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Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

benbridle.com

11–20 of 34 posts

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#11
I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5?

When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason.

Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built.

At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations?

If you want to make money on this, all the thrilled users you currently have would have likely paid 2x or more the current price, so if making money from it is the reason for the cost, $5 is confusing. But $5 is also confusing as a cost of entry to something that could be widely enjoyed at no extra cost to you, and might bring you something good in return if it was free and not paid.

At $5 a pop I can't imagine you're getting much of anything, including attention or widespread usage.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#13
post #9

I love everything about this concept. Building your own stack, the overall aesthetic, doing simple things with modern tech to recapture the past... you are definitely my kind of people. "2004-era vision of the future" is a great slogan (although I'm also a fan of some c. 1984 insights).

Thank you! I'm really passionate about exploring this direction of computing, digging around in a bargain bin of discarded futures to find ideas worth pursuing.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#14
post #12

Amazing! I couldn't see how to do the 'sketch layer'. Layers would be amazing for this

The sketch layer is accessed with the 'eye' button in the bottom-right corner of the canvas screen. Clicking that button toggles visibility of the sketch layer and reveals three more buttons, and clicking the newly-revealed pencil button toggles drawing to the sketch layer instead of the canvas.

The decision to implement only two layers for Cobalt was a conscious one. The design of Cobalt is focused towards speeding up the user and helping them to finish their images, and I found that being able to go back and tweak each layer made it more difficult to commit to a final image.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#15

Love it; editable patterns are my favorite feature. I also like that in general it is a very configurable editor - being able to customize each tool is extremely user friendly.

Thank you! The customizable tools give a surprising amount of power to the user for a relatively small amount of work (just a couple of basic editing screens). The most interesting outcome of all this is that the scatter and spacing parameters work equally well on the bucket fill tool as they do for regular brushes, allowing you to emulate white noise and similar when filling large areas.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#17
post #12

Amazing! I couldn't see how to do the 'sketch layer'. Layers would be amazing for this

The sketch layer is accessed with the 'eye' button in the bottom-right corner of the canvas screen. Clicking that button toggles visibility of the sketch layer and reveals three more buttons, and clicking the newly-revealed pencil button toggles drawing to the sketch layer instead of the canvas. The decision to implement only two layers for Cobalt was a conscious one. The design of Cobalt is focused towards speeding…

Makes sense. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#19

I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5? When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason. Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built. At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations? If you want to make money on t…

There is an online demo: https://benbridle.com/projects/bedrock.html#cobalt

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#20

I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5? When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason. Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built. At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations? If you want to make money on t…

Young users without payment methods do not sideload binaries on a Nintendo DS.

If you’re hacking with a Nintendo DS in 2025 you were most likely a teenager in the 2000s/early 2010s, and you most certainly have a payment method.

Agree that OP is underselling their work at $5 - the next big psychological barrier after $0.99 is at $9.99, might as well go there

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