Development Plan

Since I started maintaining this C-Dogs SDL fork, I've added features, made enhancements, fixed bugs and refactored the code. Although there is no grand vision for the game - just to make it better - there are some guiding principles that I would like to adhere to.

General Principles

Don't break the core gameplay At its core, C-Dogs is an overhead run-and-gun, with mechanics that allow experiences ranging from frantic fire-fights to tense navigation of dark winding passages. These core experiences must be preserved whatever the changes.

For examples, limiting aiming and movement to 8 directions ensures equal focus on movement and aiming; having a fog of war and narrow passages increases tension when exploring new areas. These elements must not be changed lightly.

Maintain the artistic vision C-Dogs has an overall style that is part-postcyberpunk-part-whimsy, with a setting that includes high-technology, dark environments and government agents, as well as having orcs, bug-eyed monsters and confusion gas. The art is both dark and cartoony, with characters that have oversized heads and pot bellies.

Although big variations in style are possible (survival-horror zombies, modern warfare), the artistic style should be maintained. Art should be cartoon-style with exaggerated features. Settings should not be overly bright and cheerful. Technology should range from modern to high tech.

Extend, don't extinguish Major features and changes can be made, but they must not eliminate the original C-Dogs experience. Where possible, changes should be configurable, and the original gameplay should always be available.

For example, total conversions are okay as long as players can still choose the original look-and-feel. Small gameplay changes are okay as long as they don't break the core gameplay. Features that are stylistically or mechanically incompatible with the original gameplay are okay to include but must not replace original game elements.

When in doubt, make it configurable.

Make old players welcome Most C-Dogs players would have played the original game and preferred it to varying extents. Therefore preserving their user experience should be a top priority. Prefer to have the original game's features as defaults, and make sure new features are easily avoided or circumvented.

Examples

These principles lead to a number of consequences. Here are some examples:

• Don't tweak or change the original weapons. Prefer to create new versions of them, and give the players the choice to use them if they really want to.
• When adding new weapons, don't include them in original campaigns. Don't mix them in with the original weapons unless they are balanced.
• Try not to break the config. Provide conversion functions so that old configs are seamlessly upgraded to the latest versions. This was abandoned due to inconvenience. Besides, preserving old configs is not a very useful feature; it's much more important to be compatible with old campaigns. Configs are automatically migrated for all C-Dogs SDL versions though.
• Use versioning to make sure the old campaigns continue to work, even as new campaign formats are made.