Dune 2000 is still alive!

[Iain McNeil]

I was surprised and pleased to see that Dune is still alive!

My name is Iain McNeil and I was the team leader on the Dune 2000 project & initially on Dune Emperor as well. Its really great to see so many people still getting fun out of a game that we made 5 years ago ( I forget now!)?After 2 years of Making Dune 2000 I had overdosed on RTS gaming and needed a break from it and early on in Dune Emperor I decided I needed to try something new, so that

[EWS]

Welcome, I actually dont like Dune 2000, I much prefer Dune 2.  Adn unfortunatly I cannot get Emperor working on my computer

[Iain McNeil]

Why are you on a Dune 2000 message forum then ;) Often the game you play first is the one you come to love, and I understand this. You'll probably find peole who played Dune 2000 first and then Dune 2 prefer Dune 2000.  I'm just glad to see so many people still playing it.

Remember, you can't please all the people all the time!

[EWS]

I really do like this forum, as the "General" boards are really good.  I guess I never really gave Dune 2000 a chance.  I am actually sitting here looking at it thinking, surely it isn't that bad.  I guess I may just have to give it a chance. As for Emp.  I have it, infact i have it in my hands now.  But for somereason I cannot get it working.

But Dune 2 is such a good game.  It was the first of it's kind and it went on to carve out one of the best styles of games available.  I still remember the first time I defeated the Emperor on that bastard of a last level.  It was like a dream come true.

[Terror]

Personally i have to say that Emperor was the better product. Dune2000 was all nice and cool but it was realy Dune2 on the red alert engine. Theoretically it could have been a mod for red alert and it didn't bring a new plot or new stuff that we hadn't seen in dune2 yet so that's why it wasn't too good.

Emperor was new, new graphics, new campaign, new story etc. That's why i think emperor was much better.

[Iain McNeil]

I'd agree with you if Westwood had allowed to use anything from Red Alert :) Why you may ask..... I wish I could say!  Unfortunately we had to write it all from scratch in a year. I didn't do much but work eat and sleep that year!

Emperor is a much more advanced game with a much larger team for about 3 years, so it should be better!

[Terror]

Hmm, k, well it did play a lot like RA though, although RA was a bit more fun. Dune2000 had it's good points. Online play was quite good, but at that time i had modem so it wasn't realy a great option for me (considering the ticks per minute) and now i have adsl but dune2000 got a bit old ;) .

Well it was a welcome new game though for the dune fans like us. But mostly because it was dune i think.

[Andrew]

Maybe Iain McNeil you can get the rights to make a Dune game and make a turn based one (since that is your expertise)? That type hasn't been made yet.

A new Dune game would be most welcome. More to talk and play with.

:)

(or Dune mod for Spartan

[Iain McNeil]

Yea - we try and make things as moddable as possible. We've just had one gamer release a Roman mod for our last game, taking Chariots of War from ancient Egypt to Rome.

I think the license would cost us a fortune, but we could check it out :) Any idea who owns it these days?

[Gobalopper]

The Dune guys, ie Kevin or Brian, hinted that someone was making a game but they didn't say who or what.

I'm guessing that EA doesn't have the licence anymore as they would probably have made a game and five sequels by now. :)

And Cyro went bankrupt so I'm guessing that was either sold off or expired.

[DRFsimmsy]

Goddamn your game. I spent approximately one year completely hooked online... It was only a small group of us playing, maybe 20 or so but boy did we get good. I don't know if they still play, Tanktrix, Tu, Prins, Achim..

I still hold that it's the most addictive RTS to come out. Must have been the simplicity. We made it simpler though by ignoring certain aspects of the game. No one really played ordos, a few were harkonnen but most were atreides, we banned engineers, turrets, harvest hunting...

And ofc none of us built concrete ;) except for power...

Sounds boring doesn't it... Nope.

[DRFsimmsy]

Personally I thought Emperor was pretty awful, and Dune 2 was virtually unplayable...

