Kinten’s regular/occasional review, Ep1.
December 20th, 2011, UncategorizedThe first weekend of Cobalt Bonanza is over and we’ve entered a new and important phase of development – finally we get to develop the game together with you! <3
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.
December 20th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
thx for the info
December 21st, 2011 at 12:04 am
Awsome game! And sweet blogpost!
About the autoaim idea, i think it works really really well with up/down to aim! I think that extending it to normal standing/running would ruin the gameplay allot (some folks have suggested this)
Although a off switch wouldn’t hurt i guess.
December 21st, 2011 at 3:23 am
What you have so far is amazingly addictive. Thanks for the awesome game!
December 21st, 2011 at 5:10 am
I have a problem! I can’t buy the game because I registered on mojang using the link on the sign-in for Cobalt. Every time I try to login on Mojang it asks for my Minecraft Account, but I can’t because my email is already listed! D: Wat do?
December 21st, 2011 at 5:23 am
Cool
Useful to know. Will get the alpha and try it out!
December 21st, 2011 at 11:09 am
Rolling1: I agree with you about not extending it. That would be a shame. But, since we’re going for pretty high configurability, maybe as an option?
Grimsby2162: Mojang is handling all the account stuff. For now, use the minecraft support: http://www.minecraft.net/support
If that doesn’t help you can always contact us and we’ll figure something out!
trieyedwolf, Lonewolf239: Thank you! and Hiyu: Cool! Let us now what you think.
//Kinten
December 21st, 2011 at 4:34 pm
When I got to preorder the game and login with my mojang account, It says, “Error! Oops, unknown username or password”, even though I am absolutely sure I have the right username and password! All I want to do is play the game!!!
December 21st, 2011 at 5:47 pm
Did you try logging in with your email?
December 21st, 2011 at 8:54 pm
No I hadn’t but it worked! Thank you so much!
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:17 am
The problem is that when i try to login to “account.mojang.com/login” it asks for my Minecraft account. After I type my stuff in it pops up…
“Error! The e-mail used for this Minecraft account is already used on a Mojang account. Merging is not yet supported.”
How would I login with my Mojang account rather than Minecraft? My reason for posting it here is Cobalt makes me drool with excitement, but I can’t buy it!
December 22nd, 2011 at 4:13 am
Amazing game! Can’t wait for more features!
Also, I think a restart button is a good idea.
December 22nd, 2011 at 6:22 am
I gotz dis! I now knoooow what I am doing! Hallelujah!
December 22nd, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Great game!
Here are my 2 ideas:
-nerf that 2nd hand weapon, it’s OP (I can’t remember it’s name and can’t launch the game atm)
-add some button to take screenshots in-game, because print screen isn’t working
December 22nd, 2011 at 5:45 pm
1- http://p.twimg.com/Ag9_I9PCIAAOAce.jpg:large push a button in the joypad in the launcher
2-Customization could be great in multiplayer
December 23rd, 2011 at 2:23 pm
I have an idea on a close combat weapon, how about you an use an enegry batton to hit enemies, you would still be able to throw it but you would also be able to hit with it and not lose it.
December 23rd, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Leaderboards please! !!!
December 24th, 2011 at 5:04 am
I was surprised you guys didn’t put so that I can use the mouse to aim and fire around.
December 25th, 2011 at 8:07 am
I think the difficulty curve is great. And I like how autoaim works at the moment! Just my thoughts
As I’ve seen mentioned (I think thewreck said this actually), being able to turn off autoaim would ruin strategies such as throwing a grenade at someone to distract their autoaim (as a decoy). I agree wholeheartedly!
December 25th, 2011 at 7:03 pm
I find the learning curve just great, but I think survival should start off easier. Also I have another suggestion: bot difficulty settings. I end up getting random bot difficulty and sometimes it’s just difficult enough, sometimes too easy, and sometimes way too hard. Autoaim is awesome, not too easy, and I can’t WAIT for online multiplayer!
Thanks for all the hard work Oxeye. I’m loving the game so far.
December 25th, 2011 at 7:18 pm
robo-katana