Nyerguds

MrFlibble told me that the values in the Sega Megadrive version are adjusted in a rather peculiar way: to make structures generally more durable, all structure health was multiplied by 2, and all unit damage was multiplied by... 1.5. And, now here's the interesting part: there was a similar guide for the Sega Megadrive version, and apparently the author of this guide simply copied large parts of that without double-checking https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/genesis/586152-dune-the-battle-for-arrakis/faqs/1520 And, look at that. He uses "arms" for unit damage I really don't wonder about them. I literally linked you to full stat dumps from all known versions of dune II earlier in this thread. http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/dune/dune2rules/ And those dumps are made with my own editor for the game. (and knowing the filename structure used in the released C&C code, that file was probably called udata.c )

I'm just comparing the internal damage stats from inside the exe with the "arms" stat from that guide. That's all. The "Arms" stat in the guide turned out to literally be just the internal damage ratings with a mulitiplier of 1.5, rounded to integer numbers. Nothing else. I have no idea why this multiplier was applied, or if it has any relation to the actual damage done in-game.

MrFlibble said he hasn't been able to log in on the forum ever since the update, something about a google authenticator? Anyway, he said the "Arms" values are the weapon damage, but balanced to the fact some units fire twice. Still doesn't seem to match the internal stats though, so maybe it's more generally balanced to their rate of fire? [edit] I just noticed that the Arms values in the guide are consistently the damage values in the exe * 1.5, for all of them except for the Saboteur, since the damage in the exe for it is its gun's damage, not the damage for the sabotage. Name Damage Arms Carryall: 0 0 'Thopter: 50 75 Infantry: 3 4 Troopers: 5 8 Soldier: 3 4 Trooper: 5 8 Saboteur: 2 150 Launcher: 75 112 Deviator: 0 0 Tank: 25 38 Siege Tank: 30 45 Devastator: 40 60 Sonic Tank: 60 90 Trike: 5 8 Raider Trike: 5 8 Quad: 7 10 Harvester: 0 0 MCV: 0 0 Death Hand: 100 150 This all checks out, lol.

Yea, I messaged him about it on Bandcamp, but got no response

I guess I'll just... re-post my answer here then, lol... should just have linked me to this thread in your DM. I'm assuming those are supposed to be weapon damage. I don't think Dune actually has armor mechanics, and the Death Hand has the highest value there. But those values look like complete ass-pulls to me... these are the actual values: Carryall: 0 'Thopter: 50 Infantry: 3 Troopers: 5 Soldier: 3 Trooper: 5 Saboteur: 2 Launcher: 75 Deviator: 0 Tank: 25 Siege Tank: 30 Devastator: 40 Sonic Tank: 60 (65 in v1.0) Trike: 5 Raider Trike: 5 Quad: 7 Harvester: 0 MCV: 0 Death Hand: 100 Rocket: 75 ARocket: 75 GRocket: 75 MiniRocket: 0 Bullet: 0 Sonic Blast: 25 Sandworm: 300 Frigate: 0 I'm not sure how/if the projectile damage values (Rocket / ARocket / GRocket / MiniRocket / Bullet / Sonic Blast) are used; they should depend on the unit's value instead. Since GRocket has a damage value there, while the gas rocket in-game does no damage at all, I assume the value is simply ignored on all but the Death Hand. You can look those up for all versions here: http://nyerguds.arsaneus-design.com/dune/dune2rules/ Mind you, I have no idea if Fremen and/or Sardaukar actually get buffs on their infantry; the game is known to do things like that, but it'd have to be looked up in the OpenDune code. Maybe @MrFlibble knows more about that. I do remember that troopers' rockets actually do slightly less damage than their guns, ironically. By the way, it seems like starting from page 59 they messed up their headers, and switched the Arms and Cost columns...

I used Project64, but you can switch between different controller plugins. This was all ages ago though; current versions of P64 handle the game better, and have more advanced input plugins.

Did that guy really say Dune II was one of the first games to use midi for music? lol. midi had been around for years by that point. Cryo's Dune uses midi. And just a few years later Westwood switched to fully-digitised music in Command & Conquer. If Dune II pioneered anything on the audio front, it's that it used digitised samples for unit responses and the mentat voice.

