Dune II v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish

[Wesker]

I noticed this version is something largely undocumented in the Dune gaming communities, as if it never existed at all. It is not mentioned and/or considered when the different official versions of Dune II are mentioned for bibliographical reasons, unofficial patch and source ports, so I will try to shed some light to it.

 

Dune II had official Spanish and Italian versions released back in 1993. These translations are present in a variant of the European v1.07 three language release "Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis" which features English, Italian and Spanish languages (in this order). This version, however, doesn't work with specific extensions for those languages. It simply reuses the same .FRE and .GER extensions of the other European v1.07 release for the new languages, with Italian being in the place of French (so, it uses the .FRE files) and Spanish being in the place of German (therefore, it uses the .GER files). Functionally it seems to be the same or largely the same as the regular European three language release featuring English, French and German, but the setup is modified to display and select the new languages accordingly (1. English, 2. Italian, 3. Spanish), and of course, all texts are translated to Spanish and Italian when the appropiate languages are selected.

 

Back in the early 90's, Westwood used to do Spanish (and I suppose, Italian too) translations to their games. Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, The Legend of Kyrandia, The Legend of Kyrandia Book Two: The Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, together with Dune II, were all released in Spanish, but only in their original floppy releases. When Westwood developed the CD-ROM re-releases of all of them, they only considered English, German and French as languages available for these versions, dismissing the already developed Spanish and Italian translations completely. The consequence of this trend was that when they started to develop PC games exclusively in CD-ROM format with titles like The Legend of Kyrandia Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge and Command & Conquer, none of them were translated/dubbed to Spanish and Italian, something that was not considered by Westwood until 1997 when they went back to these languages, starting with Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny and Blade Runner.

 

Now, going back to the English/Italian/Spanish version of Dune II, this version is particular due to the fact that both Spanish and Italian never seemed to have an official speech track done for them, unlike the ones that were done for English, German and French. No matter if you have both VOC.PAK or INTROVOC.PAK files present, Spanish and Italian don't use it at all and therefore the game remains silent with no trace of voiced speech and with only the English language selection being able to take advantage of it. While there are already several patches for the CD-ROM versions of both The Legend of Kyrandia games and the first Lands of Lore game which add the Spanish translations of the floppy versions in order to have voiced translated versions of all of them, Dune II still hasn't received an equivalent which allow the Spanish translation to either have a Spanish dub (which, I suppose, could be reused from Dune 2000) or English voices (in this particular case, someone is attempting to do it), so even in the unofficial side of things and going out of the official canon, this version is still entirely voiceless (I can't speak for the Italian language, I don't know if someone has attempted this with that translation).

 

Due to the fact that most people in the Dune II fancommunity are unaware of this official Spanish and Italian version, there seems to be some problems when trying to use it in source ports like Dune Legacy, Dune Dynasty and OpenDune. With Dune Legacy you can use these files to make it running, but you can only play the game in English, as the program gives a c++ runtime error when you try to select either "French" (which would be Italian) or "German" (which would be Spanish) with these files because, I suppose, the languages don't match which the ones intended. Dune Dynasty also fails to boot the program whenever you force the .cfg file to load these languages. And regarding OpenDune, while the current 0.7 version seems to run the game in Spanish (I haven't tested Italian), there's a problem with the program failing to recognize the Spanish accented characters and the "ñ" character which provoques the text being displayed either incomplete or wrongly formatted, something that I don't think it would be very difficult to fix. It would be good that both of these source ports would support these languages, and maybe also linking them to the English language voices so neither of them would be silent, unless a unofficial voiced track for both languages would be provided (I don't like reusing voice files from other games like it was done with fantranslations of Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer Red Alert, so I don't think it would be a good idea to have them from Dune 2000).

 

Lastly, I'm providing some screencaps of Dune II in Spanish for you to check out, although you can see some of it in the aforementioned YouTube video which is trying to hack it with English speech. You can even see the anticopy protection scheme in the screencap, evidencing this is a floppy version after all.

