rheo

The images really don't work :) Some have local filesystem addresses like this: file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/My%20Documents/Artwork/files.jpg

Hey, that's a good point. Although if you use the rock-paper-scissors idea from later RTS games it should probably not only be "most threatening" but also "most vulnerable".

I guess that is because all the clones are too similar, and none of them has yet reached a state where it would be as playable or polished as the original. It seems as though the clones seldom try to improve on dune2, the C&C-style infantry of TonyD's clone being a notable exception. But still I'd rather play the original dune2 again than play the same missions in TonyD's clone, maybe just because dune2 is much more atmospheric with its stylish UI and "cinematic" mission descriptions. Now here's an idea for improving on the old dune2 concept: It always annoyed me how the AI can drop units behind my base with carryalls, while my carryalls only carry the harvesters (and even that without my control). I don't think it would be too bad for the game balance if the player had direct control over carryalls. There could even be some nuances, like very big and powerful units like devastators being too heavy to be carried. Or maybe just infantry and trikes/quads, to give those some more tactical importance. It also couldn't hurt if the remakes stole some ideas from Westwood's own sequels to dune2. Why not have stealth fremen, special flak infantry or sardaukar that are actually different from the ordinary units in a dune2-like game? Some of the dune2 clones have done a good job of improving the ergonomics of the UI, but I don't think that alone justifies a new game. I think those so-called clones would do good to have some subtle but noticable innovations in the gameplay as well.

Heya Stefan! I don't know if you're aware, but the "www" link under your name, which leads to "arrakis.dune2k.com", is displaying that old arrakis2k site again. It used to display your Dune II - The Maker site. On another note, the Dune II - The maker site looks pretty neat, but the HTML code seems to be quite messed up. I'm using Mozilla 1.3 and none of the links on your site are clickable. The mouse cursor doesn't even change if it hovers over them. After a quick look at your HTML source i still don't know what's wrong there, but I found an </iframe> tag that doesn't even have an opening tag. I tried correcting that on a local copy of your site, but it's not the source of the link problems.

whoa, how did you find that gem. i think i spent days searching for a free screen capture utility that can capture directx screens. and all i ever found was that damn hypersnap dx that's shareware and which displays an ugly message on the pictures if it's not registered... :)

thanks! so Dune Messiah is the book to read next. about the prequels: after all that's been said about them on this board, i'm not sure if i want to read the prequels at all. but if i do, i'll read them after all the original books.

i've read the original Dune book, and i'd like to continue reading the books in the right chronological order. could someone please sort the original six books according to the order in which they were written for me?

i've downloaded your new version including the file msvcp70.dll, and now it complains about not finding msvcr70.dll :) actually i've even downloaded that dll file from the web. that must be a wrong version though because it says it couldn't find entry point "__iob_func" in the msvcr70.dll and still doesn't work. pretty weird stuff.

heh, you're right. i confused that with a song from Alphaville.

some of the band Dune's videos, especially the early ones, seem a bit inspired by the dune novels. the song "who wants to live forever" however is a cover of an older song from Alphaville.

[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

as some people seem interested, here's my win32 version of Ultra Dune II. the only changes in Stefan's code i've made are the changes required to make it compile with my c++ compiler. there is the old dos version (which doesn't work for me), my windows exe and the source included. most people won't be interested in this game much, as the only thing implemented is structure building. there's no combat yet. some keys you can try in the game: F11 - generates a random map on the fly F12 - take a screenshot Q, W, A and Z - surprise ;) i'm only distributing this so people can see what UDune is like. i'm not going to develop it further myself, but of i invite anyone to work on UDune since Stefan has gladly given away the source code.

while looking through the other parts of the forum, i stumbled over this url and found that there are some nicely done house symbols: http://www.angelfire.com/film/lvr1962/duneccg.htm

you'll also have to remove all the lines that look like extern volatile int <something with mouse> in a .h file, defsomething i think. then it's necessary that you add the line END_OF_MAIN() at the end of the .cpp file. and of course you must have installed the allegro library for mingw. it can be found here: http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/

instead of random and srandom, use rand and srand.