Fey

hey mate! sorry for the late reply. I tried to get in touch with Feda first, but he's pretty busy nowadays. doesn't have time to troubleshoot, himself I can't be sure what the exact problem is, but I can tell you that the Mission Launcher automates file replacement. in the old days, before this function, people had to replace their game files with modded ones if they wanted to play any modded campaigns. it was quite troublesome! the new Mission Launcher is not perfect, however. the most frequent issue that results in things changing unintentionally on other maps is a file permissions problem, where the Mission Launcher may be able to move modded files into place so you can play a mission, but fails to restore backups afterwards. this results in mod files being left in places they shouldn't be, and affecting other maps I could recommend a few courses of action. you could try a fresh install of gruntmods, or dato's 'dunemaster' version instead of gruntmods. you could check Cm's index, linked here: for the WoA thread, redownload it from there and see if that fixes the issue. and to prevent the file permissions-related issue I described earlier, simply make sure you're running both the game exe itself and the Mission Launcher in administrator mode. you can also feel free to drop by the Landsraad discord server for more help and information. that's also linked in the above index hope that helps, mate. good luck!

seems redundant. we can simply upgrade the MCV mid-game using new events, or make the hover version the default on a hypothetical archipelago mission like this. pretty sure we can adapt ConYard animations for different MCV types already, too; it's the Harvesters that are locked in to only one docking animation at the moment energy-based technology, like hover engines, are quite commonplace in this new setting and the main new faction there makes frequent use of such things ^^ so I didn't intend to attach some kind of heightened cost to hovertech units. if anything, The Order's hovertech stuff costs so much in ArkDebut because of their firepower lol

it occured to me that building space on majority-water maps is hard to come by and would be painfully limited. like, look at this... we need space for the buildable areas, the harvestable resources, decorations, all that stuff. how can we fit that in a puny space like this? the top left there makes the issue very obvious: there are shale/flats borders, flats/water borders... but no shale/water borders. if we fix that, we gain a lot more build space on island maps soooo i did some cooking: and now we have shale/water borders, and shale/flats/water borders here's the expanded tileset image with those additional tiles: I'll do up the attributes later. we just have the image for now still, I implemented those tiles' appearances only and here's an in-game test screenshot: we should be able to make much better effective use of the available space thanks to this. no needless two layers of terrain borders. better-looking too, right? form AND function! what? "how does island warfare work in d2k when there are no transport ships"? custom Carryall logic, hovertech, and duct tape. also, I poked PsYcHo about doing up a hovertech MCV. repack it like in ArkDebut, fly it over the water with a light escort of whatever hover tanks are available in your faction's arsenal, and plop it down somewhere new I'm still working on polishing up units' spritesets that PsYcHo generously provided via his voxels, but wanted to post this update since it has to do with the tileset itself. that's all for now edit 5/27/26: island map's drawn up. here's a full map image this map is 110x80. A8V1 is 96x96, which is 9216 tiles as opposed to 8800. and, it has about 3ish enemy bases on it, and this archipelago map is designed for 3ish enemy bases. a fairly close comparison... A8V1 is slightly larger as a whole for comparison, A8V1 has 410 thick Spice tiles and 1108 thin Spice tiles, for a total of 385,600 harvestable credits, and 23 Spice blooms. there are exactly 20 Mining Rig build spots on the archipelago mission, so those could be considered Spice blooms' equivalents so, with another ~86k harvestable resources on the archipelago map, and much less space to build in any one area (because ConYard repacking and expanding, including to enemy islands, is expected), therefore less space to cap out on factories and be greedy before expanding somewhere, it seems my estimations should be on the money. no pun intended edit 5/31/26: drew some bases on the map and did an AFK test with six Harvesters on the bottom left island... took 'em about 37 mins to mine out the island, from map start. more than enough to work with, and that's like ~22k in resources from Mining Rigs too. you know, it didn't look like much when i mapped this out, but it lasts a lot longer than i'd expect as for the bases drawn on the rest of the map, uhh... here's another full map image with those who knows when we'll have a playable test map here though. lotsa crap needs sorting. d2k doesn't have any traditional transports like those naval transports you can use to get landlocked units across the water, or APCs for infantry. custom Carryall logic needs to be implemented in order to get them to move vehicles to other islands. infantry are totally stuck because without APC logic and due to old game BS, if a Carryall lifts one up and sets him down, that infantry unit is crushed when the Carryall lands 💀 not to mention how silly it looks having a guy standing on the underside of a Carryall. there's no hover MCV yet, no non-placeholder naval units yet, and because the attributes are incomplete, if you attempt to send units across the rock/water bridges, you die IRL somehow. still working out how i came back to life from that; we'll chalk that up to 1998 game voodoo too I wrote some primitive APC logic the other day for the Lyovros Borer, but it only half-works - the unit spawns an infantry unit, but the infantry unit's health level isn't saved, so it spawns at full, and the infantry unit also doesn't properly exit the vehicle, so the vehicle can keep spawning the same infantry unit, and there's no exception for if the infantry unit can't spawn, so it would cause a crash... not to mention it only works for a single infantry passenger. hardly helpful when needing to move 30 of the guys across the water it's an absolute mess. but i have infinity spritework to work on in the meantime, so i guess i'll get back to that for now and think on this stuff for later

