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So it must be my 8th run about which I've paused, and I decided as above to stop and read the manual. I'm half-way through and it's a lot of info to take on board; in particular the stats of combat which will need a little pen and paper thinking time: Which is great, because having played and enjoyed the game, I'm suddenly seeing a lot of depth opening up on how to further optimize my approach in combat in particular so far.

I'm reading the terminals atm, and probably need to do a few "terminal-focused runs" to improve at working out how to use these to the max. effect as the manual describes them and leaves the rest for the player to experience and learn in game, so that may be a good approach to dedicate a few runs to doing, next.

So, results are, for me:-

1. Good pick-up-and-play experience, just want to have some fun.
2. Good learning curve in game, patching up stupid mistakes and making more successful decisions.
3. Manual is necessary next step to keep finding that extra edge and maximizing use of resources (robots and environment)

I still have a lot more to read! Also now I've done a few evolutions, I notice that these pts can massively elaborate the approach being taken. I think that alone will be a goodly number of runs per approach.

Hey bud,

I'm running Cogmind, likewise in wine through ubuntu-unity (desktop).

This is a known thing with wine/unity: The work-around is:-

1. F1 (or ?,F12 iirc)
2. Click [4 - Options]
3. General [B - Fullscreen: OFF]

You can now fully Alt-Tab, as I'm doing right now between Cogmind and these forums.

That reminds me I need to optimize 'General [A - Font Set/Size] right now and report back to the linux thread http://http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=182 (see: Support sub-forum)

The manual (spoiler free) explains a bunch of mechanics you might've missed, so eventually you'll want to browse through that to expand your understanding. That can usually wait until you're consistently reaching the mid-game, though (around -5).

Well my last run since, I actually got another Evolution Level in progress, which was a break-through. However, with such nervy progress, I came to realize I have to make use of everything and see anything as a potential resource: Now the terminals, which pop-up with regularity, I decided I must maximize my use of them (already got that into my head about robots!) - so as you say instead of instantly jumping into continuing my current run, I'm going to read the manual for a good while!

It's gonna hurt when my 'current most successful run' ends but not without preparation! 

> Still a bit confused that some utilities once slotted if unslotted are discarded, which seems strange?

Check to see if the item is a processor or hackware. (You can right-click to check, or you can look for a colon at the left-side of the item name in the equipment HUD.) Processor and hackware are different because they will be destroyed if you try to remove them, i.e. signal interpreter and hacking suite. You should get a warning message when you try to detach them.

Thanks for the tip. That explanation actually makes it sound logical in-game reason for why they're destroyed/discarded. I think the stem of the problem is that I'm probably cack-handed rearranging items between equipped and stored, and "thrown on the ground" and then selecting from all those sources when you can't pick up an item when your storage is full.

That probably needs more reading of the adv. commands to work more effectively: And of course you can't easily rearrange like that when the utility is one of the above and is destroyed after detaching.

> I got to level 2 on my very first run which was cool. Now I almost got to the next level after that (3) on about my 8th run while learning even more, particularly the types of robots.

> Had a few rooms explode too!

> Lots to learn about weight and power and speed.

> Also have to keep my eye on when items are destroyed instead of going trigger-happy and reconfiguring a couple of turns later.

So 6th and 7th run (I think 4th/5th both ended v quickly):-

> Managed to resolve the energy issues and the storage issue - again worked out a good strategy for the storage issue.

> Devised a strategy of avoiding major "highways" that made me feel like a genius (premature no doubt). And it worked like a charm.

> Still a bit confused that some utilities once slotted if unslotted are discarded, which seems strange?

> Learnt some more "good gameplay" tricks eg avoid no energy and no weapons in a shoot-up; a bit of robot hacking and machine/terminal opportunities, retreat and hope a few robots don't follow and deal with any that do...


Well that should do for newbie impressions. The learning curve feels very good at this stage of experience, and the visual UI feedback for decision-making makes all the difference I'd attribute to what is making the game immediately fun to want to learn more (I'm sure assessing the stats more carefully, will become critical (which robots are more vulnerable to what etc) but for a beginner that can come later) All good considering I've failed a number of times to get into true roguelikes previously.

