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actually yeah! Danny Danku's working on a new xna client that will allow build queues to be enabled or disabled with a checkbox in the lobby, similar to switching on worms or crates. moving stuff over to skirmish/multiplayer is still a work in progress and rough around the edges due to the nature of differences between single- and multi-player, but yeah, queues are doable already over there I'm not sure there's a forum post about it yet, and I'll direct Danku to this post. if he has an account here, maybe he can reply, himself. otherwise, he links new versions of the xna client over in the Landsraad Discord server, which itself is linked in a post pinned to the top of this d2k section of the forums. feel free to swing by anytime I'll see if I can getcha a link later and edit this post with it if he ain't available edit: I think he can drop by later. I'll leave it to him ^^

A nice addition to my newest installation of modded Emperor.

Major necro but this AI mod has me greatly interested. I want to merge the changes this AI mod does in the rules.txt with my own rules.txt if possible. EDIT: I just compared the rulest.txt file in this mod with the unmodified rules.txt file for Emperor using this site: diff. There is not a single change made. The only thing different is the name of the file. Huh. What was the point of this file?

unfortunately custom games are broken in this version. you can only do 1v1 or 2v2, and you cannot add any A.I. players. The coop is pretty cool, although the second player doesn't have a lot of space to build in the first couple of missions.

How did you mod in the Supply drop for the starports? That idea sounds perfect to help games where there is no spice.

I think I figured it out. In the weapon settings change MyIndex to 0. I changed all the settings for the weapon FREMEN_L to be the same settings for the weapon SOUND, except instead of MyIndex being set to 6 (which causes that blue ball GFX to show when firing the weapon) like it is for SOUND set it to 0, like it is for minigunners. It's hard to see (especially when playing at 1920 x 1080 resolution) but you can see a little shimmering ball being fired, like a mini version of the Sonic Tank's projectile. Question: anyone know what weapon BULLET14 is? I didn't see it used by any units.

WOAH that's awesome. Is there anyway to make this function work for Skirmish/Multiplayer?

Hey everyone, long-time lurker here. I’ve recently been on a massive Westwood RTS kick and decided to dust off Dune 2000 for some multiplayer action via CNCNet. It’s been great reliving those Harkonnen campaigns, but I’ve hit a technical wall that’s honestly driving me a bit crazy and I'm hoping someone here has dealt with something similar. The specific point I’m struggling with is the frequent "Unable to connect to players" error, especially when I try to host a lobby. I’ve noticed this started happening right after I upgraded my home setup to a newer wireless gateway provided by my ISP. While the raw speeds are incredible for downloading huge modern titles, I have a feeling the way this gateway handles NAT and internal traffic is totally clashing with the peer-to-peer protocols that older games like Dune 2000 rely on. I remember back in the late 90s, the biggest hurdle was just getting a stable phone line without someone picking up the extension. Now, I have fiber-level speeds, but the "smart" security features on this modern gateway seem to flag classic game traffic as suspicious. I’ve gone into the admin panel to mess with port forwarding and even tried toggling the UPnP settings, but I’m still seeing these weird latency spikes every time a large group of units starts moving on screen. It’s like the hardware is trying too hard to "optimize" the packet flow and ends up causing a bottleneck for the real-time data these older engines need. Has anyone else here successfully navigated the settings on a modern wireless gateway to keep their retro RTS matches stable, or are we just doomed to deal with these "smart" security layers getting in the way of our nostalgia? I’d hate to give up on multiplayer just because my hardware is too clever for its own good.

Hola, yo también hablo español pero este es primeramente un foro en inglés. Si puedes usar algún traductor en inglés (más que nada para que en el futuro cualquiera pueda ayudarte) mejor que mejor. Todas las campañas y mods se pueden usar con gruntmods, de hecho, eso es lo que hacemos, creamos misiones para funcionar con gruntmods. Todas y cada una de las listadas aquí son para este sistema. Tienes que descargarlas, descomprimir y aplicarlas correctamente pero todo debería funcionar. Sigue las indicaciones del anterior usuario y hazte con el último exe para asegurarte que todas funcionan perfectamente. Ah, y para otra, si es posible escribe en otra parte del foro y no aquí. Más que nada porque el post principal es el listado de todo lo que existe (para dune 2000) y uso los posts de a continuación para escribir que he actualizado y que cosa he añadido o retirado.

