It's a new year!
And what's in store? ...Pretty much an entire year of Cogmind development!
This year we'll see Cogmind mostly completed, though it's hard to judge the exact time since I haven't set a hard deadline. The goal is to make an awesome game, so when opportunities present themselves to add something beneficial that wasn't exactly planned from the start, I take them even if it means extending the final release. Progress is nonetheless always forward, and always flowing along smoothly!
That said, I've also begun to focus more closely on completing the core roadmap seen in the
FAQ, rather than have releases completely overtaken by new features (traps and garrisons come to mind). Every major release from here on out should include new maps, because that's where the majority of the remaining work lies.
Also, when I can resist the temptation, some optional features might be postponed until after 1.0 (or at least after a Steam release).
But this post is mostly meant to be an interim progress update to let you know the status of Alpha 6, so let's get to that. Its major features include:
- Two new maps. They're not huge, but you'll find some new NPCs, new robots, and new strategic choices therein. These finish off the Extension branch. (Already done.)
- Propulsion rebalancing as discussed here. (Already done, and you can get an advance preview patch in that thread.)
- Hacking overhaul as discussed here. I haven't started on this one yet, but it's coming up next.
Of course there are lots of other little things as well (and some big ones, too, but not "major"). I generally handle the major features first before moving on to a flurry of lesser features, so the latter haven't all even been decided yet.
I wanted Alpha 6 to be done for next week, but I have an important blog post to write, and family visiting this week for the holidays, so I don't think I can rush that fast. As such, I'll probably wait until the following week so I can fit in more stuff, and that's also about a month after the Alpha 5 release, which is an optimal amount of time for a major version.