Thanks for the feedback straight from the horse's mouth, too!

My aim was to be frank:-

1. Get playing as fast as possible
2. Get playing using the laziest route possible
3. Use the minimum amount of overhead of "looking-things up".

I tried for example to use "PlayOnLinux" as that sounded even easier than Wine, but the "installing" phase never progressed and their "manual installation page" on their wiki is "tbcompleted...". I also did not touch a PC game in about a year for various reasons, hence the lazy approach.

Also the "stupid newbie approach" (!):

1. What threw me without taking care to read the utility slot was that you start the game with 4 storage slots which don't have a direct correspondence to a function in the above categories (energy, propulsion, utility, weapon), so purely looking at visuals and that useful drag & drop (and a fatigued brain) that was where I got lost. Of course after a break and taking a bit of care, it was obviously only going to be utility slot and none of the others! Also managed to confuse matter storage with item storage, I think on one occasion. So all in all you start the game with a baseline 4 storage option and can equip a utility storage to store more items.

2. Energy is a big deal, and it's pretty cool once you realize it has to be kept a careful eye. Those pest swarms sucked up a lot of my energy as I was trundling along really well in some mines/caves and then "swoosh!" out of nowhere I was not being careful, got swamped and died - ugh. It's two newbie lessons:-

(1) Items get shot to bits and need frequent replacing and replacements (available!).
(2) You can be lulled into a false sense of security picking off the odd robot feeling cosy - then turn a corner and run into a "gawd-dang town meeting of robots"  and start shooting: game over.

> On my second run after my 1st demise, I already experienced plenty of new ways of playing with different items eg flying propulsion dropped off some pests, so that was really positive to get out of the game already that sense there's number of ways of playing the game.

> The items and ascii art are huge hooks to keep progressing, very "gimme, gimme".

> Another mistake I made, I assumed (again stupidly) that going through the stares I'd be instantly healed of everything so went on a binge or shooting the floor up (I thought I'd max out finding useful stuff to take with me/leave a calling card..) and then found I was not in the best shape after the evolution screen.

Yeah I think progress is going to be as much space explored as paying more and closer attention to the info presented and then using it better. So after the rush of just wanting to give cogmind a quick and fun spin, time to attempt to work out things and test decisions.

So, picking up on where I left off, fed and refreshed things became a little easier to pick up on:-

> Storage goes in utility slots

> Robots do a "!" when the see you along with the distress chatter in the log, so pretty good actually. Got better at seeing the robots "call for back up methods" too which needs nipping in the bud somehow.

> Turning components on/off is really cool function.

> The hacking thing is a lot more clear, you can cause interesting effects and interacting with the environment directly is v satisfying.

> Still getting to grips with energy, which I just started to notice after experimenting with melee (claw + data-jack). It meant I could not even slot things which seemed fairly drastic. 

> I came up against a couple of combat robots guarding directions and looked for the "wait" command, it's the scroll-wheel on the mouse as per the manual. I was not sure if my mouse's scroll-wheel was working... it seemed to be working but I was wondering if there was an alternative command... probably is in the keyboard somewhere given my mouse-wheel is temperamental.

> So after 2 small sessions the game is already fairly playable and the whole set-up is becoming more familiar and ease of use. Need to work on streamlining the slotting weapons, which is involving plenty of clicks/drops and drags.

Tutorial is pretty helpful, given trying to first navigate around all the menus. the basic menu is the key one to get chugging.

General Impressions of a first run:-

> I was really happy the arrow keys were allowing a single move (cautiously does it).

> It was a lot of fun right-clicking things and getting info: "What's this?" ; "Does this do anything?" and the feedback is good here.

> I found some terminals and immediately wanted to press some buttons. Though I did not find it easy to know what they do at first.

> I was doing well sneaking around and ensuring all the slots were being filled up and I had spares in my inventory... when,

> Suddenly a mini war broke-out which I'd tried to avoid: It was fun as a host of items appeared.

> Gobbling up items was very rewarding.

