For a long time now, Cortex Command has been stuck with the lonely Crab as the only Fauna on the planet. The Flora has been pretty sparse too.

Cortex Command Rough concept art for indigenous life

The basic idea behind these concepts are that a mass extinction took place long ago, with the crab and a type of plant being the only survivors. The fossilized creatures were the ones which drew the short straw of course. With no competitors around, the crab and plant quickly evolved and diversified.

(Note: this is just a sketch-up of some ideas, and isn’t a guarantee of future gameplay elements. That goes for any art I post on this blog, too)

What about the gameplay though? Currently, the (or a) plan is to have different pacing with more action oriented segments, and some calmer segments with more of the indigenous life. It would be a nice feeling to arrive at a new site, finding a new life form (and poke it around a bit). The question is how quick the few lifeforms I’ve drawn above will get old, and if I need to vary the shapes and color a bit more too keep things exciting. Is it boring to just have different types of crabs, or should we go nuts with many different species? I’d like to think that it’s possible to vary the crab design enough to fill the niches we need to fill. Using wildlife derived from crabs also gives Cortex Command a clear identity.

While the regular plants are just terrain objects, the hostile ones would probably have to be special actors. We have thought about trees, but it might be best to put those in the background. It would probably feel wrong if they were static  terrain pixels. They could be some special kind of actor. A palm tree for example could have a trunk spine of little… chunks, and flimsy leaves which could be shot to pieces.

A dropship crashing down in a group of trees could bend the trunks (which could snap if a certain tolerance is exceeded). It would look spectacular, in theory. In reality it might be hard to get it to feel right, and it takes valuable time to implement. Another worry is that trees will crowd up the terrain too much and that too many actors would end up walking into trees and hang or ‘explode’ (wait, did we fix that yet?).

So, well, those were my thoughts on that. I wrote a bit too much about trees. I think I’m supposed to end this pose with a question mark, to stimulate discussion. Instead I used it to highlight a bug which has proven difficult to crush. That’s not the way to do it, so I’ll have another go at it.

Coalition Military Forces (playing with styles)

What do you guys think about the proportions of the Cortex Command humanoids? More specifically, I’m thinking about the head size and foot size. When I was younger I thought big feet and big hands were really awesome. Lately I’ve been moving the focus away from the feet and legs, up to the torso where I feel the interesting parts are. For me, feet are not the most interesting part of a design. Long mecha toes are alright, but putting a lot of the (design) mass into the foot and lower leg seems like a waste unless you’re designing a toy which is supposed to be standing up. Humans get fat around the belly because it’s the center of mass. Imagine trying to move around if all of your fat was centered around the wrists and ankles! (On the plus side, you could wear blue spandex and cosplay as Megaman.)

Fight, Proto-clone, for everlasting gold!

Anyways, I had a fleeting thought about reducing the foot size a bit, and maybe (but probably not) play around with the head size some. The actual foot graphics are separate from the ground collision mechanic, so it can be just a graphical tweak. I mention this because I don’t like drawing pinups of the Cortex Command characters with huge ‘Goofy’ feet, even though they bother me less when seen ingame. It would be nice if the promo art matched the actual ingame graphics though.

Congrats to TheLastBanana for winning the forum contest for best Total Conversion Mod!

The Reject is a total conversion modifcation, changing the game style, the premise, and the goal of the game drastically. From the thread:

Dodge falling cargo crates in an attempt to escape the clutches of the Space Order Corporation’s rejected cargo bin! While you’re at it, grab expensive stuff!

Features:

- Down-to-the-pixel accuracy of fallen blocks will little lag.
- Equip a jetpack or become zombified (or both)
- 16 different treasure items to collect for points along with 3 character modification items.
- 4 difficulty modes and a difficulty select screen, ranging from Easy to Insane.
- Score counter at the end gives you a breakdown of where your points come from.

Best played in 640×480 resolution. Yes, it ends, but it’s not scripted to give you a win message or anything. No, nobody will ever get there without cheating. There is an easter egg.

Download and Discuss The Reject – it’s worth an hour of your time!

Finally, the piece I’ve been hinting at for three days…

This piece of artwork for the Coalition Light soldier came about because we were contacted by a fan of the game, Justin “gtaiiilc” Stokes. He is heading to CrisisCon and will be constructing a replica suit!

“Hey this is the almighty nerd Justin “gtaiiilc” Stokes here.

I have begun gathering up resources to make a Coalition Light replica suit… for a convention (don’t mock me >_>). The event is in February but I hope to have it long done by then so I can start saving up for my BIG project of win: a Cortex Command arcade cabinet!

That will will be a long ways off though, but for now: PICS OF THE BEGINNING!”

The convention is slated for Spring 2010, so we have some time for the project to complete – I’ll post updates as work progresses.

Thanks for being such a nerd fan, Justin!

If anyone else has any DR/Cortex Command real-life crossover events (Birthday cake? Gold mining in your backyard? Cosplay?) drop me a line @ andy@datarealms.com

New feature alert! On Mondays I hope to answer a few burning questions for the fans. If you have a question for the Dev team that you really want answered, drop me a line: andy@datarealms.com .

This week’s mailbag is full of  incredibly interesting questions from a wide variety of people!

