AK TURKEY SAYS:

“GOBBLE GOBBLE”

Here’s an idea for a cheap holiday gift to yourself or someone else: Use the code HALFOFFCC on checkout of a regular Cortex Command license and save 50% :]

Our new licensing system uses gift codes that can easily be sent to anyone, giving them DRM-free download access to the current and all future versions of Cortex Command!

This is only valid for a few days, so jump on it!

Yup, a fresh build is out, immediately available here, or on the HIB download page for you dear Humble Bundle customers! Mostly fixes and tweaks in this one, but there’s some new fun content too!

• Fixed broken custom pie menu options; now they work as advertised
• Fixed over-drawing of glow effect on selection cursor and aiming reticules. No more fat glows
• Fixed duplicate team objective cursors added each frame in activities.
• Fixed additional (I think all!) mouse control conflicts with other control schemes.
• Fixed resolution setting issue. The game will now try to use whatever res is set in settings.ini, no matter how high or silly it is. The in-game options menu will still automatically set to 2x fullscreen scaling on high resolutions though. This is a compromise between what will suit first time players, and the power users who want inappropriately high resolutions.
• Gave the Coalition Gatling Drone some more Coalitionish sprites – Lizard
• Added Thumper Grenade Launcher; tweaked Nailgun, Railgun, Scouting Rifle, Annihilator, and a lot of other stuff – CaveCricket48
• Improved Lua AI sentry behavior. Improved aiming at very short distances – Abdul
• The Dummy Rocklet now respond to delivery/stay/return orders properly – Abdul
• Made grappling gun more mouse-friendly – CaveCricket48
• The Lua AI was modified to make it easier to add custom behaviors. Humans try to fly to their targets after losing both their legs. Added a Lua AI for the Gatling Turret – Abdul
• Updated enemy drops in activity scripts, fixed a bug on the Annihiliator – CaveCricket48
• AI now fires the Annihiliator with longer-charged shots. – Abdul
• Heavy Sniper rounds no longer bounce – CaveCricket48
• Balancing of Blast Runner and Gatling Drone and Turrets – TheLastBanana

[UPDATE: The instructional video will come after some fundamental things are changed in the metagame, like the tiresome scanning mechanic etc]

I am going to add a video and talk about the now playable metagame/campaign here soon, but I just wanted everyone who previously bought the game to not have to wait and be able to download the newest version right away:
http://licensing.datarealms.com/licensing/

Use your email and old license key as password (all UPPERCASE) to get access to Windows, Mac, and Linux variants of Build 25, without any kind of DRM!
You can now play anywhere, anyhow without having to worry about registering license keys etc. If you forgot your old license key, just use the password reset feature on that page.

We worked hard on this one; I hope you enjoy the campaign mode with your friends, even in its current rough state!

Hey gang, today I want to direct your attention to this very interesting project that I am personally excited about and feel has a lot of potential:

As you can see, it’s a very impressive voxel, or ‘atom’-based 3D engine running smoothly on regular medium-spec hardware. The advantages and gameplay possibilities enabled by simulating the interior volume of the game world’s terrain and objects (as opposed to only the surfaces like in most games) should be clear to any fan of Cortex Command, Minecraft or Terraria – games entirely built around freely digging into and building with a world’s atomic matter of different materials.

As challenging as it has been for me to build a custom 2D physics engine to handle destructible atomic terrain in Cortex Command, I can appreciate the very promising progress that Branislav Síleš, sole author of the Atomontage Engine, has made on tackling the third dimension at such high (and variable) resolution! Check out this video where he shows off how the volumetric matter can be removed to expose hidden structures beneath:

Amazing stuff! This is still an early prototype with only a solo man working on it, but I would love to see this technology mature to a point where we could one day use it to develop a future sequel of Cortex Command (3D? ;)).. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to build an underground bunker in one of those gorgeous, procedural hills and defend it against enemy forces landing from orbit?!

If you’re feelin’ me, then I urge you to consider donating and supporting Branislav’s project here! It will improve the chances of him not having to take on outside investment in exchange for control/ownership of his project – something that probably would hurt the chances of a CC 3D happening. In other words: let’s help him stay indie!

For the next version, we have implemented a subtle yet very powerful feature that I hope the modding community will have a lot of fun with. Extra, custom Pie-Menu options can now be defined for any Actor or HeldDevice, so that a Lua script is run each time that option is activated by the player in-game.

The custom options will show up only when an Actor of a Preset with them defined is selected, or he’s holding a device that itself has extra options defined. The options’ icons can also be of custom size and design. As an example, can you figure out what this modded Actor’s extra Pie-Menu option will do??: (it’s not what you see to the right)

In MyMod.rte/Robots/Robots.ini:

AddActor = AHuman
  CopyOf = Robot 1
  PresetName = Suicidal Robot
  AddPieSlice = Slice
    Description = Detonate Limb
    Direction = 2
    Icon = Icon
      CopyOf = MyCoolIcon
    ScriptPath = MyMod.rte/Scripts/Dismember.lua
    FunctionName = Dismember


in MyMod.rte/Scripts/Dismember.lua:

function Dismember(actor)
  humanoid = ToAHuman(actor);
  if humanoid then
    if humanoid.EquippedItem then
      humanoid:ReloadFirearm();
    elseif humanoid.FGLeg then
      humanoid.FGLeg:GibThis();
    elseif humanoid.BGLeg then
      humanoid.BGLeg:GibThis();
    elseif humanoid.FGArm then
      humanoid.FGArm:GibThis();
    elseif humanoid.BGArm then
      humanoid.BGArm:GibThis();
    else
      humanoid.Head:GibThis();
    end
  end
end


This new modding feature effectively connects the entire Lua scripting interface and all its modding opportunities to the real-time gameplay presented to the player. Custom firing modes of weapons, explosive self-destruction of Actors, mission-specific commands.. you name it; pretty much anything is possible!

Two of the guys on the official Data Realms content production team, Chris “Capn-Bubs” Mansell and Elliot “TheLastBanana” Colp, have made a cool Unity game together. This is their own creation separate from Data Realms, but it’s pretty neat with excellent effects and animation, so I recommend you check it out and vote for it on Kongregate!

You can also follow their development on their own development blog. My hat’s off to these guys who once again show that they not only have great talent, but they put it to use by actually making something of their own!

Just wanted to give a heads up that we have now directly connected our internal Subversion repositories to Twitter, so that you can see what we are doing on our various projects on a daily basis! Follow us here, or just keep an eye on the top edge of this Dev Log page. Each tweet is prefixed with a name which shows the area the commit happened in, as follows:

• CCData: Game data content of Cortex Command
• CCSource: Source code of Cortex Command
• CVESource: Source code of Cave Vehicle Engine

This should do a better job of informing everyone who wants to keep closer tabs on our progress, while not requiring any additional work for us on the dev/content team (we write these commit log messages anyway!)