 

http://i41.tinypic.com/efqxwp.png

http://i44.tinypic.com/1zvacmp.png

http://i44.tinypic.com/25uoevp.png

http://i42.tinypic.com/156pa3k.png

http://i41.tinypic.com/2edbb6e.png

http://i42.tinypic.com/24ovs6r.png

http://i44.tinypic.com/2pquveq.png

http://i39.tinypic.com/2111f8x.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/69kgvb.png

http://i42.tinypic.com/2regkqp.png

http://i41.tinypic.com/ilei68.png

http://i42.tinypic.com/nytds3.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/2r6k4dy.png

http://i41.tinypic.com/fu431z.png

http://i41.tinypic.com/bi2kgk.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/2znqys8.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/ncjqky.png

http://i43.tinypic.com/wqzwbl.png

http://i39.tinypic.com/2jetstv.png

http://i43.tinypic.com/107702e.png

http://i41.tinypic.com/2ypg6zo.png

http://i43.tinypic.com/29gk3rr.png

http://i40.tinypic.com/23hu25t.png

http://i43.tinypic.com/344xfk2.png

http://i42.tinypic.com/2ue2v40.png

[drnovice]

Welcome!

I never searched for Dune 2 spanish or italian, because I thought they didn't exist.

Instead just today I found an ITALIAN release that has even italian speech sounds into gameplay and intro! :P

I don't know yet if it's a mod of some italian fan or if it's an original Westwood release. I'm looking for the PAKs files, there is only Italian.pak language archive, and the setup doesn't allow to choose other languages.

[Wesker]

I would have to give it a look, but I don't think that's an official release, as I am only aware of Westwood doing voiced versions of the game in English, German and French (this was also the same with other Westwood games from that time, notably for their CD-ROM re-releases). My guess is that it's probably a Dune II Italian fantranslation which reuses both the official Italian translation of Dune II (or maybe they made a new one) and the Italian speech of Dune 2000. The game featuring a single ITALIAN.PAK language file and the setup not allowing to change language are facts indicating that this could be a hacked North American monolingual version rather than a European three language version, like the one featuring both the Spanish and Italian translations together with English.

 

This could be done for Spanish too, again, having the Spanish speech of Dune 2000. But I prefer either having English speech like

or keeping the game voiceless like it has always been, as I don't like reusing the same speech from sequels like it was done for the Spanish frantranslations of Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert, both of them reusing the Spanish speech of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.

[drnovice]

I didn't find anyway this Eng/Spa/Ita release, can you share this version?

Recently I'm working on my mod that tries to manage even b-side factions (Fremen, Mercenary and Sardaukar) in an unique game with 3 Campaigns that swap from time to time the original House chosen into other b-side faction.

 

What do you need exactly? Would you like to create speech soundtrack for the Spanish version?

 

Here I attached this italian fanmade:

dune2ita.zip

 

the source is:

http://web.tiscali.it/colosio/ita4-arrakis.htm

 

The author has even created a super dune 2 swapper and a dune3 italian remake.

[drnovice]

Ok I found also an Eng/Ita/Spa release, but I think it's a mess, maybe someone have altered a bit the contents.

In this release, ALL english/french/german files that regards the texts are in the root without their PAK archives, of course "FRE" refers to Italian files, and "GER" to Spanish ones.

The setup was already set for italian language, and the look is just like the italian funmade attached before. All working but there are no speech sounds, neither in english, although the english VOC files are there.

 

So I tried to set spanish language, and here starts the mess: the graphic texts about intro are ok (there is no english voice and only spanish texts (differently what we saw in this video, perhaps this is also the result of a mod), but the Start Menu doesn't have the regular look (gray box) and only the text entries morover all disordered... still game menu entries are disordered.

 

Wesker, maybe can you clean the disordered texts?

 

this is the release:

dune2_eng-ita-spa.rar

 

 

P.S. Despite I'm Italian, I think that my language lost a bit of that alchemy that is achieved with the English terminology. By the way "Verme di Sabbia" (should means Sandworm) is terrible! As if in english was: "Worm made of Sand"...

[drnovice]

After a long research I found one of this release that work correctly (I suppose) with both languages (italian & spanish).

They work without speech sounds and the intro is with texts and no voices, only sound effects.

I think that it could be the original release.

Also this release has "FRE" and "GER" files in the root without PAK archives.

 

It should still be fairly simple create a PAK archives that contanis the right files to play for every language (speechs can be english or custom VOC files).

[Wesker]

I didn't find anyway this Eng/Spa/Ita release, can you share this version?

Recently I'm working on my mod that tries to manage even b-side factions (Fremen, Mercenary and Sardaukar) in an unique game with 3 Campaigns that swap from time to time the original House chosen into other b-side faction.

 

What do you need exactly? Would you like to create speech soundtrack for the Spanish version?

 

Here I attached this italian fanmade:

dune2ita.zip

 

the source is:

http://web.tiscali.it/colosio/ita4-arrakis.htm

 

The author has even created a super dune 2 swapper and a dune3 italian remake.

