Kyzrati

So amazing, all these smart people making commercial games in such a short time, and then there's me still working on the same old thing year after year, even though it was released a long time ago xD

Indeed, Cogmind's been my full time job for over 6 years now so far and still pays the bills every month. 11% of players even use pure ASCII mode :)

So it's... technically doable.

Hahaha, thanks. It's funny when I sometimes get notices from new players who've said they got into it after having read all my blog and FAQs. I'm like "you just read... ALL of that?!"

(I'm happy to have started the FAQ series beyond the blog, because it's about so many other devs' RL projects as well, and we can share and learn so much more!)

Ah, this was mainly because it's easiest to show UI/UX innovation in images :P

The gameplay is unique, and much has been written about it, but it's not all in one centralized location like that page, which was easier to put together as simply images for demonstration.

For the other side of things there are many many articles on the blog detailing systems and mechanics and design considerations. Plus there are Steam reviews, which give a pretty clear picture of what people think. This one, and many others, are telling: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198035898628/recomm...

Also hi :)

(Edit: Oh, and I stopped writing a lot of Cogmind-specific design the articles for the blog in recent years, and some of the writing you might be looking for has gone towards FAQs here: https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/wiki/faq_friday)

REXPaint is not based on .Net, and works flawlessly under Wine on Linux. Although there's no native build, there are a bunch of users on both Linux and OSX (especially since a sizeable portion of the roguelike dev community uses non-Windows platforms).

REXPaint also comes with a lengthy manual covering all of its features in detail: https://www.gridsagegames.com/rexpaint/manual.txt

Ah yes the owner would be me, and I really have to get around to releasing a new version of REXPaint xD. Lots of potential feature ideas, and it's cool to have to many people using this little tool I originally made for my own projects!

I've also already got a little backlog of great art by users from recent weeks that I still need to add to the gallery...

Yeah, I want to eventually have a wrapper to simplify installation for those players. For now there are step-by-step guides on the forums that keep the process pretty simple with regard to Cogmind.

I may one day write more about the engine. I've written small bits here and there in the past, though nothing comprehensive. Getting busier and busier after release, so less time to write and publish articles :(

Thanks for the recommendation, they've got some really nice music! (still listening)

I assume I will, yeah, as they have a good, loyal customer base and are known for quality. Still in early talks, and it wouldn't happen until next year, I don't think, because we'd need to wait for a price drop, and I don't want to really push and advertise Cogmind until it's about done.

Whew, many thanks for your support :D

GOG asked me the same thing when they wrote me last weekend to see if I was interested in joining their platform =p

The System Requirements section on the buy page addresses the cross-platform issue (as does the FAQ). I don't make a big point of it because while it works fine through Wine etc., it's not natively cross-platform.

As for your other question, I should really put a notice on the website that Cogmind is completely DRM free. That's not currently indicated anywhere... (I'll add it tomorrow, thanks!)

Edit: Just quickly added it to a header since the site's getting a lot of traffic right now.

I actually contributed a bit to libtcod back when it was in active development :D

The roguelike I worked on before Cogmind was originally written to work with libtcod's frontend, but I wanted to do a few unorthodox things and rather than continually patch up libtcod decided to build my own frontend from scratch. that bit was all I was using from libtcod as I already had my own game library and roguelike engine at the time. My version supports mixed font sizes out of the box and is written in C++ rather than C.

With regard to procedural generation, think of it as a normal roguelike in the vein of ADOM/DCSS. Endless replayability.

The world is entirely dynamic, even more so than other roguelikes because there is an overarching AI (http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2015/04/living-dungeon/). For a general overview of the game that should answer most of your questions, see this: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2015/04/cogmind-roguelike/

The story is secondary and optional (very much out of your face--you have to go out of your way to engage it, and most of it hasn't been added).

Haha, not a virtually never-ending DF plan, no :).

I have a very specific goal, an epic story to fill out, and a path to reach it. Cogmind will be done next year, then if it's performed well enough that I can continue making games we'll probably get Cogmind 2.

And after that I'm going to make this game much, much bigger (and rebrand it): http://xcomrl.blogspot.com/

For Cogmind's current state, see this old post linked from the buy page: http://www.gridsagegames.com/blog/2015/03/alpha-release-stat... (Since then the final release date is looking more like Q2 2016 due the unexpectedly early burst in popularity, which will slow things down.)

See the other links in the first section of the buy page for more info: http://www.gridsagegames.com/cogmind/buy.html

Not native, no. Cogmind works nicely in Wine (better than many natively ported games due to the simple rendering engine), and we have plenty of Mac/Linux players in alpha.

What I hope to do instead is eventually provide a Mac version as a one-click wrapper, but for now there are instructions on the forums for getting up and running on your own.

It's possible I'll be using a wrapper for the full version, yeah. I've got your info and I'll look you guys up when it comes to that!

As for fonts, there are 82 font bitmaps included with the game, so for those seeking more traditional options, we've got 'em: http://www.gridsagegames.com/forums/index.php?topic=165.0 (The game is highly customizable, with new optional features added every new version.)

Thank you, and yeah for that first post in the mapgen series I linked to a bunch of good online examples for others to check out, so thanks for that :D

Yeah, it's an unfortunate limitation of the custom engine :'(

But the alpha does have a rather large number of Linux players since it works great under Wine.

And thanks!

Many thanks! And feel free to wait until the price drops next year if you need to :). I've got enough funds to see it through to completion, though I'd like to use any surplus to hire a professional composer for the OST.

Yup, there's a full game in there. You can (if you're good enough =p) play all the way through to the end. We have only two known winners on record since the game's launch. It's hard.

What's missing is the mid/late-game optional branches that will add interactive story elements, multiple endings, and lots more robots and components (the latter objects are all complete, but you can't access them yet until the new maps are added).

And yeah you'd be the target audience; anyone who plays DCSS and DF would fall into that category :D.

There are absolutely the types of strategic differences you mention here, and wide spectrum of approaches. The good thing is it's not entirely based on luck--you can hunt down specific robots and take what you need; at the same time, if caught in the wrong place you could end up getting beat up and forced to switch strategies on the fly. This is a big part of the appeal I think. Comebacks from a partial defeat are commonplace, but not always in the way you intended.

That's good. As you can read in the post-mortem impulse buyers aren't the target audience for early access :)

Do come back when the game is on Steam next year!

Hey thanks so much Pyxl101!

As per my reply to another commenter, the buy page has been morphing constantly over the past several weeks, and has gotten increasingly messy (it already looks better than it did last week, so good thing you didn't see it then =p).

I'll swap it out with a simpler version soon, but the idea is that I want to make sure players know what they're getting into since this is alpha. (That and the page still contains old info I've left there for reference by the many current owners, but it no longer applies to new purchases...)

When the full 1.0 launch happens next year the page will be incredibly simple.

Dev here. Yeah, that page turned into a mess compared to what it was originally designed to be, but at the current stage I'm actually trying to ward off impulse buyers. The game isn't even done yet!

I mentioned in the post-mortem that I only want quality players right now who are very familiar with what they're getting into, and I haven't even been advertising the game to a general audience, only the primary target audience.

The Steam/GOG launch next year will be cheaper, and for a different audience. "Problem" is, players are having so much fun with it that news about Cogmind continues to spread...