rymoah

I remember I tried once the trick you describe, and, like you, I got stuck before the final attack. Anyway, I didn't try to see if she was in the Harkonnen palace... that's really cool :) Unfortunately, I simply don't have the time right now to translate the guide in English, sorry :( Currently I'm busy in updating the website of the Cultural Association Dune Italia Recently, however, I received a mail from a guy who wants to do the translation job... He said he'll tell me when it is done ;) Rymoah

I think it would be best if you record it directly from DOSBox... Actually we don't have a working player/converter for the videos, but only a frame dumper. Rymoah

I think enhancements to the game should be a step later. If I didn't misunderstood, the main focus of this project is first to get the original game running on modern OSes without using emulators such as DOSBox. Initially it was proposed by Monsieur OUXX to build a virtual machine in Java to run the game, but, seeing the direction the project has taken, I think it is best to continue at low-level, with C and assembly just like you are doing. Also, another nice side-application would be a game-resources extractor (and this, if we put together all the tools published in the previous pages of this thread, is almost done). Obviously, if we could go further than this, and do a 3D remake of the game using open source engines like OGRE, it would be great :) Rymoah

Honza, you are doing a great job :) About the hnm videos, if you look back in the pages of this thread I have attached c++ source for a program to decode them, written by Vladimir "VAG" Gneushev (unfortunately it is not a player but a frame dumper)... Maybe it could be useful to you. Be aware that it is designed only for HNM-1 videos; once, in facts, I tried to run it with logo.hnm which is HNM-0 formatted, and it gave me frames with messy colors. VAG was really surprised that the program didn't crash, since it told me that version 0 and 1 of HNM codec are quite different ;D Rymoah

Hi honza.c, My bad, I remembered incorrectly how hnm videos work (it's been a while since I don't spend time on this project). In facts, we were talking about two different video formats: hnm videos like logo.hnm (which you managed to disassemble its player, logo.exe) are coded with HNM version 0. Videos included in the CD version of the game are instead coded with HNM version 1. As you can see in this wiki page http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=HNM_%281%29 an HNM-1 video file is splitted in several chunks, and each of them begins with a 6 bytes header. If the sum of these 6 bytes is 171 (that is, 0xAB) then the chunk represents a keyframe and it is hsq-compressed. Rymoah

Exactly, what do you mean by "larger" files? I remember the old unhsq seemed to unpack all the hsq files contained in the game... and even the hnm videos (they are compressed with the same routine), which, considered those stored on the CD version, are very large. Rymoah

Great! :) With this compressor, we could also begin to test some modifications on the game... Rymoah

Hi, it's nice to see, even after all this time, that this project is slowly going on :) If I remember correctly, bigs came up with an hsq-compressor of his own, written in C, and, testing it on the BALCON.UNP uncompressed file, it seemed to produce the original BALCON.HSQ archive. Unfortunately, there is no link on www.bigs.fr/dune_old to download it... Maybe if we contact him he still has the source... Rymoah

In facts, I remember one of my early games with Dune ended with a death after I got lost in the desert. But, when I decided to explore this eventuality in detail while I was writing my complete guide of the game, I really couldn't die again by walking in the desert, only lose consciousness. Perhaps it's just like you say, the death is decided by some value of probability. Rymoah

No, there is really no point in walking into the desert. You can't reach any sietch/village/palace from your current location. You can't even die, because you only lose consciousness after the sun has appeared 3 times and wake up in the starting location. If you are followed by other characters or there is a fremen chief/smuggler in your starting location, they will warn you not to do it again, but it makes no difference. I've tried it many times (even at the beginning of the game, when you don't have a stillsuit yet), but the result is the same. Rymoah

As I wrote before, all rights for past, present and future Dune games, are now property of Paramount. And seeing their attitude towards fan-made media (Mediteatro Dune movie, Second Life Dune server, etc.), I think they will not be very open minded in releasing old Dune games, both those of Westwood and Cryo. Certainly, I can't understand *why* they maintain this aggressive attitude towards Dune fans... With other franchises distributed by Paramount, such as Star Trek, they seem to be more tolerant. The only reason I can come up with is that until their new movie isn't released, they want to protect their interests from products which could possibly draw attention away from them. Nevertheless, I would like to hear also Microids who actually owns Cryo IP in this matter, to see if they confirm this story... So I'll keep trying mail them. ;D Rymoah

Still no answer from Microids... maybe I mailed the wrong sector, I'll try with others. Meanwhile, I asked Byron Merritt about gaming rights of the Dune franchise and, as I understood it, the Herbert LLC has no voice in this matter. All decisions should be up to Paramount which owns the rights for the new Dune movie, and, along with that, for Dune games. The strange thing is why Paramount would also be able to decide for past games like those of Cryo or Westwood (I guess that's because those games were licensed by Universal, which owned the rights at the time of the Lynch's movie, but they sould have been released by now). Rymoah

Well, I think it worths a try. Sending mail costs nothing ;) Sorry, I post on another Dune board which gives the same colors to both links and normal text, so I usually change color... I guess I've become unaware of this habit :-[ I modified the links :) Rymoah

