Since the 7.1 release last week I've been hard at work on Beta 8, with a bunch of that time spent in REXPaint on new art. Some of you may know what that means... yet more parts!
That's just a small sampling to whet your appetite ;)
Fortunately it's not just me who's been up to producing art, so we can also feast our eyes upon Cogmind-related works from the community! There's been quite a lot of it over the past few weeks...
Hall of Heroes
Zyalin has been enjoying the world's atmosphere so much that he's chosen to share his impressions of the Heroes of Zion. These are only minor NPCs which don't play a part in the plot lines, but they have a lot of personality, making them good candidates for portraits. Over the past few weeks he's been sharing them with us over on Discord, having just recently finished the series.
ME-RLN
1C-UTU
7V-RTL
NK-0LA
P1-3CE
AD-0RF
99-TNT
CL-ANK
12-ASH
Having finished the heroes, Zyalin has continued drawing more bots, though now simply inspired by the world rather than anything directly from the game.
There's Zerbe-RIF:
A scary escaped prototype which has reportedly "stolen the last copy of NetHack" xD
And this great derelict with what could be a stolen pair of nice legs and a whole bunch of duct tape!
Datasheets
Not too long ago KernelPanic initially started sharing pixel art conversions of Cogmind's ASCII parts (their first attempt at pixel art, no less!):
Also eventually experimenting with new styles:
But then the parts started finding their way into these cool data sheets:
"Halloween version" for the Recycler :P
Cogmics
Pioneered by PlasticHeart, I've shared a few before but so-called "cogmics" have recently become a wider thing in the community, with at least 5-6 separate people (lost count xD) using their own cogmic style to share Cogmind jokes about the world, strategies, or even the community itself. Here are a few I've picked out...
PlasticHeart cogmics:
Gotta hate those surprise ARCs! (or any number of other surprises when opening doors without sensor data xD)
Using the new 7.1 RIF to loop garrisons (this one was specifically drawing Pimski doing it in -1/Access for what has become the second-highest ever scoring Cogmind run, which you can see on the leaderboards now).
New players are generally inundated with good advice on arrival on the Discord, but sometimes there are jokes as well :P
Lots of strategy discussion and sharing regarding established builds...
Decinym's impression of discovering nothing desirable after using CRM ("alien magic," haha xD):
Same scenario depicted by Zyalin (apparently Core Expanders are an artifact hunter's worst enemy :P)
Zyalin draws Raine as she goes for the Mad Max achievement, then accidentally picks up a prototype flight unit next to the wheel she wanted. Oops!
Allied Operators are great, by Zyalin.
8FPS lamenting the Beta 7 fix which blocked the cheese tactic of safely crushing a certain major NPC via treads without the usual repercussions.
Most recently, JackNine has been sharing some polished cogmics with a completely new perspective. (These include fun little details that are worth a second look, too :D)
Remember that Mines encounter?
(for me it's especially funny JackNine would make this connection, since a separate event I've been planning to add to the caves at some point is a more direct reference to this classic scene)
ASCII vs. tiles, Halloween edition!
How to deal with "programmers" :)
Many thanks to everyone for your artistic contributions! Some of the artists have been uploading their creations to the Images section on Steam, though not all so I thought I'd share some of my favorites as part of a progress update :D
Apostle of RIF
The Apostle of RIF is alive and well [enough]! We've survived another two parts with the RIF build, hacking and fighting up to -5/Upper Caves at this point after making the desired visit to Extension to rescue a certain someone (and then backstab them--sorry bud!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1HJ38I8xuw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3H9ieNSXVA
The written summary of the run (w/images) continues in the same forum thread.
Part 4 is coming next week at the usual time (Monday evenings EST, after the DST change in the US the time is around 7pm).
Also on Twitch, our own emote was approved ;)
I dunno though, I might end up switching it to :wheel:, which'd go along better with my streams since I've been doing a lot of wheel-based runs. (That said, some of the future runs I have planned are more likely to be back on legs.)
Scraps
My "How to Make a Roguelike" talk at the Roguelike Celebration is now also available in text form on the blog. It's a comprehensive primer on how to get started with roguelike development, with guidance and tips in 5,500 words and 84 images!
I also cross-posted it to Gamasutra, where it was received quite well and even got featured on their front page as the top article :)
You can see the screenshot they chose was from POLYBOT-7, woohoo.
In other artlike news, Rex Quantum has scrapped together a printed Cogmind manual using leftover office supplies. How appropriate :P
Overall there won't be as many progress updates prior to Beta 8, if only because a good chunk of this dev time is going towards new content that'd be nice for everyone to explore on their own. Also a heads up: This is stuff that'll be accessible near the start of a run, so unlike a lot of other big content updates it won't require that you already be able to reach the mid- or late-game areas. Stay tuned for more!
A note about SITREPs: These are regular progress updates where I often share features coming to the next release, but aren't actually in game yet. Public releases get their own dedicated news announcement and changelogs/release notes, for example with Beta 6 and Beta 7.
There may be other relevant discussion of this SITREP on the GSG forums or r/Cogmind.