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It's a pity about D2k's graphics behavior If it were a bit more flexible, we could have the edges be buildable without hecking up the graphics when a structure is sold or destroyed, and then there are the craters... Still, I've been following your progress on this oldschool campaign and it's great what you worked up, man. Just commenting here to let you know I've been looking at places other than the secret modder Discord. (which you should totally join @Klofkac!)

In Ordos 8. I will be having a godlike Harkonnen soldier as opponent. Luckily, the soldier decided to show mercy to me, by not shooting or attacking my base. Proly next week on my Youtube channel

I may workaround and giving the option of a 3x3 area that it is not too near to the spice to make something in the middle. Well, in Dune 2 you have a limit of buildings, limit of units, slow pace, slow 1 by 1 movementet... in Dune 2000 you can even do more things like selling buildings and tricking the Ais much more easily; I already left the players the option to build from 1 safe spot into the enemy base and do that cheap tactic, but at least the player need to work a bit for that. It's hard to make a line of what somebody wants: a) A map that requires to do some work to beat it. b) A map easily beateble not because it's easy, but because how broken it is. For example, Atreides mission 4; do you think Westwood really planned to do a map you can beat at 3 minutes by just using the initial units? maybe you find fun playing that way, but I wonder Westwood creators was even aware that people will try to do that, and it's not like you need to be a pro, just send your units and that's it, a gun turret out, heavy fact out and the barracks out and you are playing alone. There is an idea on a video I saw long time ago: if you add in a Doom kind of game an OP weapon, doesn't matter if the weapon it's so OP that make the game dulls and boring... people will be compeled to use it at any cost... and it's not until you finish the game that your realize that you weren't having fun since you get that superweapon; but now it is too late, you finished the game with an empty feeling... you won't be playing this game anytime soon or maybe never, so you think on how bad the designed and how bad the game it´s just for a simple flaw. I always feel that If I add any kind of cheap way to win, people will use it and then complaign and how easy the mission it is. I wonder how many people played that Atreides map for the first time, beated that easily and said "what was the point of this map? these designers have no idea how to make a game". People still replays dune 2k original maps, I wonder if anybody ever replay any custom maps or, once that mission it's beated, proceed to delete the files from their computer. I guess you mean the area I disconnect in the current version, yes, you can concrete jump into another area, but since I didn't ever give you the 3x3 area enough for a MCV I didn't care. Now I found another place you can concrete jumps. If I connect that area I will fix those problems. And maybe I make enough room for a 3x3 building but not giving too much advantage for placing a ref there, just like a slighy advantage. In Dune 2 I rarely build MCV; game has a unit limit so with 3 refineries and 4 harverstersts it's more than enough to me to have an economy and, since you reach the unit limit so soon, you will end having "silos needed" text so I keep stoping the harversters from time to time to avoid loosing money. Here, on this map, building the MCV it's a positive effect that I tried to make vaild by: a) Making a big area on the top-left area (safe from any attack, except some Fremens that may spawn over there). b) Placing 4 reaaaaallly big mine files really near over that area. So it's not a "don't worry, I don't build them, other people may do"; it's a "I, the author of this map, I want people to build and deploy an MCV". The reward; 4 big mine fields that will raise your economy. "But I don't like/I hate/I don't let myself/... to build an MCV" "Well, then you will get punished". If I let refineries (1 or 2) being builded on the top (now discconected) area, then there is no purpose of waiting for the expensive MCV, you already will have refineries closer to the spice areas. So, you are not getting punished, the player that actually use his time and money on that slow-expensive MCV it's the one that it is punished. For example, I play the game by killing the infantry with bullets, not crushing over them (for the most part), but on the Fey's map, with waves that go 40 troopers per 4-5 combat tanks, I don't follow my own rule because his maps not just are hard, but the player it's expected to actually use tanks to crush over them. I cannot go into him and say "reduce the production of troopers and make the AI to build slower because I never crush into enemies with my tanks, and don't have enough money to build sieges and infantrys all over the place to counter them". Anyway, in short; I will think I will do with the map; probably I will connect and maybe I let you to expand more although you still don't have a 3x3 area, but you build turrets in other places or something like that. I won't let the concrete jumping to go too far.

