C-Dogs

C-Dogs
Platform(s)	MS-DOS
Release	1997
Genre(s)	Action
Mode(s)	Single-player,multiplayer

Screenshot of C-Dogs gameplay

C-Dogs,the sequel to Cyberdogs, is ashoot 'em upvideo gamewhere players work cooperatively during missions, and against each other in "dogfight"deathmatchmode.

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 onecooperative 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-screendeathmatchmode 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,joysticksorgamepads.

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 its16-bit protected modemotivated Wester to write a sequel, which was released between the years 1997 to 2001 asfreeware.

Open source

In 2000 Wester released theBorland Pascal7source codeof Cyberdogs (minus some libraries he had licensed) on his website.In 2002, Wester released thesource codeof C-Dogs to the public. 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 onGitHub.In April 2016, Wester released the game assets asCC-BY.

C-Dogs SDL

Following the source code release in 2002, Jeremy Chin and Lucas Martin-Kingportedthe game toSDLand released their work under theGNU GPL-2.0-or-lateras C-Dogs SDL. Theopen source softwareport contains a number of enhancements to the original C-Dogs, including high-resolution support, local multiplayer up to four players, enhanced graphics andLANmultiplayer. In October 2015, C-Dogs SDL was updated to SDL2.Version 1.0.0 released on August 21, 2021, with support forWolfenstein 3DandSpear of Destinymissions.

Ports

With the source code availability and the initial SDL port, the game wasportedlater for many platforms:Android,GCW Zero,GP2X,Dingoo,PlayStation Portable,Dreamcast,Nintendo DS,Wii,Amiga OS,UIQ3 devices such as SEM600,P1i,P990,andMotorola RIZR Z8.

Reception

Hardcore Gaming 101 reviewed C-Dogs in May 2017.

See also

• List of open source games

External links

• Ronny Wester's official site for C-Dogs(archived in 2005 onWeb Archive)
• C-Dogs SDL- Initial port of C-Dogs to SDL
• C-Dogs SDL fork- Continued fork of C-Dogs SDL