Welcome back! Yes, Gruntmods or Dunemaster can handle all the modded missions, but you might need to update your game exe to support certain advanced / recent missions. The advancements Klofkac has made are detailed in his devlog thread over here: Hope that helps!

Approved message, here is english translation

Hola a todos , quería daros las gracias de ante mano por admitirme en el foro, soy un jugador que a vuelto tras muchos años a jugar a este juego y tela menudo trabajo están haciendo me quito el sombrero,,, soy novato en esto de los mods etc,,, y quería saber si todos las campañas, misiones los puedo usar con gruntmods para pc ? de por si lleva bastantes para hecharle horas pero me surgió la curiosidad , muchas gracias un saludo

Klofkac recently added real queueing to the game. I've been asked to add it to SS, so... details below: I guess that's all, so, good luck and have fun!

Now that que is awesome! I would love to implement that. And im fine with discussing it here or the new campaign thread.

Ah yes, I remember releasing that awhile ago. Glad to be back and editing again Thank you for the insightful tips! Guess im stuck in the old way of naming mission files, I will go ahead an update the mission and folder names so things arent overridden or are too generic. I would rather be consistent and be unique in naming these things so players dont have issues. I will absolutely join that discord server, love the idea of an active community still regarding editing for dune 2k My last goal is to add custom unit types to the game, still working that out.

Hey, long time. I remembre I rearrange your very old campaign because you had to add the imperial palace on the building queue or something like that. Glad to see you are back and creating a campaign. I only gave the missions a quick glance, just to see how a couple of missions locked (but didn´t wanted to see events or anything in deep just to play them blind later). There is already a small issue which it is not exactly your fault. The missions gruntlords release waaaaay back then, the one called "rise of the mercenaries", as you may remember as those they are only 2 missions, well, those missions were named M1v1.map and M2v1.map, which it is the same name you gave yours. If it is possible, give the files a different name. You don´t need to change the name of the campaign or the customcampaign folder stuff, that seems fine. But if you can, you can make your files "Mercenary guild 1.map /.mis /.ini" and same for all 9. Files no need to have any specific name for any specific faction so you can write whatever you want, is just to avoid overwritting those 2 missions from gruntlords. For example, when I rearrange these old campaign from Feda I wrote the name of the authors as part of the file, and this works fine. Also, this another thing is not really necesary: the customcampaign folder you added has "mercenaries" which it is fine, just a bit generic. If you also want you can have it as "mercenariesguild" just in case in the future somebody does a mercenary campaign and decided to use a generic named convention. Again, this is not mandatory, but the same as gruntmods using a generic m1v1.map file, which now can be an issue with yours, a future modder can generate a issue with a generic "mercenary" folder. If you want to get insta feedback on the mission or simply watching people playing it, here on the our discord there is a person that likes to record playing every single new mission or campaign drop and then he shares, so you can see people playing your mission, or at least know for sure that people are playing it even if on the forum we are not too active. You can read the post. The discord is mostly for singleplayer and modders, any question on "how you do this or that" can be solved here if you need help, or if you want to play the game and don´t know which campaign to pick from the big list.

see you there, mate! ping Fey there anytime, I can help ya set up the following: ah, we've actually got a proper queue now. it's hot off the presses, made more recently than the ArkDebut mission. behold: very customizable. comes with bulk, priority, infinite, and other queue functions I see you created a thread for your new merc / guild campaign, so I suppose that would also be a fine place to discuss it further

Hey everyone. I have been on hiatus from the Dune 2000 community for awhile and jumped back in recently. Couldnt believe the amazing contributions and additions to the editors. With that, I decided to do a quick design of a Mercenary Guild campaign. I tried to tie in their Personality/Function as best as I could within the Great Spice War. They appear to be simply Pragmatic, Loyal to only those who pay, not ideological or political I welcome any feedback, or any bugs/issues within the campaign Hope you enjoy INSTALL: Will require the latest gruntmods edition to utilize added colours and custom mission parameters Place the missions in your data/mission folder, and the CustomCampaignData in your dune2000/CustomCampaignData folder CustomCampaignData.rar Mercenary Guild.rar

Youll find all the patches on the D2k site, all you need to do is put it in base director of the orignal dune game. First patch the game to 1.06, then apply the custom patches https://d2kplus.com/patches/high-resolution-patch/

