Dune II - The Maker, Campaign

[Timenn]

Well, since Stefan spoke about the possibility to make your own campaigns, I have worked on some first missions for a new Atreides campaign (I will try to make Harkonnen and Ordos too) The ones I made are only the maps with buildings and units, since I was not yet able to script reinforcements, or AI. Loading missions doesn't seem to possible yet, so I can't really show the maps right now.

But I have been working on a campaign, where you can select regions to attack, like in Dune II (and Dune2k, Emperor) It is a modified copy of the Dune (book) map. So all the missions will play around the North Pole.

Here is the map:

www.xs4all.nl/~kkptt/dune/Dune2Map3.gif

EDIT:

Modified the map, Imperial Basin and Hagga Basin look more realistic now.

[stefanhendriks]

that looks quit neat. Do you have seperated pieces of that? So i can actually use that in game?

[Andrew]

Who is on Carthag? (Pink)

Should you have another group (house) on the Arrakeen spot?

What about a Fremen territory on False Wall West or even Habbanya Ridge (Habbanya is not currently shown)?

I love maps! :)

[Timenn]

Yea, I was wise enough to use layers. So here you can see some other versions:

www.xs4all.nl/~kkptt/dune/Dune2Map.gif

www.xs4all.nl/~kkptt/dune/Dune2Map2.gif

I tried to isolate some settlements a bit, when making those territories. But they are too close sometimes to make a good border between them. So I just isolated the following "capitols" for the Houses:

House Atreides: Sietch Tabr

House Harkonnen: Carthag, but I made a mistake for this one, as you can see, that region is not yet occupied, will fix that...

House Ordos: Harg pass, I couldn't find anything that made real sense as a capitol there.

About Habbanya Ridge (and some others too) I "accidentily" removed them. But I can add them later. If I ever intend to make a real Dune map, then I can just use that template.

And meaning that a House occupies a region, does not mean the Fremen don't have bases in that region...

[stefanhendriks]

Would be interesting to see for each region how much % of fremen resistance is available. Hmm...

[Timenn]

Statistics of a region should be something that can be handles in the game, I think.

Dune2Map.gif was just the background picture for all those regions. However, it has some purpose though, because the mission maps will represent a bit the background of that certain mission region. (But not literally, in other words, the mission map will not look like the background of a region, because a mission only takes place in a part of that region...)

Dune2Map2.gif was the one I actually intend to use, and then it should be possible with C++ to put over that picture another picture, which will only have the house colors, so that one will be pasted over the background, with some transperancy (that should be possible with C++, actually... any modern language. :))

Dune2Map3.gif was merely an example of the start situation...

[MrFlibble]

I hope D2TM will offer vast opportunities for campaign-making. Would be very nice if one could create the whole campaign with briefings, map, etc and then easily integrate into the Maker (so that it doesn't replace anything), just like it works with Custom campaigns in WCIII  ;D

[stefanhendriks]

I don't know WC3, perhaps someone can describe how they make it possible for you to 'easily create your own campaings' ?

[MrFlibble]

I mean, in WCIII (Frozen Throne) you can create a single 'campaign' file which includes all the maps, sound, custom settings, etc. and then there's a 'Custom Campaign' section in the menu where all the custom campaigns are shown (if placed in a proper directory, that is ;)), and they work like the Blizzard-made campaigns: you've got chapter (read: mission) selection, every next level unlocks after completion of the previous, and so on. It's very easy to distribute your custom campaigns that way, in a single file, and you don't need to replace anything in the game itself, or bother yourself with the path name for the modified models, skins or sounds. That's what I mean by incorporating custom-made campaigns into the game.

And ah, there will surely be the way to create your own Houses, units, etc? E.g., in The Frozen Throne WorldEdit, you are able to create limitless custom units, spells, upgrades, whatever you wish that are based on the existing ones, and you can change almost every characteristic.

[Cyborg]

Another solutioin could be that you made many maps, which were stored as single maps, and you then selected which maps you wanted to have in your campaign, and typed in the info needed( like campaign name and info about each mission ) and then a campaign file was created.

[Timenn]

1) That way in dealing with campaigns will work quite well. Although it would be good if the following could be added to that (that is something which can also be done with making Age of Mythology campaigns) The campaign list of all included missions is longer then the list you see when you can select the mission you want to play. This is because certain missions are not shown on the list the player gets to see. Certain missions are invisible and can only be played when you have finished the mission before that one. This makes no sense at first sight. But think about these situations: In AOM you have cinematics which can be played when you have succeeded a mission. Then it loads a next new scenario which only contains the cinematic (like in WCIII, cinematics are in-game movies) and sometimes a mission actually exist out of 2 seperate missions. (Think about the mission in RA (1) of the Allies, where you have to stop the Soviet Nukes, where you first need to infiltrate the Command Center, and then you got an interior mission. Both were missions were actually the same missions (you didn't got a "Mission Accomplished" between those 2)

So then you should be able to define which missions are selectable and which not.

Also you must be able to choose more version of one missions. Like in Dune II. And that you can make it so, that from some missions the player can choose in what order he wants to play certain missions.

2) That should be no big problem. Every mission can have its own rules.ini

[MrFlibble]

And also a nice event editor could come in handy, so you can not only drop reinforcements but also create an attack at a certain time in a cretain place, or send some scenario messages to the player during the game (e.g. change of mission objective).

[stefanhendriks]

all are very interesting points; i dunno yet when i will code further on this. As you noticed i work on this periodically.