 

I just tested this Italian version, and it's definitely a fantranslation. The website claims that "the site author has translated the original game completely in italian, including all the audio voice clips", the game spots an additional 1997 copyright together with the original 1992 Westwood copyright which goes to some "Teodosio" guy (probably the person who did it), and there's no proper V1.XX version indicated in the title screen

 

It's a very interesting fantranslation, because given the fact that it was apparently done in 1997, it is definitely not reusing the Italian speech of Dune 2000 for obvious reasons, so it must be an original speech recording done by the fantranslator. The narrator speech is also from a man rather than a woman, and while he doesn't seem to be very good at acting, the soldiers speech seem very impressive on the other hand. I guess you can have this as a Dune II Italian speech source if you really like it.

 

I don't really need a Spanish speech pack like that for Dune II. I'm fine with either English voices or silence. Besides, it would require to either get and reuse the Spanish speech of Dune 2000 because of being the closer official equivalent (though reusing official voice speech from other games is not my thing) or organizing a recording done by fans like that Italian "Teodosio" version did.

 

What I would like it's simply to make the developers of OpenDune, Dune Legacy and Dune Dynasty aware of these versions and add compatibility to them (or proper compatibility in the case of OpenDune, because it's possible to make the game running despite of the presence of several font/character errors). These Spanish and Italian versions of Dune II are not fantranslations, but official Westwood/Virgin products released in 1993, and they should be considered by these source ports as such.

 

Ok I found also an Eng/Ita/Spa release, but I think it's a mess, maybe someone have altered a bit the contents.

In this release, ALL english/french/german files that regards the texts are in the root without their PAK archives, of course "FRE" refers to Italian files, and "GER" to Spanish ones.

The setup was already set for italian language, and the look is just like the italian funmade attached before. All working but there are no speech sounds, neither in english, although the english VOC files are there.

 

So I tried to set spanish language, and here starts the mess: the graphic texts about intro are ok (there is no english voice and only spanish texts (differently what we saw in this video, perhaps this is also the result of a mod), but the Start Menu doesn't have the regular look (gray box) and only the text entries morover all disordered... still game menu entries are disordered.

 

Wesker, maybe can you clean the disordered texts?

 

this is the release:

dune2_eng-ita-spa.rar

 

 

P.S. Despite I'm Italian, I think that my language lost a bit of that alchemy that is achieved with the English terminology. By the way "Verme di Sabbia" (should means Sandworm) is terrible! As if in english was: "Worm made of Sand"...

 

I just tested that release, and yeah, there seems to be some problem with it. I believe this is because it was attempted to be modified by someone, probably an Italian person (the game folder is "dune2_ita" and there's also a "arena80" text file which is in Italian and links to some apparently Italian retrogaming site) who maybe got his modding right for the structure of the Italian files, but damaged the structure of the Spanish language files in the process, hence the problem.

 

That's right, this version has Italian language stored in the .FRE files and Spanish language stored in the .GER files, like I said. Funny way to do it, but then again, it's an official version and not a fantranslation, so you have to deal with it. They probably weren't that bothered to program proper language extensions for the new languages and instead they just reused what they already had done for French and German.

 

The "video" (looks like a voiced "Let's Play") is from the same guy who did this

, which I linked in the first message of this thread. He's definitely using a modded version done by him, though he never released it even though he promised to do it. My guess is that it's probably a fantranslation of the North American monolingual version with the official Spanish translation patched in the same way that "Teodosio" guy did it with his Italian translated/dubbed version, but in this case there's no Spanish dub and he just made the game appointing the English speech like the game would normally do for the English language files (but fantranslated to Spanish).

 

So the Italian translation is not good? The Spanish translation is not brilliant but it's decent at least. I suppose the game was translated by the same people who did the Spanish versions of the first two The Legend of Kyrandia games, which are good, although it's not quite the same translating a graphic adventure and a strategy game. In fact, I don't usually like to play Dune II in English because I feel like disregarding the Spanish version while doing it (hence why I would like the source ports to be compatible with it), except when I'm playing the Mega Drive version which was only released in English and German.

After a long research I found one of this release that work correctly (I suppose) with both languages (italian & spanish).

They work without speech sounds and the intro is with texts and no voices, only sound effects.

I think that it could be the original release.

Also this release has "FRE" and "GER" files in the root without PAK archives.

 

It should still be fairly simple create a PAK archives that contanis the right files to play for every language (speechs can be english or custom VOC files).

