After a long string of Beta's we have a massive update ready to go!
Since the change log is so long, we had to divide it up in three posts, so please excuse the spam.
Features
You can now restart Story Chapters! This allows you to play it again if you so please. You will not lose any access to other story nodes by doing so.
New Tutorial! You can consider this much more of an introduction to story too.
Survival is now available Online.
Added setting to disable Text-Chat.
Disconnecting and re-joining an online game will now restore the player’s previous state, including stats, equipment and volts.
Controls
Made jet-shoes movement more useful and with a higher degree of control!
Made brain controls more racing friendly. Use "Roll" to enable the "Air-Brake". Use arrow keys on keyboard to fly around or analog stick and "Jump" on gamepad.
Moved default “Sneak” controls on keyboard to “Shift” in standard controls preset. Moved “Reload” one step over to “C”. Shift is a more natural key for movement modifier.
Jump-Kick force is now twice as snappy (force is applied over less frames) but to compensate about 7.5% weaker. In practice, this is a net-increase of control since jump-kicks counter-act gravity and the spread out force application during an air roll. So it will feel slightly stronger, but mostly snappier.
Slightly improved wall-jumping abilities in general. For example, in a tight shaft, jump up on a wall, and hold jump to criss-cross upwards.
Rolling off a wall is now stronger.
Simply jumping while sitting on a wall has slightly more push out from wall and up force.
Sliding down a wall and hopping off retains more speed.
Improved camera in speed challenges. Camera now tracks ahead towards the next checkpoint.
Improved jet bike movement. Stabilized some crazy up-draft speeds when switching direction. Removed the sneak strafe flying since it didn’t really help with anything.
”Jet Shoes” adjusted fuel curve to be more powerful at first, and less later.
”Jet Shoes” about 125% faster refuelling in air.
”Jet Shoes” have more fuel feedback with sounds and effects
”Jet Shoes” now glow to indicate the fuel level.
”Jet Shoes” have more fuel and charge up a fixed amount every time you land as well as over time charge.
Added “Jet Shoes” and “Sloth Grip” to story ship armory.
Slightly reduced volume of “Jet Shoes”.
”Predator” jump now more like “Sabretooth Hamster” jump.
”Predator” Aiming speed increased by 100%.
”Predator” AI improved to be more assertive.
”Predator” Max aim arc increased by 30%
Improved lower level beam gun “Predators” in survival, and added grenades to most “Predator” classes.
”Jet Bike” Improved combat AI.
”Homing Missile” improved physics and smoothness and homing logic.
”Homing Missile” added trail and updated flame FX.
”Brain” added more interesting death effects.
”Brain” reduced power of death explosion
”Brain” can now also use the “Reaction Enhancer” but only at an effective rate of 50%.
”Slugger Assault” Reduced angle recoil by 40%.
”Slugger Assault” Increased bullet speed by 15%.
"Slugger Assault" Increased base price to (300), was (250).
”Slugger” weapon in general, reduced crazy bullet flying after the bullet is no longer active.
”Team-Strike” map “Rain” adjusted middle bottom girder to have a small gap to the wall.
”Team-Strike” first round buy timer reduced to 45 s.
Bosses now destroy remaining summons when they die.
Made certain sections of the motherboard area less tight and a bit less punishing.
Added two more checkpoints in motherboard area.
(Beta) Improved “Brain” AI in respect to hover flying.
Changed co-op respawn logic. You can now always respawn your friend by walking over a checkpoint. These are always free. Furthermore, you will now only use respawn-cells when all players are dead.
Improved helper logic in co-op. Now pets will join whoever is left alive in story until their original owner can be respawned at a checkpoint.
Explosive force on tiles (boxes and such) increased by 5 times!
Equipped shield belts in the ship now come fully charged! No need to waste a battery each time.
Targets that lost their head are no longer considered auto aim targets.
Current combo level now visible to clarify confusion about how it works.
Added more checkpoints to The Trappers outdoor maps.
Made the first jump in “Trunkopolis Enclave” easier.
Added ammo pickup feedback that shows what kind of ammo and how much you received.
Change damage of melee attacks VS tiles. Punch and kick 50% more, melee weapons 300% more, digging weapons such as pick and shovel, 100% more.
