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for those with no attention span or who are only having a glance: THERE IS NO PLAYABLE CONTENT JUST YET! I'LL BE EDITING THIS POST WITH THE DEBUT MISSION LATER! UNTIL THEN, THIS IS MERELY INFO ON THE NEW TILESET AND BASIC ASSETS FOR MAPPING WITH. hallo. this thing is almost done, so I guess I'll put it out there kinda sorta maybe a little. technically the tileset is complete, but I'm still working on the playable example mission, and I'll be continuing to make tweaks to the tileset until that's done, so... ya know, it ain't official just yet anyway, here's a full map image of the current state of the debut mission-to-be: and here's an image of just the starting area. this is the sort of thing that will be pictured in the tactical map, so it's not a spoiler. I mean, you clicked on this thread to get a look at the new tileset, yeah? surely this is fine! nobody had better come complaining to me later about spoilers when I hid the full map image!! this tileset is hand-drawn primarily by ZoeO, AKA my sister who did the lovely splash art for the Summers' Solstice campaign, among other things like those new Barracks we've been seeing in-game, the new smuggler sand mouse or mercenary rock dragon minimap emblems, and more this download link is for d2k editor v2.0-compatible mapping assets. again, nothing playable here just yet. if you're a mapper and want to mess around with the tileset, knock your socks off. you can find a summarizing list of credits under the FAQs section around the bottom of this post. also included are .r16s of the recolored crater assets. auto-smooth works for water and water bridges too, making that easier to map with https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gb2I4-xpLj1UG5rShNWdwna-RSloT6yG/view what's auto-smooth? it's that feature you might be familiar with from Arrakis maps that automatically paints borders. shift+click the edge of a whole buncha painted water tiles like the first screenie here, and you'll wind up with the second screenie. makes painting water or water bridges very simple and easy before I continue, here's a clip testing the first five minutes or so of the debut mission-to-be https://streamable.com/04dlae this streamable link will expire eventually, but it's here for now to give a peek at what will be the first playable mission, by me at least, on the tileset it's rough around the edges and totally unbalanced at this stage. my intent with this test was merely to examine the macro game rebalancing, and I got a pretty good look at how the early game goes. very safe build order, lots of production off two refs and four harvs with hard mode's build costs, and I would have had more income after getting a couple of rigs up on the southern island. when I tweak the AI so they don't send end-tech stuff in their first attack, this should feel pretty good anyway, below is a list of features, some purely about the aesthetic and some involving concepts and plans I have for this tileset. no spoilers, really, this is just hidden for the purpose of sectioning and condensing the thread. it features: I've been detailing progress on the creation of this tileset in a dedicated channel over in Feda's Landsraad discord server. if y'all wanna check out my diary, you can find it there. spoiler alert, obviously, but you could hang around the server anyway for all sorts of other d2k stuff. here's a link to the pinned thread which itself has a link to said server: I'll go on to elaborate on the development process and list answers to some frequently asked questions here though first, here are a buncha development screenies. apologies in advance for crashing your computer if you look under here; there are a ton of images. I guess maybe it might help that most of them are hidden under secondary spoilers? maybe? it is impossible to fathom how much effort this was without witnessing the absurdity of the development process. this is the extent of my sister's generosity - she's owed our highest praise for all her hard work! and I make sure any she receives is passed along to her, as she doesn't frequent this locale I will be doing my best to justify all her efforts: make this tileset simple to draw for other mappers through carefully customized editor presets, come up with remaps for Arrakis tilesets so they can be quickly converted, characterizing it strongly through a passionately-crafted series of campaigns including old and new factions... all that stuff here are some FAQs that's all for now. check back later for the debut mission. I'll be sure to edit the thread's name when that's ready

thank you very much!  PsYcHo did great work on their voxels it's a process, that's for sure. creation of the voxel, polishing and recoloring, frame alignment and adjustment, there used to be palette conversion issues to deal with... the palette differs for each structure. the colors are all defined by their position in the palette, and can be customized. there are some new units that have green faction color pixels and dark blue shadows doubt not at all, Falcon  if you still have those, I would love to see them. can't promise anything with regards to implementation, but... the campaign PsYcHo used the new hovertech units in is a smugglers one. as for my intent, the two hover units seen in that clip will be the main battle tanks or long-range fire support units for the new 'native' faction on Arkanon. they can be ordered at the Starport. notably, hovertech is incapable of crushing infantry, meaning this faction will feel even more different than one might expect from the original ones there are plenty of counterbalancing factors, of course. their infantry units (when they're done) will be well-rounded and compete with the Sardaukar, their Siege Tank equivalent unit emerges from the Light Factory, uhh... but, you know. and yeah, they'll get Harvesters and high-end tanks that can crush stuff, not that that really matters cuz those are slow units but yeah it occurs to me that we've been off-topic for a while now  I'll see about making a proper thread for this tileset now that news of its existence is out there. we can continue on this subject over there, and I can update that thread with the proper release in due time  I'll edit this post with a link when it's done, or reply with a link later EDIT: got that thread worked up. now we can discuss this stuff somewhere relevant https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/37027-wip-kinda-arkanon-tileset/

