Sorry if I get anyone mad, but I think the controls need to change. It's really the only thing that makes me regret buying the game. Everything else: The mining for money, buying troops and weapons, building bunkers, surviving etc. is amazing, but the controls are just so damn wonky that I can't even play it.

Like, why can't we have a fixed reticle on the screen to show where we're looking/aiming at? Why is it that I can't see where I'm aiming my gun until an enemy is about 10 feet away? Why must I look at where my guys head is pointing to figure out what direction I'm going to fly?

Also, why does it feel like every character I control is either a stumbling zombie with a gun, or just a drunkard. I kinda wish it played like the Thing-Thing games (if anyone knows what I'm talking about).

Sorry if I'm complaining too much. It's just, I regret spending 18 bucks on something just to be pushed away by controls.

No this is actually quite reasonable and the controls can be messy, especially to someone not familiar with the game, the lack of a fixed reticule is to force the player to stand still to aim his gun, once you do that you can push the mouse in any direction and you guy will point at it, so he doesn't have to be 10 feet away for you to get a shot off.

Obviously this creates a problem with jetpacks for some people and it can take a while to get used to the idea of the mouse directing you.

I'm not really so sure why everyone is so sluggish but once you get used to the jet pack you can blast around a map at 100Kph.
Don't get to distraught so early, keep it up and you'll surmount the learning curve and find your self having fun.

The controls can definitely be frustrating at first but like 111herbert111 said you will get much better and it will be much less frustrating.

One thing that still seems a bit silly to me is the lack of hotkeys for reload and cycling through items. The radial menu is very cool but it seems like most of its functions could be streamlined via keys. "R" could reload, "z" and "x" could cycle backwards and forwards respectively.

I'm sorry you have that impression of us, most of us are quite nice

Yep, once you figure how it all works you'll feel bad saying that. The controlls are simple and i can't see it changed otherwise.

The way CC crosshairs work threw me at first too, then I got used to it.

Not that that makes it a good choice, just that it stops seeming bad after a while. I don't think Data will change it. and the movable crosshair is kinda necessary for sniper rifles.

Aim with your heart, not with your mouse

You don't need to exit the pie menu to execute stuff, you can just use left mouse button without letting go of the right mouse button.
Also, scroll wheel.

I never knew you could use the left mouse button in the pie menu before Datas playthrough of the metagame. Couldn't believe I never knew, after years with CC.

...scroll wheel? I can use the scroll wheel? Whoa...

I don't understand your complaints about the aiming, I thought it's perfectly fine and always have...

The movement is a bit retarded and takes a while to get used to. The main reasons are that the walking animation is handled in an extremely retarded way (at each step of the animation you have an offset variable for the foot position and the engine magically decides what frame to use and where the foot is attached to each frame segment) and then the walking is also physically simulated with push forces like some double whammy of "why the ♥♥♥♥ would you do that".

It's really all about making the movement system as hard as possible I guess; the engine has to try and figure out how the leg should bend and select that frame of the walking animation, then it pushes against the terrain with a set force and relies on the physics engine and terrain physics to take care of it. And terrain displacement via foot impulses is another bad point of this system, sure stomping away grass is kind of cool, but in the earlier days this caused AI to tunnel by stomping on the spot, it still causes problems on snow levels, and with heavy loads it makes it very hard to move and you just end up rolling around in the mud desperately trying to break free but just sinking further until you get to harder ground (but you learn quickly not to carry too much, that said physical load limits instead of physics engine limits should be preferable).

The jetpacking is a bit weird, it's a stupid concept really 'aim to jetpack in that direction' also 'aim where you want to shoot', not at all conflicting commands. The only reason the aim to jetpack think makes an iota of sense is because on a gamepad you really do have a lot of control over your jetpack movement so I guess Dan just wanted to carry that kind of functionality over to keyboard so that it's a consistent control scheme and gamepad players don't have a massive advantage... but it's not as good on keyboard anyway.


