The Beta 6 countdown begins! It's coming May 8th, but that's my morning when it'll be released, technically still Monday evening/night in the western hemisphere where most of the players are.

In preparation for that, the full range of achievements have been uploaded to Steam, although again they aren't technically accessible in the current public build, even though Steam insists on showing them on the store page...



You can check out the full list on Steam's global achievements page, but I wouldn't recommend using third-party achievement managers unless you want to be spoiled, since they will spoil the third of achievements which are meant to be hidden. Also: As always, here's your reminder that achievements are equally available both in the Steam and DRM-free versions.

If you're interested in why some achievements are hidden, the methods and purpose behind achievement selection, how they're categorized, how the icons were created, and much more, check out the latest article on my blog.



Testing is going well, just a few more bits to fix up and polish then we'll be all set.

Ape has already added achievements to his graph-generating script:



See more graph samples in last week's SITREP.



Actually, for the record, may as well list out all the achievements that are part of Cogmind's first batch (this way it's also better organized than the global Steam list, which is mostly random at the moment).

Mechanics:

• Close Call ~~ ???
  
• Universal Adapter ~~ ???
  
• Hehehe ~~ Reprogram a trap.
  
• Wheee! ~~ Intentionally trigger a Chute Trap.
  
• It Was An Accident, I Swear ~~ ???
  
• Part-time Excavator ~~ Use a melee weapon to dig through 10 walls or earth.
  
• Unlikely Earthworm ~~ ???
  
• Hey, That's Mine! ~~ Attack 5 Recyclers attempting to collect parts.
  
• Loot Pinata ~~ Destroy a Hauler.
  
• Treasure Hunter ~~ Destroy 20 Haulers.
  
• Use The Force ~~ ???
  
• Risk Taker ~~ Attach an unidentified prototype.
  
• Adventurous ~~ ???
  
• Alien Tech ~~ ???
  
• System Compromised ~~ Reach 10% system corruption.
  
• Z1$+NX3F=JRE3_ZNQR ~~ ???
  
• Maybe Next Time I'll Detach My Launcher ~~ ???
  
• Backstab ~~ ???
  
• Short-term Sacrifices ~~ Escape a Stasis Trap with help from an explosion.
  
• Just Shoot The Terminal ~~ ???
  
• Release The Drones! ~~ Have 6 drones at once.
  
• Subspace Traveler ~~ Find a way to teleport.
  
• Storm Trooper ~~ Miss 5 shots in a row.
  
• Crack Shot ~~ Hit 10 shots in a row.
  
• Please Form A Line ~~ Hit 2 robots with a single projectile.
  
• Quick And Dirty ~~ Destroy 5 hostiles via explosions in a single turn.
  
• Power Corrupts ~~ Terminally corrupt a robot.
  
• It's Just You ~~ Cause a robot to meltdown.
  
• Fist Fight ~~ Destroy a hostile by ramming.
  
• Overkill ~~ Fire 10 overloaded shots.
  
• Batter Up ~~ Knock a hostile robot into an exploding machine.
  
• Watch This! ~~ Sneak attack a Watcher and destroy it in one hit.
  
• Deadly Force ~~ Melee attack a hostile using 4 momentum.
  
• Ambidextrous ~~ Destroy 2 hostiles with one melee volley.
  
• Oops ~~ ???
  
• No Explosion For You ~~ Shoot down a launcher projectile with a defensive utility.
  
• Oh No You Don't! ~~ Destroy a Saboteur before it succeeds.
  
• Ride The Lightning ~~ Use a Fabricator to destroy an enemy.
  
• Let's See Who's Tougher ~~ ???
  
• Uninvited Guest ~~ Be spotted by an Operator that then summons reinforcements from its Terminal.
  
• One Hack Too Far ~~ Trigger an investigation by being traced to a Terminal.
  
• Troublemaker ~~ Cause a robot to call for help or reinforcements from a nearby Garrison.
  
• Party Time ~~ ???
  
• Significant Disruption ~~ Raise alert high enough to trigger an assault dispatch.
  
• Slippery One ~~ ???
  
• Hunted ~~ Simultaneously tracked by 20 hostiles.
  
• My Command Is Your Wish ~~ Build an ally via Fabricator.
  
• Just What I Needed ~~ Build a part via Fabricator.
  
• Part-time Mechanic ~~ Repair a part via Repair Station.
  
• Safety First ~~ Identify a prototype via Scanalyzer.
  
• Dynamic Key ~~ Use an Operator Data Core before it expires.
  
• Novice Programmer ~~ Hack 10 machines.
  
• Librarian ~~ Hack 10 different Terminal records.
  
• Armchair Analyst ~~ Download 3 robot analyses from Terminals.
  
• Everything Is Under Control ~~ Lower alert using a Terminal's Purge Threat hack.
  
• GoHome() ~~ Use a Terminal to recall an active squad.
  
• Shopping List ~~ Hack Hauler Manifests at a Terminal.
  
• Brute Force ~~ Use a Force() hack.
  
• True Hacker ~~ Install a Trojan().
  
• Quantum Hacking ~~ Set up a three-Terminal botnet.
  
• A New Friend ~~ Rewire a robot.
  
• Factory Defaults ~~ Reboot a hostile robot.
  
• Error 47 ~~ Overload a hostile robot.
  
• Assimilation Complete ~~ Assimilate a hostile robot.
  
• No Signal ~~ Block an Alarm Trap transmission.
  
• Total Silence ~~ Jam 10 distress signals or other communications.
  
• I Spy ~~ Use an Imp. Sensor Array (or better) with Imp. Signal Interpreter (or better).
  
• Omniscient Cartographer ~~ Use an Imp. Terrain Scanner (or better) with Imp. Terrain Scan Processor (or better).
  
• Knowing Is Half The Battle ~~ Enter 10 identified exits.
  
• Can't Catch Me ~~ Reach a speed of FASTx3, or 4 spaces per turn.
  
