Dune II - The Maker - Demo release

[stefanhendriks]

This is a DEMO version. Its a version i have on my harddisk for quite some time. But i'd thought of sharing this with you.

Features:

- 9 missions each house

- single player -> single mission -> select mission!!! (skirmish does not work, although you can look at the 'set up houses' thingy)

- bug fixes, and probably new bugs :D

- smarter AI (unbeatable on Hard or Tough)

- reinforcements

- the missions you play are from the original DUNE

- INI file to balance units, pricing, etc.

Well, it has a lot of new stuff , and its still not complete. But i'd like to know what ya think of it :)

download link:

http://realbot.bots-united.com/backup/dune/demo.zip

install:

unzip the zip file, run dune2.exe

bugs?:

mail to stefan-hendriks@planet.nl or reply to this topic.

source:

perhaps released some day! :)

[Timenn]

Pretty sweat!

Nicely done, but I suppose you are more interested in bug reports ;)

- There seem to be no victory/loss conditions, you can harvest 3000 gold and can every single unit on the first level, and still not complete the missions. Then same goes for losing when you have lost everything.

- Normally when you have scouted the terrain to the edge of the map, the shroud will completely dissappear on those explored spots, and the map itself will "touch" the border, instead of still seeing fog at the edge. This does not work with the north and east edge.

- When placing a concrete, which is fully placed on a building, you have still built it. Meaning that you have lost the money, and build time.

- I tried the last mission, but I failed because of immediate Ornithopter attacks.

- Vehicles will avoid infantry, and not squish them (enemy)

[Terror]

holy cow. This is awesome. Though i need to play it at low resolution to get a decent unit size. But with the new interface it looks great and i can't wait for the skirmish option to work. I have not realy tested it yet for bugs, but i'll get back on that.

Looks realy good Stefan. Two thumbs up for you.

[Terror]

Okay, i also tried the last mission for a bit and indeed, the starting thopters are way too early.

(shouldn't rocket tanks be able to fire at air?)

In the pic i attached you see that a sandworm got stuck in the sand, and a thopter stuck on one spot, doing his animation but not firing or moving.

EDIT:

Ok, the game is hard alright. I tried mission 4 and got overrun. I thought... wow a lot of reinforcements. But there were many more enemies. I think that the missions need to be a bit easier. Oh and file was too big, so the pic isn't attached

[Andrew]

Eye Candy!

Does this mean that http://arrakis.dune2k.com/ will be updated?

Since it has pretty much been abandoned?

(although I thought arrakis and dune 2: the maker were different games, no?)

More info on what I think of demo when I get a chance to play it

[stefanhendriks]

Well as you can see i am still tuning the AI :) And the orni attacks can be taken care off. You can shoot down orni's with your Rocket Launchers... THey will try to by themselves, but you have to get lucky though :)

I have plans to update arrakis.dune2k.com , yes ;)

There are no win-lose conditions, true also :)

I am glad you like it. The bugs metioned are not that bad, i am glad it did not crash yet or something bad happened to anyone's computer :D

EDIT:

About shooting ornithopters, you should try to select a Rocket Launcher and then let it attack an orni if it does not that out of himself. :S

[Terror]

Ok, i played the game a bit with Emperor battle for dune music on the background (great combo :) )

and encountered the following things which i think should be looked at.

- Infantry cannot walk over infantry rock

- You get a free carryall with a refinery, this was not the case in dune2. (also, carryalls are twice as expensive as refineries)

- Carryalls also carry normal units around when you're moving to a destination. Although i like it, it's not always a good option i think, and it was not in the normal dune2.

I saw that my quad moved over an enemy quad once. He was still there and could fire. But it's sprite was hidden under the enemy ordos quad sprite until it was destroyed.

- I played mission 3 on normal and had a realy tough time at the beginning. Late game it is good to have some resistance. But in the beginning when you can't build units yet the AI is nearly if not completely unbeatable.

- Repairing of buildings goes too fast. I tried destroying an enemy refinery with a lot of units but because the comp still had a lot of money and he could repair i could hardly get it destroyed. Ofcourse it costs the computer money, but i think the repair should be tuned down a little.

- When you're going to menu i sometimes made the mistake of clicking go back to main menu instead of go back to game. I think there should be some sort of verification screen in between like: "Are you sure you want to quit back to the main menu without saving?" (Even though the save function doesn't work yet.)

Apart from this Stefan, your work has been excellent. The new interface is sleek (though grouping abilities like ctrl +# would be great if possible) and i just cannot wait for the skirkmish option to work and see the 3 new houses.

[Cyborg]

I saw that my quad moved over an enemy quad once. He was still there and could fire. But it's sprite was hidden under the enemy ordos quad sprite until it was destroyed.

If I understand your problem correctly, it's a very common problem with many games, mostly old ones.