Lowered frequency and reduced speed of lava balls on Deathmatch map “Secret Hideout”.
Lava balls have been reworked. They will bounce on the lava a couple of times until they die and explode. They are also targets now, and when shot will fly across the map, bouncing violently with explosions a couple of times until they explode. The hit damage has been reduced to (0.25) was (1), but they now have splash damage explosions up to (0.75).
Dynamite heat wave halved speed.
Dynamite halved amount of heat waves.
Dynamite reduced heat-wave bounciness to (0.1) was (0.15)
Thermal bomb now emits (5) instant heat in a radius too was (0).
Thermal bomb increased speed of heat wave by 50%
Thermal bomb increased heat of heat-wave to (10), was (1)
Thermal bomb increased heat-wave bounciness to (0.3) was (0.15)
Thermal bomb added explosive push against other grenades (like all other bombs)
”Weaving Spikebacks” can now swim.
Upgrade bench can now be used by more than 1 person at a time.
Survival shops have more organized columns guaranteeing a more predictable offer of items.
Survival shops now refill the shops as items are purchased.
Survival shops no longer adapt the stacks to the amount of players, since they are now refilled instead.
Survival shops reduced visual intensity of restocking
Survival shops sell-UI now shows helpful slot names.
Survival shops sell-UI now shows item icons of hovered item.
Rotated melee weapons in shop to make them fit better.
Added more ammo and shield belt shops to chapter 1.
Controllers without profiles now default to more interesting colors.
Player names for controllers without profiles now default to “P1”, “P2”, …
Player names can be slightly larger if they are very short, and some more spacing in hud.
”Sabrewings” now default to a different color than ai birds.
Improved dance charming and made friendly character charmable as well as enemies.
Charming a shop-keeper with dance will now issue a rebate for the goods on display.
Added a shadow behind charm and taming icon to show at what size success will occur.
When browsing market items, the responsible shopkeeper is now marked
Secrets now automatically reserve the pickups for the player.
Jetbikes are now considered vehicles which means they will always be allowed to fade to background if you want to pass by them.
Improved jetbike landing gear deployment accuracy
[Change-Log] v132 Bugs Fixed.
Bugs fixed:
Fixed moving through push-doors really fast.
Fixed “Homing Missile” sometimes getting insane speed when shot with a bullet.
Fixed “Homing Missile” not blowing up when colliding certain other objects.
Fixed “Gyrojet” incorrect glowing FX on clients
Fixed “Self-Destruct” spamming explosions on clients.
Fixed partially opening volt locks creating crazy decimals and not syncing correctly.
Fixed buy timer running out in “Team-Strike” not resulting in correct behavior.
Fixed bots balancing incorrectly in “Team-Strike” and other modes when players leave/join.
Fixed “Team-Strike” rounds draw counting correctly towards ending the match.
Fixed “Face” shooting missiles to the right.
Fixed first phase in “Face” waiting too long to expose red spark.
Fixed dangerous water in “Loading Bays” causing a possible progress blocker.
Fixed fish spawners in “Loading Bays” not spawning the fish they are supposed to.
Fixed "Flashbang" accidentally having too much visual glow
Reduced visual explosion glow of "Thermal bombs".
Fixed "Jet Usage" tap/hold preference now working correctly.
Fixed Left Shift and Right Shift working correctly. WASD+Mouse preset was using "Shift" for "Roll", but that button did now work correctly.
Fixed report tags being deleted when restarting story chapters.
Fixed Clients not being able to push boxes as easily as the host!
Fixed UTF-8 file paths not saving config files correctly! People with é and other such characters in their folder name should now have less issues!
Leaving a pet or vehicle in water now works correctly
Fixed Team-Strike map “Forest” not having any default music.
Fixed ammo pickups not prioritizing the selected weapon.
Fixed upgrade icons not showing up until you inspect them.
Fixed crash related to rail burster with upgrade wheel in story
Fixed “leftSafeZone” not working properly in classic survival
Fixed out of ammo recoil applying flip state wrong
Fixed ciphers not being saved as drops in story, making them disappear if you leave the map before picking it up.
Fixed beam gun not using ammo on client causing client to not be able to issue reload.
Improved “Sabrewing” ai for flying to head. Should be less jumping about trying to land.
