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[Kyzrati]

It's the most minor major version release yet!

Beta 3 is here, and while unimpressive in and of itself, there are several good reasons for us to advance that number (as opposed to the original plan to just bring a 2.3 to Steam):

• We're going to Steam with this version, and it would be nice to have the next batch of stats be able to distinguish more clearly between pre- and post-Steam, rather than awkwardly straddling the transition.
• Any initial issues and/or little features or adjustments specific to Steam, made in the near term after release, are better handled as minor updates to a new "this is Steam" major branch.
• Betas 2.1 and 2.2 together added the equivalent of a major release's worth of updates anyway.

Also, Beta 3 was going to go out simultaneously with the Steam launch next week, but since it's ready now there's no real reason to wait on it, especially since it fixes a pretty nasty bug added by 2.2. Oops


Update ASAP

If you're currently playing Beta 2.2, I strongly recommend you update now. ...Here I was trying to be nice and have multislot parts all gain automatic immunity to severing, without realizing that the way said immunity was handled meant that this across-the-board change would completely prevent multislot parts from being dropped as salvage at all. Across the board xD

So for Beta 3 I expanded the implementation to support enough nuance that multislot parts can keep their newfound immunity and still drop. But this also means that in 2.2 you'll have more trouble acquiring these parts (i.e., good luck trying to salvage double-slot treads and heavy armor).

Note: Saves are compatible with Beta 2.2 if you want to transfer over.

Note: If you were using the manual key rebinding system, or had even activated it, before updating you should delete your /user/commands.cfg, then apply your rebinds again after the updated version creates a new one. If you don't this your Escape key won't give access to the game menu. I wasn't aware anyone was really using this system and a change made for the Steam version sorta borked one of the command entries, making it read the old settings file incorrectly. (I'll have to be more careful with that next time, because obviously people are using the system!)

New Scoresheet Default

From Beta 3 Cogmind will now default to uploading scoresheets, instead of requiring manual activation. This will allow us to see data for more players who never bother to look at all the options, and it's also pretty normal these days for games to collect play data (without even an option to deactivate it...). As usual there is no personal information collected--it's just your run statistics and some of your option settings, and you can see everything transmitted in your scoresheet text file.

Note this change of defaults won't affect any of you who are using an existing options config file from a previous build (in fact, for all old players who never activated it, it will remain off). It'll only upload by default for new players/installs, and it can still be deactivated manually in the options menu, as before.

I imagine this will result in a lot more Anonymous (default settings) submissions, so going forward I'll probably be excluding those from the leaderboards (set a player name!), though all scoresheets will still be on record for data analysis.

Steam Integration

In my recent blog post I talked about the process of preparing for Steam, including the dedicated Steam build, where you can read more about the details. But where Beta 3 is concerned I'll mention here that although Cogmind is not compatible with the Steam Overlay, you can however use the standard method of uploading screenshots.

F12 (or PrtScn) will take a screenshot and allow you the option of uploading it as with the Overlay:


These screenshots will even be tagged by location:


And everyone's screenshots, including non-Steam players, will use new more descriptive file names:


Note: The Steam and DRM-free versions are actually not identical--the latter isn't capable of hooking into Steam to take advantage of its features like screenshot uploading (and more in the future, although Achievements will be available to all players regardless of platform).


Cogmind Beta 3 (0.10.171017) changelog:

* NEW: Basic Steam integration
* NEW: [Steam] Overlay-free screenshot uploading via standard Print Screen key
* NEW: [Steam] Screenshots uploaded to library are tagged by location
* NEW: F12 also takes screenshots (in addition to PrtScn)
* NEW: Scoresheet records include "Steam" indicator under Options
* MOD: Scoresheet no longer contains "X=" string
* MOD: Leaderboard submissions on by default (can still be manually deactivated in options)
* MOD: Screenshot filename format changed from simple counter to "cogmind_[YYMMDD-HHMMSS]_[LOCATION]"
* MOD: Core Stripper buffed
* MOD: [Steam] No download email reminder when new versions are available
* FIX: Opening info for a map object while in kb mode, then toggling off that mode and closing the window, would cause cursor to jump [DDarkRay]
* FIX: Multislot part sever immunity added in previous update also indirectly prevented them from being salvaged [GJ, lsend]
* FIX: Subatomic Replicator could cause a subsequent crash if used on a certain plot item which was then picked up [lsend]

(Yes, that's all there really is. If you want to have fun reading a long changelog go check out Beta 1 xD)

[DDarkray]

Will we also get to see Beta 2 stat summary? That's one of the things I always like to see at the end of every major patch.

[Kyzrati]

Hopefully, as long as I have time. There aren't as many "new" things that I can show for this one though, which is something I generally prefer to do (include some new stat categories or talk about something new).

One of my thoughts was to wait a bit and compare Beta 2 with Beta 3/Steam.

In any case, this is technically a "pre-release" Beta 3, since only the DRM-free players have it so far. The official date of the release is 171017 (I'll be switching over the leaderboards to Beta 3 before that, though.)