• Cya! ~~ Fly over a row of 3 hostiles.
  
• The More The Merrier ~~ Have 5 allies.

Style:

• Turtlemind ~~ Have 2% or less core exposure.
  
• Can't Touch This ~~ Absorb 1,500 damage using shields.
  
• Executioner ~~ Evolve 7 weapon slots.
  
• Perfect Aim ~~ Have +40% targeting accuracy for ranged weapons.
  
• More Dakka Please ~~ Fire 10 projectiles in a single volley.
  
• Gunslinger ~~ Destroy 3 robots with a single volley using secondary targeting.
  
• Gun Specialist ~~ Destroy 100 hostiles with at least 90% of damage dealt by guns.
  
• Cannon Specialist ~~ Destroy 100 hostiles with at least 90% of damage dealt by cannons.
  
• Explosive Specialist ~~ Destroy 100 hostiles with at least 90% of damage dealt by explosives.
  
• Melee Specialist ~~ Destroy 100 hostiles with at least 90% of damage dealt by melee weapons.
  
• Shocking Conclusion ~~ Corrupt 50 hostiles.
  
• Pyromaniac ~~ Cause 20 hostiles to meltdown.
  
• Guerrilla Style ~~ Trigger reprogrammed (or placed) traps on 30 hostiles.
  
• Tank ~~ ???
  
• Friend Of Zion ~~ ???
  
• Heroic Deeds ~~ ???
  
• Whoosh! ~~ Move with 4 overloaded hover or flight units.
  
• Speed Demon ~~ Reach a speed of 10 spaces per turn.
  
• Supersonic ~~ Reach a speed of 20 spaces per turn.
  
• Dodgeball, But With Guns ~~ Reach 75% evasion.
  
• Assassin ~~ Sneak attack 15 hostiles.
  
• Sniper ~~ ???
  
• Dramatic Entrance ~~ ???
  
• Decoder Ring ~~ Obtain 50 pieces of intel from one or more 0b10 Decoder Chips.
  
• Freeware ~~ ???
  
• Prolific Hacker ~~ Hack 50 machines.
  
• Pwned ~~ Hack 50 hostiles.
  
• l33t h4x0r ~~ Have +100% to hack success.
  
• Maximum Efficiency ~~ Succeed at 10 hacks on a single Terminal.
  
• root@ ~~ Succeed at 3 manual hacks on a single Terminal.
  
• War Machine ~~ Build 10 allied bots.
  
• We Are Legion ~~ Have 20 allies at once.
  
• Beloved ~~ Acquire 75 allies across an entire run.
  
• Generalissimo ~~ Oversee 75 ally kills across an entire run.
  
• Collateral Damage ~~ ???
  
• What Is This Thing? ~~ Discover the use of Self-destruct Interrupters.
  
• Deconstruction ~~ Destroy a robot via core entropy.
  
• Max Potential ~~ ???
  
• Hard Hitter ~~ Inflict 200 damage against an enemy with one shot from a single weapon.
  
• Sunderer ~~ ???
  
• Packrat ~~ ???
  
• Production Line ~~ Build 10 parts.
  
• Remodeling ~~ ???
  
• More Power To You ~~ ???
  
• Minesweeper ~~ Extract 30 traps.
  
• Superinsulated ~~ Become immune to electromagnetic damage.

Progress:

• The Most Popular Achievement ~~ ???
  
• Back For More ~~ Complete 50 runs.
  
• 5k Club ~~ Earn 5,000 points.
  
• 10k Club ~~ Earn 10,000 points.
  
• 20k Club ~~ Earn 20,000 points.
  
• 30k Club ~~ Earn 30,000 points.
  
• 40k Club ~~ Earn 40,000 points.
  
• 50k Club ~~ Earn 50,000 points.
  
• This Is Interesting... ~~ Reach 25% lore collection.
  
• I Think I Know What's Going On ~~ Reach 50% lore collection.
  
• I Was Wrong! ~~ Reach 75% lore collection.
  
• I Wish There Was More ~~ Reach 100% lore collection.
  
• Just Browsing ~~ Reach 25% gallery collection.
  
• Tester ~~ Reach 50% gallery collection.
  
• Collector ~~ Reach 75% gallery collection.
  
• Curator ~~ Reach 100% gallery collection.
  
• Made in Tau Ceti IV ~~ Enter Factory.
  
• Dangerous Findings ~~ Enter Research.
  
• Denied? ~~ Enter Access.
  
• \\IAMDERELICT ~~ ???
  
• I'm Back, Baby! ~~ Exit Proximity Caves.
  
• Tourist ~~ Visit 3 branch areas.
  
• Adventurer ~~ Visit 2 special cave areas.
  
• Explorer ~~ Visit 10 branch areas.
  
• Great Explorer ~~ Visit 35 areas.
  
• Serviceable Loadout ~~ Reach a peak rating of 50.
  
• Respectable Loadout ~~ Reach a peak rating of 100.
  
• Rockin' Loadout ~~ Reach a peak rating of 150.
  
• Ultimate Loadout ~~ Reach a peak rating of 200.
  
• Achiever ~~ Earn 25% of achievements.
  
• Overachiever ~~ Earn 50% of achievements.
  
• Superachiever ~~ Earn 75% of achievements.
  
• Perfect Achiever ~~ Earn all other achievements.

Challenges:

• Exterminator ~~ Destroy 15 Assembled in the Mines.
  
• Killing Spree ~~ Achieve a kill streak of 20 hostiles.
  
• Preemptive Strike ~~ Destroy a visible ARC before it deploys.
  
• Left-hand Path ~~ Destroy all Cetus Guards without any help from allies.
  
• Below ~~ Visit and survive 2 Waste areas.
  
• Streaker ~~ Enter a main complex map at -5 or above as a naked core, and find an exit (do not have to remain naked).
  
• Rincewind ~~ Teleport 10 times.
  
