MrFlibble

When I signed up here back in 2004, one of the first FED2k people to greet me was Nema Fakei. He had a link in his signature that would lead to his homepage, which, among some other things, had re-arranged MIDI tunes from Cryo's Dune, Dune II, and a few other games. Unfortunately, his page is no longer up, and the Wayback Machine copy has not preserved the downloads. However, I downloaded those tunes back in the day, and recently rediscovered them among my backups, so I'm sharing them with whoever may find them useful. Personally, this is quite nostalgic for me. Nema_Fakei_MIDIs.zip

I decided to revisit Dune 2 modding and found the HEX editing collection very useful! However, I need to note that in the file 0x047D00 fix loop reinforcements.pdf, the line you're suggesting to find 81 1f 50 16 8d 86 5e ff 50 9a f8 3a 00 00 83 c4 occurs multiple times across the binary, so it's probably more handy to use Segra's original fix where he suggests to look for 16 8D 86 5E FF 50 9A F8 3A 00 00 83 C4 08 8B D8 8E C2 and replace the beginning with 6A 00 6A 00 90 90

Actually, no, I've not listed any save game editors for Dune II there. What you've mentioned is a scenario editor that allows you to modify or create scenarios, not alter saved games that are in progress. I believe that there might have been some rudimentary DOS-based save game editors that would allow to do cheaty things like add credits or some such, but I never bothered to list them, because they are not really useful for game modding. That is, if I got it right what the OP is asking for.

What are your DOSBox settings? You should have at least 12010 CPU cycles, or possibly even 23880, to play smoothly. With that, set the game speed to Fastest in the in-game Options menu. Also you might want to try out 86box with FreeDOS as a (hopefully) more accurate alternative to DOSBox. I know it's about two years late, but in case someone else has the problem: IIRC, mouse is also enabled in SETUP.EXE. So by default, you have no sound or music, no EMS and no mouse controls.

I finally got around to watching the movie and I must say that I... didn't like it. It's probably okay as, I don't know, a moving pictures picture-book to more or less illustrate the novel, but as a full-fledged screen adaptation, it does not do justice to the source material IMO. I don't believe I've ever seen any other movie by Villeneuve, except for a few scenes from that alien contact film I don't remember the title of. But I gather that he is very fond of "great" visuals, and it looks like here he sacrificed almost all character development to showing off the scenery, and even then could not fit the entire story into a single movie. The characters are incredibly one-dimensional at best, and I cannot even imagine what the viewers who had not read the book thought about the characters at all. Almost everyone except Paul, Jessica and maybe Leto and Chani are not fleshed out at all. There is very little dialogue; the film made me realise how full of dialogue and monologue the book is. All the nuance from any character's motivation, thoughts and actions is removed because of this. And don't tell me that it's hard to convey stuff from a talky book to the screen because it's a different medium. David Lynch made Yueh cry after he betrays the Atreides and that's a short scene with no dialogue, but it is more accurate to Yueh's character from the book, even though he does not cry in the book, than the incredibly bland guy doing the doctor in Villeneuve's version. Also there are very obvious shout outs to Lynch's version, but very poorly made. There's a completely pointless scene where Piter (who is completely inefficient in this version, does nothing evil and generally acts as if he were the Baron's weak-willed, not very smart son or nephew or some such) visits Salusa Secundus -- which is total BS from the standpoint of the book's lore but anyway -- and talks to a Sardaukar commander, who speaks in some "cool" gibberish language. This is obviously a "nod" to the Navigator scenes in David Lynch's version, but. In that film, the Guildsmen use an automated translation tool, which shows that they a. rely on technology and, possibly more important, b. are so alienated from the general populace of the Imperium and feel so superior that they do not even deign to use Galach when talking to outsiders. This detail very well matches how the Guild treats the Emperor and orders him around -- hinted at in the novel but never shown there. Very clever. However, here there is no language barrier between the Sardaukar commander and Piter, which makes the use of the Sardaukar language just a pointless gimmick of no actual relevance. And the same scene also shows the Sardaukar getting marks with some red paint or perhaps blood, which is another shout out to David Lynch, this time to the Fedaykin initiation scene from the second part of the movie. How many shout outs do you put into less than ten minutes of screen time? Why? What for?

The list in the first post of this thread has been updated in a major way, with more games and a more detailed (and hopefully more accurate) genre breakdown. It's not meant to be exhaustive, but I tried to list as many good, complete closed-source games as I could. For historical reference, here's the old version of the list, but please note that it is in some places inaccurate and some links may not work:

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.

It took almost two decades to happen but Daniel Cook's Hard Vacuum resources finally found their use in OpenHV - a project to (re)create this game based on the OpenRA engine. I have not tried it yet but it appears to play exceptionally well already.

I'd love a completely libre, open source Master of Magic remake along the lines of Freeciv for Civilization.

It's been a long time. The latest version publicly available from Siberian_GRemlin's site may in fact not be the latest version in existence -- I remember him sending me a build which I'm no longer sure if it was ever made public. On top of that, the latest build actually broke something while introducing some new features. I distinctly remember having to hex-edit the main string file (which contains stuff on the sidebar, unit names and commands etc.) every time I edited it with SSTE to fix it to work properly in Dune. One version of the editor very certainly works well with Dune II text compression, at least for game version 1.07, but I can't remember which one.

Thanks! I've not been visiting here for ages so my functions as a moderator have had little impact on the forums. I wanted to suggest this demotion myself.