 

I'm glad you found it. I wasn't very sure of the rules of this forum allowing download links to the full game to be posted, but it seems it's really possible to post them?

 

Anyway, I usually get the v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish version from a site called "La Selva del Camaleón", where it has been since ages. They have a version which seems to have the copy protection cracked (that is, no matter what you type, the mentat will always regard your answer as correct) and some added "Leeme.txt" and "JUGAR.BAT" files which are usually put in by the guys of that website in every single download they have.

 

Also, it's typical for these downloaded versions to have the content of the .PAK files uncompressed and placed as separate .FRE and .GER files, I don't know why. The version from "La Selva Camaleón" also features them that way. Maybe this version was released this way in the original floppies because they couldn't be bothered to repack them. I unfortunately don't have the original floppies of this version (they are VERY RARE and difficult to find) so I can't check that.

 

By the way, since you are Italian yourself, can you tell me if Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, The Legend of Kyrandia, The Legend of Kyrandia Book Two: The Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos were all translated to Italian by Westwood? I know they were all translated to Spanish, so if you could confirm this then I would know if Westwood did the very exact same localisations for both Spanish and Italian back in the day: that is, translating the games in both languages for their floppy releases, but not doing the same with the CD-ROM re-releases which were only in English, German and French.

[drnovice]

Yes I don't think MrFlibble (the forum administrator) allows to upload full original games, but I think I have uploaded only mod releases, so the EXEs could be modified.

If you want the last release that I found (who I suppose it's the original one), send me a MP. ;)

 

I'm trying to create a full multi-languages release, that could have all 5 languages, but I think that will be hard to change the Dune2.exe file because of the usual problem of room for bytes by opcodes.

[Wesker]

Then I'm removing the links from my last message, just in case. I hope that only referencing the name of the site is enough, although I can also remove that info if necessary.

 

A custom five language release featuring English, French, German, Italian and Spanish would be a very good thing, but I suppose you would have to adapt the Italian .FRE and Spanish .GER files to proper original extensions like .ITA and .SPA to disambiguate them from the proper French .FRE and German .GER files, and like you said, modifying the .exe file so it could be able to read those extensions.

 

What will yo do with speech in Italian and Spanish languages? Using English speech for them? Keeping them silent? Or maybe you will be reusing that interesting recorded speech from the "Teodosio" version for Italian language?

[drnovice]

I have to understand how work the setup.exe and setup*.dip files to add two languages to the three availables (Eng/Fre/Ger or Eng/Ita/Spa).

Moreover I saw that Dune2.exe file (by opendune c++ source code) has several exceptions about French language (variable is valued to 1, since 0 is english) and a bit for German language (variable is valued to 2). Same exceptions, as reverse the order of nouns (e.g. Atreides Infantry in english become Infanterie Atreides in french), it works so also for Italian, because germanic languages put the adjective first, but if German means Spanish, this exception should be even when language variable is valued to 2, right?.  In other hands it's a mess add new exceptions for other languages.

 

Regards other Westwood games: I didn't know the existence about italian language, I have to search for other ones.

I can say that Italian Dune 2 translation about mentat briefings and texts is very faithful than the original texts in English, apart some terminologies like told above. :)

[Wesker]

Now that you mention it, that's one of the few things I have always been annoyed about the Spanish translation: the order of nouns. It's not done right in Spanish, because the name of the faction comes first and then the name of the unit (e.g. "Atreides Soldier" in English becomes "Atreides Soldado" in Spanish). But I thought that was simply because of how the game is programmed, and didn't know that French (and Italian, because of using the same values as French) got that right! Spanish is then compromised because of having the same values of German, when the languages are not that similar to begin with (French and Italian do have more similarities). That's so cheap.

 

But I don't remember anything else wrong because of having to use the same values as German. In fact, the translation has all the needed fonts and characters that Spanish require like accented vocals, the "ñ" letter and the "¡" and "¿" characters at the beginning of exclamative/interrogative phrases. And the text translation is decent except for a couple of oddities like the "Load game" text in the in-game boxed menu being "Load - Cargar un juego" (Surely you don't need to keep that English "Load" at all? The title screen has a simpler "Cargar juego", on the other hand).

 

P.S.: I'm sure you guys have Italian translated versions of those Westwood games from the early 90's. I don't think Westwood did things with Italian differently compared to what they did with Spanish, and Dune II is a fact of it.

[Nyerguds]

If you have this official Spanish/Italian version, could you please give a link to it? I have an archive of all released Dune II versions and I'd love to add this one to it.