• Leap Before You Look ~~ Enter 10 unidentified exits.
  
• Boltbath ~~ Achieve a kill streak of 35 hostiles.
  
• Torch ~~ Inflict 30,000 thermal damage across an entire run.
  
• Magneto ~~ Inflict 30,000 electromagnetic damage across an entire run.
  
• Punisher ~~ Inflict 30,000 kinetic damage across an entire run.
  
• Gladiator ~~ Destroy 200 hostiles via melee.
  
• Infiltrator ~~ Enter and survive 2 Garrisons on a single floor.
  
• Desperate Times ~~ Enter a main complex map at -3 or above as a naked core with no inventory items, and find an exit (do not have to remain naked).
  
• Monster ~~ Kill at least 20 inhabitants of Zion.
  
• Equal Opportunity Bot ~~ Destroy 25 different classes of robot.
  
• Giant Slayer ~~ Destroy 5 Behemoths.
  
• Artifact Hunter ~~ ???
  
• Fearless ~~ Enter a Garrison with below 10% core integrity and survive it.
  
• Shutout ~~ Seal, jam, or destroy all Garrison Access machines in Access.
  
• WMD ~~ Destroy 100 robots in a single turn.
  
• Rambo ~~ Earn 10,000 bonus points for high alert combat kills.
  
• Most Wanted ~~ Trigger high security 4 times.
  
• 404 ~~ Destroy 4 Network Hubs and escape to the next floor.
  
• Full Golem ~~ ???
  
• Traitor ~~ Kill Warlord in his base and escape.

Events:

• Curiosity Killed The Cat ~~ ???
  
• I Survived The Infestation ~~ ???
  
• Woof! ~~ ???
  
• Help From High Places ~~ ???
  
• Nope ~~ ???
  
• Origins ~~ Discover what you really are.
  
• The Oracle ~~ ???
  
• Robot Respite ~~ ???
  
• Signs Are For Wimps ~~ ???
  
• That's One Door That Should Stay Closed ~~ ???
  
• The Science Guy ~~ ???
  
• Exposed ~~ ???
  
• A Powerful Ally? ~~ ???
  
• Reappropriation ~~ ???
  
• Prison Break ~~ ???
  
• Project G-00 ~~ ???
  
• Main Advantage ~~ ???
  
• Alien Roots ~~ ???
  
• Signature Confirmed ~~ ???
  
• Rampage ~~ ???
  
• False Reunion ~~ ???
  
• Big Bang ~~ ???
  
• Meet Your Maker ~~ ???
  
• Poison In The Code ~~ ???
  
• Unlimited Data ~~ ???
  
• The One ~~ ???
  
• Are We The Baddies? ~~ ???
  
• Charge!!! ~~ ???
  
• Revising The Future ~~ ???
  
• Anyone Home? ~~ ???
  
• Decrypted! ~~ ???
  
• Revolutionary Research ~~ ???
  
• All-out Warlord ~~ ???
  
• Godhack ~~ ???
  
• Everyone Must Die ~~ ???
  
• Special Delivery ~~ ???
  
• Corridor Of Doom ~~ ???
  
• void main() ~~ ???
  
• Sorry Old Pal ~~ ???
  
• Behind The Curtain ~~ ???
  
• The Bigger They Are ~~ ???

Wins:

• Epsilon Run ~~ ???
  
• Commander 0b11 ~~ ???
  
• Home At Last? ~~ ???
  
• Payload Armed ~~ ???
  
• MAIN.CPP ~~ ???
  
• Stardust ~~ ???
  
• Planet Killer ~~ ???
  
• Derelict Escape ~~ Win while imprinted.
  
• Winner's Signature ~~ Win after being scanned by a Researcher.
  
• Data Run ~~ ???
  
• Inspector Gadget ~~ Win while only evolving utility slots.
  
• Straight Shot ~~ Win without visiting any branches.
  
• Pacifist ~~ Win without destroying a single robot.
  
• Speedrunner ~~ Win in less than 2,000 turns.
  
• Expert Speedrunner ~~ Win in less than 1,000 turns.
  
• By A Hair ~~ ???
  
• True Flier ~~ Win without attaching any propulsion except flight.
  
• Mad Max ~~ Win with 200 hostiles destroyed and without attaching any propulsion except wheels.
  
• Victory By Combat ~~ Win with 400 hostiles destroyed.
  
• Hardcore ~~ Win with 400 hostiles destroyed but no more than 4 utility slots.
  
• Death Machine ~~ Win with 600 hostiles destroyed.
  
• Partners In Destruction ~~ Win fighting alongside the Warrior.
  
• One Last FU ~~ Win after entering an Access garrison.
  
• The Little Core That Could ~~ Win without attaching any propulsion.
  
• True Cogmind ~~ Win 25 times.
  
• Grand Amoeba ~~ Win the Devolution challenge mode.
  
• Look Ma, No Swapping! ~~ Win the Fragile Parts challenge mode.
  
• Unstoppable ~~ Win the Gauntlet challenge mode.
  
• Stunt Win ~~ Win the Inhibited Evolution challenge mode.
  
• I Don't Need Leftovers ~~ Win the No Salvage challenge mode.
  
• Light Traveler ~~ Win the Pure Core challenge mode.
  
• This Only Looks Like Junk ~~ Win the Scavenger challenge mode.
  
• Terminals Are For Geeks ~~ Win the Simple Hacker challenge mode.
  
• Attach With Care ~~ Win the Sticky Parts challenge mode.
  
• Best of the Best ~~ Win the Super Gauntlet challenge mode.
  
• Master Trapper ~~ Win the Trapped challenge mode.
  
• Super Mutant ~~ Win the Unstable Evolution challenge mode.

Again the selection, categorization, and more are discussed on the blog here.


Although this week has mostly been about testing, tweaking, and writing that mega-article, I did slip in a few last quick features before the Beta 6 feature freeze had to set in.