Ummm. Dune II doesn't have multiplayer.

Right, those strings files use that obfuscation junk, don't they? I should really look into that and add it to my own tool...

Bizarre... I might test around a little and see if I can reproduce that.

This was on the subject of Dune II, but the answer probably applies to the first Dune game too, given it's a statement from the Herbert estate... https://www.pcgamer.com/gogs-10-year-journey-to-bring-old-games-back-to-life/

If it's anything like what I had to do in C&C95, it's a few years of intensive research, and a lot of disassembling and programming in x86 asm bytecode. I did it mostly for the challenge, but it definitely produced a few very strange bugs before it all worked properly...

Ah, I'd seen it around. It's an interesting one. And I love the fact there's Dune II fan art on the page, heh.

That, and neural networks trained for images still have serious issues with text, lol.

I found specs on the savegames, and... it seems the 7F thing is a simple flag-based RLE compression. https://sites.google.com/site/duneeditor/savegame-editing http://www.shikadi.net/moddingwiki/RLE_Compression That's not really something you want to handle with hex editing though. It's much better to have a tool to uncompress the data, and recompress it afterwards.

I'll be looking forward to the day Spice Opera is added to this listing :D https://stephanepicq.bandcamp.com/

Eh. It was a point that hadn't specifically been mentioned back then. Can't help it this place is kinda dead in general Blame the C&C Remasters project; it got me looking into Dune Dynasty again since the scope of both projects is really similar.

The difference is actually that Dune Dynasty is not a remake of Dune II at all. It's an actual upgrade of the original game. If you play Dune Dynasty, you really are playing the original Dune II, only, enhanced. Unlike remakes, it will act and feel exactly like the original game.

Well, as it says, it's a voc file in several chunks. Not sure what determines the size of the chunks expected in the format (beyond the 16-bit size limit per chunk), but the specs of the chunk format clearly say And it refers to the sound chunks as "sd chunks". So I assume you just have to read the whole file in chunks, then filter out all the SD chunks, and stitch those together to form the full VOC file. I'm not sure if Audacity supports VOC though. You may need to look into older DOS modding tools to convert those files.

Well, there is now

Were there ever entries for these?

@UnicornGraveyard Haha, I showed this picture to someone just a few days ago, and it made me look up that old site, and I came to the exact same conclusion. https://web.archive.org/web/20121022015917/http://membres.multimania.fr/esteban/english/news.htm Let the countdown begin! Free Spice Opera!

Yeah, but none of these tracks match their function, really. The one marked as "intro" is unrelated to the intro, and the "ordos" one isn't specifically Ordos in any way either. Here's the mapping of those, btw: d2intro2.wav - Rulers of Arrakis ordos2.wav - The Prophecy part 2 r22.wav - Humans Fall revenge2.wav - Into The Heat [edit] This is peculiar though... some sites have had these names for the tracks for ages... https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/dune-2 I checked archive.org; they always had them.

