TCH

@X3M: I would not make it this complex. CM seems strategy to me. I think this is easier than this, see next: Both. As your applied tactics are parts of your strategy. I would vote for strategy, as you have to do some resource management and unit production too. I think, in a clean tactics game, you would not have dynamic reinforcements. (On dynamic i mean, self producted, not planned. For example: "General Shityard will be here in three weeks" is planned, "Our officers recruited 300 more men" is dynamic.) @Nyerguds: Maybe, but i would rather say, that tactics is part of the strategy. Strategy is more than just combinations of several tactics. For example, timing, when to apply a tactics. I think strategy is not the "sum" of the tactics, but the art of tactics applying. Of course if you meant this by "the use of tactics", then we agree. @X3M: We already know that it's either Cytron Masters or Cosmic Conquest, they are both RTS-es, it's just the release time which is not clear. Cosmic Conquest came out in 1982 second half in BYTE, but i believe it was available earlier at South Africa. Cytron Masters says, it's either 1982.06.01. or sometime in 1980. If this latter one is true, then CM is the true winner. If the first, then we should check, when BYTE 1982/2 came out and we can accept that as the release date of CC. Unless we find another release date in South Africa. But if we don't and the BYTE 1982/2 is later than 1982.06.01. then it does not matter, if Cytron Masters came out in 1980 or 1982, it's still the winner.

No, that's was i explained above, that the PC version - as an x86 program - is little endian. Told ya. Westwood wrote the entire Amiga Dune 2 in ASM. Probably to keep memory usage and CPU resource needs low, to make Amiga Dune 2 able to run on almost any Amigas. They could do it, the 68000 assembly is much more easier than the 8086/80186/80286 assembly; just to say the most trivials: bigger and easier addressing, more and wider registers, more instructions, more addressing modes; and this was just the 68000, the Amiga OS behind the game offered much more options than MS-DOS, for example the multitasking, you could leave your work and go into Dune 2, then if the boss comes, then LA + M and the WB window came back with your work, on Amiga a correctly written program never needed a "boss key". X)

@X3M: Whoops, sorry. Maybe i misunderstanded something. Maybe it was not specified, but we argued about the first RTS video game, not the first whatever RTS, that would be nonsense; reality always "plays" in real-time, so whenever the first sentient being at anywhere in the universe made up some strategy aganist anything, that is the very first RTS, but only if we assume that strategy needs conscioussness; but this is getting too philosophical. :) Cytron Masters is here: http://thegamearchives.net/?val=0_2_1_0_0_9_40227_0_0_0_0 Or a video: However, there is no binary for Cosmic Conquest, only source code in BYTE magazine. So, if you would like to try it, you have to fire up a FORTH compiler on an Apple 2, or in an emulator and type the source by yourself, then compile (or interpret, if has that function). @Nyerguds: Cytron Masters has base building, unit management and some economic as you have to management energy (the resource in the game) and still it's called a real-time tactics game. Now which is which? ;) Of course, if you use them as synonyms or RTT as a subgenre of RTS, then it's correct. Actually "tactics" is very ambigous, if you have two armies facing each other and there is no bases or economics, you can still use strategy. I think it's rather the release time which should decide between Cytron Masters and Cosmic Conquest.

Sorry, i forgot to say, that the computer will only check the flags after two minutes and then every fifth second. So if you set a timeout to a very low value to test, then please set a higher value than 2 minutes. The seeds are just numbers. The whole map is not stored in the scenario file, so it's not the seed what causes the crash. You can choose any number from -32768 to +32767, you don't need to worry about anything. No, you don't have to. More precisely you cannot. Seeds are just numbers, they are initializing the random map generator. Of course i did. But even if i would not tested it, the loading and saving mechanisms are the very same, like in the 1.x versions, so if your scenario worked when you saved with the 1.03 versioned editor, it must work with 2.00 too. Just to test again, i loaded the last Harkonnen mission and saved it again in Amiga format. Then tried it in the game. Worked. My best guess is, that you set something which can crash the game, or you have did not set something which should be set and that can crash the game. Try your scenario in the MS-DOS version of Dune. If crashes, then your scenario contains a flaw. If not, then your scenario must contain something which is not allowed on Amiga. You can download the whole Amiga Dune 2 from oscomp.hu, but i assume, that the internals will differ vastly. Amiga version uses a different image structure, lacks Fremen and Mercs section, lacks some terrain elements (spice on dunes) and the whole number storing is big-endian. Not mention to that, that the Amiga version was entirely written in assembly, while the MS-DOS version was written in Borland C++. The sizes are different too, Amiga version: 150k, MS-DOS version: 360k. (Which is interesting, the MS-DOS version would be the one which should be smaller, MS-DOS only saw 640k purely, 16 MB (286) or 32 MB (386/486) if extended and memory extensions slowed the machine drastically, while nearly all of the Amigas in 1992 had at least 1 MB ChipRAM and could extended with 152 MB of FastRAM (nearly 2 GB actually, but nobody made turbocards what used the Z3 extension area).)