Improved “Sabrewing” landing on head logic for network clients.
Only shots you shoot yourself are now counted towards accuracy, and it can no longer go above 100%.
Re-added onDestroy behaviour to decoration loot tiles. Some user maps broke when removing them. If you have not re-saved the map this should automatically restore the functionality.
Fixed bug in editor where tile’s center positions would not be recalculated when rotating and scaling.
Fixed memory leak in editor that caused the memory to grow rather severely every time a map was tested.
Adjusted the radioactive shots that the “Mutaflies” emit when they die to make them less likely to just disappear directly.
Fixed deselecting a profile working.
Fixed charming and taming icons sometimes not being visible with neutral characters.
Fixed wing sync for fly and wasp
Survival main score now says “Score” instead of “Players”...
Fixed color issues with helper characters in online.
Fixed taming not working as well for clients online.
Improved “Predator” disabled animation to clip less with legs.
Fixed riding hacked “Predators” and being thrown off when the hack wears off.
Fixed survival leaderboards sorting. Unfortunately all the old score in survival will need to be reset. This will be done when we push the default build.
Fixed achievement “Respectable in all Regards” not triggering if the last achievement you get is not inside story.
Fixed “Survival” special objectives not being visible on clients.
Fixed ammo stack sometimes becoming zero for clients.
Fixed "Shield Batteries" stack sometimes becoming zero for clients.
Fixed syncing of "Materializer".
Fixed syncing of "Hack Device".
Fixed hacked enemies aiming at themselves sometimes.
Last beta we tried out some rather crazy jet-movement things. They worked rather good for brain, and while they were quite interesting for jet-shoes, I think we took thing a bit to far. So we simplified things a little again, and removed the jet-use key. the jet-shoes are simple and responsive, while still maintaining their extreme smoothness that was introduced last build.
Secondly, don't you hate leaving a game of any kind, then rejoining and finding that your character is gone? We do too! So now it's fixed! We also fixed issues with bot balance in Team-Strike, as well as a bot being kicked from the game despite the joining player not being able to spawn.
Also, missiles are nicer.
Full change-log:
Features
Added setting to disable Text-Chat.
Disconnecting and re-joining an online game will now restore the player’s previous state, including stats, equipment and volts.
Controls
Removed “Jet-Use” key again. Brain controls now simply require you to be in air and hold a direction. Air-Brake has gained more functionality in that it works more like shutting down engines at low speeds, and a brake at high speeds, allowing tight turns and maneuvers in the air. Gamepad and keyboard now differ in that all arrow keys create thrust, while gamepad will require jump to be held.
”Jet-Shoes” have been adjusted to be more like the old jet shoes with less rotation, to cause less confusion when moving between jet use and regular movement. They feel better than old jet shoes, but less extreme than last beta. This chance also omits the need for a jet use key, so we are removing it. Simplifications are good.
Game-play:
”Jet Shoes” have even more fuel feedback with sounds and effects
”Jet Shoes” have more fuel and charge up a fixed amount every time you land as well as over time charge.
Added “Jet Shoes” and “Sloth Grip” to story ship armory.
Slightly reduced volume of “Jet Shoes”.
”Predator” jump now more like “Sabretooth Hamster” jump.
”Predator” Aiming speed increased by 100%.
”Predator” AI improved to be more assertive.
”Predator” Max aim arc increased by 30%
Improved lower level beam gun “Predators” in survival, and added grenades to most “Predator” classes.
”Homing Missile” improved physics and smoothness and homing logic.
”Homing Missile” added trail and updated flame FX.
”Brain” added more interesting death effects.
”Brain” reduced power of death explosion
”Brain” can now also use the “Reaction Enhancer” but only at an effective rate of 50%.
”Slugger Assault” Reduced angle recoil by 40%.
”Slugger Assault” Increased bullet speed by 15%.
”Slugger” weapon in general, reduced crazy bullet flying after the bullet is no longer active.
”Team-Strike” map “Rain” adjusted middle bottom girder to have a small gap to the wall.
”Team-Strike” first round buy timer reduced to 45 s.
Bosses now destroy remaining summons when they die.
Made certain sections of the motherboard area less tight and a bit less punishing.
Added two more checkpoints in motherboard area.
(Beta) Improved “Brain” AI in respect to hover flying.
