MrFlibble

What can I say... wow. I studied OCS at the University exactly 20 years ago, and I can more or less imagine the amount of work required to pull of such a feat. Congrats!

I think I might have heard that title before, when it was still in an early concept development phase. I haven't watched your entire video yet but it looks very nice.

Oh, I played that so long ago I forgot many details. But that game remains to this day possibly the only attempt to consistently adapt the novel to video game format.

A worm riding simulator?

I did a bit of digging and it seems that these "standalone excerpts" were signed, limited-edition prints available from some book publishers. You can see an ad for "Fremen Justice" here in a Wayback Machine snapshot of dunenovels.com: https://web.archive.org/web/20030404060820/http://www.dunenovels.com/news/short_story.html At least one such story was available as a free PDF download, found at the top of the same page.

Apologies for the belated reply. As many other Fremen notions, Fiqh (not Figh) is an Arabic term from the Islamic tradition. In real life, it means human understanding of the divine law, and I suppose that the meaning in the Dune universe could be the same or very similar. At least, "knowledge and understanding" feels like a natural pair of concepts to go along with each other.

It is recommended that you read Frank Herbert's original hexalogy in order, then the new books, not in the supposed "chronological" order of events. The short answer is that no "ghola army" (or whatever the new books might introduce) ever existed in the original universe and in Frank Herbert's vision, so no reason to expect them to appear in his books.

There's a retro "demake" of Dune II called UnDUNE II.

I've not yet watched it but watched the trailer and snippets available online. It looks like the movie tries to make some allusions to Lynch which are not based on the book directly, like the levitating Baron and the Sardaukar speaking an alien language (like the Guildsmen in the 1984 movie, but here it makes a lot less sense it seems). I've re-read parts of the book recently, and it seems that Piter in particular is rather off compared to his book prototype. He does not have signs of Spice addiction, not sure why this change was made. In the book, this is what binds him to the Baron, because withdrawal would likely be terminal, and emphasizes the way the Baron controls everyone around him -- fear and power. I've also heard that Yueh has been given a shallow treatment in the movie, despite being a major character in the first book of the novel. Apparently the Baron kills him himself (kind of going against the entire plot with the tooth, as Yueh in the book says that he'd never be let close enough to the Baron to make an attempt on him), and it seems that he is not given the "You think you defeated me" lines either. This also ruins the Baron as someone who kept his own hands clean, and for no real purpose than to show that the Baron is a monster? I've always liked the part in Lynch's version where Yueh weeps after betraying the Duke, a scene which was not in Frank Herbert's vision, but feels consistent with it. He's clearly portrayed as guilt-ridden in the novel, even though his determination to kill the Baron is much greater than any other considerations, although one could say that he keeps some of the loyalty to the Atreides by saving Paul and Jessica. He also appears to stand up to the Baron in some grander way than even Leto. I've always wondered at the hints about his wife's role as a Bene Gesserit, which make one think whether this was some part of a plan as well. The conversation between Yueh and Jessica on Arrakis is a very powerful scene in the book, I wonder if anything was left of it in the new film?

Unfortunately I don't have Nema's contacts, which is a real shame. We only communicated via PM, and that was more than a decade ago.

Actually I was more thinking along the lines of making a free/libre data set for the existing MoM engine recreation -- or does it depend on the original DOS binaries or something? Like I wonder why no one ever tried (AFAIK) to do a free/libre data set for OpenXCOM, even though I guess some assets from UFO2000 could be used as a basis for the Battlescape mode.

I vaguely remember there being a fantasy-themed mod for an old version of Freeciv that still used square, non-isometric tiles somewhat similar to those in MoM. I wonder if this could not become a foundation for a free/libre data set to be used with the new engine recreation? It must have been one of those mods listed here, as I cannot find it on the new site.

There are plenty of inconsistencies in the prequels, just ignore them. Only the original FH books are worth reading.

I was wondering... Once you complete the engine, would you consider making this into a completely new game with original art, sounds etc. instead of using Westwood's stuff? I mean, if you find the artists willing to make replacements for you.

Recently I found, via the Wayback Machine, this little and apparently highly obscure gem: Future Conflict. It's a free (technically shareware) DOS RTS game, lovingly copied almost verbatim from Command & Conquer and Red Alert (and not in the least ashamed of that mind you!) by Chris Jones, better known for being the author of the Adventure Game Studio toolkit. If you look past the "programmer art" level graphics (that aren't very bad, actually), it's a fully-fledged game with a single-player campaign (only one side though), skirmish mode against up to three AI opponents, and functional multiplayer mode. There's even an equivalent of Red Alert's rules.ini. The author accepted registrations, which would endow the user with a mission builder, a unit editor and a campaign editor (no idea if anyone registered). But otherwise the unregistered game is fully featured and has no limitations. Oh, and it fits on a single 3.5" floppy disk too. It's a bit tricky to get it work with sounds in DOSBox though, but a pre-installed version is available here. Make sure you use the current SVN build of DOSBox, not the latest stable version (0.74-3) from the DOSBox website.