Some potential issues to be aware of, and how to solve them:
Game does not start, instead Windows says there are missing DLLs like "msvcp100.dll".Install the
MSVC++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) from Microsoft and the game should start normally. Alternatively, if you don't want to download or install the redistributable you can download "msvcp100.dll" and "msvcr100.dll" from the web and put them in your "windows/system32" directory.
Game does not start, or crashes almost immediately.Possibility #1: Cogmind must have write access to its directory. In Windows, make sure the game is run with admin rights, otherwise it may crash. This is required to create config files and save your progress.
Possibility #2: Cogmind cannot be run from a directory path that contains non-English characters. On some systems this may include your desktop! Make sure the entire path to the game folder itself contains only numbers, punctuation, and English letters. Putting the game in a place like C:\Games\Cogmind\ would be fine. Somewhere like C:\遊戲\Cogmind is not.
Game starts, but won't start in fullscreen or the resolution is otherwise incorrect / doesn't match the screen space. (Especially common on 4K monitors.)This occurs under Windows 8 and 10 due to its default handling of fullscreen software-rendered programs. This will be resolved in a future version (an MS-recommended fix on Cogmind's end apparently didn't work when introduced in Alpha 2). Before then you can use
this easy workaround.
(After changing this setting, it's recommended that you delete your /user/cogmind.cfg file before restarting the game so it can better auto-calculate its proper grid size.)The game didn't save my progress or configuration options!Mostly likely it's because it was not run with admin rights, which is required to save files including both your configuration and saved game. Make sure to run it with admin rights, and note that adding COGMIND to your Program Files directory will prevent it from having admin rights by default.
If that's not it, your anti-virus software probably quarantined/sandboxed Cogmind and thereby prevents it from creating or saving files in its own subdirectories. When this happens the game will appear to function normally,
but be unable to create or save any data! Make sure Cogmind is not restricted by AV programs! If Cogmind didn't start up in fullscreen mode the first time it was run, it is probably being sandboxed.
The game is sluggish.Cogmind is light on system requirements, but if you have a
really old CPU some mid/late-game areas might get slower. In this case, you can increase your FPS by switching to windowed mode, using the smallest/default map size (50x50), and using a smaller font size. The smallest window supported is 1272x720 (Tiles) or 800x600 (ASCII), which are based on size 12 and size 10 fonts, respectively.
If those don't work for you, a more general options is to cap the FPS. Cogmind is set to run at 60 FPS by default, but you can change this manually by opening /user/cogmind.cfg and changing "fpsCap=60" to some other lower number, like 40. This will reduce the amount of CPU time allocated to rendering and leave more for the action.
I'm having trouble getting the game working on my Mac.This thread will get you up and running.
I use Wine on Linux and cannot install the MSVC redistributable.Cogmind works fine on Linux under Wine, but I've heard* that some are unable to install the required redistributable. In this case use the alternative method described in the first issue above (put the files in the windows/system32" directory created by Wine).
(*This was years ago, so it may no longer be true/required--I think more recent distributions include these files be default.)
