Wesker

TC seems to refer to the Mega Drive version, not the PC version.

I knew it. In fact, until now I thoght German and French both had voiced intro speech, but it seems not! These languages only have voiced mentat/units speech and then again, only one single person is doing all the speaking for all mentats and units. So this "Teodosio" version goes a little further than German and French by having a voiced intro speech, although it still goes with having all mentats voiced by a single person (the units are voiced by a different person). Nah, don't worry. I'm not disregarding your work at all (because I assume you did it, given what you said about extracting some bits from FMVs for additional EVA speech), it's just that I'm not fond of having EVA/units speaking Spanish and then again the FMVs speaking English with subs, and since we can't have dubbed FMVs easily... But I'm sure the Spanish speech pack is useful for many people. :) Currently I'm looking for Spanish language versions of Westwood games which were released in floppies like The Legend of Kyrandia, Dune II, The Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore. Right now I have both The Legend of Kyrandia and Lands of Lore tracked, I hope I can also get Dune II and see if it is that way or not. Maybe they didn't bother to repack the files when they translated them? Yeah, I told him already. Are you able to extract the speech bits without background music/sfx? You can also do the same with Spanish if you wish. Attached here you can find the full GAMESFX folder from Spanish Dune 2000.

Thanks. I'll check it now. Works like a charm now. Thank you. I'll look for further improvements. Keep up the good work with both programs. :)

Problem solved. I just had to change the "driver=opengl" string to "driver=direct3d" string in dunedynasty.cfg, and that solved the missing .SHP files completely. Maybe the direct3d string should be default in .cfg file rather than opengl because that's probably giving less problems to everyone. I can't remember them scenes being that way, but it's been a long time since I watched those scenes in the original game. I suppose I would have to play the game to check them out. Maybe there's an easier way to access them in the original game without having to complete the levels. Even if it's just a savegame. Funny thing about the encrypted credits. Makes you think what the heck did they do with the Spanish version with so much wrong things like the deleted worm string and this credits weirdness. Good to know. No problem. Thanks. I'll check it now.

Looking good! That seems very convincing to me. If you are still intending to do the same with Spanish, be sure to use the very same lines from Spanish Dune 2000 because I think they will fit just fine, similarly to Italian. It's going to be a real issue indeed, because if you manage to get those missing lines from other games, then there's going to be different voices for the mentat saying different things when there should be only one mentat voice according to the faction you are playing. That's bad, due to this we won't probably be able to have complete Spanish and Italian speech packs reused from Dune 2000. I had even thought about having the intro speech lines being reused from extracted bits from Dune 2000 intro, as the intro script in both Dune II and Dune 2000 is pretty much the same. Maybe the best possible choice would to simply disable speech in all those lines and having them as text only.

I found a new issue using the Spanish version in Dune Dynasty. It happens in the map screen of Harkonnen level 9 (last level). This error messages pops up just when the selection arrows are going to blink. It only happens in this map screen, though. The rest of sides and levels map screens have the blinking arrows working perfectly. Regarding OpenDUNE, I just tested the last update done to pre v0.8. It fixes the problem with the intro and the mentat briefings, but it adds a new "line disorder" in the title screen menu and the game options menu which wasn't happening before. These shouldn't be like this: Rather, they should be like these: I suppose this is still related to the deleted worm string that's giving so much problem to make the Spanish version fully compatible. It doesn't happen with Dune Dynasty though, only with OpenDUNE.

