WOW! Build 22! THANK YOU DATA REALMS! What next?!
ZOMBIE TUBE = WIN!
ZOMBIES = WIN!
New weapons, actors, BOOYAH!
The first ever real mission plays very well and is quite enjoyable! Gunning down the hordes of zombies with one of those new Ronin actors and a mini gun is an absolute JOY! The beginning of it was bugging out for me though. My rocket carrying the brain actor kept crashing on delivery. Maybe its because of my pixel density settings... Anyway once I took control of the rocket and kept it from crashing manually, everything was working fine.
The AI improvements are GREAT! The AI aims, paths, and reacts much more smoothly now, making them a far more worthy opponent. Not to mention that the "go to point" command is actually FULLY FUNCTIONAL! My little clone was scrambling over piles of debris and rocketing up hills to get to the waypoint I ordered for him! Amazing!
Walking is now faster and smoother. YAY!
Performance seems to be improved too. Hurray!
Previously I didn't bother paying for Cortex Command until I discovered there were tons of mods and scenes to download for extra content. However, after this update, the base game on its own has gotten a huge boost in its inherent value/worth. Go DR!
What do we need now to push this game to even greater levels of excellence? Not saying it isn't excellent already, but...well, you know what I mean!
1: Improved buy menu! A more organized buy menu with collapsible tabs for each category of item and faction. Example, you click weapons and it expands to a list of the factions. You click on a faction and that expands to a list of weapons contained within that faction. As it is now, even with only 3 factions (partially?) complete, the list is decently large. One or two more and it will become nearly unmanageable. This of course isn't even taking into consideration the huge ♥♥♥♥ of mods that most people have loaded. Mods quickly turn the simplistic buy menu into a headache.
Being able to keep separate "Tabs" or categories open simultaneously would be advantageous, such as keeping an Actors tab open and a weapons tab open. You can select an actor, then select the gun you want that actor to come equipped with in 2 clicks once you have the desired categories expanded. As it is now, this process takes way too much clicking between categories and scrolling to your desired selection hidden amongst the ever larger list. This will make it far easier and faster to order a dropship loaded with a variety of different actors, each actor carrying a specific weapon.
another possibility would be allowing players to designate buy presets. This way, they could click a single button and instantly get a specific order that they've thought up ahead of time. Suppose you want to put 3 guys with rocket launchers on top of your own base, at the same time you're dropping 3 guys with automatics and shotguns right outside of theirs? With the current system this would take the average person 30+ seconds to select all their desired actors, craft, and weapons for each delivery. With the collapsible category suggestion, that time may be halved. With buy presets/favorites, that 15 seconds would become 2-5 seconds. The increase in usability would be tremendous.
Suggestion number 2: Built-in activities editing. Add functionality either to the skirmish setup or the options screen that will allow players to select exactly what kinds of enemies will spawn during their games, what they're carrying, what craft they use, etc... in a user-friendly GUI as opposed to having to edit data files. This will add a lot of replay value to the base game for the average user who never manually alters data files. This is a particularly great idea now that we have so many more base actors and items than we previously did. Built in activities editing would allow average players to have any kind of skirmish they want, whether its ronin dropping in with gatling guns and rocket launchers, or just dropships full of crabs! Another possibility would be an option to set starting gold values for skirmish maps.
I am by no mean a designer or a coder or anything like that. My knowledge of programming is limited to simple Python. I don't know how hard it would be to implement an improved buy interface or in-game activities editing, but I do know that these two changes would have a vast impact on the way the game plays and feels and would probably involve lots less work than plenty of other things DR is probably considering at the moment.
Anyways, thanks for reading this behemoth of a post. You get a cookie for making it this far.