Melee Analysis Suites increase minimum weapon damage, yet another buff that'll help make synergistic melee builds more effective but not OP.



By indirect request, the message log now reports what items were crushed by a cave-in. Aw...



And my personal favorite to finally slip in there: Drones can be released from bays without even attaching them!



Less tedium, more OMG DRONE SWARM STOP ATTRACTING EVERY DAMN PATROL ON THE MAP.

(But seriously, sometimes it's still good to equip the bays, be it for makeshift armor if you've got no real protection, or to recall drones for repair and storage.)

I also noticed Cogmind dev recently passed the 9,000-hour mark. Onwards to 10k!




There'll be a 10% discount next week to coincide with the new release. As a heads up, this is the largest discount Cogmind will have during Early Access unless at some point Valve decides to again offer exposure for a larger discount like they did in December, in which case I might take them up. (But I wouldn't count on them doing that again, there being so many games out there these days :P)

There won't be a SITREP next week because it's a major release week and we'll have Beta 6 and its release notes instead. We'll be back to sitrepping the week after with Beta 5 scoring and analysis, and before that I'll mostly likely be doing some streaming! (As usual the results will later appear with my other recent runs on YouTube.)

There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on the GSG forums.

Thanks for all the reviews lately! We're well on our way to that goal, and I'm well on the way to delivering Beta 6 :D

With achievements completely out of the way it's mostly done, just needs another 2-3 days of polishing. With a normal release at this stage I'd be okay to put it out next week, but this one's particularly big with a lot of new moving parts so I'm going to hold it in pre-release testing longer than usual to ensure no easily avoidable bugs are passed along to you all.

Unless something goes horribly wrong it'll be out the week after next and you can achieve all you want ;)


As usual when approaching a new major release, the top priority is to take care of any new bugs/issues/minor tweak requests that have popped up since last time. But first, because it's nice to have something exciting to show for the week, check this out:



Yep, manually activated object labels (hostiles/allies/parts) will continue appearing automatically as you pan the map. These additional labels will also obey the item filters added in Beta 5.

While adding and testing that feature I discovered that robot labels for those not in view have been completely broken for the past couple versions (no one reported this because I guess they're not needed as frequently?), so I fixed that:



Impact weapons display damage values properly modified by current momentum. Other melee weapons were doing it right, but a typo left out the impact category...



AOE traps give their salvage modifier in their description.



Items with description info (e.g. traps) will still show it even when the Show Supporter Items option is on.



Removing an active Particle Charger, or having it destroyed, immediately updates damage for the weapon(s) it was affecting.



Explicit Arc stat for forced spread weapons and clearer multi-explosive indicator



Added Disruption stat to melee weapon info, for the couple of late-game impact weapons that use it.




Cogmind already includes a couple of autosave mechanisms, the first which automatically saves your current run's progress at an adjustable interval, and another which makes a backup copy of the current save and all settings once per day. But this doesn't quite cover all the possibilities--what if something bad happens to your computer at precisely the wrong time and your save file is corrupted? If you have a long run in progress you'll still be able to restore it to wherever it was on the previous day, but any progress on the current day would be lost. Not anymore come Beta 6!

The autosave system has been expanded to also save an adjustable number of sequential backups at a designated interval, so even if the current save doesn't work, there's a backup not long before that :)



Note that this system is not accessible in game--you'll still have to manually copy and rename an old file if you really need it, but it should be extremely rare that this is necessary anyway. Just a precaution. That and probably one of its more useful benefits is making it much easier to track down a subtype of bug which can otherwise be elusive if the issue already happened before the current save. Most bugs can be solved fairly easily given existing tools, but there are a few that are extremely difficult to track without knowing the game state prior to where something went wrong.


One of Cogmind's new players, Ape, has put together a great python script for analyzing all your score sheets produced by the game across multiple runs.

There are lots of interesting insights that can be derived from the graphs we've been looking at on Discord.

Ape posted their own first batch here and I've collected some examples on the forums. Some excerpts:















GJ is the only player to have collected absolutely everything in the game, and specific to this graph you can see where I was still adding new lore in late Alpha :)



Score sheet collections submitted by other players can be browsed here for tons more types of data.


Cogmind expert Valguris has written up a quick spoiler-free guide to the early game. Kind of a supplementary follow-up to the Survival Tips in the manual. As he puts it:

Play a few games first. Then read the Survival Tips section of the manual. Then play a few more games. Only then I grant you permission to read this guide (:P), so that you have an idea of what I'm talking about and why is it that good to know/use.

Check it out if you need to up your game!

Over on the Discord, SeanMirrsen shared some cool impressions of Cogmind in various forms:





We also have a Let's Player who's just picked up Cogmind, Joselillo PDL, if you'd like to tune in to some Cogmind discussion in Spanish. Good luck to Joselillo :D


This week I also finally released what might be the final update for POLYBOT-7, the free Cogmind de/remake-spinoff-thing. You can check out what the update's all about here.

Explodey P7 gif for fun:



As usual, even just the little time spent working on that also ended up benefiting Cogmind (via the engine): As of Beta 6 if you have any letterboxing in your Cogmind display setup, the screenshot system will trim it out. This isn't usually much of an issue with Cogmind since it will never have more than a few pixels of letterboxing, and only on some displays, but with P7 it was a more important feature because the latter intentionally uses significant horizontal letterboxing by design.

Man I can't wait until Cogmind Beta 6 is done so I can start working on Beta 7 :P

There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on the GSG forums.

With all 256 achievements implemented and tested last week, it was time to finalize the main achievements UI functionality.

The first subwindow I got working was the category filters.



Then onto the other filter and sorting options... All settings are remembered from when you last accessed the page so that you don't have to keep resetting them to your desired preferences, only making changes if you want to look at them in a different way.



And here's the entire thing working together!



So pretty soon you'll be able to browse your achievements in style.