@MrFlibble: You missed one of my key points. What about RTS games which came after Dune 2 and they're nothing like Dune 2? UFO, Settlers, Reunion, Imprium Galactica and more. What about them? That's what i referred to in my previous post, if you try to categorize the genre through a popular meaning, you'll exclude a lot members which happens to fall outside that scope, yet still, in reality they don't. The correct definition is defined by itself, as i mentioned several time: it's axiomatic. Why do you need a dictionary for a term which has a trivial meaning? I'm not referring to a source. I don't need a source for this. But if you insist to have a dictionary explanation, here's one from Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_strategy) Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games which does not progress incrementally in turns. They have a lot of more explanation in that article and also a link to the chronology and they describe the history of RTS too. And Dune 2 is far from the beginning. Dune 2 is a milestone not the definition itself. (I will never wash this from myself. :) ) I do not want to sound like an ass, but as i witnessed what happened in the video game business in the last quarter century, and as i saw what the VG press/media did, and as i watched afar what's going in the communities... Well let's say "players" and "video game journalists" are synonyms for the "ignorant masses". :P (And not because they using some term wrongly.) The press is always controlled by several groups, because it's the primary instrument for brainwashing/mass controlling nowdays, and the readers will believe at least one of the sources. If a reader hate group X, he will believe a media which also hates group X and will despise those sources which stand beside group X. But these are all labels, a circus made by the elite, for the ignorant masses. Choose the group to love or hate, it's just another face of the same elite. But that's off topic and beginning to slide towards politics, so i sit on my mouth. :P And as for the players, just by viewing the former half decade: anything can be sold to players, i saw games where you just have to click one button and you gain points by that. People paying for that. Stone simulator on Kickstart. People paying for that. Pixel clicking by Peter Molyneux (!!!). People paying for that. Must i make a comment on this? I'd rather not. Following that logic, if someone will replace "yes" and "no" with each other in the public media, then the two concept will switch places? How absurd is that? Just as i said to X3M: reality does not care about people's beliefs. If there's a term which speaks for itself, then it's meaning is clear and it's irrelevant what the public believes about it. I did. See above. (Still i don't understand why do you need a dictionary for a trivial case.) As for unversal acceptation, if you tend to interpret the term differently from what it means, you will never have an universally accepted version, because everyone will interpret it as they want. You want Dune 2 to be the first RTS, you will say Dune 2. If someone want Herzog zwei, he will say that. Neither will be correct. Maybe there is an even earlier RTS game made in the UK in the seventies? A lot of genre born in the seventies. First FPS for example (Spacesim). There were those mainframes and they had games too.

I had to split this to two posts, because the engine told me i surpassed the amount of allowed quotes. (???) @X3M I think it's clear enough by itself. Perhaps. We may begin to dissect the term to words, or describe what can happen, but as i said in my last post, this term is axiomatic, it describes itself. Yep, that's what i mean. An RTS only means, it happens in real time, it does not mean a military game. Yeah, for example Transport Tycoon, or A-Train, or Sim City. These kind of games are all "just build" type of strategies. Maybe, but even warlike RTS games does not have to be like Dune 2. That's what i believed to too, but according to Wiki RTS Chronology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_real-time_strategy_video_games The first one was either Cytron Masters or Cosmic Conquest. Reality does not care about the beliefs of people.