> I got stuck later on with trying to add a bigger inventory slot thing and it would not automatically fit into the other slots like the weapons, propulsion and utilities did automatically by drop&drag (I already looked at the sea of keyboard commands and mentally tagged "for later..."!) I know having a bunch of storage for replacing burnt out bits is going to be vital, so this was a bit annoying wondering what to do...

> The "one more move/decision/what's this?" aspect of the game is very very addictive/'moreish'

> The intel on enemy robots hostile status or otherwise is v useful. However it was not clear to me if the scouts could see me or not and hence if I'd been detected which was something I'd like to be more clear on a first play-through: "vision field?"

> I really liked all the context-menus eg the calc, the announcements log etc. Useful and immersive given the sheer number of stats everywhere is swamping in detail for a 1st run.

> My second run-in with a bunch or robots, I ran away from scouts and then some mercs came after me: Fortunately I'd quickly learnt to equip weapons and replace degraded stuff for fresh stuff (green) so it went well enough. I tried to hack more things but got detected and watched the trace rise after a couple more hacks.

> Found more stash but was stuck with the small (4 items) storage still... I found it a bit annoying having to drop things then equip then pick up again: Which was due to low storage and not knowing how to get more storage going I guess.

> Having spent a lot of time in the F1 mode looking at info and all the above events, after downloading, installing and making everything work, I decided to save+quit at this point and grab some dinner.

=

Good thing is the game seems really chilled given you can deliberate and take your time and there's plenty to think about, and the game world is really vibrant too (the tile mode is really good).

I'd say if any of the mistakes made by me above are spotted and are simple to avoid, then those might be good areas to tweak if possible for the new player experience to really bounce eg storage headache I was having might be one? Hope that is helpful feedback. The other area I was perplexed, is that I ran out of slots (obviously lower at the beginning) but was wondering how that is to be resolved and also the energy usage: I tried to use a fire-thing to burn through walls (before I later saw "mining claw") and it ended up expending a lot of energy...

I guess in part these are "learning the roguelike way" tbh. Maybe that is the expectation component on the part of the player to the game design /tutorial component.

[Solution: Press F1 (or ?,F12)9. Go To: Options: The first batch: Full Screen Mode: Tap OFF with the mouse.]

Yeah got this working on:-

* Ubuntu

Steps:-

1. Downloaded from the link.
2. Put in folder in directory under home and "extracted here".
3. Already had wine and updated (it updated: Mono and gecko)
4. opened command line: cd cogmind directory with the COGMIND.exe
5. wine COGMIND.exe

6. The game worked flawlessly... in full screen mode.
7. Alt+Tab does not work in this mode in wine.
8. Solution: Press F1 (or ?,F12)
9. Go To: Options: The first batch: Full Screen Mode: Tap OFF with the mouse.
10. If using Unity you may have to go to system settings > appearance > behaviour > ON for side-bar fade away (so you can see all the info).

So far I've not found an option to make the window smaller, if there is one? I also need to find the monitor dimensions screen size and choose the most appropriate one from the Options menu (F1 > 3 Options > ""Pixel Screen Res list"")

Just wanted to confirm: Flawless easy working of cogmind and the full screen solution is nice and clear.

Well, that was just awesome.

Cogmind talk was easily the most gratifying to watch (the comments system perked up a lot watching it too which was funny): The demonstration of so much because the visuals and extras are so intelligently designed with such high quality. Also the concept is damn tight.

There was a couple of other speeches and whoa, more dev talent in the roguelike genre, two in particular: iirc brogue and the other one the woman who does ai research; they were seriously good. The most interesting roguelike imo was of course dwarf fortress in how it expanding the dungeon, the character into an entire world and history simulation (a great top level diagram they produced of this).

But the one that I want to play the most? Cogmind, easily. It was obvious there was so much to talk about which could not fit the full presentation, so maybe some of that will be in a blog! 

Definitely inspired, at some point I may try to do a roguelike in python and the insights into how much time and learning and good habits was really useful: It makes such a prospect feel as if there's some "reality checks" to definitely consult along the way!