Yes, I think I'm getting your point. However, even if the upper area is connected to your base area, it won't give you that much extra room to build (even if there's place to build just one 3*3 building), so if you still want to expand more and have more space, you need MCV anyway and take over some other isolated island. I remember in original Dune 2 I played a mission where player's area was connected with enemy area so I could build a concrete path to them. In some missions the player's areas had very bizzare shapes, something similar to lower and upper narrow areas in your map, and I could build long concrete paths on them. It was something like an iconic thing to Dune 2 terrain. So I expected your map was made to mimic aspects of original Dune 2 as much as possible, including this terrain quirk, and your map was very exactly desigled like that, the only missing thing was buildable edge and narrow tiles. The only problem in this map I see is that the upper narrow rock area is too close to quite big isolated area above it, so that you could concrete-jump on it. You could fix it by moving the areas farther to each other to avoid that. Note that in Original Dune 2, I seldom built a MCV to expand my base on other island, so if I don't build it in your Dune 2000 map, just don't worry, that's the way how I'm used to play. When I earlier played your map, at the time edge tiles were not buildable, I didn't build a MCV anyway. And in my opinion, if there are other players who like building and using MCVs, they will do that anyway even if they can now expand a little bit more on those narrow tiles. It's more about "making both kinds of players happy".

The only reason those areas were connected in the first place was because you couldn't build on top of them. If while doing the tileset I opted for the "edges were buildable" the player base will be 100% isolated from the rest to avoid concrete jumping into another area. Or you think it is a coincidence that any buildable room was exactly 5 tiles away from your main land? I didn't wanted yet another "player main base it's an isolated land", but because now you can actually build on top of those tiles, I was forced to remove the connection... or doing other workarounds like here; I wanted to encourage the use of an MCV to deploy into a new area and/or make use of carryalls; letting the players to expand that easily remove any purpose to build or purchase those two units; I am trying really hard to make those units to be usefull T_T. Even right now you can exploit even further the "deploy turrets into the enemy base" because now you can do it into the 2 enemy's Ais while I wanted to give the option to use it only against 1. I still can reconnect the top-side, but I won't leave any 3x3 area to deploy more refs; place windtraps, turrets or barracks all you want, but I prefer letting the MCV and the carryall to have some kind of purpose (if the map was much bigger I won't mind, but it's not). Probably I need to edit a bit that part too avoid more concrete-jumping. If you want to have more fun by being more "free" to do whatever you want I highly recommend you to play the dune 2 campaign with the retrotileset: https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/27503-release-dune-2-based-campaign-for-dune-2000-old-campaign-rearrange/ I did a retranslation on that campaign, not an adaptation, which means that all those rock-island that were separated 5 tiles (to avoid concrete jumping) now are only 3, so here in multiple maps you can expand your base in areas withouth any trouble. I consider the "classic" version the official one, an the retro it's more to a nostalgic value so I don't mind having some "break-maps" by letting the players deploying buildings where it shouldn't. Also, I think you may find more fun since the AI doesn't make use of an emergency build, they always build the same pace whatever under attack or not (the pace decrease the more Ais you fight against, so the unit build rate it's slower the more Ais are present), so doing quick-small skirmish/target attacks (to take 2-3 buildings and retreat) it's not punished by a increase unit build production; you can even capture the enemy silos full if the map doesn't drag for too long. Maps are also much faster to beat because there there are not multi Ais controlling every single factory, and the initial money given to the player it's always 2.5 from the original; so the beggining of the map will be much more fast paced. So if you want to have some fun by doing things that weren't suppose to happen initially, play the campaign instead. You may exploit some of the maps in ways I didn't even think of.