 

It'd also allow me to make my Dune II Editor compatible with it, in case the exe file differs from other releases.

 

And I honestly doubt MrFlibble would mind...

[Wesker]

Ok, I will post the links again. They were already posted in a previous message, but I edited them because I didn't want to do anything against possible forum rules.

 

In my case, I usually get this Dune II v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish version from this website, where they have the game uploaded here. Fact is, you need to register an account to download games from there, so in order to avoid this issue I'm attaching to this message what you can obtain by downloading it from that website. I hope this is not an inconvenience.

 

There's a couple of remarks you need to know about this attached version. First, there's a "leeme.txt" and a "JUGAR.BAT" file scattered which are NOT part of the game files. These were simply added by the guys in that website as a sort of watermarked files they include with every single game you can get from them, so of course, you can delete these files (I could have done it myself, but I didn't want to modify anything from the downloaded files).

 

And second, the copy protection is cracked in this release, resulting that every answer you give to the mentat question will be valid. This doesn't make it a "clean" release of the game for sure. I don't know if the version drnovice found (not the one which has the Spanish files messed up, but the other one he mentions after that) has the protection cracked or not, so maybe you would prefer that version in order to have the "cleanest" release possible, although that thing would only be really possible by getting the original floppies, which are VERY RARE to obtain for this particular version.

 

I don't know how much the .exe file differs from the other European three language releases. It should work similarly (because of still using .FRE and .GER files, albeit different in content), but there's probably some variations like translated Spanish/Italian content in place. You tell me.

DUNE2.rar

[Nyerguds]

I got it. I'll add it to the collection tomorrow.

Wow. That's got a lot of loose files in the folder...

[Wesker]

That's because this release seems to have all the content of ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK and GERMAN.PAK as uncompressed and scattered around .ENG .FRE and .GER files, with the .PAK files themselves nowhere to be found. I really don't know if this is because someone decided to uncompress the language files and distributed the game like that, or if this is a side effect of this version (maybe because of its translation process) and the game was already lke this in the original floppies. I don't think it was like that, but then again, we would have to check it with the floppies and that's highly unlikely given their rarity level. :/

 

If you wish, you can compile all the .ENG, .FRE and .GER files into their respective ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK and GERMAN.PAK files, obtaining a version of the game less abundant in files for you to put it in download form. Maybe you prefer it that way, so you could have all different versions keeping the same format.

[Nyerguds]

I checked the exe, and my editor identifies it as being the same as the normal 1.07 EU version... both the unofficial and the official pack.

Strangely, the official Italian-Spanish exe seems a few bytes longer than the regular EU 1.07 exe, with one byte actually different. The Italian version seems to use that same longer exe too, but without the modified byte. I assume that byte is the copy protection hack, meaning the Italian one is actually the original.

[edit]

I just checked... the modified byte is quite certainly the copy protection. After calling the _strcmp (string compare) function, the result of that function (in cpu register "AX") is tested for being 0 (which would mean the strings are identical). This check, which is done with "OR AX, AX", is now changed to "XOR AX, AX".

changed byte:

0004ED0F: 0B 31

Clarification for non-hackers: the CPU has a bunch of internal flags which it sets after executing an operation, which give extra information about the result of the action that was just executed. One of these flags is "the resulting value is 0".

An "OR" operation of a value with itself normally does nothing, meaning it can be used as simple "value is 0" test without any ill effects on the actual value (though usually, the binary compare command "TEST" is used for that, since it sets the flags without changing any values). The code after that then assumes that if the "value is 0" flag is set in the CPU, the copy protection check passed.

However, An "XOR" operation of a value (in this case, "AX") with itself always makes that value 0, since it is meant to only leave the bit differences between the two values. This means the "value is 0" flag is always enabled, forcing the "the check passed" status :)

Quite a clever little hack, really.

[drnovice]

Hey Nyerguds! How are you? :)

My (original) release doesn't have "JUGAR.BAT" but it has a "Léeme.txt" file that contains the source where I downloaded this version:

http://www.ellosnuncaloharian.com/dune-ii/

(the 3rd link)

 

Also here you need to register to download and they even ask you too many confidential information by a simple free registration... however I attach the release so it's simpler:

dune2eng_ita_esp.zip

 

what I could do now is create ITALIAN.PAK and SPANISH.PAK archive to contain all ".FRE" and ".GER" files linked to DUNE2.EXE file.

 

I would like to have the Dune 2000 .AUD files about the units speech and (mentat) game alerts ingame: anyone has got them?