One bit I remember from one speech: The "Fun Optimality" of gameplay. I think the brogue dev managed to describe how to get this very well talking about a player's line through the game as building their narrative and varying things around this, in particular the environment. But that players could optimize play through tedious means but ideally optimizing would come from fun. It seems to me the Crawl dev was successful in producing various character choices and players to create builds very organically specific to their run fitted this well.

Well, I hope the idea of play-styles in cogmind fits into this beneficially for the mainstream with this "Fun Optimality". Definitely a few true roguelikes on steam with good numbers of players purchases and positive review scores (interesting new review filters too imo is good). They could do with sorting out the tags: "roguelike" and "true roguelike" maybe?

There was discussion about "permadeath" being a name that is perhaps not perfect for describing the intent of roguelikes. Personally I like it, but an alternative: "Alive In The Moment" games or AIM (if you drop "the") or MAIT (if you wrap the words Moment Alive In The  yoda style of wisdom). Really I think this is the essence of the roguelike over other games and the present only gains meaning from persistence or as we tend to habitually think of it: "permadeath": Where the story is finally "defined". Again DF was amazing in that you'd start stories (adv. or fortress) then you'd make news ones that would bump into these old ones; or their remains!

Yup sounds like more overhead!

Think the talk is on in under an hour 3:15 sanfran time: https://roguelike.club/schedule.html

Very interested to hear/see this one!! I wonder if saying roguelikes are more like chess/boardgames than other genres of video games tend to be (oc other genres exist which do these/are these...)?

It's often a sequence of mistakes.

Yeah, I noticed this in the video plays: Someone would be trundling along getting by quite well, then they'd pick up some "heat" (I mean enemy robot attention) and it would very quickly escalate into a mini battle-zone, sometimes the classic "beginning of the end" unless they found a way to rebuild before being overwhelmed by subsequent waves.

The take-home I got, was try to avoid direct conflict and go guerilla for as much as possible. The other thing I saw was, backing off around corners and into doorways (or 1-sq wide tunnels) was a smart move (Sun Tzu: Make the enemy fight on your preferred ground/terms).

I guess that first engagement is where a lot of decision-making should be assessed by players and subsequent events are a cascade from that. It's much more chess-like than other genres in that way.

I wonder if you considered changing the cogminds size depending on how much stuff it has accumulated and assimilated: A full mecha-type standing 10 metres+ high carrying tons of "back-up" to a sleek little drone the size of a small motorbike and represented that in the little "c" to a big "C" or or similar in the tileset depiction?

Melee is one of them, and that will be easier with the new parts, plus some more specialized ones like a cannon-based sniper/guerrilla build (with the capacitor--though that item won't be as easy to obtain as actuators). I've also been working towards making datajacking and assistance from allies any increasingly viable strategy. That's gotten easier with almost every release so far.

That's music to my ears! I appreciate it must be an incredibly fine line between:-

• Optimized parameters for a really taunt competitive optimizers to complete the entire run eg avoid farming strategies or other such "easy pickings"
• Allowing a bit of slack for players to feel for different solutions and experimentation

On the one hand, the former seems the main focus (depth). On the other hand, the latter adds a bit of breadth (I guess this may help accessibility, wider audience... just a blind guess however).

This would manifest itself in terms of achievements, I believe, something that many games have or add when joining Steam, so something I'll be thinking about more later. Basically one angle of what you're talking about is built-in conducts, which are common in the roguelike world but are usually self-enforced by players themselves. We could formalize that without too much trouble.

Ah yeah "Achievements" is the common standard in games. I vaguely recall the different types of player ala Bartle: Explorer, Killer, Achiever and iirc Role-Player. Sounds like those are beginning to be well catered for with stats, lore, playstyles and mastery of the mechanics over time.

Honestly I believe this could be a stumbling block for new players and there will likely be some backlash from those not willing to... do a little thinking. Some players will undoubtedly assume this means there's something wrong with the game, but in the bigger picture it succeeds at doing what I want it to do, and I'm not really willing to make adjustments that might ease entry into the world at the cost of sacrificing early game replayability. Cogmind's world is wide yet (very intentionally) only 10 floors deep, so there isn't as much time to let the difficulty ramp up too gradually.

