TODO list prioritization (a call for suggestions)
Added 2019-03-11 02:13:55 +0000 UTCSo it's not time to actually decide on this stuff just yet, but one of the plans I have for Patreon is to allow you all to help prioritize a feature that will then make it into the next release.
I have a practically endless list of possible things to work on, and can only do one at a time, so I'm always prioritizing individual features based on player needs, architectural convenience, and other considerations, but there's always some wiggle room and I imagine you all would like to provide some clearer input on which you want to see first. (The advantage of something being first is also that it's guaranteed to be in the final game, whereas some features otherwise keep their low priority and are repeatedly kicked down the road and may never even happen.)
I haven't actually gone through my list to come up with a full range of possibilities for voting, because filtering for features of this approximate appropriate scope will take a little while, but here are examples of ideas to get you started:
- A form of item searching/filtering on the map
- Revamped combat log
- List of win achievements still available in the current run (or other types of observable progress towards achievements)
- ...
There are a good many more, but these have come up more recently or are on the top of my mind, so that's the beginning of the list
What other things might you want to see added to the list? Now the scope can't be too huge (even the achievements one, done right, could be a massive undertaking that might need to be split up...), but something that takes more than a few hours but less than a week is appropriate. I can give a better idea of feasibility in responses :)
For suggestions you can think back to other community discussions we've had in the past regarding possible features, and things that I've said could, or would probably, happen one day.
Comments
Hi Joel, well it's hard to expand too much because I haven't settled on anything yet. With long-term issues like this, up until it's about time to do something about it I just collect a large number of notes, both my own and maybe relevant comments from players, all of it disorganized and written explictly without referring to previous notes (not unlike the map planning process in my main Exiles level design article), so that I can later go in and see it from different perspectives and pick (or mix and match) for the best approach depending on the state of the game at the time. The shorter answer is: I have no idea, but yes the #1 goal would be to reduce or completely eliminate micromanagement.
Kyzrati
2019-03-31 12:39:38 +0000 UTCHey Kyzrati, could you perhaps expand a bit on what your 'drone overhaul' might entail? The required micromanagement right now is definitely a problem. I've had my own ideas in the past about how to deal with this but I would like to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Joel Collins
2019-03-31 10:19:46 +0000 UTCHi Ape! Yeah I recall that post, in fact I was also thinking about that when I wrote the above comment :). I'm not sure how many people would really want to use that over the existing system which is probably more approachable to those unfamiliar with terminals, but I'll be sure to add it to the list and we'll see. Now obviously I'm all for adding optional alternatives, though something like this would actually take a while to fully implement so it'd need more support to go through.
Kyzrati
2019-03-15 07:49:18 +0000 UTCNot directly related to schematic hacking, but I would really like to see bash-like tab completion when machine hacking like I mentioned here: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Cogmind/comments/8fq4mw/feature_request_improved_terminal_autocomplete/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/Cogmind/comments/8fq4mw/feature_request_improved_terminal_autocomplete/</a>
Ape
2019-03-15 07:15:53 +0000 UTCHahaha... well... about that TODO, it really does have thousands of lines in it, I could literally work on this for years more and still not be done with it, so clearly some of this stuff is simply not going to happen. Of course, much of it is stuff that no one has even *heard of* before, so perhaps no big loss there ;)
Kyzrati
2019-03-13 12:32:44 +0000 UTCOh, I got it! That plan sounds like more cool for me, and I'm relieved that there were no 2000+ items stacked in your ToDo.
Via
2019-03-13 09:58:06 +0000 UTCHehe, that was definitely a joke. They've been on the list for consideration, and these are definitely *not* too large for a potential voting option. One reason nothing's been done there yet is that it could be part of the "drone overhaul" I've wanted to do, in terms of modifying drone behavior and how Cogmind interacts with them to reduce or remove the benefits of tedious micromanagement. Now that you bring it up, drone overhaul will be on the list.
Kyzrati
2019-03-13 06:41:44 +0000 UTCWhile they are mentioned before in Steam discussion, what about centering camera to drones/allies (eg shortcutkey or rightclick to allies list name) and marking where drones died? Are they too large for this topic? You replied that they were added to list of #2437 and #2438, but I can't tell if this is a joke:-)
Via
2019-03-13 05:20:39 +0000 UTCWell the utility thing will need to happen at the right time during development, since it's not an isolated system and also relies on other development progress, so it wouldn't be on a list like this. I mainly threw this up since there'd been conversations before about mainly QoL feature requests that I've still not gotten around to for various reasons. I'll be expanding the list myself for the actual voting process. It's a little early yet, anyway, since this will be for Beta 9 and I'm actually going to do 8.1 before that. I, too, look forward to doing more beyond Cogmind, it's just so hard to get past/away from it quite yet xD Overall I'll be gradually reducing Cogmind work over time and shift into other areas, although of course 1.0 is still an important milestone to look forward to.
Kyzrati
2019-03-13 01:30:00 +0000 UTCI am having trouble thinking of things that aren't a large amount of work (the great utilities rework would be one -- I think I am in favor of removing and streamlining the utilities lineup and maybe adding cool new things too). Honestly I think Cogmind is quite complete, new content is welcome but I'm also curious to see what you come up with after Cogmind. :)
Joshua
2019-03-12 20:23:36 +0000 UTCHey Joshua! What about of the ones I didn't mention? :P But yeah that's more or less what I was thinking, and integrating that into the achievement UI (somehow), though note that's actually... a rather huge amount of work.
