on any existing suggestions. Everyone gets 10 votes on the system and can put up to 3 votes in a single idea. You can change your vote distribution at any time, so you're never locked in. Once a feature is delivered, you get back all the votes that you put into it. One thing that UserVoice doesn't currently capture is our own internal work requirements. Most of this work is quality-of-life updates for us (like modifications to our build machine) or focused on getting more information (like in-game analytics).
Right now we consider UserVoice to be the most reliable information source we have, though given the small voting sample (currently below 200 unique identified users), we still consider it to be unreliable. We feel the more people we have voting on ideas there, the more accurate our priority list will be and the higher quality the information we will have. Getting people engaged with UserVoice is a pretty high priority for us as we believe that there will be a strong correlation between voting engagement and game quality.
Meritocracy of Ideas (aka, no bad ideas, just priortized ideas) We've pre-populated UserVoice with a lot of ideas for what we would like to see in the game, but our own votes on UserVoice have the same weight as votes from any other player. Right now, due to the low voting population, developers are disproportionately represented, which we hope is a problem that will resolve itself as we get more players.
We will still contribute our ideas and votes to the system, but our theory is that our ideas for the game should have to compete with all other ideas to determine if they deserve development time, which is a precious resource for us. If we can't convince players of the merit of our own ideas, then it's a good sign that we've not thought about them enough and have to reexamine their value.
Testing Ideas The process for determining what we work on is as follows.
Whenever a member of our dev team has no work to do, they pick up the highest voted feature in UserVoice that they think they can work on. Initially, the team member is tasked with figuring out what it is that will actually satisfy the request. This is when we mark features as 'Under Review'.
During this phase, we come up with a list of test criteria that the feature has to satisfy before we release the first version of the feature. This list can expand during development as we learn more about a feature, and we must continually be watchful to not to let the scope of a feature expand beyond what we can reasonably complete in a release.
Often, we decide we don't have enough information about how to build a certain feature, and have to figure out how to learn more. What information do we have about this feature? What information do we need to find out? This is where a testing and design happens and we like to work by coming up with a testable hypothesis that we can then try to prove or disprove.
Testing hypotheses may not actually involve writing any code. It often involves looking at other sources of information to see if someone has already solved the problem we're facing, or speaking to other players, or looking at available data, googling it, etc. The point is to get the right information quickly so that we can figure out what the work involved actually looks like.
Currently, we feel that proving or disproving these hypotheses is a bit too 'fast and loose' for our liking, and relies a lot on our intuition as game developers. Eventually, it's something that we'd like to outsource more of to our community members when we start to get a bit more engagement on the forums and with UserVoice, but a lot of the granular design decisions we'll likely be keeping in house as putting everything out for public discussion will probably waste a lot of time.
From Ideas to Gameplay Once we lock in the list of criteria that we feel a feature must satisfy for release, it is marked as 'Started' in UserVoice. At this point, the information that we have gathered gives us a relatively clear idea of what it is that we need to build and the obstacles involved, and we commit to getting it into the game.
This is the 'work' phase, where most of the code and artwork happens. It's a collaborative phase and each feature usually requires the input of multiple team members, under the auspice of the feature owner who is responsible for driving it towards release. Balancing this phase so that work is evenly distributed is the principle challenge here, and we track the tasks that everyone is doing on a physical whiteboard with flash cards.
If a team member’s work is ever blocked while waiting for a specific task to be done, they usually switch to bug-fixing or go back to UserVoice and find an available small task that they can do while they are blocked. When a feature is ready for a release, it goes into the next release candidate, where we check to make sure that it satisfies all the criteria we established earlier. We've recently decided that we also have to start doing final quality checks where anyone can veto a feature going in if it doesn't meet our quality bar (the two patches so far have included some things that were released without going through the proper quality checks). As of next patch, we'll also be running a comprehensive QA check on the release candidate to make sure there are no regressions. Unfortunately, this is a time consuming process, but should result in a better quality game.
When the release candidate passes QA and all features in it pass their requirements, we release!