All achievement data and images have actually been uploaded to Steam, but they're not published yet since I haven't released the build that allows access to them. However, because I had to test the Steam integration I did make the first couple public already,
meaning that from the store page it looks like Cogmind only has two achievements xD



Way to go, Valve... I haven't even marked "achievements" on the list of supported features but they don't care. You can't even earn those two, yet, although they do appear on the global achievements page because while testing I "earned" them :P

Anyway, the tests went smoothly and the data properly syncs back and forth between Cogmind and Steam, always making sure both sides have the latest data (in case you install Cogmind again elsewhere and it needs your records, or you migrate a DRM-free version over to a Steam-linked install of Cogmind). Here are Cogmind achievements successfully appearing in Steam for the first time!




As with other collectible data in Cogmind (lore and gallery), achievements can also be exported to various formats. I've provided the same three formats, which you may want for different purposes.

Basic TXT, because TXT.



HTML includes some styling, plus a table of contents with links if you export a category-wise list.



CSV adds extra data like the highest difficulty mode on which each achievement was earned, and in which game number.



All exports load the same achievements listed in the UI, i.e. based on your currently set filters and sorting, giving you extra control over what is export and how.


Next up is other non-achievement work for Beta 6. Considering that the changelog for this release has already grown quite fat I may push back some other features in order to get this one out sooner, but first things first, gotta fix all known bugs as per usual!

Oh yeah, my wife will be in surgery next week so I dunno that could slow things down, but by pushing some features to Beta 7 (don't worry, it's stuff you don't even know about yet ;)) the next release will be out on schedule.

I've also started writing the first of two blog posts about achievements, which will go into much greater depth about working on this aspect of a game.

If you're reading this now it's likely you already saw the previous announcement, but just in case here's a reminder: Check out the notice from a few days ago about the future of Cogmind.

There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on the GSG forums.

Good news! Half a year ago I said I'd be expanding Cogmind for at least another six months, and here I am to say it again :)

Remember that as of last year's move to Beta, the world and storyline are complete, and all that's left are some finishing touches and possible optional content and meta features. Everything on the public roadmap (and technically more) are guaranteed to happen, but I have a ton more concepts for great optional stuff that I'd like to work in if possible. Some of this stuff is rather major, which together with the many other little features I'd like to add reaches the kind of level one might expect to see the the form of "DLC." But I don't like DLC, nor do I think it's appropriate for Cogmind, which benefits significantly from its many mechanics, systems, and plot all being tightly intertwined at numerous points.



This presents a bit of a conundrum because I still need to be able to pay for them with revenue, which will get more difficult as we near the tail end of Cogmind development. Devs of widely popular games can afford to keep adding features and content nearly indefinitely, even without selling it as DLC, while Cogmind is pretty niche and if I did that I wouldn't be left with enough savings to fund the next project, so I've come up with a pretty simple alternative!


It so happens that having an "Overwhelmingly Positive" review rating on Steam really helps with sales, and we obviously have an attractive ratio already with so many people enjoying the game, just not enough total reviews to reach that threshold. We need 500 reviews before that can happen. But at the current rate (we've gone an entire month without a single review before xD) I don't think it's likely we'll hit that threshold before the 1.0 release, at which point I'll likely be starting to shift resource to my next project and therefore less able to take on major new features for Cogmind.

I realize that the current rate of reviews is probably lower than it would be if Cogmind were 1.0, mainly because some people prefer to wait until it's "done" to dive in, but hopefully with the variety of achievements soon to be added we'll see more players getting into it now, especially seeing as the content is essentially full release material.



So there it is, the goal being to get more players leaving reviews in the hopes that we can hit that target.

But wait, there's more!


I could leave this as a vague promise since any of you following my progress over the years know my reputation for adding good content (and as we often discuss on Discord there's so much potential to work with in Cogmind's world!), but rather than leave it an unknown, I'll let you in on what I've been planning out for a long while as a suitable incentive: A NEW FACTION.

And of course a new faction has many implications, requiring...

• at least one new map (probably more than one)
  
• new NPCs
  
• new robots
  
• new tech and parts
  
• new mechanics and systems
  
• and of course more lore

What is this faction, you might ask? The working name I have peppered throughout my design doc is the Merchant's Guild :D


Anyway, this threshold is obviously not going to be hit any time soon, but is more of a medium-term goal with potential long-term upside! And if we can hit it it means 1) potentially more sales to fund features and 2) enough love for Cogmind that I don't care whether there are enough continued sales I'll fund this expansion myself anyway :P

Again there are still a fair number of guaranteed features prior to 1.0, including a much expanded robot hacking system, yet more UI/QoL stuff, and ambient audio, so don't worry all that's all going to happen. I'm just thinking further into the future here...

Many thanks to all of you who've over the years helped Cogmind become what it is today--couldn't have done it without your support!

TL;DR: There are still guaranteed features to go, but if we hit 500 reviews and get that "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam before 1.0 I'll further expand the world with a new faction and a bunch of related content.

All 256 achievements are done! But... there's still a lot to do :P

Even just on the achievements side of things there's more UI work before the system can be considered finished, then after that still the Steam support to add as well, for those playing Cogmind on Steam, but at least we're in the tail end of it. And at least all the achievements are both implemented and tested, so the foundation is complete and stable!

As reported last time the final batch of icons was completed, too, so I have a program that can spit out all the icons as individual PNGs (I develop them as REXPaint spritesheets), and those are ready for the next processing steps...



Specifically for Steam players I have to upload all the achievement icons and fill in their tag, name, description, setting.... It'd be nice if Steam supported batch uploading, but no, each has to be done one. at. a. time. xD. I guess that's fine for most games not having quite so many achievements, but it doesn't scale very well!

Steam also uses JPGs for achievements (along with ugly scaling!), so the quality in Steam's interface won't be as good as it is in game (where you always get perfectly crisp pixels, yay! :D)


One of the next places you may need to see achievements is one the game over screen. Most achievements will be displayed directly on the map, but a subset of them can be specifically earned only after the run ends, and they should also be shown somewhere convenient. Plus sometimes you may earn an achievement immediately before the run ends and there's no chance for it to appear on the map--those too will show on the game over screen next to the stats.



