🎮 COGBox 0.6.0: Gears of War is back online

Play Gears of War online with friends again - natively on PC, no Xbox Live needed.

• Online matches with players outside your own network, not just on a LAN.
• No Xbox Live, no relay servers: COGBox's own matchmaking finds the game, then you play peer to peer.
• Friends, invites and profile pictures - right in the launcher's Social tab and in the in-game menu (F8).
• Works behind strict home routers, no port forwarding or UPnP needed.
• Three regions: US, Europe and OCE.
• Off until you turn it on (Social tab: Use the COGBox multiplayer server). Switching it on or off doesn't delete saves, and Gears 3 saves are backed up first.

Online play by Flippage, mod framework by KiltedKernel - thank you!

We're finally back on GitHub! https://github.com/Shagg88/COGBox is COGBox's home again, and we're sticking with GitLab too (https://gitlab.com/shagg88/cogbox) as a full backup with the same releases.

Join the COGBox Discord to find people to play with, organise matches and get help.

How to update

• From 0.5.0: COGBox updates itself (About tab, or the prompt at start).
• From 0.4.8 or older: download COGBox-0.6.0.7z by hand once and unpack it over your COGBox folder (7-Zip or Windows 11).

COGBox is back on GitHub

• GitHub is COGBox's home again: https://github.com/Shagg88/COGBox (downloads, release notes, Issues). GitLab (https://gitlab.com/shagg88/cogbox) is the full backup, with the same releases.
• The updater checks GitHub first, then GitLab, so updates keep coming even if one site is down. The "open a ticket" buttons and links go to GitHub.

Online play (by Flippage)

• Online multiplayer through COGBox's own matchmaking server, peer to peer (nothing is relayed through a server). It's off until you turn it on. What is sent and kept is in PRIVACY.md, and the launcher can delete your online account.
• Social: friends, invites and profile pictures, also as a tab of the in-game menu (F8 opens it there).
• Works behind strict routers without UPnP: when two players have no direct path, their connection is set up over a route that already works between the players, still peer to peer (no relay server). A party host's join connection is no longer closed by the game right after it opens.
• Regions: US, OCE and Europe (US West and US East are now one US region).
• Gears 3 and Judgment saves keep working when you switch online play on or off. Nothing is deleted, and Gears 3 saves are backed up before they're changed.
• Online safety: limits on what another player can make your game hold in memory or open.

Mods (by KiltedKernel)

• Campaign mods: a mod can add its own campaign with chapters to Select Chapter (Gears 3), without clashing with the game's acts or other mods.
• Mods tab: shows what the game will do with each mod: a mod it leaves out and why, where each campaign chapter goes, and mod.ini keys it doesn't understand.
• Mods can set class defaults ([ClassDefaults]), checked against the setting's real type.
• docs/modding.md: the mod format for creators. Developer tools: a scripted controller (Gears 1 and 3), a property log and a Kismet trace.

Also new

• Delete a profile: sign in to it, then Profiles > DELETE THIS PROFILE. Its saves, name and picture move to the _old-files folder (nothing is erased); profile 1 can't be deleted.
• Gears of War 1 System Link: smoother network play with higher net speed limits. #72.
• In-game menu: Back + Start (or F1) opens the menu on the tab you last used.
• More button prompts: extra prompt sheets (GitHub #223).

Faster

• Gears of War 3: the Character LOD option is gone; the game always uses its original character detail. The lower settings cost a lot of frame rate.

Fixes

• Gears 2: "Exit Game" in the game's own menu now quits after you've played a level, instead of opening the credits. The in-game menu's Quit box can be answered Yes again.
• Judgment: fixed a freeze where the game waited on the graphics card forever. It now gives up after 2 seconds (by Flippage).
• Sound: sounds now start where the game asks instead of always from the beginning, and the game no longer reuses a sound the decoder is still reading (from Xenia Edge).
• Timeouts: some timed waits in the games never ran out; they do now (from Xenia Edge).
• Launcher: COGBox comes back to the front after you quit a game from its in-game menu.
• Mods: a game no longer crashes when a mod writes to memory the game has freed; mod folders and files with non-Latin names (Chinese, emoji, etc.) no longer crash the Mods list.