Awesome, thank you for these additions! I'm posting some impressions. 1) There are some graphics missing, I don't know why. Some graphic icons are missing in several instances where they should be displayed, and even in the game I can't see any units. I'm posting some screenshots: I suppose there should be some icons being displayed in the list from this revamped option screen, though I'm not sure. The "accept" (Sí) and "decline" (No) graphic icons are missing here. You can either accept or decline your faction by guessing where the icons were usually placed in the original game and clicking them, but still you can't see them. It's the same here, there should be "confirm" (Proseguir) and "repeat" (Repetir) graphic icons here, but they are missing. You have to rely in the same icon placement guessing according to the original game that with the previous screen. Now here comes the worst problem. I can't see any unit at all. If you guess where they should be placed, you can click them and command them, but it's annoying to have invisible units for sure. Only when the foot units die, they appear laying dead. I can't see the building icons in the construction log either, only the names and construction progress appear. Surely this must be some graphic loading issue, but I don't know the reason. Maybe I got some missing file in the data folder and that's why the program fails to load all these graphics? 2) I noticed there are additional language extensions implemented, because at first I put the "language=GER" string in the "dunedynasty.cfg" file to force the program to load Spanish language, but doing these the game keeps voiceless like it was originally. But then I tried "language=SPA", not only the Spanish language loads, but the units are all speaking English, which is awesome. So this way we can now have either a voiceless game or an English-speaking game with both Spanish ("GER" or "SPA") or Italian ("FRE" or "ITA") if we want. But surely wouldn't be better to have a proper language selector implemented in the game options, like the one Dune Legacy has? 3) There seems to be some text length issues during the intermission scenes, and the credits don't display at all because there's just a "T" letter being displayed endlessly. This is in HARKONNEN INTERMISSION 2. This is in ATREIDES INTERMISSION 2. This is in ORDOS INTERMISSION 1. This is in ORDOS END GAME (that "!" shouldn't be there, but a blank space). And this is what happens in CREDITS. 4) Even if we have English-speaking with both mentat and unit speech, the intro still remains silent. Could you use the English narration in INTROVOC.PAK for both Spanish and Italian? As long as subtitles remain enabled, which is something that can be set up in "dunedynasty.cfg", there should be no problem (the original game had subtitles disabled when there was speech in the intro, but I tested Dune Dynasty in English and it's able to load speech and subtitles combined). The only exception I would consider would be skipping the "Dune: The Building of a Dinasty" line speech because that wouldn't fit with the retranslated "The Battle for Arrakis" European subtitles. In fact, even the European original game in English language skipped that speech line and played the rest of the voiced intro, but Dune Dynasty solved this by forcing English to display the North American subtitle rather than the European one. 5) Could the "Options" and "Credits" graphic icons ("Mentat" is the same, so that one can be skipped) be changed to those of each specific language? The original game had those translated for each language, but here they remain in English. You can notice it in the in-game screenshots I posted before. 6) Good thing about putting nouns before adjectives in Spanish, that's actually an improvement to the original game. Italian already had that in the original game because of using the same settings as French, but Spanish had that reversed because of using the same settings as German. I hope OpenDUNE is also having this small fix. And now, something not language specific: X) What's with the music? It changes the different compatible formats randomly, so one moment you are listening the Adlib music, then the MIDI music, then the Sega Mega Drive music, then the Dune 2000 music, and so on. I noticed there are different [music] strings in "dunedynasty.cfg" where you can either enable or disable them (so, since I have all them enabled with "1", that's why the program is randomly using all of them), but wouldn't be better to have a proper way to switch them in-game? There's only some sort of Sound Test in the options menu, but not a proper option to switch the sound and force the game to stay with that one.

OK, I tested the pre v0.8 OpenDUNE thanks to drnovice. I know this is thread is for Dune Dynasty and not OpenDUNE, but since this has been brought up already, I'll give some impressions. It's true that the pre v0.8 fixes the problem with the accented characters, but unfortunately it adds an additional issue that was not present in v0.7 at all. The Spanish text in both the intro and mentat briefings/hints is displayed in the wrong order. The intro plays each line in the inmediately previous position that they should, because the line "present" after the Virgin logo is skipped and replaced with "The Battle of Arrakis" from the title screen, and then the text sequence goes on that way. The mentat briefing/hints are even worse, with their lines being randomly scattered in places where they shouldn't be displayed, not to mention that the house selection scenes display some "win text." and "Test sceneario win text" lines. Everything else seems to be fine. I noticed this is only happening in Spanish. Both English and Italian seem to be perfectly fine. Out of luck, then. :(

Ok, so who he managed to have Italian speech while having Italian text? Did he hack the Italian configuration to enable speech for them (since the official release has speech disabled for both Italian and Spanish), or did he rather "translate" the English configuration? And then, who would have been the replacement in case there wasn't this popular request? There's not a proper equivalent in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun who matches the Commando of Command & Conquer, since GDI have the mutants Ghost Stalker and Umagon and NOD has a cyborg commando. You would have probably required the commando speech from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. That's the thing. We can't know for sure if this was the original state in the floppies or not.