that sounds like an unthinkably difficult challenge, bruc. I'm sorry y'all had to go through that ordeal. I'm really thankful our work was able to accompany you through those times. it means a lot that we were able to make a difference in your time of need. we're gonna keep trying hard to bring the best outta this beloved ol' game and, thanks for reaching out, Cm 😅 always helpful

actually yeah! Danny Danku's working on a new xna client that will allow build queues to be enabled or disabled with a checkbox in the lobby, similar to switching on worms or crates. moving stuff over to skirmish/multiplayer is still a work in progress and rough around the edges due to the nature of differences between single- and multi-player, but yeah, queues are doable already over there I'm not sure there's a forum post about it yet, and I'll direct Danku to this post. if he has an account here, maybe he can reply, himself. otherwise, he links new versions of the xna client over in the Landsraad Discord server, which itself is linked in a post pinned to the top of this d2k section of the forums. feel free to swing by anytime I'll see if I can getcha a link later and edit this post with it if he ain't available edit: I think he can drop by later. I'll leave it to him ^^

Welcome back! Yes, Gruntmods or Dunemaster can handle all the modded missions, but you might need to update your game exe to support certain advanced / recent missions. The advancements Klofkac has made are detailed in his devlog thread over here: Hope that helps!

Klofkac recently added real queueing to the game. I've been asked to add it to SS, so... details below: I guess that's all, so, good luck and have fun!

see you there, mate! ping Fey there anytime, I can help ya set up the following: ah, we've actually got a proper queue now. it's hot off the presses, made more recently than the ArkDebut mission. behold: very customizable. comes with bulk, priority, infinite, and other queue functions I see you created a thread for your new merc / guild campaign, so I suppose that would also be a fine place to discuss it further

they're also the only map the MP boys like to play Habbanya Erg and nothing else. lol me? we've got uncrushable infantry in d2k now. it was done via a really janky workaround during Summers' Solstice's inception, but Klofkac added proper support for it relatively recently. mostly though, I lean on map design for that and just try to leave infantry rock in lots of places sure dude, feel free to hit me up then SC1 still has quite a large following. if you make something for it, I think you can be very confident it will be played

1200 resources in Starcraft for Siege Tanks? 💀 ik range is, like, the most powerful stat, but doesn't that just mean you gotta mess with how the economy works so the player's income can keep up with that kinda inflated price? my father likes to play on easy mode just to blow stuff up, and aarmaageedoon says my missions are "too easy" even with multiple restarts 😆 can't please everybody I'm not the worst at d2k, and my focus is on mission or campaign design - player versus AI - so my process is testing crap on hard mode / fastest game speed, then scaling it down for normal and easy modes. it matters for the maximum difficulty since players on hard are looking for a challenge. it should be both fair and engaging. normal and easy, those are where some theoretical scaling should suffice to nail the target difficulty as long as hard mode is done up nicely the metric I look to primarily for determining if a mission is balanced how I want it is how long it takes me to complete it, including compared to its neighboring or counterpart missions. players will inevitably have a variety of experiences, but how closely in time it takes for me, knowing them in and out and optimizing for them, to complete them does a lot to illustrate the sum of whatever balance decisions I made for them already that doesn't mean I don't consider how things might work out in a hypothetical multiplayer game though. I passed an MP compatible version of my stuff over to the boys, and some unexpected metagaming came out of it, like... walls and concrete were useable. lol micro potential is a big deal in determining units' viability. take Blink micro for Stalkers in SC2 for example. you can have a unit with relatively weak stats, but with good player control, it dominates. over here in d2k, in ArkDebut, the Keravnos Laser Tank's shield system has revealed some interesting interactions already and suggests great micro potential. needs more testing. there are innumerable complex interactions in RTS, even in a simple one like d2k. makes theoretical balance pretty messy when the rubber hits the road wym money maps? like, macro-heavy, macro missions? there are a lot of differences between how macro and micro missions need to be designed and how a player will use units just thanks to that fundamental difference. or do you mean how the resources are painted on macro missions? at some point we get more into mission design theory as opposed to unit balance theory 😛 different things

