Kyzrati

Blog time! In order to put out Beta 14 as quickly as possible, while concentrating all my efforts on what was a very significant update that needed to happen at once, I kept the blog on hold despite having several topics I wanted to cover. Now that Beta 14 is complete, I've subsequently patched it s

Back to map zooming again?! Well for a while I had skipped away do the engine work I had in mind to support UI upscaling, and having proven that would be possible, I then still needed to get back to finishing the zoom feature, which wouldn't be very playable without the QoL features. Although I fini

The series continues! Part 4 is another about new architecture in support of all the recent interface work, which I've just begun in earnest this week. I've been intermittently sharing GIFs on Discord to give glimpses of progress, but so far they're all just random quick recordings as I build the ne

That imminent REXPaint release I talked about last time came out this week. It was nice to get that out there for all the users, but it also reminded me of all the cool features I still want to build for it one day... I've had this idea that it could be an even cooler roguelike scene creator with bu

Whew, as of today I've finished a ton of writing, including many new articles to put out over the coming weeks detailing everything I've been working on as I get ready to transition to actually building the new UI layout itself. I started a series on that this week, the first part of which you can c

Time to get serious! Last week I told you about my engine upgrade and the new "quads;" now to put them to use :D I started this process a few days before writing to you about those engine changes, and am happy to report that after about a week of work, map zooming is now complete. It was a hell of a

I finally did it! An article about writing articles! :P Or at least one small aspect of it, anyway--there are really quite a few possible subtopics here, but this was a meta topic I got curious about myself and wanted to explore a bit. You can read my words about words here (password: "words!"). (In

The stats are in! Part 2 (the last) of the Polymind series includes a bunch of interesting data I organized from the runs submitted during the event period, along with some strategy info and other dev talk. You can check out the full article here (pw: "backuparmor"). I'm still overseas at the moment

I've been doing a lot of writing lately, so we've got some blog posts coming up, the first of which is Part 1 of our Polymind review (it just got way too long to make it a single post xD). You can check that out on the blog here (password: "designmind"). I'm happy with the mode overall, and maybe so

Ack, so last month was wife with Covid, and this month it finally got me, my son, and even a visiting relative xD (hence why I suddenly stopped streaming again...) So things have been pretty crazy around here and life is once again trying its best to obstruct progress, BUT in the meantime when I cou

A long time ago in my plans for 2020 I wrote a bit about an exoskeleton concept, a mechanic that I'd been considering for even a long while before that. It never actually happened then, nor did it happen later in Beta 11 despite appearing first on the list of other "planned" features for that releas

My full coverage of the Scrap Engine design is now available on the blog here (pass "UFD", although I think this one will be made public quite soon because I'm going to be writing an update for Steam when Cogmind goes on a little sale this week and want to include this, plus at least half of it I've

Over the past week I've been doing lots of writing, and ended up with a new article that weighed in at more than 7k words, so... kinda on the excessively long side for a regular read :P I decided to split it in two, so this first part mostly covers the background info before getting into the gritty

Okay it's finally here, my design and technical summary of the new Garrisons introduced for Beta 12, as released for X1. Inside you can read about how new content is mixed in, and about clock tweaks, balance considerations, and the inclusion of events. I'll be continuing my first X1 Garrison stream

Courtesy of HeavyRisk the Curious, I have finally written an article summarizing a good bit of my design philosophy, much of the higher-level stuff that I often imply elsewhere, be it in articles or just talking/chatting about design, but haven't necessarily expounded on in a clearer manner as you'l

Huge article incoming! I've just published "Rebalancing Cogmind" over on the blog (password "beta11soon") which serves as a pretty good summary of the recent item review process that went into X9~X10. Some of the topics therein I've written a bit about before on Patreon, scattered here and there amo

The DSF article is here! (password "authchiporized") If you want to explore them on your own then probably avoid this one for now since it doesn't tiptoe around spoiling details (except the things no one knows yet :P), but otherwise have an overview of Cogmind's smaller optional maps linking regular

Overhaul 4: Fabrication 2.0: Beta 11: Prerelease X8: [insert more here] Having already covered the notes on this topic a couple times here before, and then a little bit during the X8 release itself, we finally have this "definitive fabrication article" now that the system is implemented and complete

