Comments - Kyzrati

Hey Omegakill! Yeah still kicking... that 1.0 can down the road since there's always more that can be done here, and as many people as ever are really into it :P

Another good year ahead, I'm sure (getting ready to put out the annual review from YEAR 8).

Thanks, been at it for years and gifs are always still the most effective way to demo something so I record a lot of them :P

Nope, not a testing thing, this is just the whole mode--I do an especially crazy event every year for April Fools, but they don't get additional work beyond that except for the occasional bug fix. (Though it stays accessible in the game after the event is over since some people might want to play it another time.)

There actually aren't really much of any unique mechanics to test here. Aside from the AI and its dialogue (which is where almost all the code went) the only truly unique mechanic is that their core is linked to yours, and that's really easy to do in the code. Absolutely no other balance changes were made, either, nor are they necessary, because the game already rebalances itself automatically when you have allies, scaling up the defenses over time because the alert level rises faster.

So really this build was just creating a new AI to play with.

Oh, ha, did not get that since I'm not very familiar with roguelites xD

But remember, this isn't *really* two players--the second is AI controlled so it plays plenty smoothly, I wouldn't bother making a true multiplayer traditional roguelike since I don't think it can really be done and still keep the roguelike flow.

Also it's just an optional mode (/special event) for fun anyway, not a permanent thing most people will usually be playing after a while. (I.e. it's not a regular part of the game--I've added over a dozen optional modes over the years, extra content aside from the "regular" game which also gets it's own ongoing development!)

I dunno, players are having a lot of fun with it so it doesn't matter :)

Also there's a tradition in the roguelike genre of having bots capable of playing a game, so this is just one more step in that direction. I've always wanted to do that but didn't think it would ever happen, yet now through three different modes developed over the past 6 months it's actually starting to gradually take shape piece by piece... may even happen one day?

(Though I don't see how it really relates to the Nuclear Throne example since that's taking a game and turning it into an extremely different game, whereas in this case having allies is a perfectly normal and common thing to do in Cogmind, including powerful NPCs, and the main difference is that this just happens to be an NPC with a heck of a lot more abilities and smarter AI.)

I love it because for me it always means experimenting with something wild and new to share :)

Yes the post title is definitely over the top (for the occasion :P), but I did actually build an AI that can play Cogmind and kick butt with you. They collect their own parts, put together their own builds, carry their own spares to perform maintenance and upgrades, make their own evolution decisions... They also have quite a lot of situational and dynamic dialogue to share.

It turns out to be a lot of fun to have "another player" to adventure with!

Yes!

Nope, sorry that's not something the engine or design can do. It's a traditional terminal window approach that breaks the screen into a grid for placing characters (map, UI, and all--same grid), so the larger your screen, the larger everything is. It was developed for desktop monitors as a hardware requirement.

Changing the dimensions of the screen grid results in very different gameplay, although I did show an example of simplified gameplay on a smaller grid with my 7DRL last year, the Cogmind spin-off POLYBOT-7. Cogmind requires more cells than that.

I haven't actually collected a list of special modes into a single place yet, since they were mostly meant to be timed events. I'll probably do this eventually... actually I guess it's about time to add it to the manual for next release. Right now the manual only covers how to activate the various Challenge Modes.

For now they're only mentioned in the respective announcements from the past few years, as well as in the changelog. The only two other than Abominations which can still be played are "Launchers" mode from AFD2018, and "Pay2Buy" mode from AFD2019, which you can initiate by using the same command line instruction.

Since it's based on a strict grid-based terminal, font size is actually dependent on monitor size, so for example if you have a large hi-res monitor, this is what you see: Gridsagegames.com

So yeah, it's not designed for small screens--I would design the entire game differently from the ground up depending on whether it's targeting portable consoles, mobile, laptops, etc., but Cogmind is specifically made to be played on a large desktop monitor. (Note this has a significant impact on gameplay as well, it's not just a "zoom everywhere and it's okay" sorta thing--that has a great impact on the experience.)

For a comparison, I designed a Cogmind-like last year, "POLYBOT-7", targeting different hardware specifications: Kyzrati.itch.io

But either way I don't see any "peril" involved here. Cogmind is designed for a niche audience, and gets support from that niche audience, which is all it needs.

Although I've released level design tools for my work before, there aren't currently any plans to do that for Cogmind specifically because it's not really designed for it. Instead I released my main tool for general use by other devs, and many use it in their own projects: Gridsagegames.com

Thanks Napalm_Knight :D

I don't see anything really slowing down more than the little bit it already has over the past year, it's mainly that I can't work on the remaining audio yet so will be advancing the game in other optional areas instead, partially guided by patrons letting me know what kinds of features they'd prefer from among the many ideas I've still got floating around.

