Well that was fast :P
I spent all day working on balance tweaks and later on the missing sfx, and now Beta 9.3 is pretty close to its normal prerelease state. There will definitely be some more work on it, but it will only be 1) to solve any serious problem that might come up or 2) just the...
2019-12-12 12:45:27 +0000 UTC View PostCertainly later than I'd want it, but it's finally ready. Sorta :P
This is definitely an X1 rather than a "this is pretty much what's going public" prerelease like I did for 9.1 and 9.2.
Unfortunately with the deadline approaching and me already crunching on everything related to this...
2019-12-11 14:51:01 +0000 UTC View PostWell we still don't have the new leaderboards, but I've done some writing on the old ones for posterity, and who knows, maybe it'll help someone looking to do something similar? It was certainly a relatively easy way to set things up, simplest way I could figure out on my own anyway.
Well I was hoping to have the new game mode out for you all to check out by this weekend, but it turns out that was a bit overambitious of me since--who would've known*--it's the beginning of December and I had to do my 2019-12-05 13:29:47 +0000 UTC View Post
News
There's going to be a new special mode/holiday event for the end of the year! It's been mostly planned out, and this is actually what I'll be working on next, to be released as Beta 9.3 in a few weeks. Some time before that, perhaps next week, there'll be a prerelease ...
2019-11-26 05:48:07 +0000 UTC View Post
This was one of the incomplete drafts for Cogmind's alpha trailer, done back in 2015. A number of trailer versions were created, and mini-tests run, this being one of the more complete ones.
Notice the music is a bit different, as its final style hadn't yet been settled on, and there's a sp...
2019-11-18 06:40:11 +0000 UTC View PostWell then, looks like we did actually hit the Overwhelmingly Positive threshold on Steam, pretty awesome :D
That means the Merchants Guild will be a thing! Wow, I wasn't sure that would actually happen, this should be interesting... I'll talk about my plans for the Guild in a future post at...
2019-11-18 01:23:30 +0000 UTC View PostBeta 9.2 should release next Tuesday, and seems to be working nicely, but let's play with it for a few days just to be sure :P
It's pretty meaty for a minor release, with at least a little something for everyone, if at least fixes for some newly discovered bugs!
Changelog is attached,...
2019-11-07 13:39:42 +0000 UTC View PostLast year Steam updated its friends list and chat client to support more features, and among them is support for "Rich Presence," or basically giving games running under Steam the option to share with friends more about the player's current state.
2019-11-05 11:37:01 +0000 UTC
View Post
So last week for the special Halloween version I had a "branding image" / "cover image" / "logo" / whateveryouwanttocallit, something I've been doing for Beta releases for a while now to essentially represent the release visually. I really like the final choice, which you can see again below with...
2019-11-04 14:29:17 +0000 UTC View PostAnd I thought I was probably done with renderFilters...
Saw a Tweet today from a dev who was fooling around with negative color in their game, and realized we didn't have that option in Cogmind. We do have SHIFT_HUE(180), which converts colors to their opposite on color wheel for a similar ...
2019-11-01 07:24:53 +0000 UTC View PostThere's a new Beta 9.1 prerelease out, the same branch on Steam (so it can autoupdate--saves are compatible), and same DRM-free link. This should be the final version, which also includes some new fixes. There have been more updates to this mode than planned because I've had more time to play it ...
2019-10-26 05:06:23 +0000 UTC View PostBeta 9.1 is coming next Tuesday, just a week after the Beta 9 release, as planned.
It's mainly about making the Halloween "Abominations" mode public, but also includes some fixes, including for a nasty potential crash introduced by Beta 9. I've attached the changelog, although if you've bee...
2019-10-24 05:52:21 +0000 UTC View PostWhew, the data server is up and running, and the deadline for releasing Beta 9 fast approaches, so we're going to do it without leaderboards since at least we'll be properly collecting the data for later!
Next week Beta 9 will release publicly, so before then the goal is to make sure there'...