Any that won't fit in the window (they'll usually fit) can be found in the score sheet as part of the complete list of achievements earned that run.



The score sheet will of course also keep track of the total percentage of achievements earned so far, as it does with lore and gallery items.

So all the little UI features are done, while the big achievements interface is still under construction. (Remember that both Steam and non-Steam players have equal access to the achievements system, which comes with a better UI and functionality than Steam can offer anyway :D) Here's its current state:



It's very WIP right now--missing lots of buttons, some animations are wrong, and some pieces aren't even animating :P. I shared the original mockup in an earlier SITREP which you can check out to get an idea of what's missing from the layout.

This'll be finished up for next time, and I'll be writing more about achievements the UI later, including via some dedicated blog posts.

Note that in order to fit achievements into the game menu system, I've made some adjustments there. First of all I removed some of the tab/page buttons, and recentered the remaining ones. (Note that the lore and gallery will still be directly accessible via their original number hotkeys, as an extra fast shortcut, you just don't see the buttons there.)



Those features have been consolidated into a single new "Records" page.



That page will be getting more features in the future, but I'll talk about those another time. For now that's where access to lore, gallery, and achievements is provided, along with a little description which is helpful for those just getting into Cogmind.


POLYBOT-7, the Cogmind-ish game I made for this year's 7DRL, will be getting a little update with some bug fixes and minor gameplay tweaks. This week while testing out that build, what was a "quick test run" turned into a full playthrough (couldn't help myself :P) and I made it to the end for my second win \o/

My winning build while closing on the end-game:



While on the topic, I've been continuing to fleshing out my concept for yet another Cogmind-like much more radically different from Cogmind. This is an idea that for several years now I've hoped to be able to explore as a 7DRL one day. Because it's so radical it'd have to be built from scratch, though, so it's initial scope would be smaller and focus mostly on the core mechanic.

Anyway, one can dream but if it does happen it'll be a fantasy-themed roguelike which probably (eventually, at it's greatest) could be an open-world game, but I dunno... going down that rabbit hole I might never emerge! In any case, I seem to be starting a new subgenre here :) (and yet there are so many other different roguelikes I want to make, too! ugh, getting old sucks since it's very clear I only build so many more of these things...)

Speaking of evolution of the genre, this week I happened across a nice mention of Cogmind in this popular interview with Tarn and Zach of Bay 12 Games (from the 12:24 mark). What a nice surprise! We seem to have a bunch of new players who've discovered Cogmind through that avenue as well. Welcome :D


We're definitely within a month of releasing Beta 6 at this point, though I still don't have an approximate date on my end. Even with all the achievements implemented there's still plenty more work to do there, and the release timing could depend on how smoothly the remaining parts go.

All next week will likely be spent on finishing up achievements-related work, to be followed by a huge list of stuff I will so not be able to finish cramming into Beta 6 xD. Lots of new stuff to work on has been popping up in these few months without a release, so some of that will end up getting pushed back as padding for future releases (themselves centered around other major features).

I've also been brainstorming some ways to add even more content in the long-term without being forced to release it as DLC in order to pay for it, and I think I've come up with an interesting solution but I'll announce that separately when I have more time to write it all out.

There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on the GSG forums.

Previously I was spending a lot of time planning for, deciding on, and making icons for achievements, while this week I actually started implementing them :P

The plan was to get them all done this week, and of 256 I finished 204 so far, but didn't quite make it to the end of the week in good enough condition to actually finish xD. On Thursday some random lady on a bike ran into me (I was stationary), seriously spraining my right wrist so I'm suddenly one-handed right now and working more slowly... (typed all this on one hand, I did!)

I do have the final set of icons to share though! This is the "wins" category--yeah there are a lot of different ways to win :D



I'm thoroughly testing all achievements to keep them as polished and bug-free as you'd expect from a Cogmind release. It's kinda fun to quickly come up with the right tests via the debugging features... Here's an example I happened to record where I was running a bunch of Decoder Chips at once.



Of course to facilitate testing I also needed to see achievements as they're earned, so that part of the UI is in place now as well. Achievement icons and names pop up over the map as they're earned.



They're also recorded to the message log.



(As you'd expect, these features are adjustable in the config.)


This week some of you may have noticed we had a little surprise event where all the parts turned into random launchers.



On Steam it was only mentioned in the form of a semi-announcement in the discussions board (although it was a top-level announcement on my forums, r/Cogmind, and Twitter).

Honestly I didn't have anything planned for April 1st this year, but Cogmind Let's Player nuzcraft asked me about it that morning and got me thinking. I had a couple hours free and decided to really really quickly implement "AFD Mode." It was pretty fun and I'd like to do more of this kind of thing in the future, though as usual there are other important priorities right now so I dunno when.

If you missed the day itself and still want to try it out, with the latest version of Cogmind (it was a stealth update, still just called "Beta 5") you can temporarily set your system clock to April 1st to fool it into loading that mode ;)


If you're still reading and would like a lot more to browse, in case you missed it before I've also published my entire POLYBOT-7 postmortem, about the time spent converting Cogmind into another game, as a single article over on Gamasutra. They even featured it on their front page, which was pretty cool :D. Altogether it's a... 10,000-word 45-image/diagram "novelette!"

Have a bonus gif of one of the things I was working with this week, watching AI bot trails off in the darkness as they build a new map (which is revealed at the end).



Next week is going to be almost entirely about achievements UI work!

Previously I was spending a lot of time planning for, deciding on, and making icons for achievements, while this week I actually started implementing them :P

The plan was to get them all done this week, and of 256 I finished 204 so far, but didn't quite make it to the end of the week in good enough condition to actually finish xD. On Thursday some random lady on a bike ran into me (I was stationary), seriously spraining my right wrist so I'm suddenly one-handed right now and working more slowly... (typed all this on one hand, I did!)