In that one sense it's not the perfect roguelike to attempt going more mainstream, but hopefully the many other positive factors can carry it

The biggest "early impressions hook" is undoubtedly the superlative effects from the rexpaint tool used to create the matrix/mecha vibe and then the UI feels like a 1st person view of the robot atst as a top-down view of the robot, then add the info tools on the screen.

I remember playing desktop dungeons when it was in alpha (much preferred the graphics in that version tbh) and it was good because the info of my choices was fairly clear to see how I could win (think I enjoyed playing an archer or other devious char play-style). But I got to a point where I did not understand my choices were not winning - namely I could not find the info that told me how to evaluate my next moves. I guess this is a core staple of roguelikes - but I think if it's visible what sort of idk calculations (?) are inherent in which choices and then the player can work out the different trade-offs? I found the same problem with mmorpgs. All in all it got the point where I did not care about the graphics, I just wanted a combat log dump to be able to make it more explicit what numbers were happening when and why which would then tell me more clearly how to make better choices (or which button to spam!!).

I don't know if any roguelikes ever did a system where it involves the character using a "predict all oppenent's next moves" analysis shadow type representation? Maybe some sort of tool like that for newbies mode on level 1?! Then it gets electro-magnetic or other blast destroyed just as they hit the stairs to level 2...  Of course the predictor would be marginally accurate and marginally mistaken?

Similarly a sort of "rewind" style of option to evaluate wtf!? just happened crutch for new players, maybe a good number of moves to replay different options in a particular scenario... an interesting hypothetical maybe? Of course that's supposed to happen per live run for most players in roguelikes.

I sincerely hope the aim of helping take traditional roguelikes mainstream more alongside the derivatives works via cogmind.

This will depend a lot on how much buzz there is around the game once it's on Steam. The current community of supporters is great, though we'll need publicity outside the regular channels before everyone else can discover it xD

There are a lot of games tagged "roguelike" on Steam, but most are actually roguelites so the term is now being dominated by non-traditional games. I hope that doesn't cause problems in terms of expectations (or worse, outright aversion due to its overuse as a marketing term, when Cogmind really has much stronger roots in the genre).

It's a big problem: Visibility or "Discoverability", more curation needed to more diligently classify using more tags more accurately applied. I don't know what tags you've decided on for cogmind:-

* Roguelike
* sci-fi (scifi)
* mecha or robot
* acii and tileset
* indie (this is a very powerful tag)

etc. In fact the core features bit of info is really useful in this respect:-

* dynamic char progression
* full world lore backstory
* AI-driven robot ecosystem
* destructable environment
* 00's of unique weapons and equipment (acii art)
* customizable UI?
* Stats metrics of each run (interesting if persistent graphing comparisons of different run stats maybe, can't remember how much of this is already discussed).

Those seem like they'll press most people's buttons the right way (the dollar button in particular!).

Anyway apologies for the wall of text.

(Kyz edit: fixed a quote tag for you--made post hard to read )

Good to hear. I've read all the blogs and the dev work is so awesome to follow that I sincerely hope the aim of helping take traditional roguelikes mainstream more alongside the derivatives (rogue-lites or PDL's (procedural death labyrinths)) works via cogmind.

I looked at a list with the search term or tag "roguelike" on Steam wondering about this question and also curious what sort of games there were and trying to work out which were popular or seemed to work well. I did not get any rigorous conclusions eye-balling it without maybe more thoroughly looking at data (usage/sales etc). But it seems that good presentation immediately grabs interest. Then "lots of interesting/cool things to talk about" hooks that interest you notice different people reviewing aka they have stories to tell about the game and of course how much they've been playing clocking hours in it because it's replay friendly with a fresh story per time or complex system to mess with, I guess.

Traditional roguelike being turn-based may also be less immediately, but it's still good.

The other area I think that can boost appeal:-

1. Playstyles.

So I was really happy to see your latest posting on reddit concerning melee builds and the awesome item artwork. I'll still try to and shoot enemies in the back given a choice however.  I suppose people like a lot of choice when starting out with a game. I noticed in the roguelike reddit various interests in different aspects of roguelikes: spaceship roguelike, superhero roguelike or necromancer roguelike... it does seem good that cogmind is very lego-like at heart of the game?! I did wonder if a super special easter egg was mind-transfer to takeover other robots in the game (the fabled but never found by anyone magic item in the game!).

