Cobalt

Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. Like nickel, cobalt in the Earth's crust is found only in chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal.

Cobalt-based blue pigments (cobalt blue) have been used since ancient times for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass, but the color was later thought by alchemists to be due to the known metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name kobold ore (German for goblin ore) for some of the blue-pigment producing minerals; they were so named because they were poor in known metals, and gave poisonous arsenic-containing fumes upon smelting. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal (the first discovered since ancient times), and this was ultimately named for the kobold.

Today, some cobalt is produced specifically from various metallic-lustered ores, for example cobaltite (CoAsS), but the main source of the element is as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The copper belt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Zambia yields most of the cobalt mined worldwide.

Cobalt (video game)

Cobalt is an action-oriented side-scrolling video game in development by Oxeye Game Studio and published by Mojang. It was released on February 2, 2016 for Microsoft Windows. In addition to the computer versions, a port is being developed for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Gameplay

Cobalt features several different game modes that are available, such as Capture the Plug (a variation of capture the flag), Deathmatch, TeamStrike (with one life each, inspired by Counter-Strike), Survival, and an upcoming Adventure mode. Along with these features, players can create their own maps with the map editor in-game.

Players play as the main character, known as Cobalt. Some key mechanics of the game include bullet time, rolling (to deflect bullets) and punching which can deal damage and knock back explosives. All of which a player can combo together to produce an advanced level of play.

Development

Alpha

Cobalt was released in its alpha stage of development. Updates to subsequent versions of the game are free. The alpha version was initially solely available for the Windows operating system. A Mac OS X version was released on June 27, 2013, but the game was re-announced as a Xbox 360, Xbox One and Windows 10 exclusive in Gamescom 2014.

Cobalt (CAD program)

Cobalt is a parametric-based computer-aided design (CAD) and 3D modeling program that runs on both Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. The program combines the direct-modeling way to create and edit objects (exemplified by programs such as SpaceClaim) and the highly structured, history-driven parametric way exemplified by programs like Pro/ENGINEER. A product of Ashlar-Vellum, Cobalt is Wireframe-based and history-driven with associativity and 2D equation-driven parametrics and constraints. It offers surfacing tools, mold design tools, detailing, and engineering features. Cobalt includes a library of 149,000 mechanical parts.

Cobalt's interface, which the company named the "Vellum interface" after its eponymous flagship product, was designed in 1988 by Dr. Martin Newell (who created the Utah teapot in 1975 and went on to work at Xerox PARC, where the WIMP paradigm for graphical user interfaces was invented) and Dan Fitzpatrick. The central feature of the Vellum interface is its "Drafting Assistant", which facilitates the creation and alignment of new geometry.