I looked for some gameplay videos of the Italian version of Dune 2000 in YouTube but there's absolutely nothing. There are only the Italian dubbed video scenes and some gameplay videos done by an Italian guy who's just playing the English version. How come you don't have the Italian version of Dune 2000 yourself? That's odd. Surely you were aware that a Italian version of Dune 2000 existed, right? It mustn't be as rare as the English/Italian/Spanish version of Dune II for sure. Both Dune II and Dune 2000 in Spanish keep the "Melange" term untranslated, the full term being "Especia Melange". Not only it's the right thing but it also gives a characteristic name to the thing. The Spanish version of David Lynch's film also goes with "Especia Melange". I can't remember now how it was called in the novel translation but it was probably the same. If I remember right, "Sandworm" in Spanish is "Gusano de arena" in almost all Dune media (novel, movie, TV series, games, etc) translated to Spanish. They don't go to "Gusano de la arena" like you are (or seem to be) pointing out in Italian with "Verme delle Sabbie" instead of "Verme di Sabbia". I have to check both Dune II and Dune 2000 in Spanish but I think it's definitely mentioned that way. You are welcome. Attached to this message you can find the full content of the "GAMESFX" folder from the Spanish version of Dune 2000. :) Keep in mind that the units in Dune 2000 have some faction specific speech lines like "For the Duke" (Atreides), "Por the Baron" (Harkonnen) or "Atreides out/Ordos out/Harkonnen out" that don't fit in Dune II because the units speech are all the same among the different factions. Therefore, those faction specific speech lines shouldn't be used. Do you have enough command of Spanish to know what they are actually saying? GAMESFX.rar

You mean this one? drnovice posted a fandubbed Italian version which is definitely monolingual (I call this the "Teodosio" version because you can see an additional 1997 "Teodosio" copyright line in the title screen), a variation of v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish which is trilingual but has the Spanish version displayed wrong for some reason, and this v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish which drnovice claims to be similar to the one I posted (therefore, it should be trilingual) except for a added "leeme.txt" which is not part of the game files. So, which one is it? I know. That's quite odd and cheap. I suppose many Japanese players would be annoyed at this. The Japanese voice sets is something you can actually have in the European Sega Saturn version by simply setting the console language to Japanese, though you are missing the Japanese dubbed videos because those are version specific. The European PlayStation version can also have the Japanese voice sets by inputting the "GODZILLA" code in the password section (funny code, LOL). I suppose this is the same for both North American console versions, but I haven't tested them. But you know, what I mean is having either everything translated or everything dubbed, not half-translations (it's not the case because the Spanish fantranslation translates absolutely everything, and you can add the subbed videos to make the whole deal) and half-dubs (this is truly the case, because you don't have dubbed Commando speech and dubbed Spanish videos, with the first one only requiring a small fandub but the second being a more complex dubbing task to do). The Japanese thing is not comparable because, despite of not having any text translation performed, they have everything dubbed at least, so you won't have a dual language hybrid like what you have with some units dubbed and others not, together with non-dubbed video scenes. But it's ok, I'm just that way. I like to have polished efforts close to what would be retail releases done by the developer/publisher, and therefore, as the Spanish dub is unfortunately not complete, I prefer to have English speech together with Spanish text translation and subtitled videos since that's something that was completed for sure. Maybe you'd prefer to have it arranged that way in your download section, rather than with all the .ENG, .FRE, .GER files scattered around. But it's just a tip, you can do as you wish. I can't assure you how this v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish release was arranged in the original floppies, so I don't really know if you are closer to it by having the language files packed or unpacked. Really? I'm not aware of these facts because I'm not Italian. I just noticed that the soldier speech sounds very vibrant and energetic, while the narrator speech is definitely some bored guy simply doing the job. I can't guess the specific language details, but by translating what you said I noticed the "Ti hanno fregato" sentences is something like "You have cheated" (LOL) and I can guess what's the "Bravissimo!" phrase easily. Regarding "Melange", that's funny because I noticed the official Italian text translation in the intro deems that as "Preziosa", which if I guess right because it seems very similar to the Spanish "Preciosa", maybe it's not appropiate either to what "Melange" actually is. The Spanish translation doesn't overcomplicate the thing as much by actually keeping "Melange" untranslated. Oh, you mean from Spanish Dune 2000? That's easy to do. It's the content of the "GAMESFX" folder, right? I'll do it now and attach it for you. Yeah, though both of them have the content of the ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK, GERMAN.PAK files scattered around as .ENG, .FRE, .GER, isn't it? I don't know if this becase the original floppy release was that way, or because someone got it, decided to unpack the files, and then spread this version over the Internet, so that's why all known v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish versions you can have are arranged that way. Sadly it can't be checked without this version floppies which are very difficult to track for sure.

