Dark Knight ez

Might want to use a program called Sox to do the converting for you. It's a commandline tool, but it is nice to work with: "sox input.aud output.wav"

I wanted it to show off units rolling out of structures, basicly. And everything else I could think of. So that's why it's a tad on the lengthy side, I guess. ;p

Hey guys. Just thought I'd show it off. My RTS engine for the DS currently uses ripped Dune 2 assets, used for testing purposes. It won't be released to the public with those assets but I thought you might like to see a video of it in action anyway. http://www.veoh.com/videos/v11577098mMy5237 If it doesn't load properly for you, try clicking the link on that site to the RTS4DS movie shown in the right bar in the box mentioning the Publisher. That worked a treat for me. For more information, check out my own website http://amplituds.drunkencoders.com I hope you'll enjoy it.

Apparently, something's missing... When the emperor talks in the intro, he says two sentences: "Whoever controls the spice, controls Dune." "There are no set rules and territories and no rules of engagement." Now, in the intro pak file - as well as the .gif file I have right now - the emperor only says the first sentence. After that, he's supposed to quickly move his eyes to the right and back again, and say the second sentence. I've checked the finale pak (in which the emperor speaks as well) but that doesn't seem to contain the eyemovement... So, no idea what Dune2 uses for the eyemovement and the second sentence. Anybody has an idea regarding this? Edit: Ugh. I used a Youtube video as reference material because I was too lazy to boot up DosBox each time. Anyway, it seems there are different versions of the intro... changes such as the subtitle (The Battle for Arrakis or The Building of A Dynasty), the order of the westwood and virgin logo, and the talk of the emperor. So basicly, my version didn't have the eyemovement, so the graphics for it wasn't included, obviously.

Just wanted to reply to say I tried out your PAK utility. Works great, and it really came in handy for me. Quite an improvement to what I was used to working with. Good job.

Welllll.... I'm definitely interested to hear, but if it'll be awkward and taking up a lot of energy to explain, might be best if you don't. After all, I already got what I was hoping for, really. :)

Hex editing? Awkward. Anyway, a big thanks from me for creating these GIFs. :)

Or rather http://d2tm.duneii.com And congratulations on your marriage, Stefan. :)

You're right. It seems ordos.gif and harkonnen.gif are missing a couple of frames. Still, this saves me A LOT of effort. So thanks, Nema Fakei. I must say, I'm surprised that you have ordos.gif and harkonnen.gif in the first place, because they actually exist out of multiple layers originally with each layer having their own palette. You probably had to drop some colours, right? Not that it matters, because it looks great and I wouldn't notice if I didn't know the amount of colours needed to be reduced to be an animated GIF. Looking at how good this looks, makes me wonder why Westwood went through all the trouble of making it multi-layered, multi-paletted.

I know it's possible. The palette consists out of 256 entries for each intro scene (well, for the most part anyway, if you don't count the multiple layers for rockets and such). I'm just sort of lazy and thought someone else might have done it already. I saw the harvester scene of the intro as animated GIF on these forums right here, but can't find the other scenes. Also checked out the site(s) linked to, but had no luck in finding more.

Like the topic says: Does anyone know where I can find (a set of) animated GIFs of the Dune 2 intro? I'd rather not convert the still frames to animated GIF myself if other people have already done it. Greets, Dark Knight ez.

I realize that, but you still have to support things like height maps in some way, right? At least, if you want that to make a difference. You could also just forget about height advantages and only show the boundaries between low and high ground with graphic environment tiles.

No, I'm good. Thanks. I completed the regio information for my engine and it should be good. Still have to actually code the menus, but the graphics for it and the input are now pretty much done, so clear sailing from here in that regard.

You scared me, Stefan. I already did some work, and you have #22 numbered differently than I had in my mind. So for a second, I thought my current work was for naught. I went through pieces.shp again now, and your #22 should actually be numbered #15 according to it.

I guess you guys are talking about pieces.shp. Makes sense that way, so I'll try and figure it out. Odd thing is that pieces.shp has 28 frames instead of 27. Awkward. Edit: Apparently the XCC count of 28 was lieing and there were only 27 region pieces in pieces.shp. So I worked it out now. Thanks for the helpful feedback, guys.

Could be because of the format you read them in. That is to say, they might be stored "signed" or "unsigned" and opening them in the wrong format gives what you describes. I haven't fiddled around with Emperor: Battle For Dune though, so consider this a generic audio statement.

Hey all. I was wondering about the regions in Dune 2. Each regio (to conquer) has its own number and there are 27 in total. I was just wondering if someone could upload a picture (or try to explain via words) showing how the regions are numbered in Dune 2. I don't really feel like spending a lot of time playing through Dune 2 to try and find out, when others probably already know. Thanks in advance.

I must say that trying to support Dune 2000 and C&C Series is quite ambitious. The foundation of them is the same, but things like (structure placing) animations and environment height maps are available in them, which is quite a step up as I see it. Good luck with the project; you know I'll be checking the progress from time to time. :)

Well, I googled a bit after reading your post and that's pretty much all I found. R8 included BMP files(8-bit). R16 included TGA files(16-bit without RLE compression). 8 bit BMP files though... should be easy to decode, I think. Not sure if you actually want that, but... here is a nice explanation on the layout of BMP files: http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/windows/364/bmpffrmt.html

Best of luck with it, Stefan. :)

Ahh, I see. Didn't notice they were stars, should've looked more closely at the screenshot. :)

Maybe a stuid remark, but in the first screenshot it seems you also have a red unit (rocket launcher) selected. Shouldn't that be impossible if you've selected one or more of your own units?

Point taken. I sent you a mail with my current source code. edit: Is CREATE_PATH function being worked on still, or is the one in the repository the revised version you talked about? (I also PMed Spekkio as to not stray further offtopic in here.) Also, if you're really going to rewrite all (huge task), it might be wise to really choose for either C or C++. Current source reminds me of C with C++ function naming just for looks. I think that could've been done by giving the functions proper naming. Correct me if I'm wrong on this though, I only skimmed through your code.

The RTS engine I'm creating for Nintendo DS has most information/code really abstract, as all needs to be read in from FAT (SD-card). What structures there are, what units, their properties, techtrees, graphics, everything basicly. And it all works right so far. If you'd like to see pictures taken of the engine running Dune2's graphics on the DS, check this interview: http://www.ds-scene.net/forum/pforum.php?act=4&publicforum=19&topic=132 This kind of abstraction makes the code more generalized and (in my eyes) quite nice. The best code I've ever generated for a large project. It's all C though, no C++. So although I use structs as a sort of replacement for objects, one can argue it's not object-based (enough). If you would like to look into my current code though, I'd be more than willing to share it with you, of course. Your approach with having different code files for different structures is understandable, but is it needed? I am unsure about that. If it makes reasoning about the structures a lot easier, and if you do not want to create (drastic?) changes like mods for your remake, then yes you should keep it this way. Otherwise, I'd suggest a higher abstraction of structures: making them all uniform with only (known) variables which indicate it to have special purposes (such as radar capabilities).

I do appologise for having said I'd help out and then not letting hear from me in a while. I was stuck on the NDS-side of development and only received a flashcard containing a Micro-SD card two days ago. This means I can finally start loading in graphics and textfiles dynamicly using file accessing (no need to compile it in the executable itself) and make rapid (and highly modifiable) progress. When I get the displaying part fully functional of the engine, only then can I really start taking peeks at your code and submitting possible improvements. Hopefully this will be in a couple of weeks. Greets.