Kyzrati
2019-03-12 11:13:30 +0000 UTCOf the ones you mentioned, progress towards achievements sounds the most interesting/useful. I like ITB's implementation here (something like 3/5 Behemoths destroyed, with strikethrough when the goal becomes impossible like -Win without attaching any propulsion other than Wheels-).
Joshua
2019-03-12 09:53:25 +0000 UTCWow, really? I see, well I'll make sure it's on the list then :D. I thought item filtering might be more popular, but hey, that's why we're going to vote on it and see!
Kyzrati
2019-03-11 23:18:59 +0000 UTCC O M B A T L O G
MTF
2019-03-11 16:58:49 +0000 UTCAh, do you mean for hacking for the schematics in the first place, not at a Fabricator? If so, I've thought about it before, it would just be a fair amount of work to add in there. The end result would certainly be useful, and actually pretty easy to use since you just keep typing and it'll match the closest items and keep narrowing down the suggestion list as you type. This is certainly something I'd be happy to do if everyone wants to prioritize it. On that note, I believe someone else had mentioned before on r/Cogmind that they'd like to see the entire list of matching hacks as you type, rather than just one possibility and the number of total current matches you can browse through. That would be another thing I wouldn't mind having on this list (to at least explore, anyway--I'm not sure how feasible it is in all cases), but I mention it since it would affect the implementation of your suggestion.
Kyzrati
2019-03-11 11:12:32 +0000 UTCI don't know how feasible or useful it may be, but I'll just throw it out there for brainstorming: I wonder if there was way to improve auto-complete/search for Schematic Hacks, or maybe perhaps save certain schematics you'd want to bring up run after run. Would certainly help fabbing heavy builds :3
Malthusis
2019-03-11 07:00:06 +0000 UTCHaha yeah I can imagine that one being high on the list. I've wanted to add it for a while, but it keeps getting pushed down just beyond the "next release" threshold. The voting is not now, that will come later, but if the votes are in favor then you'll get it ;)
Kyzrati
2019-03-11 06:50:27 +0000 UTCQoL search plox
8FPSBOSSFIGHT
2019-03-11 06:48:16 +0000 UTCCertainly, the actual voting would happen in another thread via the voting system, with a final list, just wanted to give people an opportunity to help decide what would be on the list at all! I just threw some out there as examples, but there will be more. Removing depths was zxc's idea, I just mentioned it since it was part of the same conversation each time it was brought up. (Notice I said remove depths, not add.) By "removing slots" I actually meant something different, referring to your proposal of removing some early slot evolutions to give the player more free slots to use to begin wtih. Shouldn't have just labeled it "removing slot" xD But yeah, I certainly have other ideas and stuff I want to do there--not low-effort, mind you, but perhaps with better results than a low-effort approach :)
Kyzrati
2019-03-11 06:11:04 +0000 UTCI never proposed to add depths or slots. Instead, ways to make existing depths more enjoyable and earlygame slots more versatile in a kind of low-devtime-effort way. But if you have different crazy ideas how to make it more interesting, then it has to work too :) For a proper voting, we probably need a proper-er list of what items in to-do list to rearrange.
Suslik
2019-03-11 05:41:35 +0000 UTCSince we're in patron-only territory here, I may as well add one word that hints at one of the planned new features for the early game: Exoskeletons :) (different from the existing ones, however, which will likely be renamed)
Kyzrati
2019-03-11 05:22:01 +0000 UTCYeah this isn't planned to happen. In the long term there are alternatives besides removing slots or depths, which leave more space for development of the early game. The things you mention would be possible approaches for shortening the experience to fit a shorter dev lifetime, whereas I see it differently--more space means more room to expand (yes this includes unannounced plans for how to make use of additional slot space!). I think you'll like some of the planned early-game content, but that's a topic for another time! To reiterate, this is a call for features people want to see on a prioritization list for voting, not new ideas outside the realm of existing plans. I could (and will) expand the list further myself later, but wanted to throw this out there in case there was something that I've said I'd be open to doing at some point that players would prefer to see *now*.
Kyzrati
2019-03-11 05:19:09 +0000 UTCFrom things you've listed, combat log sounds pretty interesting. However, as we discussed with other patrons on discord earlier, there's a relatively simple solution to making early game more diverse. Problem is that often even though you find reasonable equipment, you are not going to use it anyway just because there's only 7 slots and most of them are "fixed" to essential pieces: prop is obligatory, power is obligatory, storage is favored to most other utils, etc. Idea is to merge certain not-good-enough items into 1 item, but make it worse than dedicated parts for same slot count so that it's only viable in earlygame. For example, weak legs but with heat dissipation -- it can allow more thermal cannon use early on, but later on just decent leg + decent heatsink is just better in every aspect than two of these hybrids. Or things like bad terrain scanner+bad terrain scanning processor. Or a weak generator with basic energy shield. It's not on your to-do list(yet :D) but might be a reasonably simple way to improve early game experience.
Suslik
2019-03-11 03:15:13 +0000 UTC