Holy hell! Love those tanks! Looks quite ixian to be honest. I wonder about how hard is to make new sprites. I made those static buildings and mix-and-match were damned. I am not sure I used the proper whit-grey colours what the game (theoretically) swap to faction colours... Maybe +3-5 frames per buildings could work ingame, not sure. I usually just tinkering around but rarely implement anything in games myself. I once made some unit sprites for someone. Have no clue if he may succeed to insert them ingame or not. I may still have those sprites somewhere if anyone interested (doubt so?)... What I wonder since a while is... Well, I saw tons of new units in the different scenarios like AA-tanks (legion gatling or what), RPG quad, flametank... I would love some scenario what let the player build or access via Starport for all those new units! I could imagine some nice assault groups with them.

thank you very much! my sis worked hard on this tileset  I hope it goes to great use for other mappers as well. I have much planned for it, myself. there are even some alternative colors for those pink salts there, like RA ore gold or TS tib green or blue well, it wasn't just my sis, but it was mostly her work. I'm handling the implementation and technical end of things, of course, and I did minor touch-up work on many of the tiles. the water assets are Kipp's work, and they've been seen before in some SS maps or in other campaigns, like Flippy's Great Battle of Arrakis campaign. Kipp kindly provided some recolors of the water for me, and I took the one that most people seemed to like (by a narrow margin, there were some great other options) and blended them with the new salt flats terrain, the sand-equivalent tiles. my sis touched them up further with some faded purple highlights, like those subtle colors that can be seen in the cliffs and shale/flats borders it took many drafts and lots of testing to shape it up 'til this point. to give an idea of how exactly she went above and beyond... Westwood appears to have worked off one thin Spice tile and airbrushed around it to make the various thin Spice tiles we see in-game. the pink salts on Arkanon are individually drawn, meaning we get to see them shifted around and take on all sorts of shapes as Harvesters suck them up streamable links expire eventually, so at some point this video will no longer be available. that's fine, this is just a look at the debut mission I'll be releasing along with the tileset. I can just link to the dedicated thread here when it's up at some point hopefully soon https://streamable.com/04dlae the map isn't balanced yet and the enemy currently sends end-tech stuff for their first attacks, so of course I get my butt kicked. xD I was only trying to see how the new economy and macro balance work out in the early game. it seems player income balance is pretty reasonable! that was a very safe build order, lots of infantry and a few tanks produced, and I would have had more income after getting some rigs up on the southern island. just gotta tweak some other parameters to make it fair game anyway, the clip also showcases in-game features. about the tileset specifically: the way the salts look being harvested on the left side of my base, the recolored craters, build spots specifically drawn for Mining Rigs to generate infinite funds (because Spice blooms are not meant to be used on this tileset, or at least I don't intend to use them, so the resources on the map don't regenerate), water being traversable by hovertech... lotsa stuff as a side note, those new units are primarily PsYcHo's work. I touch up all the new spritesets with shadows, removing erroneous pixels, polishing faction color, that kinda thing. Klofkac has been helping design and streamline their more advanced systems, like their hovering animation and, uhh... well, the shield system doesn't quiiite work yet, those units are way beefier than they should be in this clip, but we expect to iron out the kinks in that system without too much more effort. the shields are very new, I only drew those up recently, but the hovering animation appears in PsYcHo's mini-campaign for sure. and, umm... my sis generously provides sidebar icons for the new units. they've already made an appearance in PsYcHo's mini-campaign, which is linked in that Landsraad disc server. hopefully Cm makes a thread for that soon ayyy, zerg stuff  that looks pretty interesting! I like how the Refinery came out, especially. the Extractor assets look really nice arranged like that

Wow! Some nice looking terrain! I never tried to create terrain but a few years ago I mixed some Tleilaxu buildings...