As per the discussion in March when I called for "TODO list prioritization" suggestions, it's time to decide! Cogmind's Beta 9 release will include one of these features, whichever you all decide:
- Manual machine hacking UI upgrade: Includes autocomplete for item schematics, robot analyses, shell-like terminal autocomplete, and displaying the expected chance of success.
- Drone overhaul: Redesign drones and their behavior to reduce the incentive/capability to micromanage them (attempt to eliminate tedium). Add a way to center on and follow active drones. Add several new drone types, and a number of other drone updates and improvements.
- Revamped combat log: The combat log was thrown together shortly after the 7DRL in 2012 to satisfy player requests, not really designed for Cogmind's modern form. I'm honestly not sure how it would specifically be improved, but there have been multiple calls to do that in the past, so everyone can offer further suggestions if this is chosen.
- On-map item searching and filtering: We already have some forms of filtering, but this feature would be interactive, allowing you to more quickly find specific or general items.
- Item database: Although the current item gallery provides access to discovered item info, it was originally intended purely for ASCII art viewing (the first versions didn't even allow the info window!), thus it isn't great for quickly looking up info about items since that wasn't what it was designed for (although note that you can hit the first letter key of a target item's base name to skip to that section in the gallery!). A new interface would make it much easier to explore known items.
- In-game score history data and leaderboards: Instead of scorehistory.txt, stat overviews of future runs would be available via a new interface in the Records section (including sorting by score rank or time). With this we'd also get in-game global leaderboard support.
- General UI info expansion: Add item info to the part swap UI (probably optional), and known analyses and robot info to the status window.
- Achievement progress indicators: Checkable progress towards unearned achievements in the current run, list of win achievements still available in the current run, list of achievements that will be earned if the run is won, and more.
Everyone is encouraged to vote for more than one option, though the feature with the most votes will make it into Beta 9. Voting is open and ongoing until I start implementing whatever has the highest vote count.
Remember that anything that doesn't make it might still become part of the game, it'll just take (much) longer, or can be voted in for the next release, since I'll revive this same list (and possibly expand it!) for Beta 10 :D
Note: Since we already have some voting going here, and I've been doing other posts, we still haven't gotten to the patrons-create-a-mechanic voting yet, so that's still open for suggestions for now. There's still plenty of time to get to that, anyway, since it'll be a part of Beta 9 which is still a ways off.
Update 190627: The Beta 9 feature voting is over and the results and implementation are described in this post.