Improving Existing Features When a feature is released, that doesn't mean that work is finished on it! Any bugs for recently delivered features are tackled as a priority (as with the upcoming bugfixes for the AI)
If we release a feature that is functional but not quite complete, we will leave it as 'In-Progress' until we reach a point where we feel the feature is complete. If we intend to put updates for the feature back in the competing pool of ideas, it is marked as 'Delivered'. Any subsequent work improving that feature must then compete against other ideas for votes and development time once again. This is a discretionary call by us, and there's the potential for human error here, so let us know if we make decisions that you disagree with.
Ultimately, our vision for The Cosmos is MINE! is just one possible direction it can take. We're actually a lot more excited by the notion that this game may end up becoming something completely unexpected if that's where this path takes us.
If you're interested in anything we're doing, the best thing you can do is get involved! Vote for features, tell us what you want on our UserVoice, post on our forums, and we'll do everything to make The Cosmos is MINE! the best game we can!
The Cosmos is MINE! Early Access v0.02 patch notes
Hello everyone!
After an eventful weekend of server-wrestling following a comically destructive power outage, we finally have the Cosmos Early Access v0.02 patch live. Thanks to all our forum goers who have been very patient with us while we sorted everything out.
New Features
Single player skirmish mode This was by far the most requested feature for this patch, sitting at 67 votes on UserVoice. We'd like to thank UserVoice member Kevin for suggesting it in the first place and everyone else for voting it up. The UserVoice idea will now be marked as delivered and all votes returned, so please come back and use your spare votes to upvote other ideas!
The AI is still in a very early state, so it's more annoying than challenging right now, but we can improve it over time, particularly if a very challenging AI is a priority for everyone. UserVoice is the place to tell us about that.
Clicking solo mode in the game now has the following features:
Solo mode now includes an optional AI player.
Players can now choose to play on either Pebble or Plateau planets
Players can choose a game mode: Solo play, play vs AI in 1v1, play vs AI in 2v2.
Teamplay updates Players on the same team now share and spawn units at the same base.
Animus extractors that are built by allies now share animus between all team members.
Misc Tech upgrade description text has been added
Bug fixes Frame rate is now capped at 60 instead of infinity. Sorry to all the GPUs we stressed out, and thanks to user toqueteos for pointing this bug out to us in this thread on the forums.
Known issues
Digitizing is not well optimized. Having lots of engineers digitizing will slow down the simulation (You can see this happening when the game timer counts very slowly).
If a player disconnects during the game launch sequence or a network desynchronisation occurs, all players have to restart the game before starting a new match.
Capturing territory with an AI player in the game will cause all territory capture markers to appear at the top of the world.
Occasionally, animus extractors do not build on animus mines.
Again, we'd like to thank everyone for their contributions to our UserVoice page and for posting on the forums. We are extremely grateful for the engagement that people are showing here. Our development process is, quite literally, just working through the UserVoice suggestions in order of votes, so getting involved in suggesting and voting on ideas there is the most valuable feedback we can get.
Also don't forget that this Friday we'll all be online playing Cosmos. There's a group event scheduled that has all the regional times, so check it out if you'd like to join us!
Development Update 10th May 2015
Hi everyone,
Cosmos has been featured as IGN Prime's game of the month, so welcome to all IGN Prime members!
Play with the devs days! We're going to start doing regular play dates for Cosmos where we'll be online playing with anyone who would like to join us. I'll be posting a group event shortly. Currently it's scheduled for every Friday at 10:30AM AEST, which is 5:30PM US Pacific time, but if you have other time's you'd like to play with us, please post below and we can organise a play date. We're looking forward to the opportunity to meet you guys while you stomp our faces at our own game.
Patch 0.02 We're two weeks in and our second patch is in testing. If all goes well then we'll push it out on Monday our time (Sunday afternoon, US time). Detailed patch notes will be posted on the Announcement page when the patch goes live.
Corey has built the initial version of our skirmish AI, and if it passes our internal testing then we'll put it up with the patch.