Maybe, but by this logic, we could call StarCraft the first RTS, because Dune 2 lacked a lot of elements too. We could call an even later game the first RTS, because even StarCraft lacked a lot of elements. As time progresses, the games become more and more complex with more and more elements. Which are those elements we define the origin of a category by? What if a SC fan describes the category by elements which did not appeared in Dune 2? Either we stick to the per definition meaning, or every term will be self-righteously interpreted. They will mean what people want to mean by them. A D2 fan will say D2, an SC fan will SC a TA fan will say TA a WZ2k1 fan will say WZ2k1 and so on. We will reach a status of "an RTS is called nowdays a game what is..." You're talking about 'popular meaning' or 'popular term usage', not prototyped categories. A popular definition is what the masses call something and ordinary people never do know what they are talking about: they just tend to pick up words, expressions and memes they hear or see, that's why they called RTS games as C&C clones or FPS games as Doom clones or "alien spaceships" as UFO-s. These categorizations are erroreneous. Why? First, because these terms are axiomatic, their meaning is trivial, it's in the term itself. Second, because of unfair and unnecessary exclusion. For example if you only call Dune 2, C&C or StarCraft like games as RTS, then you will excluse a lot of other RTS from the category. For example, Imperium Galactica was an RTS too and nobody called it a C&C clone, because it is an entirely different approach of the genre, they're not even similar. Settlers arrived after Dune 2 and it was an RTS, but nobody compared it to Dune 2, because it was an entirely different approach too. RTS means it's a strategy game and events happens in real-time. If we follow the logic of popular usage, then microsoft invented computers and operating systems, because it was win95 what spreaded across the continents and got into every home and thus for ordinary people, the computer was equal to PC and operating system was equal to windows or DOS (and even DOS meant MS-DOS for them, even if there were other Disk Operating Systems both earlier and later), just because they did not know anything else outside of these. It is absurd to redefine a term and making it differ from the real meaning, just to match the ignorant masses' expectations. That was i described above. If the sum matters, then we can raise the level and add more and more stuff to the sum which will lead to 'interpret it as you want'. See? That's what i am talking about. Popular meaning and changing interpretation because of progressing. You cannot obscure or redefine an axiom, just because technology advances. You can extend the category and make subcategories, but the real meaning of the root will not change. The author used an axiom, just said out the fact, that it is a strategy which plays in real-time. He did not make it as a category, just used a term which is axiomatic, because it's meaning is trivial, it speaks for itself. It's like calling a computer as a computer. (It would be suprising, if he did called it as a non-Dune 2 like RTS, right? :) See? Just as i said above. As win95 spread to the whole world and computers and videogames were begun to used by everybody, the term become a part of the everyday dictionary of ordinary people, but with a wrong meaning: they just saw a game and compared every later game to that one. 'It's just like C&C. It's a C&C clone. Westwood calls it as RTS. Then what is an RTS? A game what is just like C&C. RTS games are C&C clones.' Are UFO, Settlers or Reunion are C&C or Dune 2 clones? Nope. Not even similar. Are they RTS? Yes they are. There is a meaning of RTS and that meaning is in the term itself. RTS are defined by itself and not by the elements of RTS games. If you try to interpret it by 'who used it first' or 'who made it popular' or you just try to specify elements which define the genre, then you will drastically differ from reality, because you will bend the meaning to your viewpoint. (It would be weird to call RISK as a Chess clone, right?) The link is broken. What they said?

