| C-Dogs | |
| Modes: | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Genre: | Action |
| Released: | 1997 |
| Platforms: | MS-DOS |
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.
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:
However, the feature to buy and sell weapons and ammo between levels was removed.
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.[1]
In 2000 Wester released the Borland Pascal 7 source code of Cyberdogs (minus some libraries he had licensed) on his website.[2] In 2002, Wester released the source code of 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 on GitHub. In April 2016, Wester released the game assets as CC-BY.[3]
Following the source code release in 2002, 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. 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] Version 1.0.0 released on August 21, 2021, with support for Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny missions.[5]
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]
Hardcore Gaming 101 reviewed C-Dogs in May 2017.[16]