ShadowDog

I'd love another Dune game, and an anime based off the series is probably the best way to get enough new people interested for that to happen. Also, it'd be interesting to see Dune as an anime. Yes, I just said that I don't really care how good a hypothetical Dune anime would be so long as it increases my chances of getting another Westwood-(style-)RTS. God knows the Command and Conquer series isn't doing it anymore. Edit: Sorry, didn't realize this topic was over a month old.

If we were to find a reference to one of the Dune games, would we also post it here?

Couldn't Oil Wells could be considered harvesters? And speaking of harvesters, I just realized that's Westwood way of handling harvesters makes no sense in Dune 2/k due to the way the books define them (Ironically, YR's Slave Miner is almost exactly it, besides the fact that they're employees in Dune). Of course, I played CnC first, so I never realized this. MrFlibble, what's your TVTropes username? Also, I'm trying to compile Seed2Map with VS2005 Express. It's not going so well: It's choking on this part: //Which types of terrain can contain spice bool canAddSpiceTo[10]={ true, //sand false, true,//dunes false, false,//rock false, false,//mountains false, true, //spice true //muchspice }; I changed it to: //Which types of terrain can contain spice int canAddSpiceTo[10]={ 1, //sand 0, 1,//dunes 0, 0,//rock 0, 0,//mountains 0, 1, //spice 1 //muchspice }; And now it's only giving me 3 2 errors (one was because I didn't know about do-while loops. Because come on, really...): There was also a reference somewhere about unreferenced variable "d" somewhere. Thanks. EDIT: Logic? This! Is! Visual Studio! So yeah, everything's compiling now.

I meant that it should be MCY in that case.

I'm actually using the Jungle theater there, and XCC Editor defaults to Temprate. Thanks. I used that to create a list of things I could use for beach. Then I realized I only needed one tile for beach. That might kill the mod right there. Luckily, I don't have to worry about XCC Editor. By stupid, I mean they should have checked to see if that mode was enabled, or else just set it to "Construction Yard". Unless they already check; I don't think I've ever actually used the ToolTips that pop up in TD. Everything was always labeled Civilian or Enemy Unit/Structure, and I didn't know about TrueNames back then. Wait, the MCV's name? That would make a lot more sense, but... MCV = Mobile Construction Yard? ... Logic? This! Is! Westwood!

Half of my projects are literally just the last project I worked on, only reporpused. In this case, this went from CnC Remake -> CnC Map Editor -> Luftballon -> Desert Fox -> Map2PNG (and now -> Dune2CnC). As such, you can scroll the map using the arrow keys. Speaking of Dune2CnC, how do I make CnC1 .tmp (or in this case, .jun) files? Download - Note: This only converts the terrain (Including the Spice/Tiberium); later versions will hopefully convert infantry and bases. (Nyerguds, wasn't there a way to disable bibs with an ini flag, or am I going to need to hack the executable?) Nyerguds, is there any problem with using up to the 255th frame of a .tem file?

Half Life. Also, I'm trying to see if I can get 2008 working. Oh, and here's Map2PNG. Download That was pretty fun to put together. EDIT: Unfortunately, the book I'm using, "Programming a Strategy Game with DirectX 9", is designed to work with, well, DirectX. Anyone here ever used DirectX? Then you'll know how quickly the SDK changes. I don't feel like messing with it any more; I'm going to use the meat of the book, but change all of the DirectX stuff to either OpenGL or Allegro. Can someone suggest which one to use? These are the main points I'm looking at: 3D Accelerated (That is, I can draw sprites on the screen as polygons and use 3D graphics cards to speed up the 2D scene) Ease of use. Who here could I ask for help with it?

I could make a Map2PNG tool, and hopefully GM has some sort of way to silently call a program in the background and wait until it's done. I'll try it out when I get the Dune 2 theater tiles together (which will probably be when I'm done trying to get VS6 SP6 to work on Windows 7. No VS6 products installed? BS!).

I could make a converter real easily by finding a tile/frame combo with the setting I want, putting the graphic there, and making a converter that takes a dune generated map and converts it to my new CnCMeetsDune tile format. The main problem would be that I have no clue how to edit .tmp files and Dune 2's theater is 16x16. Game Maker has always run well on all of my systems (even the one that literally burnt out). Of course, 6 broke after I installed 7, and 7's SoftWrap BS made it literally unusable. 8 doesn't suck, however, so I use 8 if I need to use an extension, and 5 otherwise. Though I am planning on moving development to C++... Speed increases, less hacky methods for remaps, the fact I've already gotten some experience working on this thing from the GM version, etc... It depends on the map. Worst case scenario, it has to load 4096 995 separate tiles. Best case, 16 tiles (Either the default blank map, for a 255_0 blanked map). It loads real maps much better than the test maps with every tile on them. I load only the tiles needed, so I can load up a blank map when testing other things.

