We have put together a new version for Cobalt! This update has a number of changes to how certain aspects of the game works, which will be interesting to hear what you think about! We would also love to hear if any color-blind people out there find the color blind modes useful that we added in this version!

Full change-list after the jump!

Alterations:

• Jet shoes are now additive instead of reaching speed. Jet shoes can be used while rolling in the air. While using jet shoes while rolling, you will slow down your roll a lot making you vulnerable, but it also gives you very interesting control mechanics.
• Throwing has been reworked. Charge time is now variable depending on how long you press which makes it snappier, throwing will try to push the throw towards your actor trajectory, giving more power over throw direction, as well as throwing in itself is more physical making up/down/backwards and strange middle of roll throws possible.
• reworked scope to be a bit more useful, as well as giving a little better bullet time bonus.
• auto aim now doesn’t snap back and forth frantically. If you have auto aimed against a target, and it goes behind a wall, you will keep aiming towards the last visible position.
• Rolling now slows down reloading by a significant amount..
• Simply moving against a conveyor belt will now move you, even if you are not grabbing it like a wall grab.
• Added more upgrades to slugger revolver, slugger cobra, slugger pipe and slugger breacher.
• Slugger revolver now starts as it should with no extended barrel, so there are now 2 levels. Tweaked it so that starting point is lower than normal, and ending point with max is higher than before.
• Tweaked all upgrade prices so that more expensive guns have more expensive upgrades. This is because I want it to be less obvious to get them, so that alternative spending possibilities are considered, and also follow better with the economy that you have when being able to afford expensive guns.
• increased price of matter army issue from 250 to 275.
• switched price of spike bow and price for spike bow repeater
• Sliding backwards up walls is now possible.
• Made air rolling backwards as easy as rolling backwards.
• Changed weapons on smooth jazz.
• The Plus can now be moved with explosions and applied force.
• Bomb is now called Thermal Bomb and has had its effect reworked. It is now not instant kill, instead it has damage over time. This makes is less good against tough foes like hamsters and predators. It will also not instantly kill you with shield but will wear your shield down faster than normally. Cost is 50 Volts.
• Stick Grenade and Grenade now cost 15 instead of 16.
• Improved the handling of the boomerang, also made it harder to hit with bullets.
• Tweaked waves in survival house, as well as added 3 new tiers.
• Added color blind modes to compensate for Protanopia, Deuteranopia and Tritanopia.
• Reworked bird movement to be more fluent.
• Added bird wing and breathing sounds and animations for when out of energy
• Activated tile physics can now hurt actors!
• Elevators can now crush enemies if squished by them.
• Increased reload times for bird and shroom as well as lesser recoil recovery speed.
• Altered layout and weapons and ai paths on cannon arena.
• Missles have slightly more bullet time associated with it.
• new map by frall called voodoo!
• Safest Gate has been extended
• Klonk now deals a small amount of heat damage

Bug-fixes:

• Blowing up by a bomb no longer screws up the next life.
• Fixed crash with trying to join a controller with a removed preset
• Plasma assault upgrade names
• Fixed stage selection loading everything too early.
• Shop windows could be outside of level
• laser pointer getting smoke as laser pointer.
• fixed enemies being included in the aim over mechanic cause you to raise the gun above enemies instead of pointed against them.
• Bounced and deflected projectiles now correctly generate bullet time
• Fixed left gas bouncer in position on windy valley.
• Added repair broken weapon ai.
• Fixed hanging cords gathering speed invisibly, making them jump like crazy when activated. This would often make them render incorrectly too.
• Max upgrade level upgrades could be left in the upgrade bench.
• Did some optimizations for larger scale actor and ai code which in practice should mean smoother fps at later survival tiers.
• Fixed not being able to arrange bots into teams a second time without restarting the game.
• Sound at volume 0 now actually doesn’t play the samples. Also, made the sound volume curve exponential so that it has greater precision at low values.
• Strange rolling down wall and then not being able to slide up it again bug fixed.
• fixed buying weapon, buying upgrade, and then buying the same type of gun again.
• improved transition to main menu with transparent menu disabled.
• fixed upgrades not being buyable with many of the same gun. Still a bit iffy, but at least it works.
• added suicide distance ai to grenades.
• Bots should not drop plug for the purpose of throwing it against projectiles now.
• Hud elements are now adapted to screen resolution which fixes things like shops being outside of the screen.
• reload animations to shroom and bird.
• shroom not sticking to ground after punch anymore as well as wall climbing more reliable.
• the switches for the doors on the survival maps are now only usable by players.
• fixed mouse being visible when it shouldn’t

