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[Kyzrati]

I've been hearing about Omega a lot in recent years (despite its age), but it's one of the ones I haven't gone and tried yet. I'll have to give it a spin when I get a chance.

[monsieurmarc]

I seem to remember if you do it right you can basically become godlike. Head of the druids, demon killing arse kicker

[Kyzrati]

That sounds pretty cool, though I imagine as one of the earlier classics it takes a while to get to that point--both meta experience-wise and in game time.

[monsieurmarc]

That sounds pretty cool, though I imagine as one of the earlier classics it takes a while to get to that point--both meta experience-wise and in game time.

Oh yes there is one spell that will kill almost anything.  if you can get it early you have a much better chance or UNLIMITED POWER

[SheepsTooth]

Hello all,

I recently took the plunge and bought the game and thoroughly enjoy it... when I have time to play that is.

I'm another grumpy old gamer although not quite as long in the tooth as Salzherz.  I cut my gaming teeth on the C64 and ZX Spectrum and have never really stopped playing.  Roguelikes (proper roguelikes - not this latest glut of so-called 'rogue-likes' and 'rogue-lites') are my favourite games since the late 90's.

-How did you learn about Cogmind?
Through the Temple of The Roguelike forums announcements thread.

-What other roguelikes do you enjoy?
DCSS, Nethack, CoQ, ToME (as in Tales of Middle Earth), Frozen Depths, IVAN, XLarn, HyperRogue.

-What are your other favorite games?
Pinball Arcade, Pinball FX2, DROD

-What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?
Work overtime (to dodge the wife , drink beer, listen to music (too varied a taste to list here)

I look forward to playing more and being active on the forums.

[Kyzrati]

Welcome SheepsTooth, and thanks again.

The average age of Cogmind players is much higher than your average gamer (though not necessarily your average traditional roguelike player!)--I like that . Cogmind is certainly built to appeal to first and foremost to the traditional crowd. I'm sure we stand to pull in a lot more younger players when it's cheaper and on Steam, but neither the game nor myself are ready for that yet

I'm sure my life would've been changed if I'd been fortunate enough to discover roguelikes in the 90's. I played "other" games well into the 2000's :/

-What other roguelikes do you enjoy?
DCSS, Nethack, CoQ, ToME (as in Tales of Middle Earth), Frozen Depths, IVAN, XLarn, HyperRogue.

Lots of good games. Did you get the latest CoQ on Steam? Lots of improvements, and even tiles (though I'm guessing you don't need tiles =p).

-What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?
Work overtime (to dodge the wife , drink beer, listen to music (too varied a taste to list here)

Haha, I wish overtime work could help me "dodge" things around the house, but working from home makes that a bit of a problem. Overtime just adds friction because I'm still sitting right here... there is no escape!

Forum activity dropped off somewhat after the first month, but will start to pick up again with future releases (and most definitely 1.0), but in the meantime definitely drop any thoughts, ideas, whatever, and take part in the weekly seed runs

[Gobbopathe]

Bonjour à tous !

It turned out I spent a few hours on your forum last days, so it is normal to introduce myself here. Gobbopathe's speaking, frenchman who left Paris this year for the sunnier south of France. Beware of the froggy english spelling !

How did you learn about Cogmind?

I have heard about it in Canard PC's internet forum (http://www.canardpc.com/). It is a french paper magazine about videogames sold every 2 weeks, quite the same "sensibility" as RPS (very aware of indie productions) . I do not know if you can find articles about DCSS or Dwarf Fortress on english paper magazine, it is quite nice [Edit : netsabes, one of your twitter follower, is journalist there]. Some people there followed you since X@Com and I was quite hooked by the trailer, several months ago. I bought the Alpha in May, tried a couple of runs, but as you probably noticed I dived really into it maybe 2 weeks ago.
I know also people from roguelike.fr like Kasaris who introduced himself sooner.

What other roguelikes do you enjoy?

I jumped into roguelikes something like 6 years ago. I think I had learned about Dwarf Fortress at the time, probably in Canard PC too, and wanted to know more. I found this tutorial (http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/) and even printed it (never do that usually!). It was very helpful. I learnt some months ago this guy wrote a book from this material.

