FreeGameDev

Maybe some of you remember C-Dogs, an old DOS top-down run and gun singleplayer and splitscreen game.
At the end of the DOS era it was released as open source by it's original author Ronny Wester.
A number of ports popped up, but most of them were bug-ridden and eventually where left abandoned incomplete.

Now the good news:
There is a developer named cxong, which is working on the latest fork. Also, the most annoying bugs have already been fixed by him and there was the 0.4.4 release.

http://cxong.github.io/cdogs-sdl/
The page also provides screenshots and a short gameplay video.

Now, as it is mostly with open source games, I guess help is appreciated.

Especially more C programmers are needed, to get rid of bugs, repair the level editor and to port old stuff (like the sound system and the graphics).
Also sound artist to replace the old sounds.

EDIT: Changed the thread name.

Version 0.4.5 was released by cxong today:
* health bars
* better support for screen resolutions and scaling modes
* various bugs fixed

What's planned for 0.4.6?
According to the bug tracker:
* replace custom binary bitmap format with common image format like png; this allows also...
* ...adding better scaling algorithms
* make the level/campaign editor work
* adding a MacOS package

Cxong released 0.5, including a revived level/campaign editor and more graphical effects. (Warning: Some might slow down gameplay on weak PCs.)

https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/0.5.0

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:Cxong released 0.5, including a revived level/campaign editor and more graphical effects. (Warning: Some might slow down gameplay on weak PCs.)

https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/0.5.0

screenies please.

Screenshot from 0.5.0:


The editor:

Cxong released the next version.

See: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/0.5.1

TDLR;
- OSX & Haiku builds
- new content
- initial mouse support
- editor improvements
- AI improvements

Version 0.5.1.1 is now released.
It's a bugfix release, with mostly fixes and polishing for the editor. <shameless-plug>Also, a new campaign is included.</shameless-plug>

Version 0.5.2 released; this one adds 4 player support for all the game modes.

I love you C_Xong.

Btw, could you change the first thread title? 'C-Dogs SDL 0.4.4' is misleading.
Something like 'C-Dogs SDL Releases'?

@Bertram: Done.
@C_Xong: Damn nice!

By the way: Should the secret weapons be available in Dogfight mode?

@Sauer2: Thanks!

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:By the way: Should the secret weapons be available in Dogfight mode?

I thought dogfights were knives only anyway

The secret weapons aren't meant to be more powerful than everything else, so in dogfights they should be ok. If it is a problem then the other player is in the same room, so you can just walk over and have a stern talking-to.

It seems, Cxong released version 0.5.3 yesterday, which adds a co-op AI.

C-Dogs! It's been a long time. Nice work! I'll need to test this out. Is the game's full name CyberDogs btw or is it just C-Dogs? I have a vague memory of the full name being CyberDogs and not just C-Dogs.

C-Dogs was some kind of sucessor to CyberDogs and the gameplay may differ a bit.

Cxong released 0.5.4 with static maps and much more features. Check out: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/0.5.4
Also, performance issues are fixed now.

Don't forget to look at the frontpage (http://cxong.github.io/cdogs-sdl/) from time to time, because Cxong posts animated screenshots of new features, in the same interesting manner of the posts from the developer of Mari0.

Heads up; 0.5.6 has been released! Check the home page and download http://cxong.github.io/cdogs-sdl/

There's a lot of work under the hood and smarter co-op AI, but the biggest change is that C-Dogs SDL now supports custom weapons! One of the demo maps shows some of them in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx8FZKpyzXM



I've also stumbled across an LP done by two Germans! I can't understand it but I think they enjoyed it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjOiHZnxGh4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybYzlOLTrz0

Thanks for all the support so far and make sure to request features!

Ha, I found this game recently and I like it.

I watched both LP videos. And yes, they liked it. I understand German.

At one point Meldrian complained about the level design being slightly buggy, because the corners were not closed. You can look through the corners, because they were not closed.

Stuff like this:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

X....
.X...
..X..
...X.


(“.” = floor, “X” = wall)
It is possible to look and maybe even shoot through the corners.

But when using this style:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

XX...
.XX..
..XX.
...XX


This is not possible anymore. Yes, it’s a workaround, but it works.




The custom weapon feature is surely a very nice one. Sadly it is not heavily used yet, it seems. But I was motivated to do something. I am currently playing around with this feature a bit and I hope I can publish a new terrorist campaign with an all-new weapon set in it. It will involve guns, lots of them! The feature needs to be better documented by the way, to lower the entry barrier for other editors. But I think I figured out most stuff on my own by simply reading the original JSON files.
This was at times a pain in the ass to do. A single wrong character can break your whole campaign. The game just crashes when you try to start it and the error messages are not helpful at all by finding the typo or whatever is wrong with the JSON file.

I plan to use only static maps as well, so creating the campaign will take a while. I think I will show you a sneak preview later.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:At one point Meldrian complained about the level design being slightly buggy, because the corners were not closed. You can look through the corners, because they were not closed.

I think I guessed he said something along those lines too; I've been making an effort to use the double-layered diagonal wall techniqueTM in newer missions; I'll remember to go back and fix the older ones.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:The custom weapon feature is surely a very nice one. Sadly it is not heavily used yet, it seems. But I was motivated to do something. I am currently playing around with this feature a bit and I hope I can publish a new terrorist campaign with an all-new weapon set in it. It will involve guns, lots of them! The feature needs to be better documented by the way, to lower the entry barrier for other editors. But I think I figured out most stuff on my own by simply reading the original JSON files.
This was at times a pain in the ass to do. A single wrong character can break your whole campaign. The game just crashes when you try to start it and the error messages are not helpful at all by finding the typo or whatever is wrong with the JSON file.