Today me, thewreck and Fredrik “@Frall_”  Henriksson (who will be helping out developing the game) had a planning meeting for the development of the main campaign and I can tell you things are looking good! Next week we’ll bring along Jacob “@jjervey“ Jervey and Frall to a cottage in the middle of Sweden for a week of intensive development, so stay tuned for updates!

Love to be back in the saddle and I can’t wait to start processing all the feedback and molding it into what will probably be mine and Oxeyes biggest endeavour so far.

/Kinten

Head over to http://www.PlayCobalt.com to download the new installer.

For a full change-log, click read more.

• Edit control presets in settings menu.
• Switching team resets spawn point
• Bots can now be manually moved around if autoBalanceBots is off.
• “Bunny-jumping” to the left works as well as right
• Pressing esc/start while in shop no longer hangs input.
• Shop is no longer cut off out of camera when having moved around some.
• Bots no longer get stuck when trying to punch each other in really close combat. Should also fix similar problems with grenades and similar.
• Fixed offline indicator in corner not being accurate.
• Blaster splash heat effect goes through shield
• Shield belt is now slightly visible when activated, and a lot more obvious when it is powering down.
• Shield belt now works while animating activation.
• Grenade gun has 14% longer reload time.
• Blaster Ballet and Secret Hideout should now have better pathing.
• Added some tutorial rooms and modified some.
• Stores now restock even when items have been bought up completely.
• All VS maps now have all 4 teams enabled.
• Direct hits with Flashbang will now destroy a shield belt charge.
• Sound and music will mute when window not in focus
• Red robot (ninja) has a longer attack animation
• Phaser gun has slightly less bullet time associated with it.
• Variable throwing power with throwables works now. Tap quickly to throw weak.
• Shield belt does not have warning sound if it has never been charged.
• Bullet time is tuned to adapt more fluently to more players, also bullet time secondary range effect is now dependant on the source range, which makes for much more fluent bullet time in general.
• Added bullet time and auto aim options enable/disable in settings.
• Increased objective limit caps
• safes and revive stations no longer destroy input.
• changing settings with held down button is now a lot faster.
• Improved rolling behaviour against walls, (hold against wall and roll to fall down smoothly)
• Cobalt used to loose air control in some odd situations. Hopefully some fixed.
• Grenades and pickups now explode in lava.
• Added slight gradient to flashbang B&W effect
• Fist has slighly shorter charge up time and slightly longer range.
• A successful maxiumm charged fist hit will now give a bonus to the speed of the next fist charge up.
• Fixed converting of valuables getting stuck if leaving and returning to converter while ending.
• Predator jumping Ai improved.
• Guards no longer sometimes get stuck in a direction holding a throwable ready.
• Bindable reload action.
• Gyrojet gun tweaked balance wise, now slightly less forceful and slighly more expensive.
• Added player health option to survival. Anything except normal will force practice mode.
• In survival, if a player leaves, no more players can join mid-game. The max number of players having been present in a survival game are displayed below the score if above 1.
• Slugger Cobra has slightly more recoil and spread over long firing duration
• upgrade bench crash bug when re-entering upgrade bench while upgrading fixed.
• Some debug print messages did not render properly
• Can buy ammo and shower repeatedly by holding.
• Nano shower effect more clear, also hud disappears when using.
• Metalface sparks randomly when damaged
• Fixed jumping straight up on slopes being bugged.
• Fixed Ai bug where Ai’s would actually run towards dangers instead of from them.
• Picking up multiple ammo boxes before pickup animation finishes will add the numbers together to show total pickup.
• Bots could not pickup plug because they were holding throwables charged
• Rocks have a different damage curve, exponentially less with low speeds..
• Birds have a slower throw animation, which should trigger an earlier bullet time reaction.
• Added shield belt upgrades to be purchasable in the upgrade bench.
• Salvaged items can no longer be reloaded. Was a bug.
• Gas plants now deflect railgun slugs too. Also, bounced bullets can hit the shooter.
• Debug keys are now disabled unless you set “enableDebugKeys” to “true” in debug.cfg
• Increased slugger revolver fire rate a tiny bit, but slowed down reload speed a tiny bit.
• Slugger bullets now modify damage slightly by speed. In practice, this means pipe, and upgraded revolver will do slighly more damage, while breacher will do slightly less.
• Slugger Breacher has increased rate of fire.
• Added strong recoil to railgun, but also 33% longer reload and less bullet time effect.
• Modified Survival House difficulty curve.
• In Survival House, Ninjas no longer use the shield belt, have less guns in general, but now instead have the force device, which is an area of effect attack but also pushes grenades and projectiles away.
• Capital letters in profile name editing if you tap up
• Esc/start now pauses the game for everyone.
• Windy Valley now has infinite ammo as it is supposed to be.
• Fixed some input freeze bugs when going in and out of menues.
• Maybee fixed sound looping in menues error,, please report if it happens.
• The most a map can zoom out is now a Camera Mode configurable number.
• Added option in settings for following bots with the camera.
• Added deathmatch map Tomb.
• Fixed a bug with the auto-updater that make it impossible to download big files.
• Launcher isn’t frozen while it tries to log in
• Launcher now tries to set a valid screen resolution if 1280×800 isn’t supported
• Play offline, if valid, is available without logging in
• Fixed the change log being double (repeated twice)