Some day I was stroke by an idea : let's share the good word to good people. And I started recording video tutorials, first on Livestream, then on Youtube. First there was no editing at all, but it came (very) slowly. It takes such a long time ! Since then there are 50 DF tutorials video, per domain. It is said it is the more complete french video tutorials on that topic.

Then I knew DCSS. Probably the game I spent the most time in my life. Now I left it, I think I have seen a lot of it (15 runes done with different combinations, even in tournaments, etc...). Then Brogue I had the pleasure to finish too. Tome4, Cataclym Dark days ahead, Sil. Angband, but just a bit. Next on the list will be probably ADOM and Caves of Qud.

Just this morning I received an email from a high school classmate I hadn't talked to in ages, and she mentioned ADOM getting worked on again and I felt like--YOU KNEW ABOUT THAT BACK IN H.S. AND DIDN'T TELL ME ABOUT IT? Ha.

Fun fact : when moving in my new house I found some old letters. And especially one from a guy I just met in holidays one summer, probably 20 years ago. And he told me about how fun was Nethack ! I was telling myself : why didn't you look even once at it then ? I think I never replied to that mail.
When I tried Nethack some years ago, well I could not like it.

What are your other favorite games?

Aurora 4X is a hell of a concept too, only one programmer too. Crypt of the Necrodancer recently is a masterpiece. Spent some time on the last XCom too.

What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?

Well in fact I spend more time trying to understand games than to play. In fact I did not play a lot to Dwarf Fortress. Or even Cogmind recently ! (more time on your forum actually I like to well understand the rules behind the screen. And I like to make people understand it. That is why my videos are rather tutorials than let's play.

I am also an international rated chess player. I play since I was 10, was very good when I was younger, but it stabilized when I started to study. It was impressive then, now I am just a good adult player
I play a bit of piano too since I am young. But not often.

[Kyzrati]

Hi Gobbopathe!

We do have a number of French players and fans, starting as early as X@COM as you know. Tchey is probably the first member of your community I met years ago, and I know he's the main poster over on Canard. It's cool that you guys have a print magazine that includes roguelikes. Nothing like that in English that I know of.

Sounds like you got into roguelikes around the same time I did, and have quite a lot of experience with the genre's core games. Glad to have your input

Just this morning I received an email from a high school classmate I hadn't talked to in ages, and she mentioned ADOM getting worked on again and I felt like--YOU KNEW ABOUT THAT BACK IN H.S. AND DIDN'T TELL ME ABOUT IT? Ha.

Fun fact : when moving in my new house I found some old letters. And especially one from a guy I just met in holidays one summer, probably 20 years ago. And he told me about how fun was Nethack ! I was telling myself : why didn't you look even once at it then ? I think I never replied to that mail.
When I tried Nethack some years ago, well I could not like it.

Nethack is tough to get into these days; I think it was easier back then for those who didn't have nearly so many options for roguelikes to play. I wonder what I would've thought of it had someone introduced me to it 20 years ago...

Aurora 4X seems pretty cool. I've looked into it several times but, like DF, I just wouldn't have the time to play (I played DF for a bit, but the interface really grated on me). It's great that the Aurora dev has such a good source of income giving him plenty of time to just work on his game!

So you're one of the strongly mechanics-focused players. Roguelikes do attract a very high proportion of that type of player, so I can see why some enemy behavior and mechanics being less than obvious might be annoying, OR cause for deeper exploration =p. I do want to ensure that everything can be learned some way or another, but not always 100% obvious. That approach is meant to go with the theme of exploration and discovery. (Your previous questions have helped confirm some specific content I'll want to have in that special area I was talking about.)

Ooh, a rated chess player. Totally not surprising given what we already know about Gobbopathe

[zxc]

Nice to see another chess player around here. I also used to play in many tournaments as a junior. Nowadays I only keep track of what is going on at the top level and don't play so much myself.

[Npok]

Héééééé, Salut tout le monde !

