Dune 2: The Maker

[stefanhendriks]

yeah, you can save them. Erm, just hit options and then save...

it is saved under dune2.map if i am not mistaken.

edit:

yes you can save them. When you hit options you can do:

new

load

save

random

when you hit save, it is saved immidiatly in : datadune2.ini

this ini file is a readable ini file. I don't know if it works if you replace any SCEN files in the atreides/ordos/harkonnen folders. But you could try.

[Timenn]

Yea, that works. But with not everything works with it. If you don't give the player buildings, then it seems that you are not able to control any units you have.

And you can only edit the map once, you can't load it with the map editor, but I have made a few maps already, which should act as missions for a new Atreides Campaign.

What are your plans for expanding the editor?

[MrFlibble]

Another bug:

I saw a sandworm passing through rocks. This has only happened to me once, but I'm sure on what I saw (It was no Sonic Tank) It was very weird...

When I was toying around with the editor, the same thing happened: I placed a worm on sand and then changed the terrain over the worm to rock. The worm remained there, under the rock. And also, I'm not sure but I saw something like that during gameplay.

About the editor: there's no thick spice (or spice dunes?), the spicey thing that can be only in the centre of the spice field (must be at least one cell of normal spice between it and sand). And there's thick spice in the missions (of course there is!), but when a part of it's being harvested, it looks crude because there should be a change: thick spice -> normal spice -> sand but there isn't, and the borders of thick spice graphics are quadrangle-like. Uh.

[Timenn]

You can place thick spice by first placing normal spice, and then putting hills over it.

[MrFlibble]

Here's a pair of screenshots showing some bugs. The one shows a bug that causes the selection box for a building to remain after it is destroyed (even with some helath on the bar). Here's the former construction yard.

The second one's about the thick spice: if a harv. picks up spice from a normal spice field next to a thick spice, there appears a tile of snad, but there are no sand/thick spice borders because the 'parent' tileset for thick spice in normal spice, and originally it's not supposed that sand and thick spice can be on neighboring tiles, and thus there's a crude quadrangle.[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Andrew]

When doing the website, if you could include a screenshot that shows what each thing does (label the screenshot). As I see two bars where the "power" bars usually are (like red alert) but I don't know what each is for. (Although I have not played it extensively.)

[Terror]

1 bar is for the power. One is for the amount of spice you can still store. The higher it is, the more spice you can still store. But as your refineries are filling up, the bar is decreasing.

[stefanhendriks]

rene is right, and btw, there is a tooltip ;) Hold your mouse over a bar and see the meaning of it :D

[Andrew]

Excellent!

And is it possible to somehow tell how many "squares" a building will take up when you hover over it or when building?

I also get the last building of mine that won't dissapear so the mission wont end on its own? (when i lose)

This makes a great desktop game! :)

Update hardware to detect worms?

omg this game looks good. :)

How do you cancel a building that is being built?

[Terror]

You can't. Tried that too. It should be implemented though.

[Andrew]

So technically if you dont have a spot to put the building you are screwed?

Also the game really slowed down on me after playing a while, even though the unit count didnt go up by much. (It actually went down, although I got about 3 more carryalls.

Also the fremen reveal terrain thing got pricy, it went up to about 1850 or so and I wasn't able to get the detect woms option anymore.[attachment archived by Gobalopper]

[Terror]

yeah, just build another structure.

And yes, the game is very heavy on your system.... weird eh?

[Andrew]

I thought I tried to build another structure, but I actually had to place the building already built before being able to build a building.

[Terror]

oh ok.. well i'm not 100% sure eitehr

[stefanhendriks]

yes, things to do:

- cancel building

- extra tooltip info on how 'big' a structure is in squares

I do not experience heavy load on my computer, but i don't run it on very high resolutions either. I run it at max on 640x480, as anything bigger just makes everything so small. THere are many optimizations though that can be made.

[Timenn]

Yea, I run the game on a resolution of 800x600, and that is max. for my monitor (19") otherwise I can't see the units anymore.

But isn't it an idea to increase the size of all graphics (double) and thus having everything bigger on a high resolution. This may seem a stupid thing to do, but this can give a chance to carefully improve the graphics, and thus making some units have real different animations (like the Deviator and the Launcher. Fremen, Sardaukar and normal infantry. Trike and Raider) because there are more pixels available for that...

[Terror]

Good idea timenn. I also play at 640x480. Good idea indeed timenn. Perhaps make the units 4 times the current size (and everything with it ofcourse) so you can slowly detail the units more.

[stefanhendriks]

I can give you the graphics pack... and you can all double the sizes then of the gfx. I don't have that much time on my hands. But if one of you guys want to  double them in size (or quadrouple them) then i'd be glad to hear, because it opens new doors indeed for improving gfx. Although keep in mind, it should remain as DUne2ish as possible!

[Timenn]

That was the idea, to keep the Dune II graphics as much to the orginal as possible. It was more meant to fix the high resolution problems, and to make certain units look different from others. And yes, I meant quadruple. Shame on me... I was thinking 1dimensonial... :-[

[Dunenewt]

Can I just say this game is great and I'm recruiting an army of fans at school.

[stefanhendriks]

really? lol , i did not know it was that great ;) I am always quite sceptic. All I see when i am playing that game is bugs... or things that could be done better... or features missing.... rofl

[Dunenewt]

Well, it did crash when I upgraded the Con Yard...or that could be the school Admin shutting down my computer.

[MrFlibble]

Stefan, are you going to add the ability to capture buildings to the infantry, so that they work like in Dune 2(or like RA1 Engineers)? E.g., sending infantry into the building by force move (Alt+LeftClick).

[stefanhendriks]

i liked the dune2 concept. I find it to easy to capture stuff as in Dune2k...

[stefanhendriks]

really? lol , i did not know it was that great ;) I am always quite sceptic. All I see when i am playing that game is bugs... or things that could be done better... or features missing.... rofl

hows this fan army goin? :P  8)