The problem with B26 and earlier build enemies is that their units felt more expendable than your own.
This is no longer the case, as friendly fire has been disabled. Walking into a crowd is like lining up for a firing squad.

Does weapons like heavy sniper rifle also ignore friendly targets and can you still kill your self with it on wrapped maps?
I'm also interested if weapons can damage them selves if their muzzle offsets are placed incorrectly. I would like if they ignored weapon sprites as well, that would fix many problems i have with weapons i'm currently working on.

Wow Data!
Also, what else is planned? New factions? New weapons? Mountable Weapons?
New ships? New scenes? Bunker modules?

And after cc, are you going to turn the cave engine into a real game?

Dude, Awesome! I don't really post a lot here, more of a lurker, but iv'e been following the game for around a year now and loving it, cant wait to see more of a campaign!



I may need to change my comp for this one, I have a pretty powerful machine but its amd based and thus doesnt agree hugely with CC. i currently lag when there is a lot of debris from gibbing on screen. Even so it all looks very good and Its great how you have been interacting and stuff lately, keep posting the vidyas!

Oh and Crow, you being partialy responsible for the nords means you are partially responsible for the nord invasion mod, WE LOVE YOU!!

thanks for the info dude!

Hooo! Hoooo! Hold on there, horsey!

First things first.

Yes it's been resolved.

Only thing that can kill friendlies is crushing by craft or crab and explosions.

With the whole important bases thing, are there any plans to improve how you build bases? The current system feels clunky, id like to be able to rotate pieces on the fly, and be able to have more pre-configured parts. so a good base can be build if you don't feel like designing the entire thing.

Also are there any plans to be able to place base pieces after you have fought, so you can refortify the base between battles?

Bam! So people seen to be ranting about the game so I have to chip in and say that for the final build of CC I was expecting around 5 or so fully fleshed out factions by Arne in a series of missions that ultimately tell a story as you investigate this alien planet (possibly with different play through scenarios by choosing different starting factions or something). I thought that's what all these missions were for, developing little tests (zombie caves, first signs, maginot) so that a good solid basis for the campaign could be built upon, then the current campaign mode seems to have done a 180 and reverted back to skirmishes and base building but with an economy. With this little bit I guess I just wanted to say that the design or what Data wants seems to keep fluctuating (and also wanted to say that I would love Data&Arne to still go through with this perhaps after the current "campaign"/"metagame")

However my point is over the years features and content have been added here and there but they are just piling up, not coming together to make a finished game and one update it will seem like the game is heading in one direction while the next it's trying to do something else. But in my opinion all these changes are giving with one hand and taking with the other, I think now there is too much weapon variety without enough variation in price range, damage and other factors. There needs to be higher contrast in the stats, power and price between weapon "levels" (for example look at tf2, halo etc. there are distinct weapons/classes and what you choose is a strategic choice). That's the reason that I prefer the combat from the earlier builds, there is one set of weapons with a distinct hierarchy and the weapons are highly situational, plus it's easy to tell the pros and cons from the weapons right off the bat. But now there's a great big ♥♥♥♥ of weapons, the differences in pricing is iffy and there's not a clear hierarchy.

The problem is that for starters the game is just piling up new content from the very beginning without really changing the old stuff or getting rid of irrelevant stuff (a few relatively insignificant changes seem to have been taking place in the last few builds but nothing substantial) and that things seem to have just been added for the fun of the content on it's own without taking into account the game as a whole.

Also Data keeps flinging the word "strategic" around but In my opinion it's not a very strategic game at all, just imposing gold limits and such isn't doing too much but the fog of war is one step forward. I believe he'll need to remove most of the content and start from scratch, and working the factions from the ground up, so that each faction has distinct pros and cons (weak but cheap vs. power bought by wealth...) and so that there are strategic choices in weaponry.

So that's what I think, it's a fun game, awesome times have been had but if this game is to be great it needs to re-focus on the design and stick to it otherwise the end result wont be much better than it currently is ("a working sandboxy thing"). Let's face it all these new features (pie menu options for weaponry, charged shots etc.) add to the game but have very little affect on the overall gameplay...