If you don't get it, i'm French :p My name is Thomas, 20y old, passionate about Computer & Computer Science. I'm currently doing my studies into this Theme and i fu**ing like it

So now, the questions ! And sry for my english if i do some mistakes :p

-How did you learn about Cogmind?

The first time was with the Gobbopathe's video (merci à toi d'ailleurs si tu lis ceci :p). Since a looong time, i was very intrigued about the RL Theme, and i tried a lot (DF, DCSS, CDDA..) even the "simple" ones with only the aspect of Permanant Death & Random levels (Binding of Isaac, Risk of Rain...). As this game combine two kind of "passion" for me, i bought it 5 hours after ^^.

-What other roguelikes do you enjoy?

Yeah as i just said before : DF (i'm pretty bad at this game, it's tooooooo much complicated for new people like me ^^), i really enjoyed the atmosphere of this game and the large amount of content in it.
DCCS, it's more easy for newb's in ASCII / RL world. I enjoyed this one but i don't really grind it at the maximum :p

Binding of Isaac, o - m - g dat game, sooo much hours on it x) I love it !
Risk of Rain, i fall in love with this game because it's nervous as fo*k. And i love nervous game.

-What are your other favorite games?

As i said, i love nervous games. During my lower studies called "collège" & "lycée" in French (it's HighSchool for english i think), i spend a lot of time on FPS games, especially one : Counter Strike : Source with my schoolmates & friend. I've more than 2 800hours on it (yeah it's a lot ><). So yeah, FPS is my best favorite kind of Game with RPG & MMO (WoW, Elders Scrolls, LoL....). And recently Rocket League ^^

-What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?

As i'm in a Computer Science studies, i spend a lot of time about Technical information to keep myself at date about news :p I also did some swim but since i'm in higher level i stopped I like also go out, with friend and have a glass :p Enjoy the countryside advantages and that all i think :p

See you later

PS : Pour les français qui regarderaient ce message, je suis en train de traduire le Wiki en FR, si vous trouvez des erreurs, n'hésitez pas à m'en faire part !

[Kyzrati]

Hi Npok, and thanks for your translation efforts over on the wiki so far

As you say, DCSS is a pretty good game for beginners (it was also my intro the genre), but it does take a while to "grind" the necessary know-how to play well; like most roguelikes, really. That's one of the advantages of Cogmind--even if you still don't know what you're doing, at least it's fun just wandering around destroying things (especially when you come across deadly weapons). Then once you get better you can enjoy the game at that level as well.

By "nervous" games perhaps you're referring to something along the lines of "adrenaline pumping" (not exactly an everyday phrase, but I can't think of something more appropriate right now).

2,800 hours in CS?! That is insane. How do people rack up hours like that? Even the several games I really got into a while back and played for hours every day almost every day still only managed to reach 800-1,000 after a couple years, respectively. Interestingly two of my most-played games are also online FPSs: Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Battlefield 2. (Behind that are MW4 and MWO, also first-person games but of the slower strategy variety.)

I used to swim but eventually switched to biking when the cartilage in one of my shoulders decided I should stop swimming so hard

[zxc]

Oh I can believe those CS hours. I first played CSS in 2005 and by 2009 I had well over 3k hours recorded. I quit, and then in late 2014 I got into CSGO... About 1k hours in CSGO now.

You may have noticed my absence lately - it's a combination of RL stuff (not roguelikes =[ ) and CSGO to blame!

[Kyzrati]

Yeah, I stay away from games like that now, because I would just want to play them all the time and just don't have that kind of time. When my son's older and playing with him counts as "family time" I shall once again own the field of battle!!!

I noticed your absence, but thought you might just be waiting on the sidelines for Alpha 3 after having already bent Alpha 2 to your will

[Gobbopathe]

Coucou Npok !