Q: What is up with the Digging AI? It was working a build or two ago but the AI seems hopelessly lost again. – Andy

A: Digging AI hasn’t been touched in a long time, since we are looking at making it LUA-based instead of hard-coded in the C++.  That way, you could make AI modes that did exactly as you wanted and modify the existing ones. – Data

Q: Though realtime multiplayer has been a discarded idea for years now, what are your thoughts on a turn-based multiplayer setup being included in the game? – Andy

A: You’ll have to wait and see what we’re doing with the campaign metagame (hint: it’s turn-based)  - Data

What?? Not a flat-out “no” for multi?!! zomfg

Have a question for the Mailbag? Fire me an email: andy@datarealms.com

Hey everyone! Ignore the horrible photo of me in the last post. There are way better pictures of me on the web.

As Dan introduced, I am Andy Moore (”weasel”), professional Community Designer and Manager. I’m a big fan of Cortex Command, and have been following it for years. I’ll be the BatPhone – the direct line to the Commissioner that you, the fans, can pick up at any time. I’m active in the forums and on IRC as well, and am trying to crank up the level of transparency you guys see.

In my travels I’ve found that many indie developers love to have a community, and love to have a fan following – but detest the level of commitment and the hours of work it takes to put into keeping it running smoothly. Most devs simply want to concentrate on making the game, and not deal with all the emotional issues that come up with forum drama and constant email requests. That’s where I step in!

I’m hoping to post here very regularly – maybe get it down to once per day, but we’ll see how much content I’m able to generate. Dan suggested I tease you guys with some new art, so I’ve clipped two bits of it into this post. I’ll reveal the rest of the image over the coming days.

If anyone wants to get in touch with me – the best bet is the forums or IRC. I’m happy to share my email address though: andy@datarealms.com. Drop me a line if you want to discuss anything – it might take me weeks to get back to you, but I will try to write back to everyone.

In the coming weeks I’ll see about slapping together some videos, interviews, get some long-standing questions answered, and see what other media I can come up with. Peace out.

We’re well aware how frustratingly slow of a trickle the information from the Cortex Command development team have been to our fans. It’s time to face it: I don’t have the energy and/or discipline to do a decent job of informing you guys of the awesome stuff going on behind the scenes. After working on a feature all day and night, I simply don’t have it in me to then also write a coherent article about it.

So, I’ve been looking for a solution to this for some time. While at GDC Austin last week, I found it in a gentleman who does this kind of thing professionally. Andy Moore (aka “Weasel”) will be acting as the conduit of information and feedback between us in the dev trenches and the fan/modding community:

Andy next to a lineup of Indie greats: Phil of Fez, Matthew and Shawn of Blurst, Alec of Aquaria,
Kyle of all things Savage, and the Saltsmans of Semi Secret

My fellow indie friends at Wolfire Games have an awesome dedicated PR guy, John Graham, who does just this, and look at how well updated their dev blog is for their super impressive project, Overgrowth! I’m hoping we can, with Andy’s help, approach this level of connection with you guys again.

Without further ado, I’m going to hand it over to Andy now and let him introduce himself in the next post. I will still chime in here in the future, but now you shouldn’t be going long without knowing what’s happening to the project!

Prom and I have now been working together in real life and in person on Cortex Command for over two weeks. Needless to say, there is a LOT of progress in general, and specifically on nailing down how the campaign is going to work. The next few days weeks we are going to post some of the very cool new stuff that is coming up..

Hello everyone, it’s been a while! Here’s a bit of an update:

Data Realms just attended the most excellent indie game jam No More Sweden in Malmo (in, yes, Sweden)! Here are some photos from the madness:
http://www.datarealms.com/stuff/photos/nms09day1/
http://www.datarealms.com/stuff/photos/nms09day2/
http://www.datarealms.com/stuff/photos/nms09day3-4/

Our compo submission was a quick and dirty Cortex Command mod called BANJO KABLOOIE, based on the random keywords “Pants“, “Gravity“, and “Banjo“. We might polish it up a bit and release it here shortly.

In other news, Prom and I will be working together in the same physical place for most of August, so there should be some massive progress done on the campaign content. Even though we have collaborated online for the last five years, we have never actually met in person yet. So you can imagine the amount of awesome that will come out of being in the same room!

Stay tuned..

Yep, it’s out. Here’s a few of the notable additions/changes:

• Full Lua scripting of any object, not only missions. Documentation here.
• A lot of added content, most of it is still works in progress though. All kinds of toys to play with!
• Improved buying menu now displays long item names correctly and more clearly
• Buy menu Presets can now be made to quickly switch between completely different shipment loadouts!
• New in-game music by dannyB
• Several new campaign and skirmish missions in the works.
• Fixed scene editor making the game not load afterward
• As always, several months’ worth of general touches and improvements

Again, note that the detailed Lua binding documentation is up! Will be writing a separate post and some tutorials on the scripting soon – this is powerful stuff. Modders can now make nearly anything happen in the game engine, as if they had access to the C++ source!

CC Tribute by Jordan Brown (aka Dr. Melon)

There’s been lots of press and media coverage of Cortex Command since IGF, here’s a selection:

CO-OP (former 1UP crew) IGF video segment, at 9:30 mins in:

Wall Street Journal article on the different emerging indie buisness models:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124094416078864595.html

Another interview/gameplay video by GameReactor (I was REALLY tired and hoarse during this one):
http://www.gamereactor.dk/grtv/?id=4460

Super long, rambly podcast interview with Data, by IGameRadio:
http://www.igameradio.com/2009/04/13/igame-radio-gaming-the-igf-2009-part-2-posted/

For more related links and other cool stuff, here’s Data’s twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/Data01

If you find any more coverage or useful mentions, then post it in the comments and I’ll put them here in the post!