I dunno, mate. maybe it's just cuz I'm a hands-on learner, but I've played KKND and this still sounds both overcomplicated and oversimplified at the same time... there are so many more factors that define a unit's strengths or weaknesses there was one concept you brought up that's particularly comprehensible to me though 😛 how I tried to balance the Summers' Solstice campaign was through units' roles, or functions as you put it, as opposed to on an individual basis. so even if we've got some new stuff here or there, they fall into certain categories and their strengths and weaknesses are representative of the category they belong to like Shock Raiders, for instance. fast, high damage, low durability. excels over open terrain, swarming targets. bad in head-on frontal assault. very similar to Quads, Raiders, Flame Tanks, other stuff like that even that example accounts for movement speed, effective weapon range, and other stuff like that too though. not just health and damage a lot of theory falls apart in practice, I've found. you know what they say: in theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. in practice, there most certainly is a difference 😆

it sounds a bit too basic to really work out ^^ there are so many other factors to consider in a unit's power. maybe as a starting principle, but certainly not as the core of balance decisions and whatnot do you have some kind of example to showcase the success of this method? a practical example, not... not more math

try running a game just against AI via CNCNET. that might rule out if it's display issues, renderer problems, etc... I also recommend ensuring you and your son have the same game version. Gruntmods and Dunemaster are the two nowadays, and if one doesn't appear to be working for you, try the other it's also worth noting that due to the way the Mission Launcher works, if either of you have run modified single-player missions via the Mission Launcher, it could result in desyncing issues in multiplayer. a fresh / separate install specifically for multiplayer would prevent any related problems I hope that helps!

lay it on us, brother 👀

you'll wanna open C&Cnet, which you'll find in your d2k directory with any modern install package, and then you can run skirmish games from there. IIRC you just click the mini-map image in the C&Cnet lobby to choose which map you wanna load note that due to how the Mission Launcher works, replacing files and such, if you're encountering sync issues with a friend while trying to co-op, consider using a fresh install for the C&Cnet stuff. even if windows isn't being a jerk and preventing the Mission Launcher from properly restoring files after single-player missions, C&Cnet can sometimes give folks trouble anyway if the Mission Launcher was used at all. why? 1998 game voodoo, I guess anyway, hope that helps!

ah, no worries! take your time I'm just doing spritework in the meantime lol. nice to hear from ya though, X3M got that Railgun Tank sidebar icon sorted the other day, but like the Kovi and Castle it doesn't have a place in any tech tree just yet. I DID intend for it to be a unit for the native rival faction to the Aether Knights, but it's a really cool new unit and the AK need something in the Autogun Tank's spot in their tech tree, sooooo I might just put it there. I've got other ideas for that other faction lol oh yeah, Shotgunners were in the Summers' Solstice campaign and will remain the Light Infantry-like unit for the smugglers and mercenaries in this campaign. they have more impact against light armor, albeit only slightly, than the former standard Riflemen. their area-effect, while larger as well, is nowhere near that of Grenadiers or Siege Tanks when trying to determine why exactly the Shotgunner is so superior to the regular Light Infantry, it has to do with their method of dealing damage. they don't actually have higher DPS than Riflemen with that small exception of more oomph against light armor. it's just that they deal their damage sooner, meaning they're more likely to eliminate threats sooner. Riflemen might need another shot or two Trikes' rapid fire attack works because it has the speed to compensate. it gets on top of stuff, eats it, and can leave just as quickly. since infantry are slower and tend to be stuck in the fight, a bursty damage model lends itself very well to the weakest infantry unit the Shotgunner becomes the player's standard infantry on S03V1 and on. both they and Grenadiers can be compared on this mission, and I'll link you to this vid from Felix where the action starts if you want to check it out for yourself, Summers' Solstice is in any regular d2k install with gruntmods or dunemaster nowadays... although I did do a small mostly-cosmetic update to backport a bunch of features Klofkac added for this campaign after its completion, including a new spirteset for the Shotgunners. more details about that are in... this post here ^^ hope that helps

