Thinking about implementing gun turrets…

“This is the land based version of the Phalanx (CIWS) gun system built by Raytheon called the Land-Based Phalanx Weapons System or LPWS. It utilizes the Block 1B gun system with self-destruct rounds to destroy incoming mortar and artillery rounds.”

More info here. Download the above video here.

This can safely be installed directly over the previous build (10, duh), and has the following improvements:

• Skeletons’ first official appearance, with proper effects.
• The new guys bring a new gun: the Blunderbuss!
• Problems with engine sounds getting stuck have been fixed – maybe?
• Scroll bars in lists now work 100%… just for you, crazy modders!
• The AI for the ships that are empty now don’t try to take off at first opportunity, but land gracefully and wait for manual control. This is a temporary solution until AI mode control is implemented.
• Slowdown bug when guys gib on impact has been fixed. Also digging to the bottom of the world shouldn’t slow down anymore either. (Guess why these two bugs were related!?)
• Some sound samples added and improved.
• As always, lots of small random polishes here and there.

Enjoy!

Simon Cottee (AKA ExplodingBarrel) from Australia sent in some really charming art inspired by Cortex Command. We liked it so much we thought it warranted sharing here:

Yup, it’s here, and we are proud of it.

I can’t believe some of you guys waited all night for this though. At least you didn’t have to spend it writing algorithms and tracking down bugs! I hope the improvements live up to your expectations (although I have my doubts, considering the recent avalanche of comments… ;p )

Seriously though, your interest and support give us a lot of motivation and encouragement, which is very much appreciated. It definitely helped me stay the course tonight and get things done – and done right.

I’ll make a list of things added/changed later. Now time for sleep (5 AM)

UPDATE: Here’s an incomplete list:

• New ship type; the Drop Ship. It uses its engines to stabilize itself in the air, and is good for precisely deploying multiple guys at once into an area. It is expensive though, so killing one of your enemy is a win.
• AIs added for both the dropship and the old rocket. If they have anything in inventory, and you don’t control them directly, they will land and unload. If they have nothing in inventory, they will do their best to return to orbit so you can get your money back for them. We’ll add ways to control the AI behavior later.
• The AI of the guys has been improved where they will try to user their backpacks to soften their falls. This is good for them, since…
• Impact gibbing has been implemented. If something or someone is hit hard enough in a collision, it will get gibbed. Splat!
• Gibbing of clones has been otherwise enhanced as well. You can now gib the gibs! Overkill is fun.
• Passengers of ships will now exit in an orderly fashion, using alternating exits, and with a data driven delay between them. They will also not exit out of any hatch that is blocked by terrain (think rocket on its side). The position of the exits is now also defined in the ini files.
• Audio playback has been improved; no more cutting out of sound effects, and effects off the screen are attenuated for distance.
• Reloading mechanic has changed. Now devices will auto reload if you run out of ammo and hit fire again. You can also top off your magazines manually by holding down inventory and pressing up.
• Several crash bugs related to gibbing and emitters have been fixed.
• As always, lots of small improvements here and there.

Known issues and coming fixes:

• Sound of the Drop ship engine is the same as the rocket and doesn’t turn off when the engine gets blown up. This will be fixed very shortly.
• High speed impact gibbing causes extreme slowdown
• The Drop Ship’s engines don’t collide with the terrain yet. They should.
• Scroll bars still don’t work properly in the buying menu. This is only an issue if you are using mods. We’ll try to fix this soon as well.
• Need to make/improve the interface for controlling where you want your delivery ships to land, or if you want to automatically get control switched to them when they arrive. Now they just automatically land above your brain bunker, although you can switch to manual control over them at any time.
• Difficulty levels in single player seem to be on the very hard side, considering there’s three guys coming out of each ship now. We literally threw together the config of this in a few minutes, and it shows.
• Skeletons are not ready for prime time yet, although the inital data for them is included… They need some damage effects treatement to behave as expected when shot. Think proper sound effects and pieces/shards of bone flying everywhere, while bullets pass through them like nothing.
• Controls are still not configurable with the new joystick scheme, so only Wired Xbox 360 controllers and the keyboard work well..

We recommend you uninstall any previous version before installing this one. In the future you won’t need to do that though, just install over the last build. We’re also going to be providing a non-installer zip for you who fuss over such things. (Looking at you, Arsecast Host!)

Sorry folks, the build has been slightly delayed again. I really need to be more careful with promising timeframes for these things. My sincere apologies.

The current status is that things are really, really close, but there’s still several polish and implementation issues which would get in the way of you enjoying the build. So instead of throwing somehting half-baked up here and wasting your and our time, we’re going to make sure the new additions shine first.

Again, sorry to get your anticipation set and then not delivering on time. Just a day or so more… ( I think 😉 )

As you can see, the world of Cortex Command is rapidly approaching. Now give the little fella a digger and we’re in business! Read more here and here.

While we are on the topic, there’s more fascinating work going on here… and here’s another cool video about it..

Sorry there’s been a bit of a delay in the next build. Some of the reason is that this bad boy is taking some time to perfect.

Also, rockets now have AI which lands them gracefully and dropping off things for you so you don’t have to worry about waiting for them and landing them manually anymore. They can also deliver enemy troops, and those guys try to use their jetpack to soften the landing, as well. That’s fortunate for them, because they will now gib if they hit something hard enough!

There’s numerous other improvements, like reloading mechanic, audio improvements (distance attenuation, more mixing chnnels), and a few other cool surprises.

Stay tuned, this weekend should be fun.

UPDATE: We’re working hard to get the build out today (Sunday). Just FYI

The Independent Games Festival has just announced their finalists for 2007: http://www.igf.com

Major congrats especially to our friends Derek and Alec of Bit Blot for getting their very sweet looking title Aquaria into the grand prize finals!

Cortex Command was one of the entrants, but it didn’t make it this year. Frankly, we’re not surprised considering that the build submitted was barely more than a rough physics sandbox without much content. Watch out for next year’s competition though – we’ll have an actual finished game to submit! 😉

Prom sent me this from 4chan… have no idea where or when it came from, but damn if isn’t great:

(Click to enlarge)

Considering it refers to the year 2000 as some semi-distant future, I’m impressed by its accuracy!

Here’s a sneak peek of what you’ll have to deal with soon:

And he’s bringing his friends… lots of ’em.