Your wait is over: both for this fresh build of your old faithful game, and also for the next frames in the heat of the fiercest battle! Don’t wait to get a copy for yourself or a friend, since the massive 85% OFF sale will only last for a few more days…

Here’s what’s fresh, thanks to Evgeniy “Weegee” Vigovskiy, Jesús “GranPC” Higueras Pica, and Chris “Montdidier” Kruger:

Performance

• Cortex Command now pumps up to 2x more frames per second!!
• Game activities no longer slow down when played for too long.

Gameplay

• Added keyboards shortcuts for weapon switch, reload, drop and pickup actions (also works with gamepads).
• Gib editor now rounds all offsets.
• Deployments can spawn flipped for non-flipped actors.
• It’s easier to find out how many gamepads were detected and who moves the cursor in UIs.
• Limbless actors will inevitably and quickly die.
• Reworked Test Activity to act as an ordinary GAScripted and execute Global Scripts (good for testing and debugging global scripts).

Content

• Bunker breach can be used with randomized bunkers.
• Added randomized fortresses for Bunker Breach.
• Added new skirmish activity Siege, which uses Bunker Breach maps.
• Nerfed heavy ronins a lot.
• Added global script, which gives 3x more gold when digging.
• Added infinite ammo global script.
• Added invincible crafts global script.
• Added instant and delayed delivery global scripts.

Bugfixes

• Added range checks to functions, which take Team as parameter to avoid memory corruption.
• When brain actor is deleted, MovableMan checks if it’s a brain and if it is, set’s this brain to 0 to avoid crashes.
• Dead actors no longer roll and scream infinitely
• Dead actors reduce their AngularVel.
• Fixed crashes in allegro and luabind.
• Vanilla activities now count used MOIDs on per-team basis.
• Fixed the shield-related crash in Campaign.
• Primitives are no longer drawn on top of game UI elements.
• Fixed a bug, which caused a crash in buy menu.
• Fixed crash caused by digging.

Lua binding improvements:

Scene:

• function GetOptionalArea the same as GetArea, but does not render scene incompatible for Activity if specified area is missing

SceneMan:

• function RestoreUnseen(const int posX, const int posY, const int team)
• function RestoreUnseenBox(const int posX, const int posY, const int width, const int height, const int team);

FrameMan:

• function DrawTextPrimitive(Vector start, std::string text, bool isSmall, int alignment) , alignment 0 = left, 1 = center, 2 = right
• function DrawBitmapPrimitive(Vector start, Entity * pEntity, float rotAngle, int frame)
• function CalculateTextHeight(std::string text, int maxWidth, bool isSmall)
• function CalculateTextWidth(std::string text, bool isSmall)

GameActivity:

• function int GetActiveCPUTeamCount()
• function int GetActiveHumanTeamCount()

HDFirearm:

• property FiredOnce, r/o , Whether at least one round has already been fired during the current activation. May be 0 because weapon might have activated but no actual rounds were fired yet.
• property FiredFrame, r/o, Whether at least one round has already been fired during the current frame. Use this to check if weapon fired something.
• property RoundsFired, r/o, How many rounds were fired during this frame.

GameActivity:

• property BuyMenuEnabled, r/w, Whether buy menu is enabled for this activity

Actor:

• property AimDistance , r/w
• property SightDistance, r/w

AEMitter:

• property BurstDamage, r/w
• property EmitCountLimit, r/w
• property EmitDamage, r/w

INI changes:

PEmitter:

• Lightweight, non-rotating MOSParticle-based emitter

MovableObject:

• DamageOnCollision 0,1 – When it’s != 0 actors takes health damage on collision with this MO, without penetration
• IgnoreTerrain 0,1 – When it’s 1 MO ignores any terrain collisions and travels right through them

Settings.ini:

• PreciseCollisions 0,1 – When off uses experimental simplified MO collision model which may improve performance up to 30%

Once again, just as you thought we’d given up on Cortex Command, Evgeniy “Weegee” Vigovskiy, Jesús “GranPC” Higueras Pica, and Chris “Montdidier” Kruger bring you a juicy update for the holidays! This time it’s mostly focused around massive performance enhancements. With the new build coming out in a couple of days, you can have hordes of little guys going at it, without much slo-mo action kicking in:

So keep an an out for it dropping this weekend, right before the year ends!

Speaking of which, Cortex Command can be bought for LESS THAN THREE DOLLARS on Steam right now during the Winter Sale HERE. Only until the 2nd of January, though… so this is a good time to spread the carnage; buy a copy for a friend!

We at Data Realms want to thank you for another year of your fantastic support and enthusiasm for what we do! It literally keeps us going – a good thing too, since you haven’t seen anything yet! We have some very neat stuff in store for our beloved fans, which will be revealed in the next few weeks. As far as Cortex Command goes, 2009 should yield the completion of the campaign and metagame – so stick around!

Inspiring brickwork by Andrew Colunga

We just wanted to wish all our fans and customers a very merry xmas and holiday! Thank you so much for supporting us by buying the unfinished game and enabling us to keep working on it and other projects in the future. As long as sales keep up, we should be able to continue cranking out the Data Realms goodness for you to enjoy!

A special thanks to those who have generously chosen the ‘Support Data Realms Edition’ option! Your extra votes of confidence in the final product helps a LOT, both on the money and morale fronts here. We will not forget this!

We have been working on the next build, but with the holidays going on, it’s been a bit slower than expected. Ideally we wanted to push out number 20 by now, but it’s just not done yet. We know you are eager to get more content, but half-baked cookies just don’t taste as good as something done proper, amirite?! (ok, terrible analogy)

Anyway, rest assured that you haven’t seen much yet in terms of what is in store for next year! In the mean time, enjoy the quiet days between now and new year’s…

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!