Will do thanks! I am really enjoying all the amazing contributions to the mission editor. I created a basic build que by just handpicking the unit and checking cash stores with a timer. Also did a auto repair when buildings are below a certain HP percentage (always found repairing tedious 😅). Absolutely loving the advanced logic events Im going to post a Mercenary campaign that utilizes some of this. Ill join that server too.

they're also the only map the MP boys like to play Habbanya Erg and nothing else. lol me? we've got uncrushable infantry in d2k now. it was done via a really janky workaround during Summers' Solstice's inception, but Klofkac added proper support for it relatively recently. mostly though, I lean on map design for that and just try to leave infantry rock in lots of places sure dude, feel free to hit me up then SC1 still has quite a large following. if you make something for it, I think you can be very confident it will be played

Personally, I would like to recreate my single player campaign in Brood War with my "C&C" RPS. But who would play it?

That, right there. Is a victory point for you designing the game. As for mission design balance. Money maps are the best way to test balance for multiplayer. Because players spam units and choose what is best for them. You only need to record how much units are used. You see, if the map is entirely covered with big armies. Their effects will shift. Then after that, if you have less money. Armies will be smaller. And certain units will pop out that are better at micro. You want to balance it just right that when players play that money map. The "micro" units come out first. And then the macro units. I think that a failure is a good example here: Consider Red Alert 1. Where all players always try to spam tanks as fast as possible. And yes, on smaller maps an infantry spam with some engineers within is also good. But in money maps. Tanks only is best. And of course, spamming tesla coils. But other units aren't used that much. As soon as there is less money. And a lot of defences. The V2 launcher might pop up. But no one can see a Ranger unless it is trolling. Or an APC (worse trolling). Artillery? Yip, certainly a trolling. Because the opponents always build tanks. If the designers didn't balance from their campaign point of view. But from multiplayer. The tanks would certainly be weaker than their td counterparts. I mean, Tiberian Dawn is waaaay more balanced than red alert 1. And I did play money maps on that one. Buggies, Bikes, mass light tanks, MRLS (for the buggies and bikes), Medium tanks, Noobs build mammoth tanks, the APC is dangerous, the stealth tank is good for scouting and hunting harvesters with more ease, flame tanks ftw against defence structures. Only the humm-vee, I see less use as well as the artillery. And those 2 are actually for single player good due to the enemies training infantry there. As for getting a balance between infantry and tanks. This one is much harder. And the reason why in Starcraft you see much more fodder units is because there is no squishing there. Squishing is a weapon!! Makes me wonder, how are you going to balance squishing? Also, I wonder if it is possible to apply a certain matrix calculation on unit effectivness in 1 on 1 battle's. Obviously, a con, walls do not count in that method. But the root balance kinda shows up. In a way. This matrix calculation shows how much the root factor is needed. The pro is that all value's are good. and the "cost" comes out rolling for those value's. Some value's like attack range don't really matter. Unless you put in the effectivness of micro. I could try to see if a damage matrix with durability matrix can be combined now. Either way, I got a simple example AND a true art of work as example on my pc. I can share screenshots if interested, but only in a PM. As for 1200 on that Siege Tank.... it wasn't because of the attack range. No, I used the following value's: Tank Mode: 96 Health, 24 Armor, 36 Damage Siege Mode: 192 Health, 0 Armor, 48 Damage You only siege mode when dealing with defence structures or having a very good position. Marine: 96 Health, 0 Armor, 6 Damage And I put the weight factor of 24 Armor on x12 So that the Marine would be an all rounder.

