Cortex Command

By: Derek Yu

On: July 10th, 2006

Cortex Command

Cortex Command is what I would call a “hidden gem.” Or at least a potential one, since it’s not finished yet. BUT, the creators have recently committed themselves to working fulltime on it, so things are lookin’ up!

Think Liero meets Soldat meets some other stuff. There’s a basic demo of the game available (see the devlog) that lets you play two players splitscreen. Movement is fairly rough, but it’s impressive (and quite fun) to see the characters walk, crawl, and blow up using ragdoll-style physics. Support the development of this game!

Graphics are by the inimitable Niklas Jansson (aka Prometheus), of whom I am a huge fan.

  • Derek

    And fuck, that gif is supposed to animate.

  • Kanaang

    The CCTest.exe doesn’t unzip when extracting. What’s the dillio?

  • Teeth

    The game was one of the IGF entrants a couple of years back, at which point it was called D.I.R.T. – they’ve changed the name since then as there’s a PS2 game coming out with the same name.

    In fact Cortex Command hasn’t progressed at all in over year, and development has only just started back up on it. In some ways it is fundamentally broken, for example the designer’s insistence on using physics to drive the game’s characters is yet another example of physics winning out over game design.

    Part of the problem from my POV is that the developer left a long period of time where he completely abandoned the project and then came back only to decide to port the whole thing over to Allegro.

  • yokaze

    Dude. And that’s such a great animation too…

  • http://www.datarealms.com/devlog Dan

    Derek, thanks for the review… I got tipped of to it by some friends. Didn’t even know about this blog – am sure to keep an eye on it in the future though. Also, why not just link directly to the gif on our site?

    Kanaang, try downloading the zip again? I confirmed just now that it extracts and tests ok.

    Teeth, I completely agree that the test build is broken in several respects – the most important of which is the character locomotion. Yet, I still am confident that we can make it work in a kickass fun way with this technique, I just need to focus a couple of weeks on revamping it. The last time I touched that code was literally five years ago! Rest assured that our priority is definitely on the gameplay.

    Yeah the project was on ice on an off for long periods while I pursued school and then a career in the non-indie (dependent?) game industry. Years passed before I could finally muster the courage to realize that this is what I want to spend my undivided time on. Right now I’m revamping and apply some of the stuff i learned as a code monkey at the game studios I used to work at. Tangible improvements to gameplay are forthcoming.

    Please keep the feedback flowing, folks!

  • http://www.zoesfantasy.com ZoeJane

    It is indeed an awesome game! I am expecting it to progress even further (faster) now that the dev is back on track. :-)

  • Teeth

    Nice, Dan.

    I really hope you can get it going. The idea is nice and the rest of the engine (like the rockets and bleeding from the head and stuff) is fun to mess around with. When it’s fun to play as well, I’m sure I’ll be back on your forum like a bad rash :)

  • Doe

    CC(cortexcommand now has up to four players.

  • Zack
  • Oh, Keep licking it!

    This games fucks every game! 10/10!! I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH THIS GAME! *Touches himself!*

    ~Suck My Dixx