Otherwise I have to find the box of my italian release, but I just had a move...

[Nyerguds]

I uploaded both versions in http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/dune/dune2versions/

Note that I used the unhacked version of the exe in both packs, and removed any unofficial files like the bat and readme stuff.

[edit]

drnovice: Sorry, I read through this at 2:00 yesterday and really couldn't be bothered to read all posts... isn't that the same that was already attached?

[edit again]

I only got the English and German Dune 2000, sorry. I'd love to have isos of other languages though; I kinda collect different-language versions of WW games :)

(my most prized possession is the Japanese Sega Saturn version of C&C1, with Japanese dubbed videos :D)

[Nyerguds]

Right. time to finally actually read the thread and give my opinions.

 

(I don't like reusing voice files from other games like it was done with fantranslations of Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer Red Alert, so I don't think it would be a good idea to have them from Dune 2000)

Really? That worked out splendidly for the Spanish C&C pack using Tiberian Sun voices though. Do note that while the unit voices are indeed just copied, the Spanish TD EVA doesn't simply reuse the TS EVA voice set. I've had to manually copy and paste vowels together from the TS voice briefings to get all EVA voices I needed, since loads of them are different between the two games. For example, TS has no nuke, and thus no nuke announcements. Another example of my Frankenstein-voices is this one :)

(I've also done the reverse, using the English TD EVA to make voices needed for the Tiberian Sun mod "Dawn of the Tiberium Age" :P)

 

What I would like it's simply to make the developers of OpenDune, Dune Legacy and Dune Dynasty aware of these versions and add compatibility to them (or proper compatibility in the case of OpenDune, because it's possible to make the game running despite of the presence of several font/character errors). These Spanish and Italian versions of Dune II are not fantranslations, but official Westwood/Virgin products released in 1993, and they should be considered by these source ports as such.

One big problem with this is the fact it recycles the French and German filenames, though.

See, Dune 2's file loading system doesn't work with a system that automatically adds extensions and loads the resulting filenames. If you give my Dune II Editor a try, you'll see it simply has one giant list of all filenames it ever uses. This means that even if the files were all renamed to have their correct extension, the internal files list of the game should be expanded, and as drnovice remarked, all game code should be adjusted to use them.

Oddly, I do remember that when hacking the setup, I encountered these two as additional languages that could be selected.

 

A custom five language release featuring English, French, German, Italian and Spanish would be a very good thing, but I suppose you would have to adapt the Italian .FRE and Spanish .GER files to proper original extensions like .ITA and .SPA to disambiguate them from the proper French .FRE and German .GER files, and like you said, modifying the .exe file so it could be able to read those extensions.

As stated above, this is completely impossible. OpenDune/Dune Dynasty can do this, since they got the source code, but the original can never be hacked to such an extent that new file entries can be added. There's simply no extra space in the exe file to put the data, and hacking the exe to expand it is nigh-impossible since it destroys all internal references going beyond that expanded point.

 

That's because this release seems to have all the content of ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK and GERMAN.PAK as uncompressed and scattered around .ENG .FRE and .GER files, with the .PAK files themselves nowhere to be found.

PAK (and C&C's MIX) files don't actually compress anything ;)

[dynasty]

I always wondered why OpenDUNE listed Italian and Spanish, but never did anything with it.

 

Moreover I saw that Dune2.exe file (by opendune c++ source code) has several exceptions about French language (variable is valued to 1, since 0 is english) and a bit for German language (variable is valued to 2). Same exceptions, as reverse the order of nouns (e.g. Atreides Infantry in english become Infanterie Atreides in french), it works so also for Italian, because germanic languages put the adjective first, but if German means Spanish, this exception should be even when language variable is valued to 2, right?.  In other hands it's a mess add new exceptions for other languages.

Hehe, it's not really as horrendous as you make it sound. I'm pretty
sure there are only two cases:
"<House> <Structure> is destroyed" and "<House> <Unit> destroyed"

If you want to patch the English-Italian-Spanish binary, I guess it could be done.
But a combined 5-language version isn't possible as Nyerguds has already elaborated on.
 

If you have this official Spanish/Italian version, could you please give a link to it? I have an archive of all released Dune II versions and I'd love to add this one to it.
 
It'd also allow me to make my Dune II Editor compatible with it, in case the exe file differs from other releases.
 
And I honestly doubt MrFlibble would mind...

Might as well add this to the collection too: http://www.old-games.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=34477

[Nyerguds]

Huh. The exe inside d2_anykey_107.zip gives a virus warning...