1200 resources in Starcraft for Siege Tanks? 💀 ik range is, like, the most powerful stat, but doesn't that just mean you gotta mess with how the economy works so the player's income can keep up with that kinda inflated price? my father likes to play on easy mode just to blow stuff up, and aarmaageedoon says my missions are "too easy" even with multiple restarts 😆 can't please everybody I'm not the worst at d2k, and my focus is on mission or campaign design - player versus AI - so my process is testing crap on hard mode / fastest game speed, then scaling it down for normal and easy modes. it matters for the maximum difficulty since players on hard are looking for a challenge. it should be both fair and engaging. normal and easy, those are where some theoretical scaling should suffice to nail the target difficulty as long as hard mode is done up nicely the metric I look to primarily for determining if a mission is balanced how I want it is how long it takes me to complete it, including compared to its neighboring or counterpart missions. players will inevitably have a variety of experiences, but how closely in time it takes for me, knowing them in and out and optimizing for them, to complete them does a lot to illustrate the sum of whatever balance decisions I made for them already that doesn't mean I don't consider how things might work out in a hypothetical multiplayer game though. I passed an MP compatible version of my stuff over to the boys, and some unexpected metagaming came out of it, like... walls and concrete were useable. lol micro potential is a big deal in determining units' viability. take Blink micro for Stalkers in SC2 for example. you can have a unit with relatively weak stats, but with good player control, it dominates. over here in d2k, in ArkDebut, the Keravnos Laser Tank's shield system has revealed some interesting interactions already and suggests great micro potential. needs more testing. there are innumerable complex interactions in RTS, even in a simple one like d2k. makes theoretical balance pretty messy when the rubber hits the road wym money maps? like, macro-heavy, macro missions? there are a lot of differences between how macro and micro missions need to be designed and how a player will use units just thanks to that fundamental difference. or do you mean how the resources are painted on macro missions? at some point we get more into mission design theory as opposed to unit balance theory 😛 different things

True. I remember 3 moments where I had to adjust my calculations as well. 1. The formula all above in this topic has movement speed and attack range on the same side. That is wrong. Because 0 damage with infinite attack range would make the unit infinite expensive. And a lot of formula's on the internet do the same. Why was it there in the first place? Many thought that a longer attack range would add to the durability of an unit. While true, it is movement speed that truely adds to durability, simply by moving away. 2. Attack range on equal grounds as movement speed? That didn't stay too long. Many games showed that the attack range is taking place on a 2d field. While movement is 1d. What I mean is that if you have a terrain. And you want to reach your target. Using movement, would need you to move to every spot possible on the map in case of the most crowded map with impassable terrain. As for attack range, a simple direct trajectory is the case in 99.9% of the RTS games. This means that the average terrain creates a factor between the movement and attack range. You only notice the effect of long range weapons if the designers did it wrong. I noticed this in Red Alert 2 with the Prism Tanks, but also the sniper and the GI inside a IFV. 3. The size of units. The combat density is one that is done wrong more than other value's. And this includes a limit on units as well. I started to look into this a lot more when I was making Starcraft/Broodwar maps with an altered RPS. The Siege Tanks in there are actually super small and packed together. Especially when I applied my own rules. According to my calculations, the Siege Tanks would cost 800, while marines cost 100. First, I thought it was the cumulative versus squared rule. But I quickly could rule this out. I discovered that due to the size effects, eventually I had to ram up the cost to 1200. This is over 10 years ago by now. As for theory and practise. I never said that you make it with theory alone. There are still aspects like: - Player Skills Slow/fast, dumb/smart, where do you place your balance? - Resource managment Testing on money maps, show the best results - Visuals How much can players see? Highest attack range, like in Warcraft 2? Or lowest tier attack range, like in Warzone2100? What about fog of war? - Special designs/Unique functions Some units, you need only 1 or 2 of. Maybe 3. Or a dedicated squad. If you build too little or too much of them, they don't serve their function anymore. Sounds like the Flame ATV from KKnD But, the buggy/bike from the C&C games is similar. Which are great example for the 3 practical balances regarding the Flame ATV: A player needs to be smart. As for being fast, not sure, maybe? Resource managment in the map has to be relatively low. The unit is cost efficient, but only at a small number. Spamming has no use due to short range attacks. Visuals is not a key here. 1 can do the job. But if the enemy defends properly, Build like 4 to 6. No more. Or use 2 squads of 4. It depends on the map layout and defence structures. Their purpose? Find unquarded enemy structures. Preferably the resource managment of the enemy. As for the Buggy/Bike: A player needs to be fast. Resource managment requires the player to have decent defences as well. where it matters. As for attacking, a nice mix of buggies and bikes is what matters. Visuals is key here. There is a lot of FoW in C&C3. While in C&C td the vision for the player is simply small. You attack all over the place. In C&C td, 6 bikes. Or you spam them. In C&C3 you spam them anyways. The buggies are there for being fodder and dealing with some infantry if needed. But also to create even more chaos for the enemy. You poke all over the place. Until you get the upper hand and snowball your way into the enemy. In KKnD it is more of a tactical move, part of a grander strategy. In C&C3, clearly it is RTS all the way with that tactic. The player simply needs to see for when it needs to switch tactics at the right time.