So what should I do to avoid this issue? Are you going to release an update, or could I do something myself? Really? But I'm using the last version, which is 0.7, and this one has the problem with not displaying the accented characters at all, at least in Spanish. They don't seem to have released anything beyond version 0.7, or am I wrong? It's almost two years since that release was done and maybe they just moved somewhere else and put it there, but in the official OpenDUNE site there's not anything beyond version 0.7 for sure. I actually don't use the fan Italian version at all, since I'm not Italian. I'm actually interested in solving the problem with v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish displaying Spanish language.

Ok, I think I got lost with the whole "game has already five language support implemented but really doesn't have it so it would be impossible to add it" discussion. But to be honest, I don't really need a vanilla five language version, because I use the English/Italian/Spanish version and dismiss French and German entirely as I don't really need them. Now, the source ports are different story. I hope some of them like OpenDune, Dune Legacy and Dune Dynasty are supporting these additional languages soon, and if they are able to expand their strings and have more than three languages at the same time, even better. What do you mean with "both the unofficial and the official pack"? With "Italian version" you mean the 1997 "Teodosio" Italian dubbed version? So it uses the same European three language .exe? Odd. Because of apparently being a monolingual verison, I thought it would use closer .exe to that of the North American English-only versions. So you don't like what "Teodosio" did, uh? You prefer a more "commercial" replacement. I think it adds some charm and it's more closer to a 1993 circa dub that what could be attempted by simply getting the Dune 2000 speech over, but if you really prefer that then I guess it will be fine. Spanish language could also benefit that way with its own Spanish version of Dune 2000. I only have the Spanish version of Dune 2000 for both PC and PlayStation and no other language version of this game, sorry. I don't say it's not a good work, but to me that's straight recycling speech that is actually intended for another game, so you end up listening the very same phrases in both. And it's not even complete, because the commandos still speak English as the "commando units" from Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun are entirely different (funnily enough, they reused Umagon's voice for Tanya in the similar Command & Conquer: Red Alert fantranslation). Add to that the fact that not having proper dubbed videos would never make this a properly dubbed version like it would be a retail product. Someone in the "CNCNZ" forums subbed the videos though, so what I prefer is having a translated version with all texts and subbed videos and keeping the voice in English as that would be closer to what Westwood could have released, rather than a "half-dubbed" version which is inconsistent having some parts dubbed and others not. But to be honest, if I had to use this speech pack in either Command & Conquer or Command & Conquer: Red Alert (which has a similar Spanish speech pak also reusing Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun's speech), I would opt for Command & Conquer for sure, as Command & Conquer: Red Alert is even worse. All the speech from specific units like the Spy and the Thief is lost entirely and replaced with regular units speech, and not only the EVA speech changes from a man to that of a woman, but there's also some renmants of English EVA speech that weren't replaced at all. All in all, I definitely prefer this one having Spanish text and English speech, given the fact that this one also has all videos subbed in Spanish by some fantranslator in the "Abandonsocios" community like it was done for Command & Conquer by that user in "CNCNZ". Ok, ok, so replace all "compressed" and "uncompressed" wording with "packed" and "unpacked" equivalents. Is it better and more accurately expressed now? xD You know what I mean, the fact of having all the content of the .PAK files scattered around as .ENG, .FRE and .GER rather than inside the proper .PAK files specific to each language (ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK, GERMAN.PAK). Surely it would be better to have these language files packed altogether rather than having all of them scattered around? Wouldn't that be more confy? And I don't think that's something very complicated to do.

That's because this release seems to have all the content of ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK and GERMAN.PAK as uncompressed and scattered around .ENG .FRE and .GER files, with the .PAK files themselves nowhere to be found. I really don't know if this is because someone decided to uncompress the language files and distributed the game like that, or if this is a side effect of this version (maybe because of its translation process) and the game was already lke this in the original floppies. I don't think it was like that, but then again, we would have to check it with the floppies and that's highly unlikely given their rarity level. :/ If you wish, you can compile all the .ENG, .FRE and .GER files into their respective ENGLISH.PAK, FRENCH.PAK and GERMAN.PAK files, obtaining a version of the game less abundant in files for you to put it in download form. Maybe you prefer it that way, so you could have all different versions keeping the same format.

I know, I know. I hope this can help.