[Inoculator9]

Dune2000 while you play it, is the best. Emp, though I've found my niche here modding it and have obviously become quite good at it, doesn't have the great, simple addictive qualities of Dune2000.

[Iain McNeil]

What can I say - they floundered without me ;)

[SpiceGuid]

Congratulations, any participant in Dune2000 development merits gratitude from the Dune fans.

Dune2000 ideally extends Lynch movie, has simple and addictive gameplay, campaigns have great replay value, also really great music and sound.

Plus Lynch stillsuits, impressive mentats, Lady Elara, Kari the fremen and much mure.

Really something to be proud of.

"Slitherine Software is an independent UK developer.  We are a small and talented team who have been in the games industry since the early 1990's working on games such as T-Tex, Desert Strike, Red Alert, Dune, Dune Emperor, Deus Ex and Urban Chaos on platforms from the Amiga, Lynx, SNES,  PSX, GBC, Dreamcast to PC."

Dune game is by Cryo not by Westwood, i guess you mean Dune2000.

Unfortunately, small companies and niche genre games can't afford a Dune licence. So we can't play with Dune politics and Bene Gesserit plots, too sad.

Best luck with Slitherine Software.

I suppose these brand new games can't run on my Celeron 500 however...

[Inoculator9]

All of it. Simply a stunning game.

[Iain McNeil]

Thanks & yes it should read Dune 2000 :)

Our games all work on a Celeron 500. We deliberately kept our spec low but got panned by the press for it.

This time round, with Spartan we have a 2D and a 3D option. The 2D option lets anyone with a PII 300 upwards play & the 3D option lets players get the best from their 3D hardware and hopefully to stop the press giving us such a hard time.

Incidentally Spartan went gold yesterday! It ships in the UK on 24th March through Just Play & the rest of Europe & the US will soon follow.

http://www.slitherine.co.uk

[Beckett]

The only turn based game I ever played was Star Trek: Birth of the Federation.  Great game, that really needs a sequel (and an update).  Perhaps now Activision swaped their Trek license for a court case you can get in touch with Viacom :P

[DRFsimmsy]

WTF the single player is damn boring, and skirmish isn't much better. The storyline is pretty lame. and all the movie clips are unbearably cheesy. Multiplayer is the best, but it's only any good when use the game to it's limits. (unit count)

[DRFsimmsy]

Ian, you should come online sometime and have a game with us. If you should come in i'm aka funkmando. Join us in a 4 way or something :P

[Iain McNeil]

Sounds kinky ;)

I just might do that! I haven't played Dune 2000 for years! I can tell you I was good. I was UK C&C champion & designed Dune to play very similarly so I could win at it :) None of that red alert tank rush rubbish!

Too busy right now - just got the German text back for Spartan & have to integrate it.

[DRFsimmsy]

and even kinkier, a 6 way! :P

But usually we stick with the 4s, nice and simple tvsb games.

I spose dune is at it's most active around 9-12 pm GMT. But even then most is usually about 12 peeps.

How old is it now, 6 years?

Anyways seriously you get some fucking crazy elites on dune 2k. I'm pretty crap really.

Try playing griffin65, jerski or tanktrix or someone.. Hope to see you on there some point, good luck with Spartan :)

We're working on getting back the tourny system though, FoXrotorz has been working on it i think, and I saw someone on the other day who had rank 1 next to their name so something must be happening.

[nemafakei]

My goodness, I really ought to check the D2k board more often.

It's occurred to me that I've not actually played any games based on Roman or Greek civilisations. I really should, given I'm a clacissist... oops.

I can't, however get the link to your site to work at the moment.

[Inoculator9]

Ian, for the chance to play one of Dune2k's creators, I just might have to start playing online ;)

And same for me Nema... I'm actually a little surprised now considering my interest in ancient civilizations lies in the same area.

[Iain McNeil]

Do you guys still use WOL, or is there some other matchmaking service now? Oh.... the pain we had with WOL - I hope they still use it for all the work we took to get it running!

Our website was done for a few hours, but seems up and running now so the link should work.

http://www.slitherine.co.uk