I'm using Game Maker, so I've got it running. GM is pretty good for Rapid Application Development. It only shows CnC's units and overlays at the moment, though. I'm probably going to require the graphics to be pre-remapped and make a program that remaps the graphics automatically. Because I really do not want to have to write unit/building/infantry/aircraft/naval remap code (also, it'd make the maps slower to load). I haven't even got movement yet... Right now, I'm mainly focusing on CnC and Dune 2. CnC because it's my favorite game, and Dune 2 because the formats are similar enough (I expect reading scen[side][num].ini files will be extremely easy with the exception of team types and any other ini key that uses arbitrary text rather than numbers). I'm probably going to make my version of Dune 2 (TD and RA focus on being as close as possible, D2 will admittedly be less spot-on) have a tilesize of 64x64 and use Dune 2000 tiles to make the equivalent Dune 2 tiles (unless Dune 2000's tiles are a lot different than CnC's, in which case 1 tile would work). As far as Dune 2k goes, I'm going to try and get it running (I'm running Windows 7). When I finish that, I'll see if the units actually have more than 1 frame of animation. As you guys here are Dune fans, I'd appreciate your ideas on Dune clones (or a link to relevant questions). Also, what are the main control schemes that should be supported?

There's still an chance something could go horribly wrong with it, so I'm keeping it secret from the main CnC community. So note that this is sort of an open secret. Essentially, I want to create a zlib Westwood-style RTS engine. To test it out, I'm making "mods" for the engine. CnC, RA, D2, and hopefully Dune 2k (as you know, it's formats are pure craziness). Funnily enough, the format Seed2Map outputs is Index-NullByte. TD's format is InternalIndex-Frame. Essentially, I chopped up the Desert theater into files named "0_0.png" to "255_0.png". Instead of creating a new format, I can just name the first image "0_0.png" and so on. Theoretically, I could also convert the Dune desert into a CnC theater and make it so I can play horribly butchered versions of Dune 2 missions in CnC, but that's a little silly. The main problems I've run into is that no one knows the formulas for where weapons hit (essential for TD game balance; I assume not so much for RA, since we'd actually have information on those numbers if it were in that game), no one knows how to open r16 files (I now have them extracted thanks to total commander and gaup, search the forums for "german uncensor howto"), I don't know what all the Dune 2000 buildings/units look like or what images go to what (can someone help me with that? I'll upload the images), I keep programming myself into the ground, Dune 2000 makes no sense, and I keep making simple screwups. By Dune 2000 makes no sense, I mean 1.) stupid formats compared to RA, and 2.) it looks like this on my copy of Windows 7. Note that it is in compatibility mode for Windows 95. Dune 2000 graphics are here. Use Irfanview if you lack something to view TGA files.

Luckily, just using the Seed2Map program is enough for my purposes. Thanks, everyone!

I've heard that Dune 2's seed generator has been reverse engineered. My searching between Calculus and frantic programming sessions hasn't turned up any useful info other than DuneMaps and OpenDune both using them. Are there any relevant topics about how this was done and how to implement them? Thanks in advance.

I've never understood the point of the Blizzard-style controls. Yes, they're better than Dune 2's controls. That's not saying a whole lot. They're not too complicated, but they're still overly complicated. I can understand Blizzard using it for Warcraft, but after Command and Conquer... wait, Dune 2 for Genesis came out before Warcraft... Anyway, let's see if I can remember this correctly: left-click selects a unit, right-click orders it to move or attack, left-click deselects. Now if you want to tell your guys to kill some dude or scout, you drag a box over them with the left-mouse button, click the dude or terrain with the right-mouse button, then click anywhere with the left mouse button. That requires switching the required button to press twice. In a one-button set-up, you drag with the left-mouse button, click on the person, then click anywhere with the right-mouse button. I can't really understand why you'd need to use two buttons for that. That said, not everyone plays the same way or likes the same kind of user interface. I recommend asking at first startup which control scheme you want to use. That way you don't let anyone miss that the option is there.

Is there any chance you could release the scenario editor part early?