This is how I'd fix it:
First of all defining the walk animation is horrible, just simplify it with angles:
Define the upper leg and lower leg lengths
Define only the major sections of the walk cycle (e.g leg positions: |, >, \, |, /, and repeat from #2: >, \, |, /, >, \, |, /...)
For each section define the angle of the thigh and lower leg (and the foot?)
For each section define the frame to display
For each section define the number of frames to display the current leg frame

Using those simple rules you can generate a walk cycle with just 5 definitions (|, >, \, |, /), you look at the first frames angles and the second and then generate the number of in-between frames automatically, because you define the lengths of the leg segments the engine knows exactly where the foot position should be (you'd still want to use foot positions in engine by figuring it out on load instead of doing the math each frame). Now this means you can make completely wacky walk cycles with odd legs and the sprites will still display how you want with very little effort (assuming you can estimate angles to a certain degree of accuracy and you use degrees not radians). This just gets rid of the many mysteries of the walk animation system whilst also making it more flexible and easier to use.

Secondly just get rid of the foot impulse and just have the walk move the character body, when the foot atoms stick to the terrain and have -x foot movement go to +x character position. But you still want the feet to destroy grass so just have the feet atoms disintegrate pixels of "terrain frosting" materials rather than applying a force to them. Not willing to do that then at least only make the impulse force affect "terrain frosting" materials.

And have the jetpack/jump button apply thrust parallel to the body (and ditch the impulse) and then have the left and right movement keys make your jetpack nozzle change orientation.

BAM - Movement issues completely fixed? maybe not, but I guarantee it'd be a lot better. The problem is the physics engine controls every bit of the movement, but sometimes you just have to say "♥♥♥♥ it" and accept more arbitrary movement for better controls. I went that route with plane controls, the physics controlled flight sucked, the arbitrary flight controls were ridiculously better.

-stray thought, perhaps CC campaign would be better if ships were only AI controlled, no more kamikaze attacks (which make the game ridiculously easy), more tactical drop location choice, AI actually have a chance, If you want to load stuff into a ship it will just wait with it's hatch doors open prone to being destroyed -> no more sweeping across the ground sucking up weapons.

PIE MENU!!!!!



Now, joking aside, the controls indeed takes time to get used to. In fact, I took a pretty long time to fly jetpacks in a respectable way and learnt some tricks for quick hip-firing more accurate. It's all practice and time, really.

To play Cortex Command you just need patience, and with time things will eventually get better.




Also, as a great fan of the Thing-Thing series, there is a great mod that changes movement dramatically into a more agile one which resembles the one of Thing-Thing. I'm not sure if it still works with 1.0, but I don't see why it wouldn't.

I can understand the reason for not having a reticle and I like the idea. Same reason Worms(or 20 years ago what was the game "Artilery") has only an angular a aim. However the implementation has one flaw, it still behaves as though you were using a reticle to aim. What I mean by this is, you can tell when the invisible reticule is close to your actor because the movement becomes much more iratic as the reticule makes close passes at your actor. When it's far away it becomes difficult to turn and aim because the same amount of mouse movement produces less response. You can tell it is just tracking the position of the mouse on the screen and aiming towards it.

The solution is to lock the mouse at a specific radius from your actor so you get consistent responsiveness and consistent smoothness.

You always know where you're aiming from the angle of the gun, so from the hip you don't need a reticle (because it's pretty easy to extrapolate from the angle of the gun roughly where you're going to hit), like real life you aren't given a precise aim from the hip (and spread of fire and other factors are made more erratic). When you're not sharp-aiming the reticle goes invisible and acts as thought it were a set distance away. When you sharp aim you DO have a reticle and turning is only hindered if you're pure keyboard, but you can still just release the aim key and turn then aim again.

I don't understand the complaints about the gun aiming, maybe I've just played a lot of the right games. But my friend had no problems either, took him a while to get used to the movement though. Maybe you're just bad at guessing your aim, that doesn't make CC bad and if that's the case then I don't think it should be made easier.