Nice to drag some froggies here

[SALZHERZ]

I really enjoy to read youre posts. (shhhh.... dont tell my wife.... im NOT alone)
4-5 years ago i thought the whole gaming business will drive into a "hollywood" like sequel machine, not capable to invent new ideas. The raise of the indie games told me a lesson --> im not alone. (shhh...my wife..)
Sure, to much of the armada of new indies is (from my perspective) not good enough, in terms of Gameplay. Its not enough to show retro 8-bit graphis without any fresh idea or a proper gameflow implementation.
Back to the point --> we are not alone. And to keep momentum, and this is the tricky part, we need to spread the WORD. We need to bring this baby to the attention to as many gamers as possible. GoG/Steam should be the instrument.
Cross fingers for not only a success in terms of us, the "old gamers", cross fingers in terms of a financial success.
To keep games like this developed for a long time.
Vision --> sitting in my chair and playing with my grandchilds (3 kids for now...) games and talking about the good old time. As i did with my son (13) and my girls (11), just playing Zelda a Link to the past with them.

Damm, we are not alone. Im feeling good.

[Adraius]

Hi, I'm Adraius, and until now you haven't met me unless you've ventured over to the Cogmind subreddit, where Kyzrati has done an excellent job of answering my pestering questions until I got off my lazy behind and made a profile here - hats off to him!  I learned about Cogmind through one of RPS's DevLog Watch articles and immediately added it to my watch-list - I'd never played a real roguelike before due to the arcane nature of parsing ASCII, but I love the mechanics of games that bill themselves as 'containing roguelike elements', and Cogmind seemed like the best shot I'd ever get.  I was elated when I learned the game was to get a tileset.  In fact, I think part of the reason I kept a close eye on this game was because of the steady information stream coming from the game's Dev Blog, which was a pleasure to read - so when the Alpha came out and I learned it would be a long time before the game saw full release, I took the plunge!

I'm a big fan of combat builds in Cogmind, and I have high hopes to penetrate lower than sublevel -4 - the lowest I've gone with a non-stealth run - in Alpha 3.  Y'all will probably see me posting a lot in the General Discussion, Ideas, and Strategies subforums.  I hope to appear again on the high score list at the end of the next scoring period - I was elated to be so high on the first - and I'll finally be taking part in the weekly seed runs!

Other games I enjoy which share some elements with Cogmind are XCOM: Enemy Unknown (get the Long War mod!), Darkest Dungeon (taking a break until it gets close to release), and Distant Worlds (don't have the time for it anymore).  Other than those, I enjoy slower-paced/turn-based strategy games like Supreme Commander or Rise of Nations, RPGs like Mass Effect or Divinity: Original Sin, and a side of shooters like Borderlands 2 and Planetside 2, plus some oddities like Terraria and Bastion.  Easily my most anticipated game is Stellaris, a space-based Grand Strategy game from Paradox Games. (you'll note I like sci-fi...)

See you all around the forums!

[Kyzrati]

GoG/Steam should be the instrument.

Cross fingers for not only a success in terms of us, the "old gamers", cross fingers in terms of a financial success.

Absolutely! I think success is in the cards, and look forward to spreading it via platforms with more volume. I wish it were possible to do so sooner, but I also have to make sure the game fulfills the vision!

Vision --> sitting in my chair and playing with my grandchilds (3 kids for now...) games and talking about the good old time. As i did with my son (13) and my girls (11), just playing Zelda a Link to the past with them.

Same here . I'm still waiting for my son to get old enough so we can play the classics I grew up with. MUCH better gameplay than a lot of what we're seeing today, but as you mention the indie scene is doing a fairly good job picking up the slack. Glad to be a part of it

I'm a big fan of combat builds in Cogmind, and I have high hopes to penetrate lower than sublevel -4 - the lowest I've gone with a non-stealth run - in Alpha 3.  Y'all will probably see me posting a lot in the General Discussion, Ideas, and Strategies subforums.  I hope to appear again on the high score list at the end of the next scoring period - I was elated to be so high on the first - and I'll finally be taking part in the weekly seed runs!

An increasing number of players have been penetrating Research via combat, even in Alpha 2, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you and others can do with Alpha 3 in that regard. And myself! Gotta do seed #8 soon as my first full run in the new build.

Other games I enjoy which share some elements with Cogmind are XCOM: Enemy Unknown (get the Long War mod!)

