I want to thank everyone who showed interest in Cobalt during Minecon 2012! It was a fantastic weekend for us and I really enjoyed helping people around the Cobalt areas. We held our first official 1v1 DM tournament, in which community member Acontin won first place followed by Ivar from Sweden.
The version used at Minecon was v116 ALPHA, and is not yet available for download. Among other things, it featured a new game mode called Challenge. In Challenge, you focus on doing things as fast as possible, like getting from point A to B. Today we created more maps for the mode. Here is a sneak preview:
We have also added local high score lists with epic voice acting feedback by Kinten to all relevant game modes:
Huge thanks to all the volunteers during Minecon that made it all possible!
Oxeye just attended No More Sweden and made two small games! No more sweden usually offers words to base your game around and we got Evolution, Simulation and One Button Game. You can see screenshots of Cells and EvoBeats and what we are up to now in the gallery down below!
As some of you may know, many in Mojang and the whole lot of them Oxeye went to GDC/IGF this year. For me (thewreck) it was mostly to visit enchanting San Francisco and meet (hug) other developers, while for others – like notch who had speaking obligations – things were a bit less casual. Even while engorging myself in all the casual fun I managed to fit a bunch of work on Cobalt, alas I managed to catch the flu and was knocked out for the better part of the weekend following gdc.
Oh btw… We’ll soon announce the next round of secret gifts. Since the wiki went down we have had to change our plans slightly, but we have something new cooking!
Two weeks ago a box full of stuff dropped into our mailbox at the office. (I don’t go to the office very often these days, so that’s why I’m not posting about it until now.) The package was from Daniel Wolf, who wanted to pay for a bet that he lost over two years ago. To thank him for his effort, I decided to record this clip:
In two weeks, July 16-19, there will be a indie game developer gathering called No More Sweden in Malmö. This is the second year of the event, and this time around it’s more than twice the size with 34 people signed up! The main purpose of the event is to meet interesting people and have a fun time, but there will also be some game development competitions.
I will post more about this after the event, with pictures and maybe video clips, but until then you can find more information at the NMS site: http://www.nomoresweden.com
Yesterday and today the Nordic Game 2008 is running here in Malmö (Sweden), which means the “number of game developers per capita” has sky-rocketed for a moment. We took this opportunity to meet up with some of the indie celebrities, namely Petri Purho, maker of IGF 2008 winner Crayon Physics Deluxe and Crayon Physics, Erik Svedäng, maker of the very much talked about Blueberry Garden, and Martin didn’t-catch-his-last-name who runs www.grapefrukt.com and a lot of cool stuff in his blog.
During last year we had an office in a barracks owned by the university. This was a great opportunity for us to try working together in a shared environment. Unfortunately this offer was only available for up to one year, so we had to move out sooner or later (we managed to get an extra two months, muhaha). Since we didn’t want to go back to working from our own appartments, we looked for a new office, and found one not far from where we had been.
Two weeks ago we moved our stuff to the new place and I took pictures. Hit the jump to get it all!
All of us have different ways of maintaining the glamourous life of independent game development, such as part-time jobs or standing at the corner friday nights. thewreck’s method is to study “Interaction Design” in Malmö. Every now and then, they make installments that are intended to make people interact with other people, as well as with the installments themselves.
The most recent mischief they’ve made is a “LED door sign,” which could be changed by various switches, placed on the toilet doors at a night club in Malmö. They recorded the event with a camera, and it’s quite fun to see people reactions when the “lady’s room” and “men’s room” signs switch places.
You can read more about the project on this link, or follow the jump to see one of the clips. Noteable highlight: the guy in the beginning (testing the signs) is thewreck!
Thanks everyone for a great Minecon 2012!
All of us have different ways of maintaining the glamourous life of independent game development, such as part-time jobs or standing at the corner friday nights. thewreck’s method is to study “Interaction Design” in Malmö. Every now and then, they make installments that are intended to make people interact with other people, as well as with the installments themselves.
