Cogmind Beta 15 "0bPrime" Release! Also: Achievements?

Public release of Beta 15 is imminent. Ideally it would've happened earlier this week but I was trying to get healthy again before taking the leap, and was finally on the road to achieving that personal goal but apparently that's suddenly headed in the wrong direction again... So unfortunately still no streaming, but release can wait no longer! It's time to forge 0bPrime!

Beta 15 will be out early next week, and the final version is already done and ready for you to try out if you like. It's more or less the same as X4, saves are compatible coming from that version, and will continue to be compatible going into the public release.

For now you can try it via Steam on the beta_15_rc branch (code "ForgingProtos"), or for those of you with the DRM-free version, use the X4 link you received before, which now instead downloads the full Beta 15 (same password). Anyone on the _rc branch come public release will eventually be moved over to the default branch when the same version is available there.

The only differences from X4 are as follows:

• NEW: Known nearby IFF Parser signals shown at map view edge while view shifted or zoomed

• MOD: IFF Parser scans occur once every other turn

• MOD: SF core integrity increased

• MOD: Options menu Keyboard Mode value now stored in user/system.cfg rather than options.cfg, to prevent transfer across systems by Steam Cloud

• MOD: deferredAudioLoading setting moved from advanced.cfg to system.cfg, to prevent transfer across systems by Steam Cloud

• FIX: IFF Parser could show certain spoiler NPCs with wrong affiliation

Within the install you'll also find the complete changelog, now organized for final release, at which time there will also be the usual lengthy release notes to get everyone acquainted with our new features.

There could theoretically still be more stealth updates before public release, if new discoveries are made over the weekend for example, though saves should remain compatible. In general I'll prefer to avoid making any more changes unless it's something urgent. We can always wait for post-release patches.

Achievements > 256

There's a separate topic I wanted to use this opportunity to address: Achievements. As you probably know Cogmind has a lot of achievements, but also these were added ages ago (back in 2018!) based on the content that existed at the time. Thus we now have nearly seven years of additional content with no related achievements :P

My plan since then was always to wait until 1.0, content complete, end of development, to add the remaining achievements. Of course, I also had no way of knowing that such a point would actually end up being many years down the road! While waiting is more efficient and can lead to better quality overall, it also means that in the meantime we have all this stuff without related achievements... so I'd already been thinking of moving up the next batch of achievement work to before the Merchants update. This already implies expanding achievements at least three times (since there'd need to be more after that update as well), so my new thought on this is that maybe new achievements should come even prior to that, like before or alongside Unchained updates. Basically now/next.

There will be quite a few, in all the common categories described in my previous writings on achievements, and the details will naturally be up for discussion, but right now I just wanted to ask what everyone thinks of that direction. Let's get the achievements in there sooner rather than later?