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[puke]

ooo, tricky. 

there are some pre-compression methods you can use, but youtube still takes a second whack at it after it's uploaded.

If you opt to display the videos at 1080p, even text looks sharp... but this seems slightly absurd.  still, it's how the big studios present their demo videos.

[Kyzrati]

I'll research it in more detail later, but HD will definitely be available, which helps, but even then it's not very crisp after any kind of compression considering that the text is narrow and best shown at pixel perfect accuracy. My current thoughts are to try and scale it up first, then let YouTube scale it back down. Pre-upload compression isn't very helpful since, as you say, YouTube compresses it again anyway. There are other video services that actually do a better job with ASCII, but YouTube is by far the most important. Still a good bit away from needing video, anyway--while there's plenty to show now, it's mostly UI work so I'd rather wait until there's more gameplay to feature. At present animated gifs are better for their accuracy; the only drawback being lack of audio.

[Kyzrati]

I mentioned the new propulsion overloading, momentum, EM disruption, and part deterioration mechanics earlier in this thread, but now there's an official post providing more details.

[puke]

on traditional roguelike consumeables, Transcendence nails this for the sci-fi genre.

potions - containers of things to apply as armor coatings
scrolls - bioroms create (semi)permanent effects
wands - quantum programs are generally one-shot items

you could adapt some of this.  armor coatings or re-surfacing.  fuel addatives.  single use programs.  special ammo for certain weapons.  etc.

[Kyzrati]

The lack of consumables is certainly not for lack of ideas. The original 7DRL design doc had coatings, data disks / programs, viruses, and more for consideration, but the game excludes them for a number of reasons. One is the semi-hard sci-fi theme, in which the above consumables don't really make much sense as true "consumables." They also require a lot of extra inventory management, which I'd prefer the game avoided to focus almost entirely on parts (originally it was *only* parts, but now I've added the possibility for non-part items for special purposes). More importantly, they don't really add any element to the game that isn't achievable through part design. I'd add them if Cogmind was going for the kitchen sink approach to roguelike content--but it's not =p

Referring specifically to some of the above ideas, the concept of "coatings" is already present with different types of armor that you can mix and match as you want, and effects akin to programs will be possible through hacking machines and robots (which I'll begin posting about soon). Every time I came up with a consumable idea I thought of how it could pretty easily be folded into the part system.

[puke]

I appreciate that sense of focus, good design sensibilities.

[Kyzrati]

Short intro to hacking is up, the first of a five-part series.

[Kyzrati]

In-depth description of the hacking process, and a first look at the functional interface.

[puke]

Are the "Secret" commands randomized, to preserve replayability? 

Or is the idea that you will need multiple playthroughs to build enough knowledge to access all of the information, perhaps getting slightly easier each time because you have already learned some of the commands?

[Kyzrati]

Yes, the "secret" commands I mentioned would be randomly generated and valid only for that specific run. Carrying knowledge of advantages like that between games would make things too easy, since they're not the focus of the hacking and will only be used to very occasionally provide extra special benefits. 99% of what you do at machines will have nothing to do with them--they're just a rare treat.

[Kyzrati]

A closer look at the most important type of hackable machine: Terminals.

[Kyzrati]

Two more machines: Scanalyzers and Fabricators.

[FireCrazy]

PTW

[Kyzrati]

Last two interactive machines for now: Repair Stations and Recycling Units.

[Kyzrati]

So I've just finished the interface framework for controlling any allies you may have, but I'm still tweaking the exact list of possible commands before implementing the AI behavior. (Right now you can give out all the commands you want, but your friends will just ignore you )

The list is mostly your standard fare: Stay, Go to, Roam, and Follow. See a quick shot of one part of the UI here. There's also Guard (essentially follow another unit and shoot whoever's attacking them) and Aid (essentially follow another unit and shoot whoever they're shooting at, though it could have other meanings later for other unit types). Then there are very unit-specific orders which generally apply to only one specific class of robot, the ones at the bottom like Drop, Pickup, Collect...

Cogmind isn't about micromanaging a bunch of followers so I'm trying to keep it simple, but it makes sense and would be more fun if you could take advantage of each unit's specialty. Thus I've tentatively added Build and Excavate to the list for the Engineer and Tunneler bots, respectively.

I'm not really sure about these two features, though, since the ability to terraform the environment (through methods other than explosives and destruction) may prove too powerful and unbalancing. You could create alternate pathways to pretty much anywhere on the map, or build walls and/or fill tunnels to prevent enemies from reaching you. There are ways to balance all the side effects and odd strategies, but the effects are so broad that I wonder if this would cause the game to focus a bit too much on a "terraforming metagame" (that and require a lot of extra coding and planning for the AI).

My current plan is to implement these features anyway and include them in the alpha release for testing. But in the meantime, does anyone have any input about this (or the other commands or other possibilities for that matter)? Imagine it in the context of the 7DRL version (if you've played it before), since the gameplay will be similar.

Off to bed for now, but I'll be back in 8 hrs