I've heard good things about Long War, but never went back after trying XCOM and getting bored. The original is still the best

Also, SupCom is one of my favorite strategy games of all time

Easily my most anticipated game is Stellaris, a space-based Grand Strategy game from Paradox Games. (you'll note I like sci-fi...)

Huh, hadn't heard of that one before. I know I'll pretty much stick to sci-fi games forever because it's easier to meld them with my UI style and make it more immersive than a fantasy game (plus there is an overabundance of the latter, anyway).

[Tuttu]

Hi there !

Thanks to a generous soul, I can finally play to Cogmind and so far, I love it. My name's Michael and I love Roguelike. I didn't play them much so far because I was looking for the perfect universe that would allow me to get extreme fun and I found it with this one.

I will try to train myself as much as I can before the next seed is revealed and enter the competition with you all.

[Kyzrati]

Glad you could finally join us, Tuttu--I just updated the leaderboards and noticed you're quickly improving

[Sherlockkat]

Hiyall. I am Sherlockkat of gradskoll.   I have been playing cogmind on and off over the past few months and finally starting to get the hang of it.

- How did you learn about Cogmind?
I don't remember exactly. RPS maybe? I think I beat FTL in normal a couple of times and was looking to explore the roguelike genre and stumbled onto cogmind.

- What other roguelikes do you enjoy?
I am also playing Sil and Brogue (edit: Also, DCSS) . I also like roguelites (FTL, Sunless sea (I love reading))

- What are your other favorite games?
Dark souls. I play some Lol aram with friends. Starcraft 2 (had some fun with the ladder, too old for it now). I also play bit of chess and love solving chess puzzles.

-- What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?
I read books (fiction, non-fiction, anything really), walk around looking thoughtful (doina Phd in control theory, you see), hang out with friends, you know..the usual.

I have also started looking into making a roguelike (like everyone else these days). I find the game design aspect of roguelikes fascinating and fun. I have some leftover programming skills from my startup/undergrad days. So, hopefully up for the challenge.

Anyhoo,see you guyz around. Bye.

[Tuttu]

Glad you could finally join us, Tuttu--I just updated the leaderboards and noticed you're quickly improving

Thanks for the welcoming. Getting 3 Grenade Launcher right from start has been really helpful until I start to get out of mass.

[Kyzrati]

Hi Sherlockkat!

Looks like you're into some good roguelikes there. Seeing as you enjoy Brogue and Cogmind, I'd also recommend TGGW, another game with similar underlying design (though for now it's ASCII only--probably not an issue for you since to my knowledge Sil doesn't have a tileset and you're playing that).

"walk around looking thoughtful" sounds like a fun activity

If you need any help with roguelike development, check out /r/roguelikedev where we have lots of helpful people (the simplest way is to just share what you're up to in our Sharing Saturday threads). It doesn't take much to program a decent roguelike (I'm a case of what little it takes, really ); it's just a matter of determination since the tools and reference materials are out there. Good luck!

Thanks for the welcoming. Getting 3 Grenade Launcher right from start has been really helpful until I start to get out of mass.

Um yeah that's not advisable . I'd certainly carry at least two as backup weapons, but going around blowing everything up will get you into a bind eventually!

[okr]

Hello,

Cogmind has been on my mind for some time now. Today I finally listened to roguelikeradio 109 and my first thought was: "He doesn't really sound like a standard dev at all! What a nice and well-spoken person is making this game." Also, he mentioned some game mechanics (current and upcoming) which I thought were really awesome. And then I messaged Kyzrati on Reddit asking if Cogmind will stay DRM (and Steam) free after Steam release, which he answered really fast and to the point. And so I had no choice left but to support the game

As for the answers:

-How did you learn about Cogmind?
I read about it on RPS. What I really liked were the visuals in the game trailer (the art style is fantastic..) and the overall atmosphere/setting. I thought "I love it, where can I buy it?". But then I saw the asking price, which was quite shocking at first. Also, lack of native Linux version was disappointing. But I kept thinking about Cogmind. It grew on me, I suppose. So today I took the plunge.
-What other roguelikes do you enjoy?
I like Nethack and Brouge. I also like games that utilize roguelike mechanics but offer something more/different.. so I'm more a roguelite fan I suppose. I love FTL and Invisible, Inc.
-What are your other favorite games?
Planescape:Torment. Bastion and Transistor from SuperGiant Games. Mark of the Ninja by Klei. I also play a lot of coop Magicka and Skullgirls with my girlfriend
-What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?
Digital painting. Also, I'm learning web game development. We (me and my better half) watch a lot of TV series and movies together as well.

