Chris Longpre

:D I really love this thread!

Actually, I believe MCA Universal holds the rights to the film, and I would be surprised if EA retained those rights any longer than they needed to in order to legally sell & market the game. If someone wanted to make a DUNE game, they should inquire there... and dig out their pocket books.. it won't be cheap. ~Chris

and.. Doc should be able to help you find the Port #s neccessary to get E:BFD working on your firewall. They were either buried deep in a readme.txt file, or online on the Knowledge Base at EA. --Chris

An old article indeed... but I can go ahead and answer this question, which I dodged artfully way back then. <i>And now, the loaded question Chris sidestepped: Electronic Arts disbanded Origin Systems not too long ago. Has Westwood Studios ever been near the chopping block?</i> Yes. --Chris

DelugeD, I do not know of any professional game company doing a 'Dune' RTS game... but I've been out of the industry nearly 3 years now. It's always possible. Personally, I really like the ideas for mods of Emp & other games, Like Battlezone2000, for Dune. Some good stuff. :) --Chris

Heya all,

just a FYI ... EA does not hold the license on the Dune franchise.

True on the deploy & speeding up. You could play with the rules file and speed up the contaminator's movement. If you can find the animation control file for them, speed up their 'being spawned from the dead' animation, and then make their attack +1 point of damage or so.. Then give them a spin, a la zerg style. Buzzsaws, snipers, etc. will not be able to keep up... may be the start of a fun mod though... --Chris

shhhhhh....... ;)

Here is a picture of the DVD directory .. looks like we put some other stuff in there too! --Chris [attachment archived by Gobalopper]

The Contaminator was created to fill a couple of design needs. Besides needing a cool unit for the Tleixu flesh vats to produce, we wanted to add unique units with unique strategies. (We did not succeed on every unit :) We really liked the idea of a viral attack, or a unit that propogated like a virus. That idea became the genesis for both the Leech & the Contaminator. Once converts infantry, the other machines. Both are organic technologies, and its a rather organic attack form, so it fit the Tleixu ethos perfectly. In the early versions, both units were so deadly, they would quickly overwelm & dominate any opponant. (Talk about a Zerg attack!) So, they had to be nerf'd. In the end, we took a tad too much sting out of them.. but they are annoying as hell <evil grin>. When the Contaminators kill too quickly, they become very difficult to defeat. Also, their original spawn time was faster.. so when the enemy solidier died, you had another Contaminator in less than a second. :) They also walked faster initially.. he he.. again a 10 contaminator Zerg attack became lethal if you had any amount of infantry around. I used the Leeches more than the Contaminators.... and nowadays, I'd try them inside an Ordos APC, and dump them in the middle of a base, or in the middle of an infantry group. --Chris

hmm.. yes... I think .. through a custom map and/or campaign/mission INI settings.. wow...so foggy now... there might be some flag somewhere to make two sides play as one, even with differnt units ... I think... hmm. --Chris

Oh the tease .. (sorry, I feel bad now.) :) Seriously, there was a complete proposal with concept art, units, sides, everything. We pitched it to the execs September 8th, 2001. It was turned down.. for a number of reasons... most not having to do with the game proposal. Most definitely due to poor forcasts on a sequel title. I intentionally did not take a copy with me when I left Westwood, as I knew it would be too tempting to have in my possession. .. .. Much like... (dare, I tease again..??... ah shucks, its 2am .. nobody is looking..) the Emperor DVD version I found last night in an old box. Yup. I found this box in my closet, thinking all these years it was my last case of "Into the Void", another game I produced ..which barely saw the light of day (longer story). When I went to open it, I a bunch of stuff from my Westwood desk. This was the very last box I packed, quickly, as they stood in my door ready to push me out the front door. I just sweeped the last few stacks of stuff into this box, and left. Besides a couple of fresh, unopened Emperor boxed copies (which I needed, as I loaned out my opened box), I found the DVD version that Tim Fritz & I made in early October, 2001. It's the full version 1.09, with all the map packs, the editor, trailers, screenshots, marketing kit, etc. etc. I belive the main EXE is identical to v1.09 you all have, but the installer was rev'd to work off the DVD. Anyhoo... I'll have to go see what else is in that box .. who knows.. I was too sleepy to get past the top layer... ;) --Chris

Oh, and a completely new AI model. (Given current spec PCs, some time & money to develop, there are some cool new things to be done... and nobody doing them yet!) --Chris