Also, that thread doesn't actually contain the game, only updates for a Russian version. The actual Russian version isn't in the downloads.

[edit]

Found it in the site's downloads section. I added them all as "dune2_ak" entries. Files only, no patch apps.

[MrFlibble]

Yes I don't think MrFlibble (the forum administrator) allows to upload full original games, but I think I have uploaded only mod releases, so the EXEs could be modified.

Alright, I'll just pretend I didn't notice anything ;) (This is a huge thread and I'm quite busy with other stuff ATM.)

That's right, this version has Italian language stored in the .FRE files and Spanish language stored in the .GER files, like I said. Funny way to do it, but then again, it's an official version and not a fantranslation, so you have to deal with it. They probably weren't that bothered to program proper language extensions for the new languages and instead they just reused what they already had done for French and German.

This is quite surprising, I remember Nyerguds helped me hack the setup programme from v1.07 (to allow for multiple sound device selection), and actually both the setup and the game itself has full support for five languages, including Italian and Spanish. The ITA and SPA extensions are present from v1.0 onwards (and maybe even in the pre-release demo of the game, I'm not sure), in an obvious parallel to the multi-language system of other Westwood releases in the early nineties.

Strangely, the official Italian-Spanish exe seems a few bytes longer than the regular EU 1.07 exe, with one byte actually different. The Italian version seems to use that same longer exe too, but without the modified byte. I assume that byte is the copy protection hack, meaning the Italian one is actually the original.

Does this "longer" version of the v1.07 EXE actually have any similarity to the v1.07 intro-only demo you found on the Kyrandia CD? IIRC that EXE is also a bit longer than the "regular" EU v1.07 EXE, but I have no idea why (the length difference doesn't seem to be related to the hack that made the demo EXE return to the intro loop rather than go to the main menu screen).

As stated above, this is completely impossible. OpenDune/Dune Dynasty can do this, since they got the source code, but the original can never be hacked to such an extent that new file entries can be added. There's simply no extra space in the exe file to put the data, and hacking the exe to expand it is nigh-impossible since it destroys all internal references going beyond that expanded point.

Yes, but you can just put the extra language files with correct extensions into the game's root directory, and it will read them from there.

Might as well add this to the collection too: http://www.old-games.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=34477

I guess Nyer would be more interested in the original unofficial Russian translation from 1994 (which uses Dune II v1.0). I was actually going to offer that version sometime but keep forgetting that :) There's also another Russian version, from 1993, which is based on the patched US v1.07 but it doesn't have any translated voice-overs, only the text.

[Nyerguds]

Does this "longer" version of the v1.07 EXE actually have any similarity to the v1.07 intro-only demo you found on the Kyrandia CD? IIRC that EXE is also a bit longer than the "regular" EU v1.07 EXE, but I have no idea why (the length difference doesn't seem to be related to the hack that made the demo EXE return to the intro loop rather than go to the main menu screen).

Really, it's literally the 1.07 EU exe with some bytes padded to the end. I'm surprised it doesn't have problems with that...

 

Yes, but you can just put the extra language files with correct extensions into the game's root directory, and it will read them from there.

with "correct" extensions, do you mean the fre/ger ones? There's no way the game will handle the ita/spa ones if the files aren't in its internal list. That reply you quoted was to him inquiring about the plausibility of a full 5-language version.

 

I guess Nyer would be more interested in the original unofficial Russian translation from 1994 (which uses Dune II v1.0). I was actually going to offer that version sometime but keep forgetting that :) There's also another Russian version, from 1993, which is based on the patched US v1.07 but it doesn't have any translated voice-overs, only the text.

Already found it in their downloads. See the edit in my previous post :P

[Wesker]

Ok, I think I got lost with the whole "game has already five language support implemented but really doesn't have it so it would be impossible to add it" discussion. But to be honest, I don't really need a vanilla five language version, because I use the English/Italian/Spanish version and dismiss French and German entirely as I don't really need them. Now, the source ports are different story. I hope some of them like OpenDune, Dune Legacy and Dune Dynasty are supporting these additional languages soon, and if they are able to expand their strings and have more than three languages at the same time, even better.

 

I checked the exe, and my editor identifies it as being the same as the normal 1.07 EU version... both the unofficial and the official pack.

What do you mean with "both the unofficial and the official pack"?

 

Strangely, the official Italian-Spanish exe seems a few bytes longer than the regular EU 1.07 exe, with one byte actually different. The Italian version seems to use that same longer exe too, but without the modified byte. I assume that byte is the copy protection hack, meaning the Italian one is actually the original.

