Access Cogmind's Real-time "Arcade Mode"

So last year on 4/1 we ended up with Pay2Buy as a special mode, but that wasn't actually the first idea planned for that event. Before going on to build that mode I'd actually tested another that sparked my interest at the time: What would it be like if Cogmind were a real-time game?

Now obviously there are a lot of different ways to potentially go about this, though when it comes to AFD I'd prefer it be something relatively simple to implement rather than spending forever building a bunch of new mechanics and content. Since parts and integrity are central to Cogmind, I decided to base this mode on these relatively simple rules:

• your parts are gradually losing integrity over time
• if you have no part integrity left to drain, it instead drains your core
• destroying enemies repairs your parts

It's technically still turn-based action and you can just sit there as you lose integrity, so in that sense it isn't quite what everyone will be thinking when they imagine a "real-time game," but is instead just real-time in the sense that the passage of real time matters and you'd better be fast! :P

Clearly the main balancing point for designing this mode was how quickly to drain integrity, and correspondingly how much to restore on attacking enemies. My notes where I was figuring out the relevant factors and calculating it out:

An old gif I recorded back when I first created this mode:

On testing it I decided that, while interesting, this wouldn't be something that many people could enjoy, partially because it requires a lot of familiarity with the game in order to be effective. Plus of course it's a complete diversion from the turn-based nature of the game.

Anyway, at the time I was thinking I might come back to it at some point, and I'd already written in some code for it, so I left it in the game! You can even play it right now :)

Reminder from the manual:

Activating them requires adding a command line parameter when running COGMIND.EXE, "-forceMode:[mode_name]", where [mode_name] is simply the name of the desired mode from the list below. (Within Steam this is handled by going to Cogmind > Properties > Set Launch Options.) If you've done this correctly the message log will show a special announcement when you start a new run. Note you don't actually have to type out the full name of the event, just a subset of it will work, for example simply "-forceMode:Launchers" to get the April Fool's Day event from 2018.

For convenience you can also download and run the enclosed .bat file in the game directory.

The official name of this mode is "AFD2100/Arcade". So yeah, if someone happens to play Cogmind on April 1st in the year 2100, this incomplete mode will automatically activate :P (Maybe should've set it to 2243? ;))

Arcade mode is playable but very much incomplete from a design and balance perspective. Among my notes I see:

These are just random notes in the source, whereas normally for special modes I write up longer detailed design docs in external text files, but this mode never made it that far, so it just gets source comments :P

Anyway, just thought I'd share this and see if any of you were interested in trying it out. Gotta be fast!

Note: I recommend having the part integrity visualization on ('w').