Umm..somewhere in this thread.. there is an assumption that all the units were created for multiplayer games. Some units were created for either story or campaign gameplay. Others for multiplayer balance. And still others just for the tapestry of the Dune world (i.e. Fremen Riders). Hopefully there were (and still are) many viable strategies for winning in campaign & multiplayer, based upon your sub-houses, and unit choices. That is what it is all about. Agreed that after 3 years of playing, you all have probably found the exact formula/combination that works for you and/or most players. :) Oh.. Hi all! :) --Chris

:-[ Oddly enough, I was going through some old emails yesterday, and realized that there is an unrealesed Map Pack. It was fully tested & approved for release, and I was holding on to it for the next month's 'update'. Obviously, that never happened after I left Westwood. Unfortunately, I'm sure it is gone from the westwood servers. Perhaps it rests in some deep archive somewhere, in a wood crate next to the Ark of the Covenant. Perhaps somebody formerly from IG might have a copy..??..?? --Chris

:) Hey All! Just a quick comment on connection issues. Since the Blaster worm made its debut, I've had intermittant connection problems on various web sites, game sites, and other internet traffic. This is both from home (cable modem) and work (T1). When an email virus infects such a large number of machines, and they are constantly emailing themselves to *everyone* on that machine's address book, and they are actively scanning IP ranges, looking for open machines to link to, it creates a lot of packets flying around the internet. A WHOLE LOT. Now, when your un-infected machine is just trying to connect to a game site, some of the machines that pass your packets along the line to your final server destination, will be so busy handling all this junk-virus traffic, that your packets will not get serviced, and expire. i.e. a lost packet. This causes lost connections, page not available, and other errors. Sending packets to any server, will 'hop' accross a number of machines, could be 5 or 6, or 20+. It all depends on where you are connected on the internet, and where the final destination is. Hence, you may have good connection with Battle.net, but lousey with gamespy.com. Your traffic is routed along different computers in those 2 cases. Anyways, it seems to have gotten a lot better in the past 4-5 days. I can finally play DAOC & UT-2003 again, and my business web traffic is much more steady. Virus' suck. Game On. ~Chris

You may want to re-check the build-tree in the settings file. There may be another building required (in addition to the Hanger) to build those.. and perhaps your opponant engineered or destroyed your (con-yard, etc.). It certainly could be a bug, but with an extremely low frequency. If you re-installed, and it did not come back with your same frequency, it would be more likely an install/modification issue. --Chris

Hmm.. can't build the special air units eh? Did you pre-order Emperor? ;D As you recall, those Air-Units were only available to the pre-order folks initially, and they had a code to unlock their WOL account to display the units in the build tree. However, everyone gets the air units after a certain date, which was about 30 days after ship, back in June 2001. So here are some scenarios to explore. If the WOL date is before that special date in July 2001, then nobody will get air-drones. If WOL is not available, it should use your system date instead. Is your system date correct for 2003? If you are on WOL with a different WOL account than you usually play on, perhaps your WOL account is bugged. The flag for the pre-order units is stored in your WOL account data. Hope that helps... --Chris

Quick tid-bits... + Observer mode was scratched in the last few weeks, as we just ran out of time. :( + game recording was implemented for debug purposes from very early on. It is turned off when you compile the program in 'final' mode, which means no debug code. This typically makes the code run much faster, but removes all the cheats, including the 'replay scripts'. Was not a space issue at all.. + We also had a cool cheat mode, which would freeze the game progression, but keep the camera controls & screen shot keys active. This is how we could create so many decent screen shots, and do the 3D screenshots (Quicktime-VR). + We also had a movie record mode which would draw every frame rendered to the hard-drive in sequential filenames. Another good method to make movies, or collect screen shots. Was also helpfull for debugging, and is not compiled in the final release version. (BTW, when drawing each fram to disk (as TGA files), it ran like 1 fps, due to the large size of the TGA pictures... not playable really) Cheers, --Chris

:) BTW, Great work on the ladder everyone! It is very nice to see a viable ladder emerge post-Westwood closure. Kudos to all who worked on it! --Chris

Anytime you have a choice, with good & bad, yet different, consequences ... it is a tactic. Force your enemy to micromanage a battle carefully, but loose an expensive harvester & slow your spice prodcution. And the fact that it is not universally seen as a preferably tactic, means it has some balance. :) IMHO...

;D Tactic baby... ;)

.. and if you retreat from the territory successfully, you will get a reserve force. Which is good for an initial group of units on another turn... and they can be moved around the map.