With "Italian version" you mean the 1997 "Teodosio" Italian dubbed version?

So it uses the same European three language .exe? Odd. Because of apparently being a monolingual verison, I thought it would use closer .exe to that of the North American English-only versions.

 

I would like to have the Dune 2000 .AUD files about the units speech and (mentat) game alerts ingame: anyone has got them?

So you don't like what "Teodosio" did, uh? You prefer a more "commercial" replacement. I think it adds some charm and it's more closer to a 1993 circa dub that what could be attempted by simply getting the Dune 2000 speech over, but if you really prefer that then I guess it will be fine. Spanish language could also benefit that way with its own Spanish version of Dune 2000.

I only have the Spanish version of Dune 2000 for both PC and PlayStation and no other language version of this game, sorry.

 

Really? That worked out splendidly for the Spanish C&C pack using Tiberian Sun voices though. Do note that while the unit voices are indeed just copied, the Spanish TD EVA doesn't simply reuse the TS EVA voice set. I've had to manually copy and paste vowels together from the TS voice briefings to get all EVA voices I needed, since loads of them are different between the two games. For example, TS has no nuke, and thus no nuke announcements. Another example of my Frankenstein-voices is this one :)

(I've also done the reverse, using the English TD EVA to make voices needed for the Tiberian Sun mod "Dawn of the Tiberium Age" :P)

I don't say it's not a good work, but to me that's straight recycling speech that is actually intended for another game, so you end up listening the very same phrases in both. And it's not even complete, because the commandos still speak English as the "commando units" from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun are entirely different (funnily enough, they reused Umagon's voice for Tanya in the similar Command & Conquer: Red Alert fantranslation). Add to that the fact that not having proper dubbed videos would never make this a properly dubbed version like it would be a retail product. Someone in the "CNCNZ" forums subbed the videos though, so what I prefer is having a translated version with all texts and subbed videos and keeping the voice in English as that would be closer to what Westwood could have released, rather than a "half-dubbed" version which is inconsistent having some parts dubbed and others not.

But to be honest, if I had to use this speech pack in either Command & Conquer or Command & Conquer: Red Alert (which has a similar Spanish speech pak also reusing Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun's speech), I would opt for Command & Conquer for sure, as Command & Conquer: Red Alert is even worse. All the speech from specific units like the Spy and the Thief is lost entirely and replaced with regular units speech, and not only the EVA speech changes from a man to that of a woman, but there's also some renmants of English EVA speech that weren't replaced at all. All in all, I definitely prefer this one having Spanish text and English speech, given the fact that this one also has all videos subbed in Spanish by some fantranslator in the "Abandonsocios" community like it was done for Command & Conquer by that user in "CNCNZ".

 

PAK (and C&C's MIX) files don't actually compress anything ;)

Ok, ok, so replace all "compressed" and "uncompressed" wording with "packed" and "unpacked" equivalents. Is it better and more accurately expressed now? xD

You know what I mean, the fact of having all the content of the .PAK files scattered around as .ENG, .FRE and .GER rather than inside the proper .PAK files specific to each language (ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK, GERMAN.PAK).

Surely it would be better to have these language files packed altogether rather than having all of them scattered around? Wouldn't that be more confy? And I don't think that's something very complicated to do.

[Nyerguds]

What do you mean with "both the unofficial and the official pack"

The second Italian translation that was attached. It uses the same exe.

 

With "Italian version" you mean the 1997 "Teodosio" Italian dubbed version?

I... guess? I just checked the exe.

 

So it uses the same European three language .exe? Odd. Because of apparently being a monolingual verison, I thought it would use closer .exe to that of the North American English-only versions.

Nope, exactly the same exe, except for the security check hack. Note that what makes a version look "monolingual" is probably just the choices you get in the setup program. I didn't check that for differences.

 

Add to that the fact that not having proper dubbed videos would never make this a properly dubbed version like it would be a retail product. Someone in the "CNCNZ" forums subbed the videos though, so what I prefer is having a translated version with all texts and subbed videos and keeping the voice in English as that would be closer to what Westwood could have released, rather than a "half-dubbed" version which is inconsistent having some parts dubbed and others not.

It might surprise you then that the Japanese C&C1 on Sega Saturn is completely in English, beside the voice sets and dubbed videos.

 

Surely it would be better to have these language files packed altogether rather than having all of them scattered around? Wouldn't that be more confy? And I don't think that's something very complicated to do.

Oh, that's definitely easy to do.