The AI that we're delivering on Monday is obviously going to be an early version, so it will need a lot of testing and iteration before it starts to feel like a real player. Making an AI that's not too hard or too easy is a challenge that will take us a while to get right. Feedback on how you find playing against the AI will be something we're looking out for. There will likely be some strange behaviors early on that we'll smooth out over time. The long term goal is to develop various 'personas' for the AIs that feel like different play styles people might use to win, but I think we need to focus on adding more gameplay features before AI variants become a priority (please feel free to vote on UserVoice if you disagree with me though!). Once the skirmish mode AI is live, I'll be closing the UserVoice idea and subsequent suggestions to improve the AI can be handled under their own header. Once the idea is closed all the UserVoice votes will be returned and you can use them to vote for new ideas.
Also included this patch are a number of updates to teamplay that we've done as a prerequisite for custom lobbies, which are on the way. Players on the same team now share the same orbital HQ, spawning at the same locations rather than at randomly allocated starting zones at the beginning of the match. This will allow people to manage zones that expand outwards from a single shared point, rather than having to link up distant territories. We're testing out some resource sharing mechanics too, as I want players to be able to focus on specific roles within a team (e.g. one player managing the economy, another player on security, etc).
Upcoming features
Custom Lobbies Custom lobbies is next - the feature isn't on UserVoice but I feel that the ability to play with your friends without the need for matchmaking is a pretty fundamental missing feature in the game currently. Ideally the first version that we release will include the ability to play against AI with a teammate, but we need to evaluate whether or not the AI is deterministic as it could cause network issues if it isn't.
Multi-unit selection For player-requested features, we're also going to be starting work on multi-unit selection. There is one big prerequisite for this that we've got to address first, which is pathfinding. The main thing for us to do here is figure out how we're going to make groups of units move around without blocking each other, coming to a dead stop, or repathing everywhere. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to make units pathfind a bit more elegantly than we do currently, and we may be able to do some optimisation here too, as pathfinding is pretty slow at the moment.
Public roadmap We've also had a request for a public roadmap. I'll put a text one up in a post this week. It'll be pretty fluid as our priorities are flexible right up until we begin work on something. In my experience, community expectations and software development tend to clash when dates start getting thrown around. To see if we can find a solution that works better, I'll work to ensure that the public roadmap keeps parity with the UserVoice priorities that everyone has voted for.
Single player survival mode Finally, we're working on a design for a new game mode that's a bit more dynamic than the current quota system. The design still needs a day or two to percolate through our thoughts and it deserves its own post so I'll put up something for discussion soon after the Monday patch is out.
The Cosmos is MINE! Early Access v0.01 patch notes
Hi everyone,
We released a patch last night that addresses some issues and adds a help screen to explain the fundamentals of the game. Details are as follows:
New features:
Added a help screen that explains the basics of the game. This can be found by clicking the ‘How to Play’ button on the main menu or the ‘Help’ button in game.
Bug fixes:
Units that arrive in SpaceCrates that crush other units are now targetable.
Quota panel GUI has been updated to show the correct quota due time.
Structure models are now removed upon destruction.
Towers no longer enter states where they are indestructible when upgraded.
Thanks for tuning in! If you've got any feedback to give us or would like to comment, please check out our forums.
Development update 28th April 2015
Hi everyone,
The first development update has been posted in the Cosmos forums. We're looking at what form a new single player game mode should take - an AI player to compete with or a survival mode. If you've got any suggestions, would like to vote, or just want to read our thoughts, you can see the update here.
Thanks to everyone who's posted on the Cosmos forums and voted for features on our UserVoice!
Now on Early Access!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/347220
Hey everyone!!! We are excited to launch The Cosmos Is MINE! on Early Access and just want to make sure you know where to find everything you need.
If you want to check out an overview of the game head here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/347220/discussions/0/611704730315468710/
Check out our list of Known Bugs:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/347220/discussions/0/611704531884491639/
We also want to use Early Access the best we can! Check out our Official feedback page and more info about it here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/347220/discussions/0/611704531881287221/