Ok, I will post the links again. They were already posted in a previous message, but I edited them because I didn't want to do anything against possible forum rules. In my case, I usually get this Dune II v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish version from this website, where they have the game uploaded here. Fact is, you need to register an account to download games from there, so in order to avoid this issue I'm attaching to this message what you can obtain by downloading it from that website. I hope this is not an inconvenience. There's a couple of remarks you need to know about this attached version. First, there's a "leeme.txt" and a "JUGAR.BAT" file scattered which are NOT part of the game files. These were simply added by the guys in that website as a sort of watermarked files they include with every single game you can get from them, so of course, you can delete these files (I could have done it myself, but I didn't want to modify anything from the downloaded files). And second, the copy protection is cracked in this release, resulting that every answer you give to the mentat question will be valid. This doesn't make it a "clean" release of the game for sure. I don't know if the version drnovice found (not the one which has the Spanish files messed up, but the other one he mentions after that) has the protection cracked or not, so maybe you would prefer that version in order to have the "cleanest" release possible, although that thing would only be really possible by getting the original floppies, which are VERY RARE to obtain for this particular version. I don't know how much the .exe file differs from the other European three language releases. It should work similarly (because of still using .FRE and .GER files, albeit different in content), but there's probably some variations like translated Spanish/Italian content in place. You tell me. DUNE2.rar

Now that you mention it, that's one of the few things I have always been annoyed about the Spanish translation: the order of nouns. It's not done right in Spanish, because the name of the faction comes first and then the name of the unit (e.g. "Atreides Soldier" in English becomes "Atreides Soldado" in Spanish). But I thought that was simply because of how the game is programmed, and didn't know that French (and Italian, because of using the same values as French) got that right! Spanish is then compromised because of having the same values of German, when the languages are not that similar to begin with (French and Italian do have more similarities). That's so cheap. But I don't remember anything else wrong because of having to use the same values as German. In fact, the translation has all the needed fonts and characters that Spanish require like accented vocals, the "ñ" letter and the "¡" and "¿" characters at the beginning of exclamative/interrogative phrases. And the text translation is decent except for a couple of oddities like the "Load game" text in the in-game boxed menu being "Load - Cargar un juego" (Surely you don't need to keep that English "Load" at all? The title screen has a simpler "Cargar juego", on the other hand). P.S.: I'm sure you guys have Italian translated versions of those Westwood games from the early 90's. I don't think Westwood did things with Italian differently compared to what they did with Spanish, and Dune II is a fact of it.

Then I'm removing the links from my last message, just in case. I hope that only referencing the name of the site is enough, although I can also remove that info if necessary. A custom five language release featuring English, French, German, Italian and Spanish would be a very good thing, but I suppose you would have to adapt the Italian .FRE and Spanish .GER files to proper original extensions like .ITA and .SPA to disambiguate them from the proper French .FRE and German .GER files, and like you said, modifying the .exe file so it could be able to read those extensions. What will yo do with speech in Italian and Spanish languages? Using English speech for them? Keeping them silent? Or maybe you will be reusing that interesting recorded speech from the "Teodosio" version for Italian language?

