C-Dogs

2023 video game

C-Dogs

Platform(s)	MS-DOS, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Release	28 July 2023; 9 months ago (2023-07-28)^[1]
Genre(s)	Action
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

C-Dogs, the sequel to Cyberdogs, is a shoot 'em up video game where players work cooperatively during missions, and against each other in "dogfight" deathmatch mode.

Gameplay

In C-Dogs, players play through a number of campaigns, made of a variable number of missions. Each mission has a selection of weapons, and different objectives, such as killing enemies, collecting items, destroying objects, or rescuing a hostages. The campaigns can be played by a single player or with one cooperative player. Other features include color-coded keys to access locked rooms, friendly characters, and neutral civilians that the players are penalized if attacked.

C-Dogs also includes a 2-player, split-screen deathmatch mode called "dogfight": players attempt to kill each other for a fixed number of rounds, and the player winning the most rounds wins. Players can be controlled by keyboard, joysticks or gamepads.

Compared to Cyberdogs, C-Dogs includes the following enhancements:

Multiple campaigns - 5 included, with user-created missions available for download online. Missions also include short story-driven briefings.
Different level layouts
Deathmatch mode
More NPC types: friendlies that attack enemies, hostages, and neutral civilians
Custom campaign editor
More weapons, including different types of grenades

However, the feature to buy and sell weapons and ammo between levels was removed.

Development

The creator of C-Dogs, Ronny Wester, released the precursor to C-Dogs, Cyberdogs, in 1994. The popularity of Cyberdogs and the limitations of its 16-bit protected mode motivated Wester to write a sequel, which was released between the years 1997 to 2001 as Freeware.^[2] In 2000 Wester released the Borland Pascal 7 source code of Cyberdogs (minus some libraries he had licensed) on his website.^[3]

Open source

In 2002 Wester released the source code of C-Dogs to the public. Following that Jeremy Chin and Lucas Martin-King ported the game to SDL and released their work under the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later as "C-Dogs SDL". As of June 2007, Wester no longer maintains a website for C-Dogs but the game continues to live on via the C-Dogs SDL project hosted on GitHub. The open source software port contains a number of enhancements to the original C-Dogs, including high-resolution support, local multiplayer up to four players, enhanced graphics and LAN multiplayer. In October 2015, C-Dogs SDL was updated to SDL2.^[4] In April 2016, Wester released the game assets as CC-BY.^[5]

Ports

With the source code availability and the initial SDL port, the game was ported later for many platforms: Android,^[6] GCW Zero,^[7] GP2X,^[8] Dingoo,^[9] PlayStation Portable,^[10] Dreamcast,^[11] Nintendo DS,^[12] Wii,^[13] Amiga OS,^[14] UIQ3 devices such as SE M600, P1i, P990, and Motorola RIZR Z8.^[15]

Reception

Hardcore Gaming 101 reviewed C-Dogs in May 2017.^[16]

References

^ "Release 1.5.0". GitHub. July 28, 2023. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
^ "Cxong/Cdogs-SDL". GitHub. 3 January 2022.
^ Cyberdogs dogs_src.zip (archived 2000)
^ SDL2 ported, drag and drop on cxong.github.io/cdogs-sdl (25 Oct 2015)
^ "C-Dogs (SDL) Datafiles README". GitHub. 2016-04-16. Retrieved 2016-11-22.
^ C-Dogs - Google Play Store
^ Dingoonity
^ "C-Dogs2X". Archived from the original on 2009-04-13. Retrieved 2007-07-03.
^ C-Dogs2X
^ cdogsPSP
^ C-Dogs SDL DC
^ C-DogsDS
^ C-DogsSDL_Wii
^ aminet.net
^ "AnotherGuest". Archived from the original on 2006-05-03. Retrieved 2007-10-29.
^ "C-Dogs - DOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Android (1997)". Archived from the original on 2017-09-29. by Mike MacDee on hardcoregaming101.net (May 25, 2017)