On Content Density

As of the latest prerelease Beta 15 now includes a whopping 97 new items since Beta 14, even more than the already huge 87 added with that version. Funny enough it's possible there's still a need for a few more coming up soon, though I don't anticipate breaking 100. But in doing all this work on primarily the Protoforge, which has now become one of Cogmind's more "content-dense" maps (especially among those controlled by the complex), I once again got to thinking about content density in general. While as a player it's easy to gain a general sense of where more of the content is located or otherwise stems from, I thought it would be interesting to take a more data-oriented look using real numbers, mainly for fun but also to see if anything stands out.

In principle one usually wants to reach at least a minimum threshold of content in a given area, after all that's its reason for existing in the first place. This is why I've always been interested in ensuring the so-called "core content" is consistent and solid from a balance and gameplay options perspective, whereas branch content can be more variable and possibly offer options that range from good to awesome if one can take advantage of them given their own current situation. (I wrote about this concept many years ago when covering the world layout fundamentals.) And with Cogmind's core content complete, combined with a full set of branches already available, clearly newer branches can do even crazier stuff like what's been happening with Scraptown and Protoforge.

That's the backdrop for graphs like the following, which gives a visual representation vaguely comparing the "aggregate content" of various branch maps.

Methodology

So just where does that data come from... Well first of all let's get some basics out of the way:

• I'm ignoring main maps for the purposes of this analysis, since although they have a lot of content (especially items and robots), it's mostly core content, and much of the same content is also found in many other branch maps, so they essentially cancel each other out and aren't too relevant anyway.

• Lower/Upper/Proximity caves are all merged into a single "CAV" category, since they actually share much of the same content, just in different ratios. This is actually how they're handled internally in some cases as well--as a single category.

As for the data itself, I associated each piece of unique content with a given map when the content is either solely accessed via that map, or at least primarily associated with it even if also indirectly available via other maps. Any content associated more broadly with multiple maps was not considered.

The types of content included in the data:

• Robots

• Items

• Lore (non-dialogue)

• Dialogue

• Encounters

Rather than directly including these on a 1:1 basis, I thought it'd be reasonable to add weights to each category, given that some are more involved (both more work to complete but also hold more meaning in terms of player interaction), but when I went to do that the impact was minimal--surprisingly it didn't really make much difference!

I guess this tells us that maps tend to have a similar inherent ratio of content types, which makes sense because for example when I add new robots I often add new items for those robots to use, and lore related to the extra content, and if there's more encounters there's probably also more dialogue, and items, and so on... It's all interconnected, after all :P

So no weighting. 1 robot is a piece of content, 1 item is also a piece of content :)

I also excluded some content categories:

• Events, like some hard-coded special situations or major plot points

• Props or environmental machinery and objects, as these aren't a big focus of Cogmind anyway, and most maps have a middling amount

• Alternative static map layouts, of which there aren't many anyway

As we have discovered, these exclusions may not really matter much in the end, due to the whole content ratio aspect.

Spoiler note: I'll be entirely avoiding any big spoilers in this article, the main spoilerish bit being the fact that map abbreviations are used in each graph, which may be revealing that they exist at all (without further details).

Data!

I'll share the data breakdowns below, though some of my general observations are based in the aggregate content, so may as well look at that more closely here. Another copy:

So yeah, Scraptown is clearly kinda insane. And it felt like that while working on it, too, but this approach was necessary and important for a number of reasons.

For one it is home to a faction that represents an entire other complex and the history of the world, so there's a lot of lore and different items and robots and it ideally needs to do a good job of making that other world feel as rich as possible, which I believe it ends up pulling off well. While worldbuilding doesn't necessarily require a lot of content to be evocative, the more you have there the easier it is to make what it represents feel even bigger than that.

In raw numbers Scraptown also represents about twice as much "content" as either Zion or Warlord, which makes sense due to skipping one or more depths to take that route, balancing it out in a vertical sense. This is especially relevant with regard to power progression and the acquisition of benefits to improve later outcomes.

It's also found early in the game, and while it may not be easy to discover at first, it could be revisited many times so we want to have somewhat different options each time to help keep it fresh. In Beta 15 there are yet more new ways to reach it, in particular leading new players there to at least discover its location and learn about its existence.

By comparison, the late-game Protoforge (FRG) has less total content but at the same time brings more than any other 0b10-controlled map, which is in line with how much work that's been so far :P. As you'll see later it's almost entirely robots and items with very little lore or dialogue, so has a different kind of focus.

Anyway, these maps together accurately reflect the scope of the nearly-complete UFD expansion, though after all this I gotta say I look forward to hopefully adding smaller bits of content to a greater range of areas in the future!

Breaking down the aggregate graph into its constituent parts also no doubt holds some interesting points, so here you go:

Scraptown dialogue and lore sure dominate this particular graph :P

That said, impactful and memorable locations do not absolutely have to include a ton of different content! Some areas there with only a few or small bars are relying mostly on the core content combined with a handful of special mechanics or unique aspects to make their place in the world, i.e. defining how they fit into the bigger picture as far as worldbuilding goes, or at a gameplay level in terms of player strategy. We don't actually want every area jam packed with content--peppering simpler areas throughout the world offers a bit of respite, lightening the mental load by offering more predictable stretches.

As for other specific standouts, we can look at those while examining the type-wise data below.

Outside the main floors, the majority of other entities (robots) are naturally coming from the several major factions. Warlord contributes the largest portion, but Zion has quite a few as well. Surprisingly the portion from expansive Scraptown as shown here is somewhat lower, but a number associated with them in name were attributed instead to the late-game since that's the area they were created for and you won't see them early in the game. Protoforge is thus in the distinct position of being the 0b10 map with the most unique bots--it's a pretty different place ;)

I pointed out earlier that our latest releases are getting a huge influx of items, so it's not surprising to see Scraptown and Protoforge topping this chart. The latter is now the single largest source of unique gear, in most cases by far. Each of the other factions contributes their own significant hauls as well, though in general branches are built to serve that purpose as reflected here, providing unique rewards for visiting them, where the majority of rewards in Cogmind are naturally items.

Scraptown again! So yeah, vast lore to read up on there, again suitable for its early location and likely good for many visits, though the majority is tangential to the main story elements so in that sense it's more of an optional background thing (not surprising considering the map is part of an "expansion"). On the contrary there are several other maps with concentrated important lore dumps found later on.

Random bits of dialogue containing story, tips, secrets, and more are almost entirely found in the three main derelict communities, again with a larger pool for Scraptown since they have even more topics to cover. I should mention there's also a lot of other dialogue which is not necessarily map-specific, or occurs during certain events, and none of that is reflected by the graph. This only covers specifically the lore recorded in Cogmind's persistent Lore Collection feature.

Cogmind "encounters" are pieces of content usually dynamically embedded into procedurally generated maps. This forms the backbone of many areas, though most of all Garrisons, a special case since you may visit so many of them across even a single run that they needed a greater selection of possibilities to keep that interesting. Although they're composed of many static map pieces, as of their 2.0 iteration they can now be embedded with normal-style encounters to make them more dynamic overall.

And one more graph! I thought it'd be interesting to show each map graphed purely with its piece of content that has the highest value, giving an idea of where its emphasis lies (seen here with the dialogue-based map values capped since they're kinda ridiculous):

Although not entirely accurate in all cases, turns out it is still a somewhat reasonable interpretation!

(Note: In case the earlier main composite graph isn't easy to see since it's kinda large with a lot of data, I've attached that one as well.)