Some of you have had problems with your Mojang accounts, but we don’t have access to the account or billing systems so we are unfortunately not able to help you. If you have a problem with your Mojang account, gift codes or billing, please use Mojang’s support system here: http://help.mojang.com, or send them an email here: http://help.mojang.com/customer/portal/emails/new

However, if you have a problem with Cobalt itself, such as installing, starting the game or have another game-related question, feel free to contact us on the Cobalt GetSatisfaction page, or get help from the community at the Cobalt forums!

Cheers!

We’re taking the whole develop together with the community thing very seriously, that’s why we’ve been keeping ourselves busy with reading the forums, the get satisfaction page, twitter, mails, the IRC channel, the Reddit page and the Facebook page. Even though we might not comment on everything we manage to read about 99%. As the community grows (which it hopefully will) it will become increasingly harder for us to keep up. To remedy this we’ve decided to have getsatisfaction.com/cobalt as our main channel of communication. If you’re having issues with the game or want to share an idea, post it there!

Now to some fun stuff!

We’ve been receiving some pretty neat suggestions and ideas, some of which have already been implemented in the game.

I’ve resolved to every now and then write a post reviewing some of the more popular/interesting ideas. Below you’ll find the first list.

• Power/Energy currency should be called Volts: This started as a misunderstanding – but we like it! Volts it is!
• Nerfing of shield and blaster: Yes, this should be tested. Thewreck?
• Playing offline before failing to connect: There is room for serious improvement here, and we have a plan.
• Autoaim being optional? What do you think? Personally I think it sounds like a great idea.
• Rail gun too powerfull? It seems like the current poll on the forum suggests it’s ok as it is. We’ve discussed changing it a bit though for the next update. We’ll just have to wait and see if you can tell the difference. J
• More melee weapons! Yes! I’m a big fan of this. Needs more suggestions!
• Video/screenshot forum? I’ve talked to the good citricsquid about this. We’ll see what happens!
• Pause button! Has been added to the next update, sir.
• I’ve seen quite a lot of posts on character customization. There are plans on adding several levels of upgrades to the main character. This will allow for some different styles of characters depending on your preferred playing style (sneaky ninja, obnoxious bomber, etc). When it comes to visual customization we’re hoping to someday be able to support creating your own characters in a character editor.