Hi all. Since the Dune Revival topic is intended to be strictly technical and the Dune II Source/Download topic talks about Dune II licenses, I thought to open a thread specific for Dune Cryo game licenses. While in the Dune Revival thread was written that DreamCatcher owned the rights for the game, I noticed that in reality all Cryo intellectual properties have been bought by Microids exactly one year ago (see this page on their website). I also found out that they made available again for sale Cryo games such as Mega Race 3. So yesterday I wrote them a mail to ask if they were intentioned to republish also the Dune games (including continuing the development of Dune Generations), and if there is the possibility that they release the source code for Dune 1, since it's an abandonware title. At the moment they didn't answer me, but I will keep you informed. Also, feel free to email them on the same topic... maybe if they see that there are some more fans asking they'll get interested Rymoah

Never heard about a place like that... moreover, when you find a new sietch/village it usually get mentioned on your map, so you can return there quickly. I guess your first hypothesis is the one which better answer to your question ;) Rymoah

Just to note, using VAG HNM dumper I have discovered that actually there is a hidden video in the CD version of Dune, not showed in the game. It's the SEQQ.HNM file, and it's a footage of the Harkonnen-Sardaukar attack on Arrakis from the Lynch's movie. In facts, I always wonderered why, in the description of the Harkonnen in the book of Dune, there is a video with scenes of Fremen raids... It's surely more appropriate this hidden video, while the other is best suited for the page describing Fremen attack techniques. It's amazing how, even after all this years, this game continues to surprise me :) Rymoah

If anyone is interested in the dumper, try to look at http://www.bigs.fr/dune_old since the old address doesn't work (Bigs' site is under maintenance, and I've asked him if he could send me his dumper since I have lost it on my local computer). About dynamic palettes, He told me that he thinks they are hard-coded in the game engine binary, no separate hsq files for them. Well, about this matter, I hope to bring some news, even if they are not that big ;) I managed to contact Vladimir "VAG" Gneushev, the author of HNM1 page on the Multimedia Wiki, and I asked him if he had already implemented some kind of player/converter. Unfortunately he did not, but he developed a decoder prototype which generates the stills from a given HNM1 video, dumping the frames in TGA format. He enhanced a bit his program in order to extract the soundtrack (if present) which is stored in VOC format. Attached is a zip file containing: 1) hnm1dump_gui.exe, the windows executable of the program using file dialogs to select hnm videos. 2) hnm1dump_gui.cpp, its relative source 3) hnm1dump_console.cpp, same source but without specific windows gui part, in order to compile it on other platforms and run it from console. Note that some HNM videos in dune.dat have the same issue of some hsq-compressed sprites: since they depend on the time of the day, they use a palette defined by the game engine dynamically. The resulting dumped frames will be all black. I'm trying to force a grey palette, just as Bigs did for the sprites, to see if some shapes appear. VAG also told me that hsq files can be unpacked using LZunpack function in his source. Rymoah hnm1dumpsrc.zip

Concerning the distribution company, Virgin Games, MobyGames says: "In 1993 they became Virgin Interactive Entertainment, before eventually working with Electronic Arts. Ultimately they were bought by Titus, who now themselves have ceased trading." And about Titus the website reports that it went out of business in 2004. It doesn't specify wheter it was acquired by some other company or not, so my guess is that if EA doesn't hold the game rights, then no one should hold it at the moment... Rymoah

Mmmm, so who owns the rights of the game at the moment? Cryo has been absorbed by Dreamcatcher, but I think that Dune was licensed to Virgin Games... Rymoah

If I remember well, both the Sega CD and the PC CD versions feature those extras (Lynch's movie footages, digitalized speeches and 3D-like flights over the desert). Rymoah

I totally agree, I'll see what I can do next days ;) I think it would be nice also to begin using the forums you created on dunerevival.dev.java.net, to discuss more technical details and leave this thread for news and update on this project. Rymoah

And here is the second part of the dialogues ;) It contains phrases of Liet-Kynes, Chani, Harah, Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, Feyd-Rautha, Harkonnen captains, smugglers and Fremen chiefs. It also contains some expressions used by all characters (for example, those to find a new sietch), Paul's visions and the Book of Dune texts. Rymoah part2.txt

A voc2wav bash script to convert .voc speeches in wav on Linux. The usage is the same of the voctowav.bat I have posted earlier -- unzip the content of this attached archive in the dune.dat directory and then launch the voctowav.sh. This script uses the voc2wav utility written in Perl by Peter Keel. Rymoah voctowav_linux.zip

Here is attached the first part of dialogues, that is, file PHRASE11.unp cleaned and reordered. :) It contains Duke Leto, Jessica, Duncan, Thufir, Gurney and Stilgar's phrases. Each character has three fixed categories: Storyline, answers to "Come with me/Stay here" and other miscellaneous phrases. Then, there are some specific-character categories (for example Thufir has "Strategy expressions", Duncan "Spice production expressions", and so on). I have tried to maintain, especially in the Storyline category, the chronological order in which the phrases are pronounced. Soon I will post also the PHRASE12.unp texts, containing phrasess from the remaining characters (Fremen chiefs, Chani, Harah, Kynes, Baron Harkonnen, Feyd, Shaddam, smugglers, Harkonnen captains and the Book of Dune texts). I also figured out that the COMMAND*.unp files should contain all the remaining texts in the game -- various labels in the map of Dune and the game panel, plus other things that I still have to analyse. Rymoah part1.txt

Sorry, I didn't think about the fact that the sprites representing "outside" locations could use a palette defined by the game engine depending upon the time (day, sunset, night and sunrise). So this explains why also sprites of outside views of palaces, vilages and sietches have a grey pal. Do you think that the same thing applies to some .hnm videos of the CD version? Because I think that some of them (for instance, those containing the flights over the dunes) can change palette if a day/sunset or night/sunrise effect occurs. Rymoah