2021, Unchained (Patreon)

It's a new year! And going into this year, I'd like to thank everyone for your support--we even just recently hit the next funding milestone :D. Assuming it stays at or above this level (which I imagine to be likely based on previous trends), this means the Unchained really are coming to Cogmind O_O

More on these traitorous bots below.

Catching Up

We're a little further behind than I expected at this point, first due to a higher-than-expected amount of stuff going on over the holidays last month, then because I realized that if I didn't finally get around to reporting on the Beta 9 stats they were basically never going to happen.

I know a number of people look forward to that, and I'd eventually need to put together a new system anyway in order to export spreadsheet data like I used to have for the pre-Beta 9 releases, so might as well not put that off any longer. Besides, Beta 9 was our first version series using the brand new spreadsheets containing even more juicy data, so definitely worth taking a close look at.

Juicy data, indeed! While working on the stat summary it started to get really long and I realized it was growing beyond the scope of a typical forum post, so decided to move it over to the blog this time, where it would also naturally get a bit more attention to quality.

If only the process would be as simple as pouring a bunch of time into coding, analyzing, and writing up the stat data... but no. Before the article was finished, my blog decided to start having issues again, including intermittently blocking everyone from reading it, even preventing me from accessing the backend to finish the article. So I finally did some much-needed updating (the dev blog was originally set up in 2013 and has changed very little since then) and lost a day and a half to that plus other website maintenance. I guess it's nice to finally have that behind us, but while doing it I made yet another list of web things that still need to happen xD

Anyway, the article did get finished and the results were worth it:

7,000 words covering new topics like difficulty modes, causes of death, build classes, RPGLIKE/special modes, SR targets, and more. The build classification system's base classes and modifiers are also defined in there, which I haven't shared elsewhere before (when first introduced I thought it'd be fun to just let everyone discover them and figure out what was what, but most of that has been done by now).

The Unchained

The mysterious Unchained have been getting less and less mysterious as time goes on, ever so gradually :P

For the longest time no more than a single word I'd throw out there occasionally, in recent Cogmind releases they've gotten a small number of references hinting at what role they might play, and even more recently got more specific lore shared via the Halloween 2020 ARG event, as the first reward:

There are a bunch more lore rewards included in the ARG, and you can read them all in the walkthrough I posted on the blog if you're not into solving the puzzles on your own :P

So that new lore above finally gives them a much more concrete background. No gameplay, but then a lot of the specifics aren't finalized. That said, yesterday I collected my scattered notes on the Unchained so that I could give some advance notice of where they're headed on that front... In short: Prepare to die ;)

Well, only if you deserve it and aren't on your toes ;)

The Unchained would likely be the minibosses of Cogmind, deadly unique named bots that can track and hunt you across multiple maps, sometimes traveling with a posse, and using unique parts and special behavior where appropriate. They'd of course have their own home base you can decide to visit, too :D

Way back when I first envisioned the Unchained, kinda like 0b10's version of the Heroes of Zion, they were originally considered as a combined "higher-level challenge and anti-farming mechanism." The latter part is generally already handled by the new sterilization mechanic, so we don't have to worry so much about that part anymore, although we do need to consider how the Unchained are triggered and encountered.

I won't get into the non-Cogmind related encounters (you can discover those when they're added), but obviously the most important aspect is when and why they'd come after Cogmind specifically.

The primary cause would certainly be repeatedly causing trouble across multiple maps, so unlike sterilization and high/max sec which are single-map consequences*, as far as Cogmind is concerned the Unchained are a response to persistent derelict threats across multiple areas, responses that can also persist across multiple floors until they're actually destroyed. *(aside from the alert which can technically spill over into other areas if not managed or actively avoided by branch diving for example)

Balance-wise, one of the main issues with Unchained is that I want to make them deadly, but at the same time don't like deviating too much from Cogmind's normal concept of "everything is usable parts," which is always a bit of a dilemma because whatever makes them deadly can theoretically then be... borrowed by Cogmind to become even deadlier xD

There are other intermediate approaches that could work to varying degrees, such as self-destructing parts (e.g. cave patrols, CPs) or perhaps limited-use parts, though obviously it's nicer when this sort of thing can be avoided. We'll have to see just what their parts and abilities are, I guess. I have a list of concepts, but that's beyond the scope of this post and not something I plan to announce in advance anyway :)

So when can we expect to be murdered? Well, I can say this is definitely not a Beta 11 thing, since the feature list for the next release is already full, but I do believe it would be a good central theme for Beta 12 right after it!

Beta 11

Only minimal work has been done on Beta 11 so far, at least compared to what it will be. The biggest new feature you've already read about if you saw my previous post about item searching and filtering, but having finally worked through everything on my todo list getting in the way of Beta 11 proper (random stuff kept piling up on top of it xD), it's finally at the top \o/

After I organize my balance notes, we're going to move on to playing with some test builds. In case you weren't aware, Cogmind's next release is going to focus on heavily rebalancing a number of parts. There's a long thread on the forums discussing various aspects of this, though on its own it's mostly people offering opinions (and me replying) and fairly inconclusive on many points. I'm pretty sure the first thing we'll be looking at, being rather central to the experience, is somewhat reducing inventory sizes and the number of utility slots builds are allocating to storage units.

That test build should be our next post here, and either way I'm sure I'll continue sharing other incremental progress updates on Discord.

Yet More 7DRLs

In community news, 2021 7DRL was announced today! This is the first year I'm not even considering maybe joining, or even doing related brainstorming for fun, though I'll probably keep up my new tradition of streaming some when the time comes. Not sure yet whether I'll be doing it as an official reviewer or purely as a spectator this year. Any thoughts one way or another?