Bugs:
Fixed moving through push-doors really fast.
Fixed “Homing Missile” sometimes getting insane speed when shot with a bullet.
Fixed “Homing Missile” not blowing up when colliding certain other objects.
Fixed “Gyrojet” incorrect glowing FX on clients
Fixed “Self-Destruct” spamming explosions on clients.
Fixed partially opening volt locks creating crazy decimals.
Fixed buy timer running out in “Team-Strike” not resulting in correct behavior.
Fixed bots balancing incorrectly in “Team-Strike” and other modes when players leave/join.
Fixed “Team-Strike” rounds draw counting correctly towards ending the match.
Fixed “Face” shooting missiles to the right.
Fixed first phase in “Face” waiting too long to expose red spark.
(Beta) Fixed issue climbing up wall would sometimes become very slow.
(Beta) Fixed crash issue with having 0 profiles.
Fixed dangerous water in “Loading Bays” causing a possible progress blocker.
Fixed fish spawners in “Loading Bays” not spawning the fish they are supposed to.
CWC1 Winners and CWC2 Starting!
Hey hoo!
It's time to announce the winners of Cobalt Workshop Challenge #1, and kicking off the next challenge!
Cobalt Workshop Challenge #1 Winners
Over 60 levels were added to the workshop and it was really tricky to select the ultimate winners. It was even so tricky that we decided to hand out two extra prizes as "memorable mentions"! Each one of these winners have been awarded a token for a Cobalt cape in Minecraft. They can give this away if they prefer to only play Cobalt forever and ever, of course =)
Honorable Mention - FatalThornz for great enthusiasm
First up is a special prize for FatalThornz. With 16 maps submitted to the workshop - each crazier-looking than the next - we could see great commitment and enthusiasm in creating Cobalt levels. We want to recognize these efforts, but this is definitely a one-time exception so don't try any workshop-spamming shenanigans for future CWCs!
Honorable Mention - CEO of the Corporation for "Cavern Shipwreck"
Second, we wanted to highlight this awesome map by CEO of the Corporation. It looks great and tells a story of its own. It may not have been selected as a winner for any of the categories, but it scored high in many aspects!
There were many memorable maps in CWC1, but ultimately the winner for "most memorable" is "Pravus" by Xeronsis! This map utilized timed triggers to create a cool dynamic in the map. Every two minutes the water raises and you start spawning at a higher floor. Each floor brings new weapons and new encounters. Congratz!
After playtesting a bunch of maps with both bots and players, we determined that "Clay" by Crona, who is that? is the ultimate best level winner! The map offered fluent gameplay with many strategic options without getting too complicated. Great level, thanks!
So let's get on with the second Cobalt Workshop Challenge!!!1111oneone :D
This time we will make it a little bit trickier, but not by a whole lot. The theme is called "Wonders of Speed" and the objective is to create a speed challenge that in some way relates to or is inspired by the old or new "Wonders of the World". If you are unsure what these are, here's the list:
Great Pyramid of Giza
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
Colossus of Rhodes
Lighthouse of Alexandria
Great Wall of China
Petra
Christ the Redeemer
Machu Picchu
Chichen Itza
Colosseum
Taj Mahal
It's up to you to determine how you create a map around this theme. Just make sure you add it to your level description!
Objective:
Create a level with the "Speed Challenge" game mode.
The level needs to have some kind of theme relating to the Wonders of the World
Share it to the Steam Workshop with the tag “CWC2”
You can contribute as many levels as you want
Categories:
Best challenge map - The most fun speed challenge with the best balanced par and Mountainhammer times
Best use of theme - The map that uses the theme in the coolest way
Best use of mechanics - The map that has the most clever use of triggers, sensors, ai, equipment, tiles or other surprising gameplay effects
We have updated the beta build again. A couple of bug fixes, but more importantly a big thing we are trying out:
Step 1. We feel, as some have noted, that Z,X,C,V is one button too many. This has, in our view, led to the "Sneak" action being completely unused on keyboard.
Therefore, we are moving the "Sneak" action in the standard preset on keyboard to "Shift".
And since there is now one key less, we are moving reload one step to "C".
Z:Roll X:Shoot C:Reload - Already feeling a lot more tidy.
