Achievements Brewing, World Map Stewing

As you probably know, Beta 15 went out, and it was good! We've only had one patch and no need for more, though on my end I've already addressed several issues to be rolled into Beta 16, where we'll start to see... the Unchained?! More on them later since work in that area is still a ways off.

Instead as previous suggested I'm now indeed focused on new achievements, a decent-sized undertaking on its own which I'd been holding off for years for a better opportunity, but no longer!

The first thing I had to do was rework the achievements architecture to make it easier to expand xD

It was hard to imagine way back in 2018 that we'd need a bunch more achievements in the future, and I didn't build it in the most expandable way, figuring new additions could be tacked on in one extra batch... or something...

Anyway, it's not ideal given how much will be added, including insertions here and there, so with an eye towards removing excessive manual labor associated with any insertions needed to keep things organized, I had Cogmind reorganize the data into a different format, especially the icons which were all in a single REXPaint file.

The original layout was even primarily horizontal, which is not as nice to work with in REXPaint if you're revisiting a large image quite a lot (again this wasn't an issue seven years ago, but it's going to be one now). The new system uses a multi-file row-based layout which combined with a mostly-automated coordinate system makes it quite easy to apply any adjustments or insertions in just the right place. Below you can see a before and after sample:

Icons are used directly within Cogmind in their ASCII format, of course, or can be batch output to separate PNG files for uploading to Steam's back end.

That was the code part done, but there was plenty more prep to do before the creation of actual achievements could even begin.

It's been a long time since 2018, after all, so putting together the best complete list of relevant achievements would require lots and lots of referencing and cross-referencing.

There is a lot to cover, though (fortunately? :P) there will not quite as many new achievements as I first imagined, since they don't cover every little thing. For the first achievements I put together an article about their categories and intent behind their design, a good reference point going into work on the new batch.

Still, "not as many as I thought" does not mean "not a lot." I was just worried it'd be many hundreds, but no, looking at the initial notes it's maybe about 250? Not really sure since that's just based on a calculation derived from the line count in my notes, but okay, now that I calculate it out that's apparently still quite a lot of work haha

The current state of things is a categorized list of specific features and content to target with achievements, that list being compiled by systematically parsing the entirety of Cogmind's records going back to 2018, approaching the topic from different angles including

• maps

• encounters

• history log

• plot points

• robots

• items

• mechanics

• scoresheet entries

• changelogs

I also referenced the main achievements forum thread, which has seen intermittent suggestions over the years since the first batch.

Going over all this and having to read a good bit of it in detail really reinforces just how far Cogmind has come--it's kinda insane.

So by "categorized list" I mean the intended achievements are already split up into the usual six categories, not the source categories above, though the precise details of each have yet to be determined, as do most of their names. Plus of course they'll need icons! (Saving all the fun parts for last? Heh, no that's just the most efficient order for maximizing quality.)

Oh yeah, then there's the actual adding them in code and testing to make sure they all work xD

I guess manually uploading and defining hundreds of achievements on Steam, one by one, is one of the less fun parts, and that has to come last. If only we could be satisfied with Cogmind's own superior achievements system!

I'll probably share an updated achievements list with details when that's further along, and the good thing is that with the new architecture it will be very easy to add new ones even beyond this, so we can have more timely additions instead of waiting forever without persistent recognition of various milestones. In Beta 16 about 15 achievements will be removed as part of the update (mainly all the challenge mode win achievements), but there won't be too many other modifications to the existing set.

Updated World Map

Having come to the end of the UFD expansion, I went back to the old world map sample to include the several new maps that have been added since its last update. You can see that below, and it does include some mid-level spoilers.

For the full spoilers version with even more maps, I've attached that as a separate file (the regular version above is attached as well--see the file names).

In other news, stat analysis for Beta 14 has also since been released on the forums here.