Things are looking good!

Oh hey Indiegamelover, thanks :D

All in good time! First we'll get a couple little updates, one this week, and another around a few weeks from now which will contain... stuff that shall remain secret for now. But I can guarantee any Cogmind players who've been nice this year will have a happy holiday ;)

Hehe, thanks elmundodefreeman! If you manage to get through the hundreds of hours of content in the next month, there's a big new update coming in January ;) (Actually Beta 8 will be doing some nice things for the early game, so easily accessible as well!)

I released that 7DRL, by the way. It's a Cogmind-ish game you can check out for free here: Gridsagegames.com

Enjoy :D

It works like a terminal grid, so it depends on your physical screen size. This is basically a hardware requirement, one that can't work for everyone! But that's okay not every game is suitable for every player--I'm sure you'll find plenty of other roguelikes to your liking :)

That said, I'm going to be releasing a free stripped down version next month for 7DRL (very stripped down because much of Cogmind's content and features are not meant to be fit into a smaller grid). Everything will be much larger than in the current full iteration, so you could try that even on a smaller laptop.

Oh sure I've considered it. But after they asked me whether I wanted to put Cogmind on GOG a while back I said I needed more time and they haven't replied to my emails since :/

I'd love to hear back from them, but stopped bothering for now since I already sell DRM-free direct anyway.

There's a page for Cogmind on GOG here: Gog.com

Did you check the link from the system requirements? There is a page of UI previews here: Gridsagegames.com

Native 1280x1024 is supported just fine, and you can see it in the list to test--there are seven different fonts at that resolution. (Cogmind was actually designed for 4:3 aspect ratio, and expands to widescreen only as necessary, so it was definitely designed with this ratio in mind!)

But if you have a *physically* small screen then yeah it might be too hard to see things since it requires that the screen be divided into a minimum 160x60 grid for displaying the terminal. In any case, you can test with those images and see.

No problem, yeah it was here: Reddit.com

Pretty much still the same list today, and you can find a lot of other details about my dev work in the other FAQs: Reddit.com

The years just keep piling up xD. At least this time it's mostly finished in a lot of senses, and on Steam!

There are a lot of ways devs use to track hours, but I just record everything on paper, then on Monday's go back and migrate all the data for the previous week into a spreadsheet. That gives me a chance to look over it again, which is always an interesting and useful habit.

In a future article I'll be doing a lengthy and detailed report about my hours over the years, including also more notes about methodology. (But that won't be coming until 1.0.)

Heh, post-Greenlight it's been pretty linear, just fast, but post-Direct it could easily get seriously exponential!

Thanks! Sure would've been nice to release on Steam one or two years ago at the latest :P

Will be interesting to follow the long tail... Also some new data based on this first post-release discount: In general sales are about 50% higher with 10% off.

Well-earned break... my gosh, you know, you are so right... And what am I doing instead? Still working my butt off xD

At least I've been getting progressively better--found yet another treatment that might help improve things even more!

In any case, there *will* be a pause in dev for a bit while I do some Steam transition-related stuff, but fortunately all the new players have a ton of stuff to explore in the meantime!

And thanks! I'm sure you'll be reading about how it goes once I get around to posting something :D

Well I've spawned a little me to help take care of side projects, but he's only in preschool right now so I don't know if that plan is going to pan out within the next decade xD

I'm as good as can be given the circumstances :)

There are lots of fun potential features to choose from, though that also means full release could be a while away. Note there also won't be any significant sales until some time *after* 1.0--before then only up to 10% off (including for example the launch discount), but Steam will at least have regional pricing for those outside USD/EUR countries.

Yeah I'm at least... able to work again xD

Got a concussion and unlike most people who recover in maybe a week or two, it's been messing me up bad for almost half a year now, and it got *really* bad for a while. I'm doing new treatments now--lots of what would be dev time is instead spent in the hospital... but at least it's turned things around enough that I can make progress. (Working with a concussion is bad, but running out of money is also bad!)

Anyway, I'm trying to stay as balanced as possible here, so you know, sticking to within 40-hour work weeks and actually taking occasional little breaks for a change :P

Back to the topic at hand... STEAM! I uploaded the first build just this afternoon and tested--working nicely :D

Thank you, coming to Steam next month! Had to take a little break due to an injury, but getting back into things to make the next leap now...

Thanks :)

Need to post another update actually, but I've been gone from IndieDB for a while because they blanket blocked my IP range :/

Thanks! Support will continue for... as long as I can afford it and have ideas to add, at least the latter of which I can confirm is going to be for quite a while to come :D (the former... we'll see--it depends on Steam, hehe)