Sometimes two units might move into the same cell at the same time, because both see it as unoccupied... It doesn't happen often, though, and it's really a problem.

[stefanhendriks]

yes that is a very annoying bug to fix.

Btw, did anyone take a look at the game.ini file already? :)

[Cyborg]

Where do you specify the graphics of structures and units?

[Timenn]

Yea, I checked it. Looks quite standard though, but it seems to be easy to adjust and has a good interface. Especially with jEdit... (Hmm, maybe too many comments in between the line, an explanation for certain lines at the start might be better)

About that 2 units moving to the same cell problem. You might be able to fix that by first setting the destination cells of every unit, and then you check if there are no double cells, and fix potential double occupied cells, and then do the moving procedures.

[Cyborg]

Well, the problem is that to remove the problem he has to check each next cell of all paths with each next cell of all other paths...

[stefanhendriks]

Well as you can find in this forum, i removed the graphical support via INI files. It was to huge, and it did not give all the possibilities i wanted. Perhaps i will re-add it later, but not now.

I have several checks made. In theory, in one frame i go through the cycle of units. I determine the 'next cell' (next cell in path), and i 'occupy' it already for this unit, so other units cannot move to it. So somehow this goes wrong. This is because of the 'frame' dependant functions and 'non-frame' (time) depandant functions. I think here they mess up. The checks are all going okay.

Anyhow, it still does not make sense because both functions have their checks and they would never allow 2 units on one cell. There are exeptions (like buildings , units may move 'over' a building when they have to enter it (harvester)) and such, so my guess is i have to search the bug there.

[stefanhendriks]

dummy website up;

http://arrakis.dune2k.com/dummy.html

[nemafakei]

Can I also point out that my harvester got completely lost  at one point after leaving the refinery and went round in circles for some time until I redirected it completely.

"It was to huge, and it did not give all the possibilities i wanted. Perhaps i will re-add it later, but not now."

Hm. I don't know how it's possible to do it, but I'll try to figure out a normalised graphics system. How do you store the pictures? As individual and separate frames, or separate animations, etc?

[desert_storm]

Ok, so I downloaded the demo, on my computer with internet.  Then I moved it to and older computer (windows 98)by putting it on flopy and then puting it on a hard drive (well actualy a zip 100, I use that as my hard drive because this computer is soo old that it's hard drive barly has enough space to run windows 98) Ok, so anyway the game didn't work.  at all.  It works on my new one but not the old one.  When i try to start the game the screen goes black, then flashes between windows and dos and then just quits and goes back to windows. 

Is this a bad thing or is it just the old computer.  Thought you might like to know.

[stefanhendriks]

@ Desert storm, can you show me the log file (txt file)

@ Nema;

i have bmp files, and they have individual frames in it. I.e.

harvester.bmp

contains frames (to the right) for 'facing' and frames down for 'animation'. So its a simple X/Y system.

When drawing it does:

draw_unit(facing_number, frame_number);

easy as pie!

I thought of fixed rules for facing, so they should not be specified in a ini file. I also had something working where you could link sections like:

[bULLET: SmallDot]

Damage=10

And in some unit:

[uNIT: Trike]

Bullet=SmallDot

this could work, had it working before. Same goes for sounds , etc.

[Terror]

Yeah i also had checked the .ini files. The only thing i was wondering about. Did you change any stats from dune2? I think in dune2 the devastator was less powerful and costed 800, not 900. Also the rocket tank costed 450 i think, not 400

[stefanhendriks]

I have changed some things yes. So the Devastator is not an all powerfull thing. I had to balance a few units. its like this:

1 Tank can be destroyed by 2 Quads

1 Siege tank by 2 tanks

1 devastator by 2 siege tanks

etc.

[Terror]

are you sure the s tank can be destroyed by two combat tanks?

The siege tanks has more than twice the hitpoints, and twice the firerate i think.

[stefanhendriks]

the higher the firerate (time) the longer it takes in my game. So FireRate=0 means super fast and FireRate=20 means slower.

[desert_storm]

You ask and you shall recieve... the log[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[stefanhendriks]

it seems the font loading does not go correct. Are you sure you have the entire package? (and no corrupt files?).

alfont.dll is critical here

and you need to be sure you got the DATA files.

apart from that, it makes no sense to me.. :S

[Snillet2000]

Hi, Stefan.

I really want to know how you play a sound file from *.dat files. How to get data chunk from *.dat (or another file the wave files are in) in to a buffer that I can play with PlaySound() or DirectSound. It would be great if you could help me with that. :-)

[Cyborg]

a .dat wave file is the same as a .vaw wave file, if we're talking about the wave format.

What file type a file is has nothing to do with its contents.

Basically, what you do it open the file, read the header, create a buffer of about 500ms and then use DirectSound to play that buffer.