I’ve seen a couple of pretty grandiose  suggestions as well, but they sort of deserve their own separate posts. I’d love to see more posts on your take on the games lore. I know we havn’t given that much away yet, but it would still be fun to see your ideas and thoughts! There are some hints to be found here and there

Now for some common issues:

• “The game is too difficult!” Yes. Yes it is. And no! The problem is that the learning curve is way too steep at the moment. This will be remedied with time and the addition of a campaign and of new levels.
• “I’ve got weird text showing up, some sort of development console with different options.” *GASP*! You’ve found the secret console! Try deleting debug.cfg in the cobalt folder. And don’t tell anyone how you managed to find it in the first place, or we will have to find you. You wouldn’t want that.

Last but not least I would like to add that I’ve seen some pretty amazing looking custom maps on the forum. You cheeky bastards managed to find the editor quite quickly

I will try to be as active as I can on the map/mods forums but I won’t be showing off your maps on the blog quite yet since that would only cause awesome confusion since the editor is not supported yet. Officially.

Also, Mr Alex Herrman reports that “cobalt runs perfectly under wine, it does need a more powerful system to run at a higher framerate.” Thank you for sharing that, good sir!

Kinten out.

Go to:

www.playcobalt.com

for more info!

Yay!

More after the jump!

Super sweet Cobalt, imagined by Jacob Andersson.

Keep’em coming!

We announced earlier today that Cobalt alpha preorders were right around the corner and from what we’ve seen, people are EXTREMELY excited, and because of that – so are we! However, some of you may have been slightly disappointed after reading that networking wasn’t in the team’s vision for the game right now.

It’s true; the networking functionality is very much still in the ‘figuring out’ stage, but I personally think it would be a crime to not implement it. That’s why I’ll be working on a proof of concept so you can play with your friends, whether they’re next to you or across the globe. Because this is a proof of concept, it may not be included in the game.

Le gaspe! How will it work?

As much as I want to be extremely technical right now, networking is still very much in development. You can’t even play together for that matter, just chat. So please know that anything in this post may change.

My plan is to have both a listen server (you would play and host the server at the same time from the same game) and a dedicated server (console based). The dedicated server will likely be released after the listen server. You will also be able to have more than one person on a single computer using their own controllers, much like some games on the XBox. Additionally, I’m hoping to utilize a technique known as ‘NAT punchthrough’ which will allow you to host a server even though you’re behind a firewall, without requiring any port forwarding or otherwise. This is what Portal 2 utilizes for its co-op.

Essentially, I’m going to be giving you the ability to join two or more games together so it’s almost as though those additional controllers are right next to you. You’ll be able to instantly connect to any other game, no matter what point the host is at. Getting owned by your friends in a 2v1 Capture the Plug and you want to call in some internet backup? Just press the host button and have your friend join up.

What does it take to implement networking?

An extreme understanding of most of the game’s engine and the game itself, both from a player perspective and a programmer’s perspective. It’s quite difficult to delve into a game that is so far into its development and write a networking system from scratch without first spending a lot of time figuring out how every single thing interacts. You need to know what’s important to keep track of; it’s not important if one game has a light that’s 80% bright and the other game has one that’s 20% bright.

Cobalt is a huge game, both in content and code, so I’m still learning as I work. Luckily, the game itself features hotseat multiplayer which makes adding networking (relatively) a piece of cake. The game essentially already acts as a server, letting a player join and leave at any time. For the most part, it’s simply a matter of keeping things in sync between the clients that are connected. Such things include stage changes, new players joining the game, or an AI’s velocity and position. For the dedicated server, I just have to disable input and graphics (and probably some other changes here and there).

When are we going to see networking in Cobalt?