Well, since I just linked to the midi files recorded from original hardware by the actual composer, I'm not sure if this is still useful 😛 We do have information from the .exe that gives some hints to what music is which track is which in the actual game files. Though do note, the actual track identifications (the sections between [brackets]) are done from personal identification by testing them in-game. Also note that according to the information on Frank Klepacki's website, the tracks generally called "ambient" (indicated as "idle" here) were apparently officially called "wander" instead. This is from a dump made by the Dune II Editor. [None (0)] Filename string ref. = <no reference> Track in this file = 0 [Bonus] Filename string ref. = dune1 Track in this file = 2 [Lose Ordos] Filename string ref. = dune1 Track in this file = 3 [Lose Harkonnen] Filename string ref. = dune1 Track in this file = 4 [Lose Atreides] Filename string ref. = dune1 Track in this file = 5 [Win Ordos] Filename string ref. = dune17 Track in this file = 4 [Win Harkonnen] Filename string ref. = dune8 Track in this file = 3 [Win Atreides] Filename string ref. = dune8 Track in this file = 2 [Idle 1] Filename string ref. = dune1 Track in this file = 6 [Idle 2] Filename string ref. = dune2 Track in this file = 6 [Idle 3] Filename string ref. = dune3 Track in this file = 6 [Idle 4] Filename string ref. = dune4 Track in this file = 6 [Idle 5] Filename string ref. = dune5 Track in this file = 6 [Idle 6] Filename string ref. = dune6 Track in this file = 6 [Idle 7] Filename string ref. = dune9 Track in this file = 4 [Idle 8] Filename string ref. = dune9 Track in this file = 5 [Idle 9] Filename string ref. = dune18 Track in this file = 6 [Attack 1] Filename string ref. = dune10 Track in this file = 7 [Attack 2] Filename string ref. = dune11 Track in this file = 7 [Attack 3] Filename string ref. = dune12 Track in this file = 7 [Attack 4] Filename string ref. = dune13 Track in this file = 7 [Attack 5] Filename string ref. = dune14 Track in this file = 7 [Attack 6] Filename string ref. = dune15 Track in this file = 7 [23] Filename string ref. = dune1 Track in this file = 8 [Brief Harkonnen] Filename string ref. = dune7 Track in this file = 2 [Brief Atreides] Filename string ref. = dune7 Track in this file = 3 [Brief Ordos] Filename string ref. = dune7 Track in this file = 4 [Intro] Filename string ref. = dune0 Track in this file = 2 [Menu] Filename string ref. = dune7 Track in this file = 6 [Conquest] Filename string ref. = dune16 Track in this file = 7 [Finale Harkonnen] Filename string ref. = dune19 Track in this file = 4 [Finale Atreides] Filename string ref. = dune19 Track in this file = 2 [Finale Ordos] Filename string ref. = dune19 Track in this file = 3 [Credits] Filename string ref. = dune20 Track in this file = 2 [Cutscene] Filename string ref. = dune16 Track in this file = 8 [35] Filename string ref. = dune0 Track in this file = 3 [Logos] Filename string ref. = dune0 Track in this file = 4 [37] Filename string ref. = dune0 Track in this file = 5 [edit] Okay, so, I matched all your midis to the official names: DUNE2-01.MID - Choose Your House (unused in-game) DUNE2-02.MID - Wander 1 - The Building of a Dynasty DUNE2-03.MID - Wander 2 - Dark Technology DUNE2-04.MID - Wander 3 - Rulers Of Arrakis.mp3 DUNE2-05.MID - Wander 4 - Desert of Doom DUNE2-06.MID - Wander 5 - Faithful Warriors DUNE2-07.MID - Wander 6 - Spice Melange DUNE2-08.MID - Harkonnen Mentat DUNE2-09.MID - Atreides Mentat - The Council DUNE2-10.MID - Ordos Mentat - Disturbed Thoughts DUNE2-11.MID - Menu - Hope Fades DUNE2-12.MID - Atreides Victory DUNE2-13.MID - Harkonnen Victory DUNE2-14.MID - Wander 7 - The Prophecy part 1 DUNE2-15.MID - Wander 8 - The Prophecy part 2 DUNE2-16.MID - Battle 2 - Epic War DUNE2-17.MID - Battle 3 - Humans Fall DUNE2-18.MID - Battle 4 - Adrenaline Rush DUNE2-19.MID - Battle 5 - Only The Strongest Survives DUNE2-20.MID - Battle 6 - Marching Towards The End DUNE2-21.MID - Map Theme DUNE2-22.MID - [Interlude track: Plotting (not on Frank's site)] DUNE2-23.MID - Ordos Victory - Abuse DUNE2-24.MID - Wander 9 - For Those Fallen DUNE2-25.MID - [Atreides Ending Cutscene (not on Frank's site)] DUNE2-26.MID - [Ordos Ending Cutscene (not on Frank's site)] DUNE2-27.MID - [Harkonnen Ending Cutscene (not on Frank's site)] Not accounted for: Game intro Battle 1 - Into The Heat Credits theme All three "Lose" themes (thought they're only 8 second clips) Note that the midi files are available here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=33823&start=42 These seem identical to yours, only the pack has all of them. The unused "Choose Your House" theme is misidentified as "Ambient 1" though.

Oh wow, you gotta listen to Faithful Warriors (Wander #5); after 1:45 there's a whole new background sound in it that I'm quite sure the original didn't have.