@MrFlibble: Okay, this was offtopic here anyway. @Foxman: You can do that, but be warned about two things: You have to edit the executable for that. My editor obviously only supports the "normal" flags, so you have to "hack" your additional flags into the binary scenario file.It's not impossible, of course, but you already turned down the idea of new pictures, because you claimed the decyphering of WSA-s "too much" and this would be an even more difficult task (at least, editing the executable would be, because i can describe the Amiga scenario format for you, see at the end of my post). So, i think you should stick to the original flags. You cannot do this by the original flags. Read the manual first: the flags are in logical OR connection, regardless whatever condition fires first, the game ends. You can do that, that either you have to collect X spice OR destroy the enemy. (If you happen to destroy the enemy in the very same second than you acquired your last needed credit, then the result will be the same.) However, with a bit trick, you can reverse your conditions: first you have to destroy the enemy, then collect X spice. Of course, you cannot do with this with the flags, but if you place the required amount of spice behind the enemy, then even if the scenario only requires you to collect X spice, you still have to destroy your enemy to achieve that, and you have to do this before the enemy collects the spice, because after that, you cannot collect enough to fill your quota, so you even have a non-specified timeout. Good idea. Dune 2 lacked tactical missions anyway. However, be aware, that you only can acquire a building, if it's heavily damaged (in the red phase) and if you succesfully acquired the building, then you either have to have enough credits for an emergency repair or you have to start with two windtraps, because a windtrap only produces 100 power and a starport requires 80 and without enough power, your buildings will beginning to decay, which is definitely fatal in a heavily damaged builing's case. And there are no flags for a specified building's status, so, if the refinery has been accidentally destroyed, then the game will not be ended. Try out, if the timeout flag works on Amiga. It does not works on DOS version of Dune 2, without a patch, but maybe it works on Amiga. With that, you can make new type of missions. Rescue missions won't work in Dune 2. The enemy will destroy your "hostage" units immediately, you cannot make them invincible, or put them a "rescuable" state, like in StarCraft. (Of course, you can build a ton of walls around the "hostage" unit, to prevent the AI from destroying it, but still, you cannot protect it from air attacks, unless you disable all possibilities of an air attack.) And if you have to rescue the harvester, then you have to have a refinery. So destroying that harvester will automatically "resuce" it, as if you have zero harvesters and you have at least one refinery, then the game automatically brings you a new harvester. And now, as i promised, here are my notes about the structure of the Amiga scenarios from 2007: ;id data = B [SECTION], B (id_owner) e.g. [MAP]/Bloom id = B 1, B "B" = 322 = $0142[BASIC]W 0 ;LosePicture idW 14 ;LosePicture strlenB db X ;LosePicture strB db 14-X ;unusedW 1 ;WinPicture idW 10 ;WinPicture strlenB db X ;WinPicture strB db 10-X ;unusedW 2 ;BriefPicture idW 12 ;BriefPicture strlenB db X ;BriefPicture strB db 12-X ;unusedW 3 ;TimeOut idW X ;TimeOutW 4 ;MapScale idW X ;MapScaleW 5 ;CursorPos idW X ;CursorPosW 6 ;TacticalPos idW X ;TacticalPosW 7 ;LoseFlags idW X ;LoseFlagsW 8 ;WinFlags idW X ;WinFlags[MAP]W $01,"F" ;Field idW X ;Field lengthW db X ;Field valuesW $01,"B" ;Bloom idW X ;Bloom lengthW db X ;Bloom valuesW $01,"S" ;Seed idW X ;Seed[Harkonnen]W $02,"Q" ;Harkonnen Quota idW X ;Harkonnen QuotaW $02,"C" ;Harkonnen Credits idW X ;Harkonnen CreditsW $02,"B" ;Harkonnen Brain idW $00,"C"|"H" ;Harkonnen BrainW $02,"M" ;Harkonnen MaxUnit idW X ;Harkonnen MaxUnit[Atreides]W $03,"Q" ;Atreides Quota idW X ;Atreides QuotaW $03,"C" ;Atreides Credits idW X ;Atreides CreditsW $03,"B" ;Atreides Brain idW $00,"C"|"H" ;Atreides BrainW $03,"M" ;Atreides MaxUnit idW X ;Atreides MaxUnit[Ordos]W $04,"Q" ;Ordos Quota idW X ;Ordos QuotaW $04,"C" ;Ordos Credits idW X ;Ordos CreditsW $04,"B" ;Ordos Brain idW $00,"C"|"H" ;Ordos BrainW $04,"M" ;Ordos MaxUnit idW X ;Ordos MaxUnit[Sardaukar]W $05,"Q" ;Sardaukar Quota idW X ;Sardaukar QuotaW $05,"C" ;Sardaukar Credits idW X ;Sardaukar CreditsW $05,"B" ;Sardaukar Brain idW $00,"C"|"H" ;Sardaukar BrainW $05,"M" ;Sardaukar MaxUnit idW X ;Sardaukar MaxUnit[CHOAM]{W $06,<unit_typ>;Choam unit idW X ;Choam unit amount}db N ;Choams[TEAMS]{W $07,<team_#id>;Team idW X ;Team ownerW $00,#1letter ;Team behaviour typeW $00,#1letter ;Team movement typeW X ;minimum unitsW X ;maximum units}db N ;Teams[UNITS]{W $08,<unit_#id>;Unit idW X ;Unit ownerW $00,<unit_typ>;Unit typeW X ;Unit HealthW X ;Unit #o FieldW X ;Unit ?Rotation?W X ;Unit Behaviour type}db N ;Units[STRUCTURES]{{W $09,"G" ;GENERAL STRUCTW X ;Structure #o FieldW X ;Structure ownerW X ;Structure type}{W $09,"I" ;ACTIVE STRUCTW X ;Structure #idW X ;Structure OwnerW X ;Structure typeW X ;Structure HealthW X Structure #o Field}}db N ;Structures[REINFORCEMENTES]{W $0A,<RF_id> ;RF idW X ;RF OwnerW X ;RF TypeW X ;LocationW $$,$00|"+" ;Time (+ signs after(Time)}db L ;RFs[EOF]W $FFFFThe abbreviation "db" is the short version of the hungarian word "darab", which literally means "piece", but we use it also for "amount of <something>". All words are big-endian, so if it's written as $fa52, then it will look like the same on the disk and not $52fa, like on an x86 machine.