I do have the final set of icons to share though! This is the "wins" category--yeah there are a lot of different ways to win :D



I'm thoroughly testing all achievements to keep them as polished and bug-free as you'd expect from a Cogmind release. It's kinda fun to quickly come up with the right tests via the debugging features... Here's an example I happened to record where I was running a bunch of Decoder Chips at once.



Of course to facilitate testing I also needed to see achievements as they're earned, so that part of the UI is in place now as well. Achievement icons and names pop up over the map as they're earned.



They're also recorded to the message log.



(As you'd expect, these features are adjustable in the config.)


This week some of you may have noticed we had a little surprise event where all the parts turned into random launchers.



On Steam it was only mentioned in the form of a semi-announcement in the discussions board (although it was a top-level announcement on my forums, r/Cogmind, and Twitter).

Honestly I didn't have anything planned for April 1st this year, but Cogmind Let's Player nuzcraft asked me about it that morning and got me thinking. I had a couple hours free and decided to really really quickly implement "AFD Mode." It was pretty fun and I'd like to do more of this kind of thing in the future, though as usual there are other important priorities right now so I dunno when.

If you missed the day itself and still want to try it out, with the latest version of Cogmind (it was a stealth update, still just called "Beta 5") you can temporarily set your system clock to April 1st to fool it into loading that mode ;)


If you're still reading and would like a lot more to browse, in case you missed it before I've also published my entire POLYBOT-7 postmortem, about the time spent converting Cogmind into another game, as a single article over on Gamasutra. They even featured it on their front page, which was pretty cool :D. Altogether it's a... 10,000-word 45-image/diagram "novelette!"

Have a bonus gif of one of the things I was working with this week, watching AI bot trails off in the darkness as they build a new map (which is revealed at the end).



Next week is going to be almost entirely about achievements UI work!

It seems I never run out of achievement stuff to show... because, well, yeah there are 256 of them xD

Here's the finalized icons for the second to last category: events and story-related elements!



Achievement work is progressing nicely. Yesterday I pretty much finished the internal framework, and also implemented most of the new related UI features (except for the main achievements UI). But I haven't yet recorded anything to share there, so it'll have to wait for a later SITREP. (We have pop-ups on the map when achievements are earned, as well as a new section next to the end game stats window if any new achievements were earned at the end of the run. All animated, of course :D)


Remember POLYBOT-7? Well it was quite the detour, but as mentioned before Cogmind benefited from it in a number of ways, one of those I haven't talked about yet being enhancements to low-contrast mode.

The "LOW_CONTRAST" renderFilter option I added in Beta 5 has been getting some use among players, though it was always kind of a hackish thing in the first place. Lots of Cogmind code and scripts assume the background is black, but I went in and changed that assumption in a number of places where it was more accessible. All of these improvements came as a result of efforts to polish the distinctive look of POLYBOT-7, which uses a low-contrast aesthetic by default. For example:

Path visualization is now much more visible. (All sample images are using the SLEEPY preset.)



FOV edges are somewhat easier to see.



(The following are all before-and-after gifs demonstrating adjustments.)

Activating an Optical Array.



Motion trail fading.



AOE visualization edges.



Structural Scanner and cave-in visualization.



SFX visualization.




Speaking of POLYBOT-7, this week I finished the last two parts of its dev postmortem, much of which is related to Cogmind:

• Part 3: Spending Too Long on Map Generation and Content
  
• Part 4: Finishing Touches

Again there are lots of diagrams/images so I won't copy them all here, but here's a few to give you an idea:

My desk after reasoning through various POLYBOT-7 map layout needs.



A sample 100×100 map layout, annotated (the generation algorithm is one borrowed from Cogmind, but many of the parameters are different).



Testing generation for one layout style (each floor has multiple styles) of the 125×125 map (fourth floor).



Examining content across a section of map, including patrol paths (the colored lines). I use these same features to balance Cogmind.



Special prefab rooms, labeled. A lot of Cogmind's outlying maps have prefabs as well, and that's one of the main ways to create unique experiences for different areas, but in POLYBOT-7 there wasn't time to add very many.



The purge timer in action.



Oops! Bug-enabled hacking interface opening a theoretical exit into a Dispatcher. Most of the non-applicable Cogmind features were blocked off, but I had only blocked bump-hacking and forgot that when adjacent you can of course click on a machine to hack it xD. (Being a simpler, faster, purely combat-oriented game there is no hacking in POYLBOT-7.)



If you want to see (and hear) it in action, this week I streamed my first serious P7 run, and won! :P

And POLYBOT-7 also appeared in PC Gamer this week :D


I also streamed this week's Cogmind weekly seed, going for a purely wheels-based combat run. It's a very atypical build, but a lot of fun. The entire run was uploaded to YouTube, and you can find a written summary on the forums.

Also on the forums, Joshua has shared his notes on Cogmind's many "Resources," essentially a breakdown that might aid some of you in understanding these concepts and in some cases how they relate to strategy.

b_sen's prequel mockups are becoming a recurring theme around here, but his reimagining of Cogmind and use of REXPaint are really inspiring :). The latest installment is "AI updating in the face of Derelict incursions" (source)



Next time we'll take a look at the final achievements category! And probably see some of the achievements UI features in action :D

It seems I never run out of achievement stuff to show... because, well, yeah there are 256 of them xD

Here's the finalized icons for the second to last category: events and story-related elements!



Achievement work is progressing nicely. Yesterday I pretty much finished the internal framework, and also implemented most of the new related UI features (except for the main achievements UI). But I haven't yet recorded anything to share there, so it'll have to wait for a later SITREP. (We have pop-ups on the map when achievements are earned, as well as a new section next to the end game stats window if any new achievements were earned at the end of the run. All animated, of course :D)


Remember POLYBOT-7? Well it was quite the detour, but as mentioned before Cogmind benefited from it in a number of ways, one of those I haven't talked about yet being enhancements to low-contrast mode.

