Good news and bad times, but the latter are behind us, so here's an overdue update!
First of all, over on the blog I posted a new article describing
The Alpha Release Cycle, where you can read in great detail about the entire development process behind putting together and releasing a new major alpha build.
Part of it talks about the advantages of a one-month cycle, though I can say now that Alpha 11 is going to be one of those somewhat longer cycles
That's where said "bad times" came into play... My ancient dev laptop was on its last legs, so I had no choice but to get a new one, and the transition has gone quite poorly as Windows 10 is a terrible buggy mess on this thing. I'd really like to go back to 7, but after many days of problem solving and fixing broken things, I can finally do work without too many serious disruptions, so in the interest of continued progress I'll have to stick with what I've got for now!
In a few weeks I'll also be taking some time out to participate in the
Roguelike Celebration in San Francisco, so that will contribute to a lengthened dev cycle. Only a few days left to get tickets to that, by the way, but all talks will be recorded so you'll be able to watch them either way. More recently than what you'll see on the site there, I decided to change my talk, since the original was a very serious topic aimed more at developers than a general roguelike audience, and is probably more suited for my blog, anyway, which tends towards that type of content. Instead
by popular demand I'll be talking about my background and how I went from being a hobbyist to a full-time roguelike developer. It'll be a lot lighter, fun, and more personal, plus towards the end it can still include some relevant elements from the original talk.
In good news, despite the non-dev factors resulting in a longer wait for Alpha 11, I can already say that it will be the largest Cogmind update ever. I am partially making up for lost time by finally unlocking lots of late-game content which was built into the game even prior to Alpha 1, but only now does it make sense for it to be accessible. Special items and other fun stuff
(also deadly stuff
).
Most of what I've been working on lately is secret (as usual...), but here's a new little feature I can show you:
Taking EM damage now also does a bit of ASCII-static animation along your HUD borders. (Of course I also blow up the Power Conduits for good measure--hard to resist!)In another fun milestone, Cogmind has now reached over 100k lines of code (C++, excluding comments, scripts, and data).