The "Shift" key is a more natural key for movement modification, and it gives your pinky-finger some optional use. It also sets the stage for the next change:
Step 2. Flying with the new movement as the brain feels great on gamepad, but less so on keyboard because up arrow is your throttle by default, which inhibits the angles your brain can fly. This caused keyboard controls for the brain with the new movement to be very limited and no at all as free and lovely as with gamepad.
So, we are introducing a new action.
"Jet Usage".
On gamepads it defaults to the same key as "Jump", so very similar to before.
On keyboard, we are putting "Jet Usage" on the "Shift".
This means, to fly the brain, you jump up in the air, then
Hold "Jet Usage" to start flying. Direction is controlled with the arrows keys or analog stick.
Step 3. Jet shoes have always been OK. However, once you have equipped a pair of jet shoes, jump kicks were harder to execute and the movement you gained didn't actually give you more control.
So, we are taking the opportunity to improve and streamline all jet/hover/propeller movements into a cohesive movement with more control and more fun.
Jet shoes now work similar to the new brain movement. Jump up in the air, then hold "Jet Usage" to start flying!
Controls
Moved default “Sneak” controls on keyboard to “Shift” in standard controls preset. Moved “Reload” one step over to “C”. Shift is a more natural key for movement modifier, and it makes more sense given the next change.
Added separate button for “Jet”-use, like jet-shoes and brain propeller. This button in by default same as sneak on keyboard, so (“Shift” in standard, or “m2” in WASD+mouse) currently. On gamepad, this button is by the default same as “Jump”. Already customized presets will get the default “Jet”-use key/button.
Made jet-shoes movement more useful and with a higher degree of control! Hold (“Shift” in standard preset) while in the air to blast around with the jet shoes.
Game-play:
”Jet Shoes” now glow to indicate the fuel level.
Bugs:
Fixed "Flashbang" accidentally having too much visual glow
Reduced visual explosion glow of "Thermal bombs".
Fixed "Jet Usage" tap/hold preference now working correctly.
Fixed Left Shift and Right Shift working correctly. WASD+Mouse preset was using "Shift" for "Roll", but that button did now work correctly.
(Beta) Fixed shield belt not being added in deathmatch.
(Beta) Fixed a crash in upgrade bench
[Beta] Brain, bugs, movement, tutorial
Hello! The beta has been updated and there is a lot of stuff..
We have game play improvements, bug fixes and a new tutorial!
The next couple of days will be focused on Quality Assurance and making some videos and materials describing this past month's updates.
Here is the current Beta full list of changes (compared to default build):
EDIT: quick update of build to correct Crash related to Etac-Bosses.
Features
You can now restart Story Chapters! This allows you to play it again if you so please. You will not lose any access to other story nodes by doing so.
New Tutorial! You can consider this much more of an introduction to story too.
Game-play:
Jump-Kick force is now twice as snappy (force is applied over less frames) but to compensate about 7.5% weaker. In practice, this is a net-increase of control since jump-kicks counter-act gravity and the spread out force application during an air roll. So it will feel slightly stronger, but mostly snappier.
Slightly improved wall-jumping abilities in general. For example, in a tight shaft, jump up on a wall, and hold jump to criss-cross upwards.
Rolling off a wall is now stronger.
Simply jumping while sitting on a wall has slightly more push out from wall and up force.
Sliding down a wall and hopping off retains more speed.
Improved brain movement. Flying is way more intuitive and fun. Jump will throttle and the brain will face whatever direction you press on arrows or stick. Roll button is now an air-brake. (Brain movement on keyboard is currently a bit strange, will fix)
Improved camera in speed challenges. Camera now tracks ahead towards the next checkpoint.
Improved jet bike movement. Stabilized some crazy up-draft speeds when switching direction. Removed the sneak strafe flying since it didn’t really help with anything.
Changed co-op respawn logic. You can now always respawn your friend by walking over a checkpoint. These are always free. Furthermore, you will now only use respawn-cells when all players are dead.
Improved helper logic in co-op. Now pets will join whoever is left alive in story until their original owner can be respawned at a checkpoint.
Explosive force on tiles (boxes and such) increased by 5 times!
Equipped shield belts in the ship now come fully charged! No need to waste a battery each time.
Targets that lost their head are no longer considered auto aim targets.