2019-10-16 02:18:56 +0000 UTC View Post
No wonder I've been feeling productive, got to spend most of last week actually CODING! Was recording my hours and noticed it was one of those good streaks :)
The first couple days this week have been similar, although instead of the upcoming event the time was instead spent finalizing and ...
2019-10-15 14:04:31 +0000 UTC View PostThe final iteration of the server backend still isn't ready (Will's occasionally working on it...), but the good news is that it's pretty close to a state where it'll at least be usable for accepting uploads, the minimum requirement for releasing Beta 9.
Although it would be unfortunate to ...
2019-10-13 23:48:51 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm still waiting on the completed server backend so we can actually test the final score uploading features, so in the meantime decided there was time to implement some extra content for another timed event. Steam sent out an email that reminded all the devs this is a thing you can do, and an id...
2019-10-09 23:57:10 +0000 UTC View PostBecause some of you haven't redeemed your rewards yet, here's a quick reminder that you can check out this post for details on how to do that for your particular tier.
This link is also provided in a welcome emai...
2019-09-30 23:46:11 +0000 UTC View PostFor a long time I've toyed with the idea of having a bot that plays Cogmind, just for fun, and especially in recent months I've thought of the idea more and more often, even coming close to starting implementation a couple times now.
The second such time was last night, though I stopped mys...
2019-09-27 04:42:43 +0000 UTC View PostI've added an important new Wizard Mode feature for Beta 9 but will hold off on updating the Wizard Mode How-to until Beta 9 officially releases.
Instead, if using Beta 9 X5 you can access Wizard ...
2019-09-18 06:59:17 +0000 UTC View PostAnother prerelease! I'd like to say this'll be the last one before Beta 9 finally goes out, but it's still missing the leaderboards which we definitely need to test before release, so I guess there'll have to be one more after this. (X5 was going to be the last, but the dude helping with the lead...
2019-09-18 06:48:30 +0000 UTC View PostThis is the draft for a new blog post coming soon...
A couple years back I introduced difficulty settings to Cogmind. At the time I wrote about the benefits and draw...
2019-09-14 01:57:41 +0000 UTC View PostFor me, permadeath is a huge part of the roguelike experience. When you make enough mistakes that you lose--that's it, it's over. No immediately starting from a safe checkpoint not long before in order to try again, no in-game benefits carrying over to future attempts. Each run is an isolated att...
2019-09-10 00:49:01 +0000 UTC View PostWell sheesh, the changelog for Beta 9 is already longer than any before it, and it's still not out xD
As I've mentioned in some places, this is because I don't really want Cogmind to be without leaderboards for one or more releases, and a number of the new features I've been working on idea...
2019-09-06 05:28:41 +0000 UTC View PostAfter the earlier post declaring Siege Treads the vote winner that'll be going into the next release, I've spent more time thinking about the design and it's been expanded!
I'm pretty close to finali...
2019-09-03 00:11:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe fourth and final article in the Ultimate Morgue File series is up, in which I write about why and how to include accessible character dumps in Cogmind, including automated build classification and a situation analysis system.
I've embedded it in image form below, but you can also 2019-08-27 01:13:37 +0000 UTC View Post
The patrons have spoken , Siege treads are coming to Cogmind Beta 9! I like this one, good choice :)
They'll be fairly accessible, and probably lead to some new reliable strategies, although of course with that ...
2019-08-26 01:11:33 +0000 UTC View PostThe recent voting will be closed soon, so anyone interested in participating who hasn't done so yet is encouraged to get those votes in ASAP.
We have some clear front-runners now, so I'll provide a bit more clari...
2019-08-24 02:09:41 +0000 UTC View PostTime to vote for a new Cogmind item/mechanic! This patron goal was reached earlier in the Beta 9 dev cycle, as described here when I put out the call for concepts. The requirements and other details are described in th...
2019-08-15 07:10:15 +0000 UTC View PostIf you recall, back in March I put out a call for concepts since we reached this particular milestone goal. That was all going to be handled earlier, but instead I've been working on prereleases and other feature...
2019-08-14 04:49:13 +0000 UTC View Post