I just tested this Italian version, and it's definitely a fantranslation. The website claims that "the site author has translated the original game completely in italian, including all the audio voice clips", the game spots an additional 1997 copyright together with the original 1992 Westwood copyright which goes to some "Teodosio" guy (probably the person who did it), and there's no proper V1.XX version indicated in the title screen It's a very interesting fantranslation, because given the fact that it was apparently done in 1997, it is definitely not reusing the Italian speech of Dune 2000 for obvious reasons, so it must be an original speech recording done by the fantranslator. The narrator speech is also from a man rather than a woman, and while he doesn't seem to be very good at acting, the soldiers speech seem very impressive on the other hand. I guess you can have this as a Dune II Italian speech source if you really like it. I don't really need a Spanish speech pack like that for Dune II. I'm fine with either English voices or silence. Besides, it would require to either get and reuse the Spanish speech of Dune 2000 because of being the closer official equivalent (though reusing official voice speech from other games is not my thing) or organizing a recording done by fans like that Italian "Teodosio" version did. What I would like it's simply to make the developers of OpenDune, Dune Legacy and Dune Dynasty aware of these versions and add compatibility to them (or proper compatibility in the case of OpenDune, because it's possible to make the game running despite of the presence of several font/character errors). These Spanish and Italian versions of Dune II are not fantranslations, but official Westwood/Virgin products released in 1993, and they should be considered by these source ports as such. I just tested that release, and yeah, there seems to be some problem with it. I believe this is because it was attempted to be modified by someone, probably an Italian person (the game folder is "dune2_ita" and there's also a "arena80" text file which is in Italian and links to some apparently Italian retrogaming site) who maybe got his modding right for the structure of the Italian files, but damaged the structure of the Spanish language files in the process, hence the problem. That's right, this version has Italian language stored in the .FRE files and Spanish language stored in the .GER files, like I said. Funny way to do it, but then again, it's an official version and not a fantranslation, so you have to deal with it. They probably weren't that bothered to program proper language extensions for the new languages and instead they just reused what they already had done for French and German. The "video" (looks like a voiced "Let's Play") is from the same guy who did this , which I linked in the first message of this thread. He's definitely using a modded version done by him, though he never released it even though he promised to do it. My guess is that it's probably a fantranslation of the North American monolingual version with the official Spanish translation patched in the same way that "Teodosio" guy did it with his Italian translated/dubbed version, but in this case there's no Spanish dub and he just made the game appointing the English speech like the game would normally do for the English language files (but fantranslated to Spanish). So the Italian translation is not good? The Spanish translation is not brilliant but it's decent at least. I suppose the game was translated by the same people who did the Spanish versions of the first two The Legend of Kyrandia games, which are good, although it's not quite the same translating a graphic adventure and a strategy game. In fact, I don't usually like to play Dune II in English because I feel like disregarding the Spanish version while doing it (hence why I would like the source ports to be compatible with it), except when I'm playing the Mega Drive version which was only released in English and German. I'm glad you found it. I wasn't very sure of the rules of this forum allowing download links to the full game to be posted, but it seems it's really possible to post them? Anyway, I usually get the v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish version from a site called "La Selva del Camaleón", where it has been since ages. They have a version which seems to have the copy protection cracked (that is, no matter what you type, the mentat will always regard your answer as correct) and some added "Leeme.txt" and "JUGAR.BAT" files which are usually put in by the guys of that website in every single download they have. Also, it's typical for these downloaded versions to have the content of the .PAK files uncompressed and placed as separate .FRE and .GER files, I don't know why. The version from "La Selva Camaleón" also features them that way. Maybe this version was released this way in the original floppies because they couldn't be bothered to repack them. I unfortunately don't have the original floppies of this version (they are VERY RARE and difficult to find) so I can't check that. By the way, since you are Italian yourself, can you tell me if Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, The Legend of Kyrandia, The Legend of Kyrandia Book Two: The Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos were all translated to Italian by Westwood? I know they were all translated to Spanish, so if you could confirm this then I would know if Westwood did the very exact same localisations for both Spanish and Italian back in the day: that is, translating the games in both languages for their floppy releases, but not doing the same with the CD-ROM re-releases which were only in English, German and French.

I would have to give it a look, but I don't think that's an official release, as I am only aware of Westwood doing voiced versions of the game in English, German and French (this was also the same with other Westwood games from that time, notably for their CD-ROM re-releases). My guess is that it's probably a Dune II Italian fantranslation which reuses both the official Italian translation of Dune II (or maybe they made a new one) and the Italian speech of Dune 2000. The game featuring a single ITALIAN.PAK language file and the setup not allowing to change language are facts indicating that this could be a hacked North American monolingual version rather than a European three language version, like the one featuring both the Spanish and Italian translations together with English. This could be done for Spanish too, again, having the Spanish speech of Dune 2000. But I prefer either having English speech like or keeping the game voiceless like it has always been, as I don't like reusing the same speech from sequels like it was done for the Spanish frantranslations of Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert, both of them reusing the Spanish speech of Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun.

Dune Dynasty doesn't seem to be compatible at all with the Spanish and Italian language files from Dune II v1.07 English/Italian/Spanish. Whenever I try to force the .cfg file to load either the Spanish .GER files or the Italian .FRE files of this version, the program gives the same fatal error at boot. :/ I hope these could added to subsequent releases. Since these languages are stored in files which have the very same extensions as French and German, I suppose they would have to be implemented by detecting and accepting the reworked version of these files, something which is not possible now in the current version.

