hugslab

there's a sequence in a save game that should be something like 0D 0F 32 64 80 28 14 28 23 32 46 80 xx xx xx xx yy zz (this is in a new or early game, so your results may vary) yy and zz are your party members - they'll be set to FF if nobody is in that slot. setting both of these bytes to 00 gives you two dads. i tried setting one to 0D, which should be a smuggler, but this crashed the game. forcing a character to follow you using this method will still leave them behind in the world, i think, because recruiting a character normally changes a byte in their character data. this is also why "come with me" is shown in the dialogue, i suspect.

hey, it's been a while since i was last poking around inside this game, but my understanding is this: 0x00 to 0xff of the data segment contains variables that can be checked as dialogue conditions. these conditions are defined in condit.hsq and referenced in dialogue.hsq. i think characters being willing to follow you is always controlled by dialogue. i think these are consistent between different versions of the game, except the demo. 0x2A is the current game stage and 0xC2 is used for the phase of the final attack on arrakeen. this is followed by the location data, troop data and then character data. all of this data is compressed and stored in save games, as well as dialogue data. i can't remember if there was anything else that gets saved. i've included some of my fragmented notes and an IDA database (from an unpacked duneprg.exe in version 2.3) if these might be any help. dunenotes.zip

character data is right after troop data and is laid out something like this: a b c d e f g h leto: 200a 80 01 dc9d 0000 0000 00 02 A : the scene this character appears in (see field C of sietch data) + the room within the scene (in this case, the throne room of the palace) B : i *think* this is used for distance from a location if you leave someone in the desert? C : character is hidden when this is set to ff D : this is a function pointer used to start dialogue and i have no idea why it's present in save games E&F : unsure. these are set to zero at game start (thus compressed in save games) G : sprite index H : unsure characters appear in this order: leto, jessica, thufir, duncan, gurney, stilgar, kynes, chani, harah, the baron, feyd, the emperor, soldiers, smugglers, fremen, fremen

I was able to figure out a way of playing an incomplete version of the game from within the demo a little while back. It's a bit of a hack to get it working, and it needs files from the final game - so not entirely accurate, but it's still kinda interesting! I've added some (incomplete) findings to the page started by sourgrass.

For anyone super curious, the first byte of column F in John2022's sietch structure is used to determine when a sietch can be discovered. For example, Tuono-Tabr is set to 02, so when the game stage variable is 02 (which it is when Leto orders you to find the stillsuit maker), the sietch becomes discoverable. The game stage only goes up to C8 (I think), so those locations set to FF are revealed through other events.