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Poll

Cogmind Beta 9 Feature Voting

  • Manual machine hacking UI upgrade 18
  • Drone overhaul 17
  • Revamped combat log 8
  • On-map item searching and filtering 10
  • Item database 16
  • In-game score history data and leaderboards 4
  • General UI info expansion 7
  • Achievement progress indicators 6
  • 2019-05-01
  • —2019-08-16
  • 86 votes
{'title': 'Cogmind Beta 9 Feature Voting', 'choices': [{'text': 'Manual machine hacking UI upgrade', 'votes': 18}, {'text': 'Drone overhaul', 'votes': 17}, {'text': 'Revamped combat log', 'votes': 8}, {'text': 'On-map item searching and filtering', 'votes': 10}, {'text': 'Item database', 'votes': 16}, {'text': 'In-game score history data and leaderboards', 'votes': 4}, {'text': 'General UI info expansion', 'votes': 7}, {'text': 'Achievement progress indicators', 'votes': 6}], 'closes_at': datetime.datetime(2019, 8, 16, 5, 41, 20, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc), 'created_at': datetime.datetime(2019, 5, 1, 1, 8, 45, tzinfo=datetime.timezone.utc), 'description': None, 'allows_multiple': True, 'total_votes': 86}

Content

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.

Comments

Michael Powers

Although "combat log" isn't my first choice, one suggestion for an improvement is a mention of what part(s) are hit and how much damage they took.

Kyzrati

Have you adjusted your combat log detail level in the options menu? You can actually already get that info, and much more :) (there are several different options)

Suslik

I'm sooo voting for general UI expansion. Don't get me wrong, it's great already, but I'd love to have options for swapping with items on ground, multi-slot swapping and similar QoL related to micromanagement. Regarding combat log, I think it's imperative to somehow group and/or nest information so that every volley takes one brief line and then it's somehow possible to view more information of what happened exactly as right now there's a problem that it gets completely overflown with not the type of information that I'm actually looking for right now. Maybe toggle modes? Like show hit percentages, show damage types/resistances, show parts damaged, etc and make all of them optional? Or make every volley/shot collapsible (uncollapse for detailed info) or filterable by attacker/target?

Kyzrati

Well I must say again we're not getting multislot swapping! But note that the entry you're referring to is an *info* expansion, not referring to functionality. That said, at least one additional form of ground-swapping will probably come on its own, without needing to vote on it, so I didn't include that or similar things in the list. (Everything we're voting on here is basically optional, but I think more swapping options is pretty vital for streamlining.)