I noticed this version is something largely undocumented in the Dune gaming communities, as if it never existed at all. It is not mentioned and/or considered when the different official versions of Dune II are mentioned for bibliographical reasons, unofficial patch and source ports, so I will try to shed some light to it. Dune II had official Spanish and Italian versions released back in 1993. These translations are present in a variant of the European v1.07 three language release "Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis" which features English, Italian and Spanish languages (in this order). This version, however, doesn't work with specific extensions for those languages. It simply reuses the same .FRE and .GER extensions of the other European v1.07 release for the new languages, with Italian being in the place of French (so, it uses the .FRE files) and Spanish being in the place of German (therefore, it uses the .GER files). Functionally it seems to be the same or largely the same as the regular European three language release featuring English, French and German, but the setup is modified to display and select the new languages accordingly (1. English, 2. Italian, 3. Spanish), and of course, all texts are translated to Spanish and Italian when the appropiate languages are selected. Back in the early 90's, Westwood used to do Spanish (and I suppose, Italian too) translations to their games. Eye of the Beholder, Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon, The Legend of Kyrandia, The Legend of Kyrandia Book Two: The Hand of Fate and Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, together with Dune II, were all released in Spanish, but only in their original floppy releases. When Westwood developed the CD-ROM re-releases of all of them, they only considered English, German and French as languages available for these versions, dismissing the already developed Spanish and Italian translations completely. The consequence of this trend was that when they started to develop PC games exclusively in CD-ROM format with titles like The Legend of Kyrandia Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge and Command & Conquer, none of them were translated/dubbed to Spanish and Italian, something that was not considered by Westwood until 1997 when they went back to these languages, starting with Lands of Lore II: Guardians of Destiny and Blade Runner. Now, going back to the English/Italian/Spanish version of Dune II, this version is particular due to the fact that both Spanish and Italian never seemed to have an official speech track done for them, unlike the ones that were done for English, German and French. No matter if you have both VOC.PAK or INTROVOC.PAK files present, Spanish and Italian don't use it at all and therefore the game remains silent with no trace of voiced speech and with only the English language selection being able to take advantage of it. While there are already several patches for the CD-ROM versions of both The Legend of Kyrandia games and the first Lands of Lore game which add the Spanish translations of the floppy versions in order to have voiced translated versions of all of them, Dune II still hasn't received an equivalent which allow the Spanish translation to either have a Spanish dub (which, I suppose, could be reused from Dune 2000) or English voices (in this particular case, someone is attempting to do it), so even in the unofficial side of things and going out of the official canon, this version is still entirely voiceless (I can't speak for the Italian language, I don't know if someone has attempted this with that translation). Due to the fact that most people in the Dune II fancommunity are unaware of this official Spanish and Italian version, there seems to be some problems when trying to use it in source ports like Dune Legacy, Dune Dynasty and OpenDune. With Dune Legacy you can use these files to make it running, but you can only play the game in English, as the program gives a c++ runtime error when you try to select either "French" (which would be Italian) or "German" (which would be Spanish) with these files because, I suppose, the languages don't match which the ones intended. Dune Dynasty also fails to boot the program whenever you force the .cfg file to load these languages. And regarding OpenDune, while the current 0.7 version seems to run the game in Spanish (I haven't tested Italian), there's a problem with the program failing to recognize the Spanish accented characters and the "ñ" character which provoques the text being displayed either incomplete or wrongly formatted, something that I don't think it would be very difficult to fix. It would be good that both of these source ports would support these languages, and maybe also linking them to the English language voices so neither of them would be silent, unless a unofficial voiced track for both languages would be provided (I don't like reusing voice files from other games like it was done with fantranslations of Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer Red Alert, so I don't think it would be a good idea to have them from Dune 2000). Lastly, I'm providing some screencaps of Dune II in Spanish for you to check out, although you can see some of it in the aforementioned YouTube video which is trying to hack it with English speech. You can even see the anticopy protection scheme in the screencap, evidencing this is a floppy version after all.

Hi. I have been following this project, and I just wanted to know if it's still on work and if some substantial progress has been made, since there seems to be a lack of communication and progress in this topic compared to what used to be before. From what I can tell, an open-source rewriting of a HNM-based Cryo game like Dune is truly a great thing to have for the homebrew community, and if I'm not mistaken, once it's finished, it could be a starting point not only to have Dune ported to other platforms, but even to continue work on the engine to support advanced HNM-based games like MegaRace, Dragon Lore and Lost Eden (if there's people interested in the matter, that is). So, keep the good work, guys!