2. Objectives.

It seems roguelike objectives are in and out of the death maze overall purpose most effectively. But what if there is objectives such as find particular things or percentages of things per run, destroy certain percentage or x of level per run, avoid detection for x per level, rescue something/robot etc. I notice players often comment on a particular mini-success or massive-failure in fond terms equally because the story was personal or fabulously unexpected.

Obviously there's limits in scope of the game dev, but different obectives as it were within the overall story arc add diversity (optional or pre-arranged). Guess you'd need a main menu where you set certain parameters that make this conducive however, which would be enormous development to undertake? I don't know if other traditional roguelikes ever take this approach?

3. Meta- Knowledge

Obviously this is the player skill increase and mastery of the roguelike environment. For example I saw this map of the AI movements posted on reddit and was blown away by the idea of how interesting it might be to decipher the 'dungeon's' secrets, the patrol behaviours of the robots and the types from this image: https://i.imgur.com/vZg7OiG.gif and understand the system! A good place to spend time.  I notice people cited how the game was a worthy challenge or not ie earnt progress vs the fairness of challenge the game throws at you. This was commented in different forms a good amount.

[Low specs]

Coincidentally I was looking into buying a cheap portable computer for doing work on while commuting, and first thing I will do tomorrow is replace Win10 with linux (probably a minimum install) to boost performance (!). 

So it made me think another area cogmind does well on is Low specs make it perfect for cheaper computers or old hardware.

Not a massive insight, but a good basis given many games are so demanding on hardware and hence price. I definitely select games based off how simple their specs are.

I look forward to listening to this part (on boosting mainstream appeal/enjoyment) of your speech on going from hobbyist to full-time RL dev. I definitely think the dynamic environment (simulation), the info-rich dynamic GUI/HUD (& info-rich interrogation of the environment by the player/cogmind too!) and ideally multiple playstyles are key to boosting appeal more broadly to more players? Of course the quality assets really helps here for players who can't get into ascii (me for example).

Yeah, it's in the dev blog:-

1. Avoiding Combat (combat is not necessarily for reward).
2. Ranged Combat (unlike "bump" usually used).
3. Changing out gear a lot as the main mechanism not represented in roguelikes as much/often.

Which I like the sound of!

@Shadowfury333 thanks bud, I'll probably just get cogmind finally and take the plunge. I like the idea of different scope of challenge to skill mastery of the different styles or strategies. To work at different strategies and get better at executing them thus adding variable challenge to skill would be very cool achievement of the game design imo.

I like the emphasis on info gathering the game seems to project.

I've been wondering this question. Tbh I was going to get this after a payday but then all sorts of RL stuff had to be attended to (family etc) so it slipped. Also the whole updating and I'm using linux made me think about waiting as well.

I got " crypt of the necrodancer" as it got rave reviews but I just cannot get into it; I'm appallingly unmusical too :-(... which has made me wonder if roguelikes are for me?

There's lot that excite me about cogmind:

* scifi robot theme
* aesthetic is uh-mazing.
* lots of choices and a ecosystem evironment

But coming back to whether it's my sort of game. I think the subject of strategy vs tactics is about right.

Strategy:-

Purpose:

1. Get out alive.
2. Choose style of getting out alive from eg:-

* Destroy as much as possible along the way! (destroy)
* Hack and steal as much valuable data/intel along the way! (steal)
* Get out most effectively and least risky via max. stealth and speed (escape)
* Puppet-master and corrupt systems to serve your own goals (create)

Tactics:-

* How optimal your choices are to effecting your strategy

To compare with football (soccer) I prefer possession/territory domination and complex moves to achieve goals. There's plenty of other strategies which require different smaller tactical modules for example in the previous triangles is king, another strategy of "long-ball" is disrupting the oppositions' defence and attacking leaving your own defence in postiion when you lose the ball.

Tactics is the smaller skills you learn but the strategy is kinda your philosophy or personality.

It sounds like it's more tactics driven in cogmind, use what happens when it happens most effectively (optimize within the randomness).