I've been meaning to do this before the next release but I've been lazy You're right it's very confusing, involves multiple files (guns.json and bullets.json) and for some of the weirder weapons, can involve many layers of recursion! I'd like to have some wiki pages documenting what each file and field does, plus a walkthrough so people can see how it fits together.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:I plan to use only static maps as well, so creating the campaign will take a while. I think I will show you a sneak preview later.

Excellent! If you had any questions feel free to ask, and please share what you have!

Here are some previews of my campaign:
A simple fight map featuring the enemy group “Code Blue”:


The entry area to a base of the Green Ones (it is a large building complex):


The game mechanisms in the campaign have still a lot of rough edges:
A bug prevents me from placing a mission objective item, so they are just placed somewhere on the map. (bug reported)
It seems that almost all enemies only shoot diagonally but as soon as I stand in a horizontal or vertical line with them, they stop shooting. Weird.
And some enemies appear right at the spawn point. This is bad and I want to prevent that. Is it possible? How?

Also, do I really have to edit characters.json manually or is it somehow possible to edit in the editor now?


I upload two files temporarily. I will use a real host when I am finished.

The first file has a test campaign which showcases all weapons I will use in the campaign. The weapons may still need some balancing and are subject to change.
Download it here: http://rghost.net/download/58039441/374 ... uns.tar.xz


The second file is the very early version of my terrorist campaign.
http://rghost.net/download/58039481/5c8 ... nge.tar.xz
If you want the finished version, I guess you have to wait. This campaign preview should only give a rough idea what this is about.

Extract the .tar.xz file into the missions/ subdirectory. Fell free to add another layer of directories, but this is not neccessary.
Windows users use 7-Zip to extract.

Sorry for the file size but I use extra-sounds for the weapons and only WAV. I wonder if C-Dogs SDL supports other audio formats, I would happily use them.
All the sounds are in public domain. I release everything under the WTFPL, also when I am finished.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:A bug prevents me from placing a mission objective item, so they are just placed somewhere on the map. (bug reported)

Lots of bugs reported! Should be fixed now, big thanks for reporting.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:It seems that almost all enemies only shoot diagonally but as soon as I stand in a horizontal or vertical line with them, they stop shooting. Weird.

It was a bug with the AI "is facing player" routine, good catch, fixed. This has made the AI very tough!

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:And some enemies appear right at the spawn point. This is bad and I want to prevent that. Is it possible? How?

That was a bug. Fixed also.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Also, do I really have to edit characters.json manually or is it somehow possible to edit in the editor now?

You can edit characters in the editor too: you need to press Ctrl-E. As a quick fix, I've added a piece of text saying this at the bottom.

The campaigns are looking good! Looking forward to trying the end result out.

Just some comments though:
- The gun names are a bit too long for the UI; maybe you can abbreviate some words e.g. "SMG" instead of "Sub-machine gun"
- I suggest converting the sounds to mono; the game will use stereo panning according to sound position anyway so this is more suitable

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Sorry for the file size but I use extra-sounds for the weapons and only WAV. I wonder if C-Dogs SDL supports other audio formats, I would happily use them.

C-Dogs SDL uses SDL_mixer for sounds so WAV, OGG and MP3 are all fine.

Hi again!

Thanks for the Ctrl-E hint. I already have figured that out earlier by noticing the help menu again.

Progress on my campaign is going slowly forwards. It is slow mostly because I am lazy. I have now 5 missions. The (current) first mission introduces Team Viola, the shotgun masters in the campaign. Another mission is a prison job, but for some reason the prison guy the player has to free just spawns completely randomly. The prison map has a fixed number of locked rooms for prisoners, yet anything, even enemies can spawn in it. It seems the access and no-access flags are just completely ignored for static maps. I think I tried to manually place the prison guy but I guess it didn’t work. I need to do more research.
Currently the whole campaign is difficult even on easy mode because c_xong fixed an important AI behavior bug I mentioned earlier. But I have to tweak balancing anyway, so … ;-)

I think at the end, I want to have at least 13 missions. More previews:




I use now Ogg Vorbis as audio file format, because it is the best of the 3 choices. There is no noticable quality loss, so it should be fine. This already shrinks file size dramatically, but I still use stereo. Maybe I convert them to mono later if it is worth it, but I was too lazy. When I am finished with the campaign, I will provide all the sound files in a lossless format in a seperate package.

Here you can download preview version 2 of my campaign: http://rghost.net/download/58106699/1c1 ... ge2.tar.xz
If you want a finished campaign and don’t want to just be a tester, just wait until the release comes.

Edit:
About the suggestions:
Yes, I have considered even dropping the entire “Pistol: ” etc. prefix altogether. But that has the drawback that the names alone don’t speak for themselves very well but I also don’t like overgeneric and boring names like “fast pistol”, “strong pistol” etc.
The best solution IMO would be that there is an in-game description of the weapons, built-in into the weapon selection menu. This would render the prefix obsolete. An in-game description would be a big plus for the default weapons as well.

Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Another mission is a prison job, but for some reason the prison guy the player has to free just spawns completely randomly. The prison map has a fixed number of locked rooms for prisoners, yet anything, even enemies can spawn in it. It seems the access and no-access flags are just completely ignored for static maps. I think I tried to manually place the prison guy but I guess it didn’t work. I need to do more research.

- The access thing doesn't work for static maps, you should try to place objectives manually if you want them to be in locked rooms.
- The manual placement of prisoners is a bug! I have fixed it now.

Good idea with the weapon description; could you please make a feature request and provide more details?

I've begun writing up a wiki page on how to make custom weapons here: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/wiki/Custom-Weapons

It has a complete references on how to specify the bullets and guns, but it's missing a walkthrough and things like sounds and particles. Hopefully it's still useful.