The new Heavy class is now solidified in the design, so let's talk about about everything Heavy! Awesome loadout (i.e. loot), Cutters, Specialists, distribution, and other mechanics... I've embedded the latest article in image form below, but you can also check out the text version here. The passwor

Yauler time! I've not written much about these before, since they were released as part of a prerelease in which I just said "try it out and see" :P. And now I'm starting another Beta 11 blog series using them as the first topic. I held off on doing this for a while since I wanted to make sure their

Whew that was a long one... finally wrote up all the details regarding the new damage and crit stuff that I've been streaming lately, covering the reasoning behind it along with other development tidbits, including one bit that's still to come in X5 ;) Beyond this, my entire schedule this week has b

Beta 11 details! This time we're specifically talking about some of the features I've finished for the next prerelease build, which will be coming soonish, but first I need to spend an unknown amount of time converting my entire website over to a much newer version of PHP before the host's looming d

The patrons have spoken, and the features are complete! We now have some more advanced UI features that are really going to make browsing through lots of items much easier. To celebrate (and educate :P), I've put together a new article about how these features work... I've embedded it in image form

The ARG post-mortem is complete, taking a look at how the ARG event for Halloween 2020 was conceptualized, built, played, and received. I've embedded it in image form below, but you can also check out the text version here. The password for access is "unchained".

So this is a blog article that's actually not coming until late this month, after I put up the event post-mortem which will talk a lot more about how it was conceptualized, built, played, and received. But I thought some of you might be interested in having a sneak peek at the full walkthrough now,

Continuing where we left off with my article introducing Cogmind's new soundscape and its development, here's another explaining the closed caption-like audio log, visible SFX, and other audio options, as well as discussing some parts of the implementation process for these features. I've embedded i

This latest article is a much-expanded version of similar lists I've given out before, complete with samples, anecdotes, and other info. Now it's finally all in one place as a comprehensive look at the tools I'm using, which some of you might find helpful, or to satisfy your curiosity :) I've embedd

Well that took a big longer than expected! Partially because there was a release just last week, but also because this is Yet Another Long Article (plus everything's a bit slower these days coronavirus impacts...). I've seen and gotten a lot of questions about multitile creatures over the years, so

No, sadly we still don't have operational leaderboards (out of my control...), but the backbone is there, and I'm happy to finally share it all with you! Gonna be nice once the results are actually visible. Leaderboards and Player Stats with Protobufs on the blog (password "pbdata"). And in image fo

Well 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. Leaderboards an

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 out on Patreon because thi

Last 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. ^My Cogmind Rich Presence status as seen in someone

There'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 mys

This 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 drawbacks of difficulty modes in roguelikes, along with an introduction to Cogmind's difficulty-related features, and overall I've been ple

The 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 check out the t

The third 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 check out the text version

The second article in the Ultimate Morgue File series is up, this one a more complete version of an earlier Patreon post as we continue exploring new scoresheets by taking a look at the ASCII maps being added to them. I've embedded it in image form below, but you can also check out the text version

I'm starting a new article series based on Cogmind's scoresheets, this first part more of a general overview. Some of the content has been posted here on Patreon before in more of a draft form, but now I've organized it all and also included sample images etc. I've embedded it in image form below, b

I've written up a complete look at the new RIF ability system and its permanent upgrades. Unlike previous articles, this one will be going public after just a day, so I'm not putting it on the blog just yet, instead embedding it below. You can find the non-image version on the blog tomorrow (a few o

Just put something new on the blog for patrons, an article exploring the hows and whys of alternate modes of play for roguelikes, taking a range of mode types from Cogmind and other games as examples. I've embedded it in image form below, but you can also check out the text version here. The passwor

A number of times over the past couple years or so in various places I've written about Cogmind's turn/time system, and I've finally gathered all the info into one dedicated article covering the evolution and characteristics of the system I use. I've embedded it in image form below, but you can also

My latest article discusses the advantages of static and procedural maps in a roguelike, naturally taking Cogmind as an example since it includes both for different reasons. (This is yet another extension of the original level design article.) I've embedded it in image form below, but Patreon is act

New blog post! This is an extension of the previous article, examining level design details specific to underlying layout planning for procgen maps. I've embedded it in image form below, but Patreon is actually terrible with images and formatting (which is why I also didn't just paste it here...) so