But I hope it's possible to define a few different strategies to achieve scoresheets that skew heavily and reflect the that measure of success.

It's bit in games, I like to win, but I like to see how greedy I can be also (winning all points or do outrageous things etc)! That's fun for me.

I'll certainly pick up cogmind, it's been a sheer joy to follow the dev of.

Thanks for the tips and extra info. V useful. 

I might do a little "trawl" and list some Let's Plays I've found somewhere; can't be too difficult. 

Will do that tomorrow and post what I've found so far.

Agree, thanks for the heads-up. I've not bought Cogmind yet:-

1. kickstarter experiences have put me off early payments
2. End of month
3. Linux and requiring Wine (yet another kink)

But I think I will probably bite the bullet on this one and get cogmind relatively soon. Just looks and seems to play very well already. And the dev blogs are really insightful.

What's handy is a "Journal: Cogmind on Linux with Wine..."

1. Bought and extracted file to directory
2. Ran Wine
3. Did x to run Cogmind
4. Played and no problems for x hrs ; doing y runs etc

They're good "Let's Plays", I've been watching a number of them and just watching the latest from 3rd July. 

In fact it would be quite handy to have a repository of "Let's Plays" of Cogmind somewhere just to know a latest run is uploaded.

I like 4-player/multi-player local games for most fun, but growing up Powermonger is my "vision game".

[System Corruption]

Just browsing the first dev post I made a bee-line towards (information) and really enjoying it, I was thinking about:-

System Corruption

To a degree, both robot and map knowledge are susceptible to interference from system corruption. Once Cogmind has been corrupted, low-level Sensor Arrays will sometimes report false signals (the number of false signals increases with the degree of corruption), and you can lose map data for previously visited areas!

There could be the sort of animation/disorientation that you get when your tv is not tuned properly and all that grainy-fuzziness interferes with the picture?

The false signals idea is already tending that way, but it's maybe extending that idea a bit. Anyway at this stage of dev, probably another_idea^x! 

The 'unity of aesthetic' in cogmind fits so well the mechanics and the visuals and the UI and of course map/world info which this particular blog 'Information Warfare' conveys especially well.

Oh - that's some impressive data tracking... I was curious "how" hi-score fitted into the game in terms not only of "performance" or "competition" but game "story" too: Is the cogmind on a mission to collect/cull data before escaping?

Are check-points / info hubs a consideration as additional objectives to "in and out in a flash"?

That data suggests lots of ways for players to interpret their runs. :-)

I can't spoil anything lore related., though there will be bonus points for triggering certain plot-related encounters, and others will give you access to new content on that run, thereby indirectly providing you with ways to improve your score.

Finally, does "seed ID" provide the means of recruiting the same map for others to try and compare runs by? That's a nice option to have!

Correct. After you play you can replay the same world, or give the seed to others to play. There will at some point be player seed competitions based on that. Those can start any time--a few players have already expressed interest.

Righto, already several steps of thinking ahead, again. 

The impression I get from "the cogmind boots up..." intro (acii = info view ; tiles = spatial view) is that it does not know nor necessarily need to know what it's ultimate objective is, it's proximate objectives are self-evident:-

1. Surrounded by hostiles
2. By all/any means remove to a secure position.
3. Use available environment to advantage self.

Curious how the cogmind was deployed in the first place.

/The plot thickens

I need to limit the number of things I make explicit, since we're already bordering on information overload both in the game and on the website, but I could add that to the ASCII-sprite section.

Also, the in-game tutorial does have a message suggesting you try the F3 key. (The key is actually F3, by the way. I just didn't correct nsg21.)

Of course I should realize you have already considered that and the economy of explanation required.  F3 it is. The flexibility of switching it will be interesting to see which view I start tending towards over time.

That is wonderful subversive! 

The view is great too, because it shows the battle played out, which when I've watched some Let's Plays it's not immediately clear to me as a roguelike novice and someone who has not played cogmind "how the battle/combat is playing out"; though I can clearly see a wealth of decisions and modifications can be made to any decisions being taken by the players.

Dang, getting tempted by the day to grab this...