Cortex Command

Notes

Thanks to Data Realms and the Cortex Command Community Project for Cortex Command, a side-scrolling action-strategy sandbox where every pixel of terrain and every soldier is physically simulated and can be blown apart.

The port renders with OpenGL ES 3 and runs on the sdl3-sdl2-backend libSDL3.so.0 shim, which uses the device's own SDL2.

Controls

Button	Action
Left Analog	Move, up to jump, down to crouch, cursor in menus
Right Analog	Aim
D-Pad	Actor and weapon hotkeys, fine aim while holding X
A	Fire, select in menus
B	Pie menu, cancel the buy menu
X	Hold to aim
Y	Jump
L1	Previous actor
R1	Next actor
L2	Pie menu
R2	Fire
L3	Toggle sprint
R3	Prone
Start	Pause menu
Select	Back
Select + Start	Quit

Compile

Built in an Ubuntu 22.04 aarch64 chroot from upstream commit ba5d0f2 with gcc-12. patches/cortexcommand-portmaster.patch adds a gles meson option (OpenGL ES 3 renderer, system SDL3 instead of the vendored static copy, compressed in-memory audio) and a few gcc-12/aarch64 build fixes. patches/glibc-compat.h pins two symbols to older versions so the binary needs only glibc 2.34 and GLIBCXX 3.4.29.

1. SDL 3.2 (build-time only)

git clone --depth 1 -b release-3.2.30 https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL.git SDL3
cd SDL3 && mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
  -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=gcc-12 -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=g++-12 \
  -DSDL_SHARED=ON -DSDL_STATIC=ON
cmake --build . --parallel $(nproc)
cmake --install .
cd ../..

2. Cortex Command

apt install meson ninja-build gcc-12 g++-12 libgles-dev libflac-dev libminizip-dev liblz4-dev libpng-dev libtbb-dev
git clone https://github.com/cortex-command-community/Cortex-Command-Community-Project.git
cd Cortex-Command-Community-Project
git checkout ba5d0f2
git apply ../patches/cortexcommand-portmaster.patch
CC=gcc-12 CXX=g++-12 meson setup build-pm -Dgles=true -Dtracy_enable=false -Dtracy:tracy_enable=false \
  -Dinstall_data=false -Dinstall_runner=false -Db_lto=false -Db_ndebug=true \
  -DSDL3_image-3.2.4:jpg=disabled -DSDL3_image-3.2.4:tif=disabled -DSDL3_image-3.2.4:webp=disabled \
  -DSDL3_image-3.2.4:avif=disabled -DSDL3_image-3.2.4:jxl=disabled \
  -Dcpp_args="-include $PWD/../patches/glibc-compat.h" -Dc_args="-include $PWD/../patches/glibc-compat.h"
ninja -C build-pm
strip build-pm/CortexCommand
cd ..

3. sdl3-sdl2-backend shim (shipped as libSDL3.so.0)

patches/sdl3-sdl2-backend-fixes.patch forwards SDL2 mouse motion as absolute coordinates (relative only in relative mouse mode) and stops the shim from unloading SDL2 on video shutdown while SDL2's audio thread is still running.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/bmdhacks/SDL.git -b sdl2-backend sdl3-sdl2-backend
git clone https://github.com/KhronosGroup/SPIRV-Cross.git
cd sdl3-sdl2-backend
git checkout 6057d79
git apply ../patches/sdl3-sdl2-backend-fixes.patch
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DCMAKE_C_FLAGS="-march=armv8-a" \
  -DSDL_SDL2_BACKEND=ON \
  -DSDL_SPIRV_CROSS_DIR=$PWD/../../SPIRV-Cross \
  -DSDL_X11=OFF -DSDL_WAYLAND=OFF -DSDL_KMSDRM=OFF \
  -DSDL_PIPEWIRE=OFF -DSDL_PULSEAUDIO=OFF -DSDL_ALSA=OFF \
  -DSDL_SNDIO=OFF -DSDL_OSS=OFF -DSDL_JACK=OFF \
  -DSDL_OFFSCREEN=OFF -DSDL_DUMMYVIDEO=OFF \
  -DSDL_DUMMYAUDIO=OFF -DSDL_DISKAUDIO=OFF \
  -DSDL_VULKAN=OFF -DSDL_GPU=ON -DSDL_RENDER_GPU=ON \
  -DSDL_UNIX_CONSOLE_BUILD=ON
make -j$(nproc)
cd ../..

4. Game data archives

The game decodes every sound fully into RAM, which needs well over 1GB with the original FLAC/OGG audio. patches/convert-audio.sh converts all audio to 96 kbps MP3, which the gles build keeps compressed in memory, and rewrites the .ini/.lua references. Needs ffmpeg with libmp3lame.

mkdir stage
rsync -a --exclude='*.xcf' --exclude='*.reapeaks' --exclude=Base.rte/Settings.ini Cortex-Command-Community-Project/Data stage/
patches/convert-audio.sh stage/Data
cd stage
tar czf data-part1.tar.gz --owner=0 --group=0 --numeric-owner Data/Base.rte
tar czf data-part2.tar.gz --owner=0 --group=0 --numeric-owner --exclude=Data/Base.rte Data