[Dzlan]

Heya everyone. I'm mostly lurking around, just watching as the game develops.
So a little about me. I'm a roguelike ASCII enthusiast. I'm also into programming, maths and linux. I love linux. I'm currently nearing the end of my first year of Uni, where we have started using Java. I spend a lot of time writing, and programming basic things, keeping me just above my class mates in programming. Although I still feel l suck at it, I can at least get basic procedural generation working. Barely, xD

I probably spend more time writing and listening to music then anything though. Mostly whilst I wait for my girlfriend to come online (Cause somehow I got myself into an long distance relationship situation which is the hardest thing I've ever done/continued as it doesn't really give me anything I'm looking for in a relationship, but.. curse loyalty I'm stuck with it.

-How did you learn about Cogmind?

I don't even know. All I know is this has been jumping out at me over various place on the net. To be honest. I just thought this would be another weird incomplete, spin off roguelike (what with the mech customization and all) so I never really bothered to look into it. Until recently, of course. The developer's amazing responses and interaction with the community, his interesting way of approaching the game really caught my interest so here I am, just sort following progress, dev's and reading the lots of material Kyzrati has strew across the forum, and his dev logs.

-What other roguelikes do you enjoy?
Any. That is, any that is feature rich, complete and full of lots of randomization or procedural content. Nethack, Angband, DCSS I used to play a lot. But yeah, even they don't feel like they have the diversity I'm looking for, somehow. DCSS kind of does. So, I'm going to start developing my own roguelike. The hard thing is, Uni keeps changing languages, so after getting a procedural generated dungeon in python set up, we then moved to basic java and I'm now trying to get a similar gen written in java. Although, what we actually do in Uni is not even close to the work I put into these dungeon gen projects. The other thing is, I can't bring myself to progress until the world gen looks nice, and I honestly suck at that.

-What are your other favorite games?
XCOM UFO DEFENSE and Xenonauts
Halo 1 and 2 (Yep, still play them often enough and love them)
Dwarf Fortress + Any roguelike really.
FTL, Spelunky, Binding of Isacc, Dungeon of the Endless (All those games people call Rogue likes which also annoys me to no end)

-What do you do for fun when you're not playing games?
I write Stories, Novels and Poetry.
I listen to music. I mean, I literally lay there or sit still for hours, listening to music. Synthwave on soundcloud, or 80's romance songs, or even a lot of classic Guns N Roses, Ozzy Osbourne and, litterally, too much else to all list here.
I program basic projects to build up my skills.
I rarely play games these days, honestly. Sometimes I'll do nothing for hours, with or without music when I could be playing games, but I don't, xD I just do nothing and think.

[Kyzrati]

Welcome guys

There certainly is a high ratio of Linux players/users around here . Not too surprising considering the tech-oriented audience, though I'm sure at this point the ratio is higher than it will be in the future once the audience expands. Most indie games are like <5% Linux users, but my impression is that we have more than that in early alpha.

@okr: The next Roguelike Radio interview (unreleased) is with the devs of Invisible Inc., so that might interest you as well!

I don't even know. All I know is this has been jumping out at me over various place on the net.

Hehe, well, you're obviously into roguelikes because outside the community it hasn't really been advertised to any real degree, only having been picked up by a couple general-interest sites since I didn't contact any for now. Cogmind is getting a lot of love from within the community, however, which means we're on the right track with making a new type of roguelike that still appeals to the old guard.

For development, be sure to check out /r/roguelikedev, which is a great resource and full of helpful supportive people. While you'll have to decide on a language eventually to make anything of respectable scope, switching around at first can be good so that you can find which one you'd prefer to use.

If you like UFO Defense, perhaps you've seen the previous project I was working on? And one that I'll be working on again in the future...