And what IS Arne doing? He knows all this ♥♥♥♥ anyway, his designs are great, and he's posted loads of stuff about new factions/revamped designs and other concepts. Get more of his input, his speciality is the exact department that the game is lacking in! Also much to the dismay of the "content developers" (content tweakers) they have very little actual freedom and as far as I can tell they haven't achieved very much (I'm not blaming that on them or calling them ♥♥♥♥). However they could be better used to actually speed up the flow of content creation, Arne makes the sprites and effects and doesn't have to worry about anything else, content devs add the ini files/Lua magic with guidance on damage, pricing and such and Data focusses on features and gameplay.

/rant (now go make the game great Data and team!)

Nothing atm, can't really do a lot either because hand issues.

I'm sorry to say this but, why not just get a new art director while Arne/Prom heals up? Would it really be that hard for a new artist to try to match whats there already, I mean only as a temporary thing? (Prom's art is amazing and I wouldn't want him to leave forever.)

A replacement for Arne would perhaps be possible, but if Data would choose for that I hope he'll choose wisely and not just choose anyone. None of the forum spriters can match Arne's work, not even close. So what then?

Personally I hope Arne will heal that hand and be fit again to continue his amazing work. (Stop masturbating, you pixel artist god!)

What the game needs is a whole lot more content.. really? If the dozens of official weapons and scenes already in there isn't enough or to your tastes, that's exactly why we went through such trouble to make the engine so completely data driven, scriptable, modular, and generally modification-friendly!

Yes, if there was to be a big story arc "campaign" in there (as was planned at one point, several years ago), there would be a huge demand for a lot more content.. an amount that is daunting for any small team to deliver in order to make a compelling and satisfying play experience - on top of polishing and making the second-to-second gameplay itself fun.

However, we realized that after making such an elaborate story, it would have very limited replay value.. so, why bother spending all that time, effort, and money on building that, when we can focus our attention on a completely different design paradigm that will be as fun to play the first time as it is the 20th time? Instead of delivering a story-based game, let's deliver a gameplay-based game.

This decision probably stems from my personal opinion that computer games are a relatively poor medium for telling a story - especially when compared to their potential to let the player write his own stories within a dynamic and interesting game world. When a friend excitedly tells you what happened in a session of GTA he was playing the other day, it's probably not going to be about a twist in the scripted story line, but something crazy that happened when he was chased and got away from a dozen cops in the ice cream truck.

So, although there's a few test activities that look like they might be the beginnings of a bigger story, they are now simply standalone scenarios that work well on their own in the Scenario Battle mode, where any Activity can be paired with any compatible Scene. Anyone who really would love to tell a story through a series of content-heavy and scripted Activities are more than welcome to do so.. the support in the engine is there all the way.

However, don't expect that from the Metagame-style campaign mode we're developing for the 1.0 of CC.. it's built to be supremely replayable, with a unique chain of events emerging dynamically during each play-through. It's also extensible, each time revealing a randomly selected and ordered subset of the total number of Scenes that were loaded by the game. You can play with actors and weapons of new Techs (formerly known as factions) added by mods, make your own team icons, build with base pieces from any other mod, on a terrain added by another mods' Scenes, etc.

If you crave a great sci-fi story told well, go watch Alien or Blade Runner. If you want to experience a fun dynamic challenge that you can't wait to share with your friends, play X-Com.. or wait for Cortex Command 1.0

What would be neat, I think, would be if whatever metagame you have could function similarly to MW3's survival mode: an onslaught of increasingly harder enemies, filled with occasional challenges such as helicopters or mechs. That, layered on top of gold struggles and base defense, would make a very interesting game.

However I am quite disgruntled at the non-inclusion of a proper story mode. The backstory Arne created, as well as the art accompanied with it really got my hopes up. Maybe someday, after you finish CVE and come back on CC you'll attempt a story mode.

oh heck yeah it does! campaign is amasing and fun and all, ive even got some friends over and had a full game of a campaign. but what makes CC such a fun game for me (and my friends) are the senarios, such as the maginot defence and zombie cave. Campagin is going to be a large stronge point in CC, especialy when it gets AI. But Senarios will always hold the center of my attention. It does not even have to be anything story related, drop me inside a bunker and tell me to defend until a certain time and im fine. On that note, maginot is much more compeling than defending you own bunker, for an unknown reason. Just make a huge ammount of preset maps ready for game modes like exploration, chip hunt, assualt, and defence, and im happy as can be.

Miggles, both Arne and I agree that the first game we build with CVE should be in the CC universe, so don't worry

I think story has a proper and important role in games where it gives context and meaning to the gameplay, and explains certain rules of the game etc.

In other words: it should serve the game, but not be the point of the game.