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JasonRedway

Fremen
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  1. Looks like it has a good fan base and loads of potential, its good to see the people keeping the Dunivers alive! And with big budget engines having free versions (Unity, Unreal and CryEngine) there is a load of scope to bring cool stuff to the masses. Some of the best games around come from the people rahter than the big companies, keep up the great work!
  2. Here's an idea, if you want to send me some designs (anyone) that you'd like to see in an Emperor Mod I'll have a look and maybe consider them. Start with units and buildings. Behaviours will mostly be limited to what is already in the game, there is only so much you can do within the engine but I'll see what I can get done...
  3. Why D2K? Why not Mad Max, or Star Wars or even something completely new?
  4. There was not any real need for forward thinking, the houses used in the games were defined by the legalities of what were were allowed to use based on the books. However, I have been looking into the text files that define everything in the game and it appears that there could be a way to add more houses. There are declarations for houses in the rules.txt file and then there are definitions in the artini.txt file too so in combination it may be possible to add new ones. You'd have to give them an AI.ini file too but copying one of the existing houses may be enough. I understand that mods would have been better recieved 10 years ago, the problem there was that all the companies involved either were consumed by bigger ones or just plain and simply went under. And Emperor was a number one title when it was released, but only for about a week. Apparently people took it back for refunds because it was too processor hungry for the computers of the day, so it appeared that the actual sales of Emperor were pretty small - this is probably why there has not been another release based on the IP since. But now I have kind of rediscovered all the original files I am in a position to make a mod with completely new everything with a better poly count than the original and just for the fun of it. I am interested to see if anyone else would like a mod or should I just make it for myself?
  5. My guess is that its because it lacks the animation definitions.
  6. If you can extract data/model/rules.txt from the MODEL.RFD you can add the carryall=TRUE attribute under the GUScavenger section, you'll also need to remove the house=Guild attribute so that it can be used by all houses and drop its tech level down to 1 so you can use it from the start of the game.
  7. Interesting. So no-one was ever able to create mods that contained really new units etc? All that the mods could do was to unlock what was already there and change the unit behaviour. I guess if someone was to create a new mod that had new things in it would be well recieved. I have the original editors, the FXEditor that I used extensively to create the unit animations and effects, I also have the map editor and the shadow maker utility. I have found that they all work and can still be used under Windows 7 64Bit. I have the XAF exporter that only runs with 3DS Max 3 and here is my problem - I no longer have 3DS Max 3. The original workflow for creating units was to use 3DS Max, we then used the XAF exporter to create what is essentially a text file that describes the objects and geometry. That was then loaded into the FX Editor where the animation names were defined and any particles or texture animation was applied. That was then exported as an XBF file as used in the game. There are text files that associate the game object to the mesh and a rules file that defined its speed, size and gun types and that was all there was to it. I was looking at the XAF file recently and believe if I can figure out what the values mean I could write a maxscript exporter to create them so I would then be able to create a whole new set of assets for a mod - unless I cen get a hold of 3DS Max 3, and then there is no problem at all. In answer to your question about the number of houses, I would expect it to have been hardcoded. It was a part of the game that really defines its place in the Dune Universe. There was only ever three main houses and each its own subhouse, that was never going to change so there would have been no need for it to have been defined by ini file.
  8. The Flesh Vat was one of my favourites to produce, I was asked to make it as disgusting as I could so I hit the internet for texture ideas. I found an image take from a real life autopsy of an eight month old baby that had died from a genetic neurological disorder. The back of the Flesh Vat is the image of the baby's spinal column with some colour modifications to make it less gross! The animation was done with 3DS Max's XForm modifier, a loop of vertecies selected for each XForm that expanded and contracted in a sequence making the vomitting action as it 'gives birth'.
  9. Hey AnimalMan, how are you making these mods? Do you have some tools? Has any mod ever been made that uses new artwork that was not already in the game res files? Incidentally, the Smelter was going to be the orignal refinery, we were not going to have harvesters and spice in Emperor. The plan from the start was to have debris scattered about the maps that was left over from the previous war on Dune. There was a flying unit we called the Scavenger http://www.reddixcgi.com/development/portfolio/projects/emperor/html/project_empmov_sc.htm that was going to pick up the dedris and take it back to the smelter to make the necessary resources for building units and buildings. The idea that anything that was destroyed in the game would leave bits behind that could be recycled by picking them up and smelting them down. It was intended that this could create more ferocious competition for players because they would be able to pick up anyone elses dead units for themselves so it would be a race to recycle. The idea was dropped though, months into production we decided that spice and harvesters were really too central to the Dune universe that they could not really be cut from the game. So the smelter and the scavenger were 'removed'. There were probably a couple more units/buildings that ended this way too but I think that most would have been repurposed to either non-player incidental units/buildings or for subhouse groups. Technically any in-game asset can be controlled by the player, if someone was so inclined to change the rules of the game. I did mess around with a version of Dune that used Star Wars models, I have a sand speeder, AT AT, sail barge, the sand crawler (which I think actually made it into the game - if you're in the right map looking in the right place at the right time you might see it along with the Fremen Speederbike - don't ask me which map, there is no way I can remeber that! ha ha). I also have some models from the Red Alert 3D pitch that I did for WW Studios, for an unnamed supernatural horror game that we looked into tech demo with the Emperor engine and for the Age of Heroes which also never made it past demo stage.
  10. I still have all the original promo stuff, might even have the icons somewhere, there is a bunch of stuff on my site here too http://www.reddixcgi.com/development/portfolio/projects/emperor/html/project_emp1.htm
  11. I guess everyone is playing in high quality mode now, the processor speeds of PC's back when we made it was pretty slow. By the time we released it single core 1GHz P3's had only just come out. Most people didn't have that kind of hardware so even though initially it was a No. 1 title, it dropped pretty quickly to bargain basement. What does everyone think looks good or bad?
  12. Everything about the game really, its been 11 years since it was released so its interesting that people are still playing it so what could have been done better and what is just perfect?
  13. Whats your best and worst bits of E:BFD?
  14. Thanks, its good to be here :-) I was a massive fan of Dune (the books and films and then the games) so it was a great honour to get the chance to work on the remakes. To be fair though I did very little in the production of D2K, mostly preproduction work and prototyping but I was very heavily involved in Emperor. To me it is probably one of the best games that I was involved in and I still play it from time to time so it would be great fun to mod away... Maybe I could pickup on the Star Wars mod that I messed around with before release!
  15. Hi guys, I was wondering how you make these mods? Do you have tools for creating the assets and modifying the files? I still have some of the original tools that we used to make it but the XAF exporter only worked on 3DS Max V3 and the FX Editor doesn't seem to work on 64Bit OS. It'd be really cool to make some mods. We did a demo for WWS and EA for Red Alert using the Emperor Engine near the end of development and we started doing a Frank Miller inspired Spartan game called Age of Heroes too (http://www.reddixcgi.com/development/portfolio/projects/heroes/html/project_heroes.html) but when IG folded in 2002 it all stopped... Cheers -Jason
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