I (you) have voted for Combat Log (Patreon)

In previous patron feature voting I've generally included a "combat log update" option, and it always gets a lot of votes, consistently making a very competitive run for the top spot. Now if I were the only Cogmind player, I'd be happy to just rip that log out and put some totally unrelated UI supporting a different mechanic in its place (there were actually plans for such a thing in pre-alpha--I dropped it for various reasons), but I know there has been consistent interest in an improved combat log among a fair number of players, and the topic comes up again and again over the years, so I'm just going to do that now!

The next question is just what "that" is :P

Aside: I was originally planning for another new vote to be combat log vs. just one other specific thing to see how that turned out, but it's been postponed long enough, and plus I'd like to stop hearing about it so often xD

I've already got a lot of notes here on combat log feedback, going all the way back to 2015 (!), and over the years a few issues have since been addressed individually, but there are certainly many more to explore, especially since part of my past reluctance to make certain near-term improvements was based on my assumption that one day the combat might even change form entirely, if necessary to more effectively do its job.

That said, although I considered it for a bit, I don't yet think it would be a net benefit to completely change the form of the log. Instead, after organizing the notes a bit I've come up with a list of concrete steps to begin addressing most of the issues within the framework of the current UI:

• Prefix hit core/part with owner name (in abbreviated form where appropriate)
• Remove all coverage values for hit parts/cores (mainly to recover some space from info you can already get elsewhere)
• Include part/robot destruction
• Distinguish terrain hits, and add melee hits
• Add support for multiprojectile weapons included in a greater volley

Some of the above are also things I'd wanted to do before now, but decided they wouldn't be great while we were limited to the small top-side log area; obviously we've since added the semi-customizable on-map log as well, making the idea of Yet More Lines of Info less appalling...

Anything else not covered here you'd like to see added, or at least discussed?

Dev Font

In case anyone is interested in trying their hand at mockups to proactively suggest an alternative combat log UI, for example something with different style of interaction, I've attached to this post my REXPaint font for doing Cogmind UI mockups. If you're interested but have trouble figuring out how to load the font by dropping it into the proper directory and adding a line to the cfg file, let me know.

Or again just leave other comments here.

Edit: 7DRL Streams!

Oops, I completely forgot to mention that I've started streaming this year's 7DRLs! There are a ton of neat ones this year, and after filtering the list down to the turn-based ones and looking through every single entry, I've picked a bunch to try out, sharing them with anyone interested in seeing some new roguelikes as well as often having the devs stop by, or sharing feedback with them elsewhere to help out.

I'm streaming them on Twitch, and putting the videos on YouTube. I also put summaries on Mastodon in this thread here., and chat with other devs in the #7drl channel of the Roguelikes/RoguelikeDev Discord server.

I don't have a set schedule for those, but it's definitely more streaming than usual and I generally announce them in advance on Discord.