Cyberdogs is a freeware DOS run-and-gun shooter by Ronny Wester, released in 1994. If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the prequel to C-Dogs! The two games look alike but actually play very different - in Cyberdogs you can earn money and buy and sell weapons between levels, and the gameplay is a lot more tense. There are many folks who prefer Cyberdogs to C-Dogs as a result.
With this release, we’ve added Cyberdogs as a campaign in C-Dogs SDL, so you can enjoy this classic oldie but goodie, but with all the modern C-Dogs SDL enhancements (wanna try 4 player co-op?) It’s no exaggeration to say this feature was 10 years in the making! In order to implement Cyberdogs, a lot of major features had to be made - buy/sell weapons, a revamped equip menu showing prices and ammo, new pickup types like over-healing and extra lives, enemies that can both shoot and melee, and many many more - not to mention lots of reverse engineering and tweaking gameplay so it feels the same. Some of the features have trickled out to other parts of C-Dogs SDL, for example the Wolf3D extra life pickups now actually give you an extra life 😆
Last but not least this release contains a bunch of fixes and enhancements made possible by awesome contributors, special thanks to reinerh for miscellaneous fixes and helping to get C-Dogs SDL into debian! Big thanks to all who made it happen. Also thanks to @PavanLuca, @naddoska, @rootkea and @hucarxiao for various contributions; it’s great to see that C-Dogs SDL is going slowly but strongly, so keep those patches and bug reports coming in!
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/2.0.0
]]>Plus a big bunch of fixes and enhancements! Thanks to @Kurtsley, @PavanLuca and @reinerh for fixing/raising them 💪
And finally, a controversial feature removal: quickplay!
Quickplay was a mode that was added way way back in version 0.5.2. It let players jump into a randomly generated level and start running and gunning, without having to choose a campaign. It was slightly improved over the years but the premise stayed the same: get started quickly and shoot up some bad guys.
However lots of players new to C-Dogs would pick this mode first, and walk away unimpressed by the game, thinking it’s just a simple shooting game. But with dozens of high quality campaigns, mods, even the ability to play Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, this was a highly inaccurate impression!
Therefore I’ve made the decision to hide the feature entirely - you can’t play it unless you re-enable it via the source code. I could consider adding it back if enough people ask me to, or if we can greatly improve its quality.
And by the way, C-Dogs SDL is on Mastodon 🐘! Join and follow the #CDogsSDL tag to get more frequent updates, news and cool screenshots!
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.5.0
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ptr bugs!
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.4.2
]]>The most pressing fix is a Windows crash when adjusting audio settings, but there’s also a bunch of random bug fixes and tweaks if you check the release notes.
GIF unrelated - just a mission in the AI Insurgency campaign
If you want to stay up to date with the latest C-Dogs SDL development (cooking slowly), follow the GitHub project page: https://github.com/users/cxong/projects/3/views/1
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.4.1
]]>Some long time C-Dogs fans may recall that in classic C-Dogs, players could have up to 3 weapons. Way back in version 0.6.7, we changed one of them to a dedicated grenade/explosives slot, in order to streamline the weapon switching controls and make grenades much more useful. But this would be bad for players who don’t use explosives in the first place, but like playing with two guns and a backup melee weapon (i.e. the trusty knife).
Well now you can do all that, because the redesigned equipment system allows 2 guns + melee + grenade, for a total of 4! And on the campaigns with auto-melee, you can pull off cool moves like finish weak enemies off by dashing into them and automatically hitting them with a melee weapon!
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.4.0
]]>With this new GUI, you can clearly see the weapon slots, and the available weapons as icons. More enhancements are in the works so stay tuned!
Let’s take a look back to the original C-Dogs equip menu:
This version was minimalist and showed the available weapons clearly, but it tended to confuse new players who weren’t aware that the top section showed equipped weapons, and how many slots there were. The controls were also unintuitive - you used the shoot button to equip weapons, but to remove you had to use the switch/slide button.
This was changed when the grenade slot was added in version 0.6.7. Weapon slots are shown prominently, but the available weapons are hidden, which made it harder to see what was available, or when there were new weapon options.
With this newest GUI, we’ve solved all the shortcomings plus making things look really good too!
If you want to follow the development plan, check out the GitHub project for C-Dogs SDL.