The "LOW_CONTRAST" renderFilter option I added in Beta 5 has been getting some use among players, though it was always kind of a hackish thing in the first place. Lots of Cogmind code and scripts assume the background is black, but I went in and changed that assumption in a number of places where it was more accessible. All of these improvements came as a result of efforts to polish the distinctive look of POLYBOT-7, which uses a low-contrast aesthetic by default. For example:

Path visualization is now much more visible. (All sample images are using the SLEEPY preset.)



FOV edges are somewhat easier to see.



(The following are all before-and-after gifs demonstrating adjustments.)

Activating an Optical Array.



Motion trail fading.



AOE visualization edges.



Structural Scanner and cave-in visualization.



SFX visualization.




Speaking of POLYBOT-7, this week I finished the last two parts of its dev postmortem, much of which is related to Cogmind:

• Part 3: Spending Too Long on Map Generation and Content
  
• Part 4: Finishing Touches

Again there are lots of diagrams/images so I won't copy them all here, but here's a few to give you an idea:

My desk after reasoning through various POLYBOT-7 map layout needs.



A sample 100×100 map layout, annotated (the generation algorithm is one borrowed from Cogmind, but many of the parameters are different).



Testing generation for one layout style (each floor has multiple styles) of the 125×125 map (fourth floor).



Examining content across a section of map, including patrol paths (the colored lines). I use these same features to balance Cogmind.



Special prefab rooms, labeled. A lot of Cogmind's outlying maps have prefabs as well, and that's one of the main ways to create unique experiences for different areas, but in POLYBOT-7 there wasn't time to add very many.



The purge timer in action.



Oops! Bug-enabled hacking interface opening a theoretical exit into a Dispatcher. Most of the non-applicable Cogmind features were blocked off, but I had only blocked bump-hacking and forgot that when adjacent you can of course click on a machine to hack it xD. (Being a simpler, faster, purely combat-oriented game there is no hacking in POYLBOT-7.)



If you want to see (and hear) it in action, this week I streamed my first serious P7 run, and won! :P

And POLYBOT-7 also appeared in PC Gamer this week :D


I also streamed this week's Cogmind weekly seed, going for a purely wheels-based combat run. It's a very atypical build, but a lot of fun. The entire run was uploaded to YouTube, and you can find a written summary on the forums.

Also on the forums, Joshua has shared his notes on Cogmind's many "Resources," essentially a breakdown that might aid some of you in understanding these concepts and in some cases how they relate to strategy.

b_sen's prequel mockups are becoming a recurring theme around here, but his reimagining of Cogmind and use of REXPaint are really inspiring :). The latest installment is "AI updating in the face of Derelict incursions" (source)



Next time we'll take a look at the final achievements category! And probably see some of the achievements UI features in action :D

More achievement icons! We've got the final pass on two new categories here.

Special Challenges are probably not quite as obvious...



...whereas Progress-related achievements are more basic and numbery.



I've been talking about achievement "categories" for a while, but haven't gone into detail about what that actually means. Each achievement belongs to a certain category that gives a general idea of what type of achievement it is, determines the color scheme of its icon, and also enables it to be filtered along with others of its category via the in-game UI. There are so many achievements that after I'd formed a tentative list it seemed best to divide them up logically to aid both organization and understanding.

The six achievement categories:

• Mechanics: A group of mostly basic achievements covering common useful tactics and learning about systems. Some of these serve as a way to teach (or at leas reinforce) features, too.
  
• Style: Specifically play style-related achievements, like combat, stealth, hacking, etc. These are generally earned through normal play using a given style/strategy, and while some might be more challenging or require focus in a certain area, they're not difficult enough to be considered "special challenges " (another category).
  
• Progress: Personal meta progress like high scores, lore/gallery coverage, and world exploration.
  
• Challenges: This group doesn't have anything to do with Cogmind's "Challenge Modes," but is simply achievement-specific individual challenges ranging from Tier 1 (not too hard) to Tier 2 (hard) to Tier 3 (pretty hard!).
  
• Events: Story-related elements. Basically once you've visited every location and exhausted all the branching possibilities of the plot, you'll have all of these. This category is entirely hidden, though, so these aren't achievements to be explicitly sought like a list. You've just gotta explore and use the in-game lore as clues.
  
• Wins: There are a lot of different ways to win the game, whether achieving unique endings or simply winning by overcoming other challenging scenarios, so these get a whole category of their own.

So we've come upon another little speedbump on the way to Beta 6: tax season xD

Taxes have gotten more complicated this year--I have to file in two different countries now, so this'll be annoying. I could try to push Beta 6 out before the second country's deadline, but I'd rather not because the release shouldn't be about just achievements, so it's going to take longer than that!

Just a heads up that there's still lots to do on the list.


I heard from someone this week mentioning that POLYBOT-7 "really helped them understand Cogmind better," so maybe it's worth checking out for that reason, in addition to the fact that it's just an interesting different way to play a modular robot :)

In case you missed it, I released that game last week for 7DRL.

Since then I've also been working on a proper in-depth postmortem about its development, which you may be interested in checking out seeing as POLYBOT-7 is a very experimental alternative approach to the concept of Cogmind. The first two parts are already on the blog:

• Part 1: Preparation
  
• Part 2: First Days with UI, Aesthetics, and Mechanics

There are tons of details and diagrams/images in there--here are some excerpts:

The source code evolution of all my projects since 2011, which share the same code :P



Redesigning Cogmind's UI layout to meet new needs:



Alternative item color schemes:



In related news, one of our Cogmind experts (surprise surprise it was GJ) won P7 on New Game+++++ mode, which requires winning six times in a row, each run harder than the last.

Next time more on achievements, and an introduction to improvements to low-contrast mode.