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[Kyzrati]

More achievement icons! We've got the final pass on two new categories here.

Special Challenges are probably not quite as obvious...



...whereas Progress-related achievements are more basic and numbery.



I've been talking about achievement "categories" for a while, but haven't gone into detail about what that actually means. Each achievement belongs to a certain category that gives a general idea of what type of achievement it is, determines the color scheme of its icon, and also enables it to be filtered along with others of its category via the in-game UI. There are so many achievements that after I'd formed a tentative list it seemed best to divide them up logically to aid both organization and understanding.

The six achievement categories:

• Mechanics: A group of mostly basic achievements covering common useful tactics and learning about systems. Some of these serve as a way to teach (or at leas reinforce) features, too.
• Style: Specifically play style-related achievements, like combat, stealth, hacking, etc. These are generally earned through normal play using a given style/strategy, and while some might be more challenging or require focus in a certain area, they're not difficult enough to be considered "special challenges " (another category).
• Progress: Personal meta progress like high scores, lore/gallery coverage, and world exploration.
• Challenges: This group doesn't have anything to do with Cogmind's "Challenge Modes," but is simply achievement-specific individual challenges ranging from Tier 1 (not too hard) to Tier 2 (hard) to Tier 3 (pretty hard!).
• Events: Story-related elements. Basically once you've visited every location and exhausted all the branching possibilities of the plot, you'll have all of these. This category is entirely hidden, though, so these aren't achievements to be explicitly sought like a list. You've just gotta explore and use the in-game lore as clues.
• Wins: There are a lot of different ways to win the game, whether achieving unique endings or simply winning by overcoming other challenging scenarios, so these get a whole category of their own.

Death and Taxes

So we've come upon another little speedbump on the way to Beta 6: tax season xD

Taxes have gotten more complicated this year--I have to file in two different countries now, so this'll be annoying. I could try to push Beta 6 out before the second country's deadline, but I'd rather not because the release shouldn't be about just achievements, so it's going to take longer than that!

Just a heads up that there's still lots to do on the list.

P7

I heard from someone this week mentioning that POLYBOT-7 "really helped them understand Cogmind better," so maybe it's worth checking out for that reason, in addition to the fact that it's just an interesting different way to play a modular robot :)

In case you missed it, I released that game last week for 7DRL.

Since then I've also been working on a proper in-depth postmortem about its development, which you may be interested in checking out seeing as POLYBOT-7 is a very experimental alternative approach to the concept of Cogmind. The first two parts are already on the blog:

• Part 1: Preparation
• Part 2: First Days with UI, Aesthetics, and Mechanics

There are tons of details and diagrams/images in there--here are some excerpts:

The source code evolution of all my projects since 2011, which share the same code :P



Redesigning Cogmind's UI layout to meet new needs:



Alternative item color schemes:



In related news, one of our Cogmind experts (surprise surprise it was GJ) won P7 on New Game+++++ mode, which requires winning six times in a row, each run harder than the last.

Next time more on achievements, and an introduction to improvements to low-contrast mode.

Since a lot of the relevant SITREP discussion happens on Steam rather than in the forums, for reference here's a link to this same news on Steam. But feel free to post replies here, too :)

[Joshua]

Loving how much you can express in a 3x3 icon. I can guess quite a few of them. I'm assuming almost all of these need to be achieved in a single run?

Guesses follow:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Special Challenges
1. Attach 15 AAs in a game
2. Have 20 assault squads dispatched
3.
4. Trigger High Security, or Escape High Security
5. Fall through two Chute traps
6. Escape -5 with less than ??% core
7. Find the other LRC prototypes?
8. Go through 10 unidentified exits
9. 35 assault squads
10. 30k thermal damage
11. 30k EM damage
12. 30k kinetic damage
13. Something with melee
14. Survive two garrisons
15. Escape -3 with less than ??% core
16. Have 20 allies from Zion at once
17. No idea, this looks like some other roguelike with molds You can tell I play with tiles mostly.
18. Destroy 5 behemoths
19. Maybe 15 extermination, or 15 intercepts dispatched/survived
20. Enter a garrison on every floor after -10?
21. Disable all 6 garrisons on -1
22. Destroy 100 robots
23. Take 10k damage from crushers? No idea, really.
24. Survive High Security 4 times?
25. Destroy less than 4 explosive machines? It doesn't seem like a challenge to destroy more than that
26. Equip a golem unit?
27. Be the warlord (maybe command related)

Progress is easier to guess:
1. Die
2. Play 50 games
3,4,5,6,7,8. Reach 5k, 10k, 20k, 30k, 40k, 50k score.
9-12. 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% lore.
13-16. 25%, 50%, 75%, 100% gallery items found/used.
17-19. Reach Factory, Research, Access.
20. Read a certain terminal?
21. Reach Prox Caves
22. Have Small, Medium, Large Storage equipped all at once
23. Visit 2 caves branches
24. Go through 10 exits in a game
25. Go through 35 exits in a game (very nearly the max I see in scoresheets)
26. Attach 50, 100, 150, 200 parts in a game
27-30. It's not possible to visit every area on the map in one game, so I don't know what else you might be able to reach 100% on

[Kyzrati]

Hehe, get your guesses in, folks! Place your bets!

I was originally afraid this system wouldn't work since 3x3 sure isn't much (especially for some of the more abstract or complicated concepts), but I'm glad it worked out okay

And yes almost every individual achievement can be earned within a single run. There are only a few exceptions, rare stuff that had to require multiple runs but was important/meaningful to have (like reaching a certain lore %, for example).