]]>The last one is a notable change; previously lives would reset every level, making it little more than a glorified extended life meter. Now it makes sense to try to stay alive and not waste lives, and collect those 1up powerups (in Wolf3D/SoD)!
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.3.1
]]>Since around version 1.0, the campaign editor was missing some UI elements, like mission objectives, objects, enemies, and allowed weapons 🙃 Pretty important no? Well they’re fixed now…
Also, we have a bunch of unrelated enhancements:
Animated loading screens
Animated doors
Footprints
…and more enhancements and fixes!
Download free from itch.io: https://congusbongus.itch.io/cdogs-sdl/purchase
Release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.3.0
]]>On that note, here are some future plans for C-Dogs SDL, although it’s unlikely they will be achieved. Still, they might be interesting for you to think about:
Yes, the 1994 freeware DOS classic, Cyberdogs, by the same original author as C-Dogs! Cyberdogs was released a number of years earlier, and is still fondly remembered by many. Although it looks very similar and plays similarly to C-Dogs, and if you compare the feature list it has many things missing (like different types of maps, story-based campaigns, fewer weapons), crucially it has something that C-Dogs doesn’t: buying and selling weapons and ammo. This feature is quite significant, and creates a cool meta-game on top of the base run-and-gun shooting game, which is why many players prefer Cyberdogs over C-Dogs.
Well what if we could have Cyberdogs and C-Dogs in the same game???
This is the plan: add a Cyberdogs custom campaign to C-Dogs SDL. It will have the classic Cyberdogs guns, creepy zombie/cyborg baddies, the buy/sell phase, and all in C-Dogs SDL livery with its bells and whistles. Cyberdogs SDL if you will.
And it won’t be terribly hard to do so. Virtually all the features are implemented, apart from the buy/sell mechanic.
The big version 1.0 release was all about being able to play Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny. It was well-received, and rightly so: both C-Dogs and Wolfenstein 3D are fun games, and Wolf3D-in-C-Dogs is the best rendition of Wolfenstein 3D in 2D (if I say so myself 🧐).
As you may know, there are a bunch of games that also use the Wolfenstein 3D engine. These include some cool but perhaps less well known games, like Rise of the Triad, Super 3D Noah’s Ark, Blake Stone, and more stinkers like Corridor 7…
What if we could play these games, but in 2D?
This is possible but will require a bit of work. Because they use the same Wolfenstein 3D engine, their level and audio data is easily supportable, but graphics will need to be reworked, since the transition between first-person and overhead, C-Dogs graphics is not easy. Plus new gameplay elements will need to be added where necessary, e.g. talking to people like in Blake Stone. While a lot of work, it won’t be out of the question…
LAN multiplayer was added back in version 0.6, and internet multiplayer is also supported although well hidden - you have to access it via a command-line parameter. It was hidden for good reason - lack of game lobbies, and anti-lag.
Multiplayer is perennially one of the most requested features in C-Dogs SDL, so how come it isn’t one of the top dev priorities? Well, because it’s quite difficult, and requires a lot of stars to align to be worthwhile, so to speak:
So it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem; without good multiplayer support it’s hard for a community to form, but without a community there is little incentive to work on multiplayer. But who knows, maybe with enough effort chipping away at the edges…
One thing that constantly baffles new C-Dogs players is that they don’t understand what the game is about. In the original game, players get 5 unrelated campaigns, where you battle an army of ogres, or fight a zombie infestation, or stop bank robbers… you name it, it was a random mix of action game tropes.
What if these campaigns were all interconnected, inside a larger story, or even game world?
Perhaps there is a real, “main” campaign telling the story of intrepid cyborg-dogfighters, or “cyberdogs”, taking on contracts in a gritty post-cyberpunk world. Players could walk around in a persistent hub-world, accessing side missions by talking to specific quest-givers like an RPG. Or maybe the existing campaigns are reworked so they fit within the same world. What would this world even look like? Does it take place in an interstellar empire, or a grimy Blade Runner-esque metropolis? And what’s with the bug-eyed monsters anyway, are they AI run amok, or the physical manifestations of an insane genius?
These questions await answers, but perhaps only by a passionate writer willing to undertake such a crazy task.
There are many more C-Dogs SDL ideas:
Which ones would you most like to see? Would you be interested in contributing or even maintaining C-Dogs SDL? Check out the project today!
]]>Downloads and release notes: https://github.com/cxong/cdogs-sdl/releases/tag/1.2.0
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