just an update for the curious... lotsa stuff needs doing before I can get on with doing up campaign missions, but just cuz it's boring backend stuff doesn't mean we can't look forward to the final results! Klofkac has been working on reviving mvi's ol' queues system I believe I already mentioned that my current pursuit is spritework and I've also refined the tech tree seen in the debut mission although ArkDebut was released primarily to showcase the tileset, it happens to also be the latest mission created for d2k and I could do up another draft later just to showcase the new art additions and gameplay tweaks. and also to make that art available for other mappers through the mod data y'all can see it in action with or extract it from. I've got a lot more spritework to wrap up first though that's all for now

haha, yeah those final missions can get a bit hairy xD especially the Harkonnen ones! I guess because you get Devastators as Harkonnen, Westwood was like, "alright, start 'em off with the cruddiest of stuff between all the level 9's" lol ah, sorry to hear this issue has gotten in your way on thatun. fortunate it is, indeed, that we can freely select any mission from the Mission Launcher! starting a long mission over again is bothersome, but at least it ain't the whole campaign, right? I hope you enjoy the campaign though! 💕 good luck n have fun!

hey there! the number you're seeing in the error message is the amount of "ticks" that have passed in the saved games you've got. 25 ticks = 1 in-game second, and at fastest game speed, an in-game second is roughly 0.4 of a real-life second. it's just a way to tell you when the crash occurred, for debugging purposes game data invalid is what it sounds like, unfortunately. something in the save file ain't playing nice with the new exe. we try to maintain backwards compatibility, but ya know how development can be the good news is, you should be able to run any mission made with a prior version of the game in mind just fine between stable versions of the exe. there are minor exceptions, like if a bug was exploited for map design and that bug was fixed, the map that used it may be a little different. nothing should be unplayable though and, you should also be able to run more modern campaigns making use of the powerful new features. Cm's index has all known playable content documented: and if you'd like some examples of more modern campaigns, I can make a few recommendations of threads to check out via that index: - Thel 'Vadam Flippy's Great Battle of Arrakis focuses heavily on large-scale macro missions, using some powerful variables-based features, such as 'repeat queueing' to let you mass-produce large armies to clash with - PsYcHo's Smuggler Restructure campaign is closer to vanilla in terms of most of the event types used, but makes use of minimap pings and quite a few lovely new units he created as voxels, which I later polished up - my Summers' Solstice campaign recently had some new features backported to it. nothing that fundamentally changes the missions, except ooone thing on the final mission, but some significant optimizations and QoL but there are plenty of gems besides those; these are specifically campaigns that use new features with the v2.3 exe and all that on a tangential note, the very latest mission designed for d2k at the time of this post is the Arkanon Debut mission included in that tileset's thread. it'd be under "single missions" in the index. that uses a cutting-edge exe though, technically not the stable version of 2.3. still, it might be of interest if you're looking to get a peek at the most modern of our capabilities anyway, I hope that answers your question!

OpenRA is different! different engine and all that stuff. therefore, this process is not applicable to anything OpenRA they probably have another way to get custom tilesets in, but I wouldn't know how that works so, good luck!

I feel that ^^ the build queues are a popular request

aye, unfortunate about the build queue patch being so, uhh... you know. hard to get working thank you! I appreciate that! and I extend the same offer; if you need help getting the repeat queue system implemented on any missions at all (like those that NEED the new exes to work), feel free to reach out. I frequent the Landsraad Discord server, a link to which is pinned on these forums, and could help more rapidly over there. but if you just wanna give it a try and see how it feels, you'll find the system implemented in the recent ArkDebut mission, which is linked in the Arkanon tileset release thread hope that helps!

that's factually incorrect! Klofkac didn't merely design new features - he designed, essentially, a new programming language we can use to add our own new features to Dune 2000. the custom special weapons in the new ArkDebut mission, for example, are of my own design thank you though there are a lot of things people have said we'll "never have." if that were our attitude, we wouldn't be here ^^ those two in particular are pretty popular requests though. I can poke Klofkac about those again. given progress in other areas, perhaps he's up to investigate the implementation of stuff like this more closely I'm no stranger to the OpenRA side of things either. I appreciate their platform... but it's not d2k! and we d2k folks over here don't intend to just pick up and start implementing everything in their engine. we've got our own to make improvements to, which is important for them too since they've benefit from our advancements and contributions. for instance, quite a few of our new art assets have wound up in OpenRA-based d2k thingiemajiggers. so, I hope they have fun, and I hope they get lots of use out of the next art assets we'll be polishing up over here! it's just not my place. that's all

well, if you figure it out again, I'm curious how changing that graphic works! TibEd is entirely replaced and on many levels surpassed by Klofkac's editor. you'll be pleasantly surprised when you have a look, I'm sure

no idea about that, mate ^^ I could show ya how to apply the repeat queue system to any mission though, if that helps