Definitely not soon (if ever, we’re not promising a single thing). I’ll keep everyone updated occasionally on the progress so you don’t lose hope, but as I said above, I have to get to know the game a lot better than I do right now before any real development happens.

If you have any questions, you can tweet me @jjervey or talk to me on our IRC channel at irc.esper.net #cobalt. Also know that this isn’t a milestone for alpha/beta/gold, it’s simply something I’ll be working on and it may or may not be part of the game once it’s done or some rudimentary form of ‘done’ that is at least fun to play. Please don’t bug any of the others about the networking as it’s 100% my job and they will just tell you to contact me (awww yeah, put on the pressure!)

(Article was edited slightly to clarify on the fact that this is a proof of concept and not a planned, promised part of the game)

We at oxeye are currently hard at work with bringing the Cobalt pre-order to you ASAP. In preparations for this we would like to share our visions of what Cobalt is and how the development of the game will play out over the coming months.

Hit “Read More” to read more

What are the plans for Cobalt?

Our vision for Cobalt is to expand on the in-game editor to the point where the player can create everything from single maps to whole campaigns from scratch, including adding their own units and characters and finally being able to share their creations with the community from within the game.
Meanwhile, the development team will continue adding their own maps and game modes to the game as well as continue work on the main campaign.

What will I get when pre-ordering Cobalt?

When pre-ordering the game you will get access to the current build of the game as well as all future updates up until and including the full release of the game. This is limited to the PC-version of the game (Mac, Windows, Linux). Pre-orders will of course be offered at a discount price.
By pre-ordering you support the continued development of the game. Think of it as part pre-order, part funding support.

Current status of the game – Alpha

The first alpha release includes two hot-seat versus game modes (capture the plug and death match) and a co-op game mode (survival). The number of players in hot seat mode is theoretically limited by the number of USB-controllers you manage to forcefully plug in to your poor computer. That and the hardware limitations of your computer. Theoretically.
Our development philosophy is to keep it simple and manageable by being a relatively small team. That is why the alpha will be limited to the features we know are reasonably stable. This will help to keep development focused which in turn will help us update the game more often.
Please note that the current alpha is only available for Windows.

What are the major milestones for the game’s development?

Alpha
Hot seat multiplayer
Continued work on singleplayer/co-op main campaign
Introducing the level editor
Windows only

Beta
Fully functional level editor
Continued work on singleplayer/co-op main campaign
Introducing in-game level sharing
Introducing more editors
Windows, Mac OS X and Linux

Gold – Feature complete game includes:
All editors fully functional
In-game level sharing
Completed main campaign
Hot seat multiplayer

What About Networking?
Since we know people will ask about this, yes, we would like networking too! And yes, we are actually looking at networking, but as it stands now, we are not including networking in our vision for the game because as it is now, networking remains uncertain.

Who develops Cobalt?

Cobalt is being developed by Oxeye Game Studio, which in reality means it’s being developed by three friends who all love making games: Daniel “thewreck” Brynolf, Jens “jeb” Bergensten and Pontus “kinten” Hammarberg. Thewreck is the main developer of Cobalt. He has pretty much single-handedly created the game with occasional help from the rest of the Oxeye crew.
Oxeye have also aquired help from talented musician Mattias “Anosou” Häggström-Gerdt, artist and game designer Gabriel Verdon and programmer Jacob William Jervey.

Since the summer of 2011 Oxeye Game Studio has teamed up with Mojang to help bring Cobalt to release.

Love,
Oxeye

The absolutely most frequently asked question right now is “When will Cobalt be available???”

The answer is that we are working on getting the auto-updater / launcher ready for the game, and update the Mojang back-end to contain information about which games you own (in addition to Minecraft). Our current, reasonable estimate is that this will be done “before the holidays”

The second most asked question is “How much will Cobalt cost?”

We will probably decide this the same day as the pre-order is available, so we don’t know yet. However, the aim is that when the game is “feature-complete” it will cost about €20, so the pre-order will cost much less than that.

// jeb_