Rippsblack

I see... I think i understand what you mean the graphics being used just don't scale and centre right with the dynamic resolutions of modern monitors and stuff. Could just approach this differently by including more infomation in the empty space, bump up the dialogue bar and use the lower half to display mission statistics such as spice mined and units destroyed, rank achieved and score. You never really get to see this stuff until you finish or lose a game so mission by mission details would be very welcome and probably already being tracked by the engine so... maybe theres that? I played dune 2000 a lot but probably not as much as I should have, I cant really remember what colours were used in that game with the exception that ordos used a much paler green. Its probably a good solution though, Flying units on the radar in modern games are usually upwards pointing triangles so maybe we could do that? I played even less of emporer 😛 or remember even less. Something simple like a radar ping (expanding circle) shown for 1 or 2 seconds near a structure taking damage would be good enough? Could even write a note in the message / status bar but I seriously think that would be missed in most cases by the player so something eye catching on the minimap i feel is the best way to go. Yea this looks fantastic, I wonder if you could do something similar for infantry to cast shadows?

Should'nt have done this; Crippled the AI's ability to rebuild before showcasing if it could 😛 Are the Saduarker carryall's meant to be glowing white on the minimap? they look like sandworms, I also have a little trouble spotting the saduarker trooper blips on the radar being so close to the blue of your base. I kinda feel like the radar itself is missing a lot of polish, the most notable being the lack of radar activating animation that displays. I feel like more could be done to show the emergance of the saduarker carryalls as in real gameplay that would be catch me unaware. This is strange; Whats going on here? Its like he exists in the square above the conyard and is rendering inside the refinery and got stuck? Also I feel like this may be in error? Shouldnt the fire be under the smoke? Otherwise....

Love this tooltip, probably want an option to turn it off though I have more thoughts about this tooltip after about watching 10 minutes of the gameplay from the latest YT video, In the original game, the sidebar used to display all kinds of infomation about the selected structure - most of it useless (not for back then, but for example wind trap info is now handled with a nice power bar). However one unit did have stats that were useful and probably still would be today, the Radar Structure, it showed the current known population count of both friendly and enemy units. Sadly it did not distinquish between factions but still - good enough. Could we have that infomation back on the radar somewhere? or perhaps in this tooltip? Mentant appears to be shorter than he should be? maybe this is good and stops him looking so low res 😛 I'm also noticing much of the detailing graphics are missing from or doesn't match that of the original Dune 2 'Select your next conquest' Screen. looks kinda empty as a result I really really love these particle effects on the carryall, my only thought is they are very hard to see and something you might not even notice, they're even harder to see when flying over concrete, perhaps a different particle colour dependant on the tile its flying over might be a good idea? You units seem to have a really hard time obeying orders to shoot a spice bloom 😮 pretty sure you noticed this DId smoke always behave like this? if not... Good Job! I like it I know I'm meant to be looking at the AI here, but still: Is this the AI moving to defend their base? If so good job!

The main reason i suggested using the FOW effect was that the graphics were already drawn, but if you want to create a unique effect that would actually be better as then there would be no chance a player might confuse the edge of the map with unexplored terrain. Good Job! Shame we cant just copy the unit behavior from one to the next but I feel like each unit class would need its own behavior types. For example rocket tanks should try and keep some distance between them and their target. Rocket Troopers also have a unique AI feature I've yet to see be recreated by any Dune 2 Clone and that is due to the fact they have two weapons to choose from In the original game you could reduce the damage taken to your tanks by rocket troopers by standing in the very next adjacent tile, forcing them to use their pew pew machine guns at the lower DPS. I took advantage of this all the time but for a modern game I feel like the troopers should be able to move back a square and keep firing their rockets. I aint 100% sure but i believe the pew pew machine gun was actually more effective at taking down other infantry, so the opposite was true if you wanted to use your rocket troopers effectively against other infantry. I dont think anyone even uses infantry in games these days, they are just useless once you get combat tanks and sadly overlooked. this is probably because combat tanks and all heavier vehicles just path over infantry and slaughter them, maybe some simple logic to allow infantry to attempt to move out of the way might balance this. Who knows... I'd like to see the infantry units get more use somehow, perhaps by giving them their own unique functions in addition to the capturing of enemy structures. Honestly finding it quite hard to brainstorm for ideas with regards to infantry the only thing I really thought of would be splitting the unit cap into two functions - one for vehicles and another for infantry. Something I feel should probably be optional so we can still play as close to Dune 2 style as possible.

