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.

that's exactly what i did as well :) those extern declarations gave me a bit of a headache first. i got lots of undefined references first and couldn't understand where they were from, because i had never actually looked at that header file. were those declarations not part of the allegro headers back when you wrote udune, or why did you have those declarations there?

do you know that it's possible to compile your old Ultra Dune II as a native windows program? i compiled it with the free MinGW compiler and the allegro for windows library, and i only had to change five lines to make it work. that means you could actually continue that project and get a directx windows game if you wanted to, without having to start from scratch. of course, this is just a suggestion. :)

Dune Legacy is there: http://www.dune2k.com/forum/index.php?board=19;action=display;threadid=5612 make sure you download the two "patches" as well, otherwise it won't work (or be to fast to be playable).

well, i think it's funny how the harkonnen's sardaukars are more expensive but weaker than the emperor's ones.

the computer i ran dune 2 redux on had a 1GHz Athlon and a geforce 2 mx 400. the guys at hp sure provide some crappy manuals with their hardware (there's no manual for the graphics card, only one for the complete system saying that the graphics card has "lots of memory"), but i think those cards usually have at least 64 MB. i also tried the game on another computer with a Athlon XP with 1,6 GHz and a SiS 315 graphics card, and the slowdown wasn't that noticealbe (though still there). as i don't think the budget card outperforms the geforce 2, it's probably because of the faster processor.

yup, i forgot to mention that: the health bar of units and structures will often be behind other graphics like impact craters or other units. i guess that shouldn't be so. thanks for the tip with the "r" button, i think you forgot to mention that in the readme file ;)

i haven't actually tried to change the screen resolution, but i've chosen different game speeds. the game isn't slow at the start, even though it's slower than dune legacy (which may or may not be a good thing). however, if there are many units, like 20 or more, the game will become slow, no matter the speed setting. this also shows in the mouse cursor always lagging behind my mouse movements with a short delay. i noticed that the game became considerably faster again when i scrolled away from my large group of quads and tanks, even though they were of course still there, just not visible to me. that makes me suspect that it's the drawing of the units that's slowing the game down.

hey that's a pretty cool remake. although, where dune 2 redux is quite slow, this is quite fast. the game seems to be developed pretty far already, and i really like all the details that are already in the game (group selection and deselction with the shift button, saving groups, several infantry men on one tile etc). also i find that the hi-res graphics, although a little small, look better than dune's original low-res graphics. oh yeah, and not to forget the controllable air units, those rock :) again, a few things i've noticed (that you may already know): - even the new version of the game is very fast. unlike the old version it's not too fast to be playable, but some people will like to have the game slower. maybe there should be an option to set the game speed. - the enemy doesn't seem to actually build units in his factories - on the other hand, i was able to give build orders to the computer's structures (that was in mission 17, me playing harkonnen) - in some missions (mission 1), all the enemy units like to attack my base right at the start (making the missions quite impossible) - sand worms are... um... damn fast, and damn effective - there does not seem to be a way to repair structures (but the repair facility for vehicles works, great!) - structure upgrades aren't there yet, and you don't need a house ix to build special units either, it seems - the air units are very cheap, and i couldn't get the ornithopter to fire at the enemy. it's an excellent scouting unit nevertheless - my carryalls love to fly my harvesters right into the middle of the enemy's base, if there are spice fields i hope you'll actually finish this game at some point, it shows great potential to me. good luck!

whoops, i can't get the game to run on my machine. when i start the game it'll display a black screen for a second and then exit without any error messages. here's the content of the stdout.txt file (stderr is empty):

oh i see... in the menu with all the different houses, i thought i could chose my side by left-clicking on the one i want. instead i always get to use the first entry in that list and the rest is ai players, but i can cycle through the different houses for every list position. you can already draw a rectangle around the units with the mouse and so select a whole group at once.