@MrFlibble: I did not say, that Dune 2 did not have it's innovation. I just said, it's not the first RTS. As for what is covered by the term, it's depend on terminology. If you interpret the term by word, it's mean it's a strategy game, where events are happening in real-time and of this type, there were a lot of games before Dune 2. If by RTS, you mean Dune 2 like games, then Dune 2 is obviously the first. About the game elements, you mentioned, all of them are already made their debut earlier in real-time strategy games in titles like Sim City, Carrier Command, Nether Earth, Populous, Supremacy, just to name the real-timed ones, but for example base/unit construction and unit macro/micromanagement were parts of even more earlier turn-based strategy games (like Utopia) and the real-time tactical parts were debuted in real-time tactics games like Legionnaire, Stonkers and Cytron Masters. Herzog zwei was just one example, i mentioned it, because Westwood mentioned it. Besides as i checked some games, i found something: http://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1982-12/1982_12_BYTE_07-12_Game_Plan_1982_djvu.txt It appears that even the term too, made it's debut more earlier, but everybody just forgot about it. So, it's appears, not even Stonkers was the first, it was Cosmic Conquest. But if we consider the only tactical real-time games too, then Cytron Masters is even more earlier. @Foxman: Yes, the seedgenerator is the same on both platforms. Your question about the walls and turrets are already answered correctly by MrFlibble.

@Foxman: The manual is inside my editor's package. I sent you a mail about v2.00 is available with seedgenerator and the manual you asked before. I've never tried to put a unit under a spice bloom. Is that crashes Amiga Dune 2? Thanks for the praise, try the new version, it will get rid of the seed packages. @MrFlibble: Perhaps the term is invented by Westwood Studios, but the genre isn't. A lot of real time strategy games were made before. It's like, there was a man who invented the stone axe and another one who named it. But still, all of the stone axes made before the name born, are still stone axes. Also, Westwood admitted that they copied a lot of game elements from a japanese RTS, called Herzog Zwei. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II#Development)

If you're to dechyper the WSA-s, then i'd suggest the "destructive trial and error" method. I mean, you can destroy various parts of the WSA and you can check what happened. You can do it with WinUAE and a hexaeditor. Just load Dune 2, go to the mentat screen, then select an entry which you will try to hack. You backup it, edit it, then you open it in the mentat screen. (You don't have to restart Dune 2, just exit from the article and open it again.) What do you mean by "special bloom"? Blooms (spiceblows) are available on Amiga too. I don't know, if you did get my mail, but i finished the manual you asked; it covers every difference between Amiga and DOS Dune 2 scenarios. I know, House Ordos does not exists in Herberts' books, but renaming them to Corin will be redundant as House Corrino is the Sardaukar (purple) player. I've already seen your post, it was on the news at the hungarian Amiga community. (BTW, Dune 2 is not the first RTS in history. It's either Stonkers from ZX Spectrum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonkers) or the Bokosuka Wars from the Sharp X1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokosuka_Wars), both from 1983.)

I made a screencap in WinUAE during game and counted the colours with IrfanView. It uses more colours than 32, so the game obviously uses EHB mode. I found the palette in the WSA-s, from the offset of 11, there is 32 12-bit (0x0RGB), but until now, it seems, that the pictures only uses 16 colours and only the first 16 entry is used, the second 16 colours are set to 0x0fff (white). The pictures are 184x112 sized, so in theory if the Amiga WSA-s are really in planar structure, one scanline must be 23 byte long. However, it seems, that the WSA-s have some kind of compression (maybe a run-length one).