oh yea.... thats a really good point about the inward corners, I guess this really just a non-issue, point of taste really but when I think back to play Dune2 on the amiga the map wouldnt actually pan further than the edge or corner, this probably only worked because of the one resolution used and I get this kinda breaks when you consider larger resolutions than the map you're going to have some ammount of black space or a very focused and limited zoom. Yeah thats basically right, I expected it to be like in real Dune 2. Deselecting a structure for a unit removes the highlight. I think theres a few possible approaches; Continue chasing the unit but fire at the target dealing the unit most damage. Disengage the unit and focus entirely on the higher threat. Fallback to the base or other friendly units. or basically go back to where it came from. My personal choice would be to disengage and target the new threat. I'd just like to see the AI take better care of their units really, I don't know if you could add something like a high cost path for units that try to move near known enemey turrets so they try and avoid doing that. this is moving near an enemy turret is less likely unless its been specificlly targeted by the units AI. again not sure how much effort to worth ratio that would be but just a thought.

Been thinking about the line implementation thing. Upon further consideration I now understand why the C&C RA2 line paths are direct lines to the destination rather than showing the full path the unit takes, this is simply to stop the unit AI revealing too much about the terrain ahead through the magic of its path finding. I feel like I've come up with a solution to keep everyone happy, Draw the path upto the fog of war than make the line direct from there revealing no terrain infomation. I dont know how hard that implementation would be or if its even worth the effort, but w.e 😛 A Few other things that occurred to me: Do you think it would be a bad idea to increase the credits counter display by an extra digit? The scale of the maps are increasing so the demand for larger spice stores would increase too don't you think? Explored map edges look ugly, can we use the fog of war effect to make them wavey? Friendly structure selection lines, the highlights around the building whatever you u wish to call them don't always go away, I noticed a number of your structures had them on almost permantly, specificly the factory structures. Unit selection boxes seem to be drawn not quite right and missing the right edge, I only noticed this a third time through the video, and it seems to dependant on the zoom level. similar to the concrete slab problem. The 'Power' bar uses the letter 'P' to represent electrical power, which is fine, but could we not use a more classical lightning bolt symbol. I am guessing the use of the letter 'P' was a simple solution to draw a character instead of a graphic since you've used the '$' symbol to represent the spice storage in the same style. The AI units don't seem to re-evaluate threats and I noticed you took advantage of this fact once or twice by luring the enemy combat tanks into your rocket turrets. Maybe thats a future nit pick though, But i was thinking each units AI could check the surounding area for threats and re-evualuate its targets each time the AI unit takes damage. This could prove to be far too effective so maybe just have it recheck whenever its health bar changes colour, which is probably about when the average player would take action anyway. I'll probably have more thoughts later on, hoping to get my hands on the demo soon

Yea I saw the YT video watched to the end when u struggled to find the last Rocket Trooper and he got killed by your base. With regards to the line feature, I only wish it was gameplay for one reason and one reason only. Units like to path over spice blooms, knowing if they intend to do this before hand is a good thing. I do my best to follow you're tweets but i'm not a twitter person really so YT is a good place to post

Good Job! My thoughts: Something looks off about the concrete slabs, lacking some of the 3D shading effect I believe. Explosions look really nice as does the animated mouse cursors actions, I will say the explosions appear blocky maybe that could be improved some. Many of the flying units seem to want to strafe at strange angles when flying in straight lines 😮 Flying units seem to fly under the smoke effect 😮 I love the unit path lines, I'm assuming this is a debug feature but should be gameplay IMO Carryall shadows are nice but i feel are maybe too dark? should have some level of transparency IMHO, similar to the one used by smoke. Frigate Shadows seem to be inconsistant from the caryall shadow angle, maybe thats just me. Like the carryalls appear to fly while the frigate seems to just hover slightly above the ground.

oh well that explains that 😛 my bad... carry on.

Going to download and do a short play test now.. will post some feedback in the morrows Edit: would appreciate if you updated the fundynamic website pages i know thats a whole other project and i dont wanna be pushy but theres no way to reach the demo 5 pages from the site link in your sig 😉 Edit2: Cant actually find the 5.01 version (assuming thats it name) on the github page. 😕 I guess i'll test it another time

I was thinking many of these - the ones within map size limits anyway the smaller ones would be easy ports back to D2TM format.

Imma download it now 😛 thx for the pressie

Better not be funning with me! had my heart strings pulled a lot recently ;)

Another series of maps Dune Legacy Rippsblack Map Pack 2.rar

Its been a while since i've been over this way, but last time I was i was heavily playing Dune2 The Maker and i made some maps for that game. Somepoint after the Dune Legacy team contacted me requesting use of those maps in thier game, ofcourse i said yes. I've spent some time recently playing Dune Legacy and its a fantastic game, supports larger maps upto 128x128 which is kinda nuts. In some cases i managed to push this limit over 128 but it results in sometimes crashing and weird radar bugs. But enough about all that... Today I Present to you some new maps made specificly for Dune Legacy varying in size and shape, some very small and some large. About half of them were made for 1v1 or 2v2 games so try and keep that in mind also. I Tried contacting the legacy team but was unable to reach them at IRC, i guess their contacts info is a little out of date but hey people know about this place. I'm sure if people want new content they'll google it and find it :D :) Long Live the Fighters! Dune Legacy Rippsblack Map Pack1.rar