Current combo level now visible to clarify confusion about how it works.
Added more checkpoints to The Trappers outdoor maps.
Made the first jump in “Trunkopolis Enclave” easier.
Added ammo pickup feedback that shows what kind of ammo and how much you received.
Lowered frequency and reduced speed of lava balls on Deathmatch map “Secret Hideout”.
Lava balls have been reworked. They will bounce on the lava a couple of times until they die and explode. They are also targets now, and when shot will fly across the map, bouncing violently with explosions a couple of times until they explode. The hit damage has been reduced to (0.25) was (1), but they now have splash damage explosions up to (0.75).
Dynamite heat wave halved speed.
Dynamite halved amount of heat waves.
Dynamite reduced heat-wave bounciness to (0.1) was (0.15)
Thermal bomb now emits (5) instant heat in a radius too was (0).
Thermal bomb increased speed of heat wave by 50%
Thermal bomb increased heat of heat-wave to (10), was (1)
Thermal bomb increased heat-wave bounciness to (0.3) was (0.15)
Thermal bomb added explosive push against other grenades (like all other bombs)
”Weaving Spikebacks” can now swim.
Upgrade bench can now be used by more than 1 person at a time.
Survival shops have more organized columns guaranteeing a more predictable offer of items.
Survival shops now refill the shops as items are purchased.
Survival shops no longer adapt the stacks to the amount of players, since they are now refilled instead.
Survival shops reduced visual intensity of restocking
Survival shops sell-UI now shows helpful slot names.
Survival shops sell-UI now shows item icons of hovered item.
Rotated melee weapons in shop to make them fit better.
Added more ammo and shield belt shops to chapter 1.
Controllers without profiles now default to more interesting colors.
Player names for controllers without profiles now default to “P1”, “P2”, …
Player names can be slightly larger if they are very short, and some more spacing in hud.
”Sabrewings” now default to a different color than ai birds.
Improved dance charming and made friendly character charm-able as well as enemies.
Charming a shop-keeper with dance will now issue a rebate for the goods on display.
Added a shadow behind charm and taming icon to show at what size success will occur.
When browsing market items, the responsible shopkeeper is now marked
Secrets now automatically reserve the pickups for the player.
Improved “Predator” disabled animation to clip less with legs.
"Jetbikes" are now considered vehicles which means they will always be allowed to fade to background if you want to pass by them.
Fixed report tags being deleted when restarting story chapters.
Fixed Clients not being able to push boxes as easily as the host!
Fixed UTF-8 file paths not saving config files correctly! People with é and other such characters in their folder name should now have less issues!
Leaving a pet or vehicle in water now works correctly
Fixed Team-Strike map “Forest” not having any default music.
Fixed ammo pickups not prioritizing the selected weapon.
Fixed upgrade icons not showing up until you inspect them.
Fixed crash related to rail burster with upgrade wheel in story
Fixed “leftSafeZone” not working properly in classic survival
Fixed out of ammo recoil applying flip state wrong
Fixed ciphers not being saved as drops in story, making them disappear if you leave the map before picking it up.
Fixed beam gun not using ammo on client causing client to not be able to issue reload.
Improved “Sabrewing” ai for flying to head. Should be less jumping about trying to land.
Improved “Sabrewing” landing on head logic for network clients.
Only shots you shoot yourself are now counted towards accuracy, and it can no longer go above 100%.
Re-added onDestroy behavior to decoration loot tiles. Some user maps broke when removing them. If you have not re-saved the map this should automatically restore the functionality.
Fixed bug in editor where tile’s center positions would not be recalculated when rotating and scaling.
Fixed memory leak in editor that caused the memory to grow rather severely every time a map was tested.
Adjusted the radioactive shots that the “Mutaflies” emit when they die to make them less likely to just disappear directly.
Fixed deselecting a profile working.
Fixed charming and taming icons sometimes not being visible with neutral characters.
Fixed wing sync for fly and wasp
Survival main score now says “Score” instead of “Players”...
Fixed color issues with helper characters in online.
Fixed taming not working as well for clients online.
Fixed riding hacked predators and being thrown off when the hack wears off.
Fixed survival leaderboards sorting. Unfortunately all the old score in survival will need to be reset. This will be done when we push the default build.