My guess about the difference between Amiga and DOS Dune 2 WSA-s would be that the PC use chunky VRAM structure, while the Amiga uses planar. A chunky VRAM for a 16x2 image looks like this (an eight number group is a byte and the numbers are the bits of the pixels): 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 7654321076543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210 76543210While a 16x2 planar VRAM looks like this (same here, eight number is a byte and the numbers are the bits of the pixels): 77777777 7777777766666666 6666666655555555 5555555544444444 4444444433333333 3333333322222222 2222222211111111 1111111100000000 0000000077777777 7777777766666666 6666666655555555 5555555544444444 4444444433333333 3333333322222222 2222222211111111 1111111100000000 00000000Advantage of the chunky mode is speed. A chunky VRAM is the fastest VRAM, the CPU can directly modifiy a pixel by one operation, regardless to the bitdepth. Disadvantage is the memory wasting, for on 8 bit, it's okay, but if you use only 5 or 6 bit (like on Amiga), you'll waste 3 or 2 bit on every byte. Planar mode is exactly the opposite. It's extremely slow for the CPU, since for modifiying a pixel, you have to read in, mask it out, then write it out the bytes that much time as much bitdepth you have. However it's the most efficient method for sparing space, as it never wastes even one bit. (Since Amiga has a special co-processor, exactly designed for manipulating planar VRAM, in the beginning, the programmers did not have to worry about speed.) In practice this means, if you want to have fast drawing on the Amiga (with the Blitter or the 68000), then you cannot store your images in chunky format, since then you have to convert them each time you write them into the VRAM, so you have to store them in planar structure (shown above). Another difference is the palette as mentioned by MrFlibble. An SVGA or MCGA VRAM on the PC uses 256 colours out of 262144. It means, every palette entry is 3 byte long, but do not uses the top two bits per component, only can assigned with values from 0 to 63. An AGA Amiga also uses 256 colours, but out of 16777216. (Means full 24-bit colours, 256 values per component (0-255).) However the Amiga version of Dune 2 can run on OCS/ECS machines too, which can use 32 (or 2x32, see later) colours out of 4096 (12-bit palette). (Actually on Amigas, you can have 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and 2x32 coloured screens on every Amiga and you can use 64, 128 and 256 coloured screens on AGA machines, but Dune 2 is not AGA and not colourpoor, so my best guess is that they either use 32 or 2x32 coloured EHB screens.) On an OCS/ECS Amiga, you have 32 palette registers, each are 12-bit wide (which means 4 bit for R, G, B and 4 bit unused, 16 total shades per colour component), so you can have 32 unique colours on a screen (5-bit screens). But Amiga has a special 6-bit screen format, which called Extra Half Bright mode. You still have 32 palette registers, but you have an imaginary second palette where all colours are the half brighted versions of the primary palette. So, if you set colour number 8 to a gray with values 10, 10, 10, then the imaginary colour 40 will be equivalent to 5, 5, 5. Dune 2 either uses this EHB mode with 2x32 colour, or just 32 colours. Third difference can be the endianity. PC-s uses intel x86 CPU-s, which are uses little endian byte order, while the Amigas (and the vast majority of the 16 and 32-bit homecomputers from the '80-ies) are uses the Motorola 680x0 CPU-s which are uses big endian byte order. Little endian writes and reads bytes from the least to the most significant byte, while the big endian does exactly the opposite. For example a (hexadecimal) number 0x12345678 in the memory or on the disk would look like this on little endian: 78 56 34 12 On big endian it will look like: 12 34 56 78 While endianity is not an earthshaking problem, as it can be converted from one to another by simply rotating the bits, it must be known if a value needed to convert. Though i have no knowledge about the WSA-s, i can confirm that the Amiga scenarios uses big endian byte order for storing numbers, thus i don't see a reason why Amiga WSA-s would do otherwise. To conclude this much bullshit i wheelbarrowed together, the Amiga Dune 2 WSA-s must use 5 or 6-bit planar structured pictures and 32 coloured palettes. (For showing them on PC, you must emulate the imaginary 32 colours too, but to find them in the Amiga binaries, you have to seek for only 32 entries, not 64.) The rest of the WSA-s (header, footer, whatever VRAM independent data) can be similar or entirely identical to the PC version, being their byte order the only exception.

Hi there. (The old topic is locked, so i write it here.) After nearly 8 years i updated my editor, here is the 2.00 version. Changes are the following: - Seed package no longer needed, a program (with Dune Legacy seedgen) generates the seeds. - Seed value is now a signed 16-bit integer; fully compatible with Amiga and MS-DOS Dune 2. - Manual added. - New, explained Win/Lose handling, instead of "WinFlags", "LoseFlags" numbers. - Fixed: CHOAM empty amount error. - Fixed: CHOAM amount did not accepted negative value. You can download it here: http://oscomp.hu/?details/Dune_2_Scenario_Editor_v2.00_Win32_147 http://bgafc.t-hosting.hu/frs.php?mukk=prg&c=4&l=0 More in the manual. Have fun (if someone still uses this).

My favourite is the low level programming. But the Intel x86 ASM suxx.