I think I've read something about that actually, sometimes when I make a typo its not only the wrong spelling or wrong word, in the example of 'bear with me / bare with me', but completely different word that wouldn't even fit in the sentence, it might be something else I was thinking about or doing at the same time. anyway, moving on. So I've been playing again tonight and had worked my way up to level 9 on the Ordos campaign, was doing quite well and then.... bam The crash occurred when I clicked on the rocket turret icon to begin construction, I had noticed prior that I'd hit some kind of building/unit cap. Wasn't sure what exactly caused the crash, but I did have a number of units queued on the starport (purchased, but hadn't clicked send order) that I was planning on breaking the unit cap with :P Maybe that was a bad idea?

Haha, that's okay dude, honestly I've noticed myself making that mistake quite frequently these days, it even bothers me xD

Dynasty, I don't mean the button is not click-able, I meant that Mentat's face is not click-able when on the Mentat screen. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? I already figured out the skip trick, however was using the options menu and double clicking Music on/off button :P I am aware of how BBcodes work, they were present in my signature at one point but for some reason are now missing. I care little anyway as it was only a display for my current halo sessions for which there is no longer any need. I don't play the game any more and care little about sharing my stats :P With regards to the music, I've been playing all night last night (massive headache now), and noticed that dune2000 music does indeed get its fair share of play time, once enabled correctly :P (my bad) The way i noticed the movement issue was with a siege tank and a combat tank, before entered the same tile to squish a trooper and then stopped there. the unit underneath seemed to be protected by damage, but once both units moved again they went their separate ways. Normally I'm shit hot on grammar and punctuation and things, but honestly towards the end of the day when I'm tired and stoned grammar sort of goes out of the window in favour of speed typing :P

Removed my sig... it was from bungie's halo... a game sadly i can no longer play since my xbox was banned from xbox live :p Its a shame about the music, because allot of the great tracks from dune2000 rarely get a play (at least i find this to be the case) maybe the dynamic music could be made optional? Like in total annihilation you could choose between random, custom (dynamic) and play all (in order) I have been playing this game allot of over the last week and i've noticed a few possible bugs. not 100% sure what causes it but in some instances two or more units can occupy the same tile, I first noticed this when ordering a group to 'move' onto an enemy trooper. also, somewhat less important, but still somewhat annoying, the hark mentant does not seem to be clickable like the others. But apart from that this game is astonishingly complete and bug free, goodjob!

Wow, Really impressed with this. I've only one request, the ability to skip music tracks, back and forth or a screen with a track listing so you can choose your favourate tracks Maybe add another button next to mentat and options, 'music' though i guess that would probably require some additional graphics be drawn, and it could just as easily be another page in the options button What do you think?

oh yes... obviously it makes sense :P (to some) so do you understand why its happening ? or would you need more info to recreate this bug first?

perhaps i should have been more clear... the resolution detects a wide-screen mode... which is not displayed on a single monitor, but instead, across both monitors in a windowed mode :S @ Mr Fibble... Demo4 is pretty old now, but there are 'unstable' releases that are available from stefans D2TM site, those release have better resolution support ;-)

you're probably right... this may not be the place to report it... however most peeps are pretty friendly and care not about such things... but yes... I am having the same issue too incidently... stefan... loving the new res support... tho it behaves odd when more than one monitor are in use

My Favourate RTS game, (Total Annihilation) had the option for the a left click interface or a right click interface and as much as i loved the choice, i allways stuck with the left click interface. Since the inception of supreme commander it became right click only and i've noticed the trend in RTS games to be Right Click only... I honestly feel that the choice is essential... it will avoid alienating any particular players playing style. looking over the RTS games in my collection i dont think any of them have gotten the control style right just yet... Most seem to forget that there is a middle mouse button too... which should be used for either selecting or going to your base or moving the screen to the action (enemy unit approaching ;p ) Keyboard controls are an essential... i think looking at the Supreme Commander / Total Annihilation Key bindings and copying those that apply to D2TM would also not be a bad idea Below i have posted some of the main commands from TA for your viewing pleasure I feel that the blizzard & C&C style controls are good... but not good enough...

hey stefan, just stopped by to ask how D2TM is going... bluehappybyte, has recently asked me for permision to use my maps in Dune Legacy, I have ofcourse said yes :) Which kinda got me wondering just how far off a new release of D2TM is... FYI... i prefer D2TM to Dune Legacy ;) ;)