Request - deadly serious!

[stefanhendriks]

Hello all,

I have a request to you all; it is vital to D2TM though and its impossible to do this on my own. However, YOU can help me speed up the process A LOT.

Ok, whats going on?

- The mentat code is being extended, it is able to say anything from a given txt file. Therefor it needs input, and not self invented input. It needs DUNE 2 input.

Basicly this means, i need:

- the original mission briefings of DUNE 2

- the original 'when you win' briefings of dune 2 (of each mission, and each house)

- the original 'when you lose' briefings of dune 2 (of each mission, and each house)

I have tried to extract stuff from dune2.exe itself, but i can't find anything there. I also tried to do some digging with XCC but it took me a whole day to find out i can't do anything with the stuff i found.

How to help?

Simple, you can try this:

- launch dune 2, select a house and write down (in notepad or whatever) the mission briefings that come along. There is a 'repeat' button so you can always recall it.

- win each mission and also write down these victorious comments

- lose each mission and write this down too

Send me an e-mail, include info about what mission and whats it about. Don't forget your name, i need it for the "Credits list" ofcourse! :)

If you have any old savegames, this will be a lot faster process. For me, i don't have savegames for this. Perhaps its possible to arrange this by deviding this 'task' into smaller pieces. Ie, some people who would like to help do a small piece instead. (ie, one does Atreides, one does Harkonnen, etc). Any means are welcome, i just need the texts, and i know if i have to do them my own, it will take a few months before i can release a thing...

Any help is really appreciated, or even better said, i can't do without it!

[Gilneas]

There is of course a trainer which makes this quite easy. I'll be sure to do a campaign at the start of the weekend. (since I'm the first to post, I pick the Harkonnen)

Do you need all the text from the in-game mentat screen too, with all the unit descriptions and such?

[stefanhendriks]

If you have the time and will to do those mentat chatter about units/structures, it would be even better! :) Thanks for helping in advance! :D

[Swordmaster_Duncan]

Alrighty-then. I'll give the Atreides a shot. I had a whole bunch of save games that I lost when I formatted a week ago though. I'll have to play through them, just another excuse to play dune II again. If anyone else already has savegames lined up and wants to do this, don't let me stop you though. Good ol' Cyril, we meet again.

[stefanhendriks]

Alright! this is awesome. The campaign stuff is working basicly and i am making it editable now through ini files. I hope all works out ok, then the next demo could have a full working ATREIDES and HARKONNEN campaign already! :D

[stefanhendriks]

FYI: If you got anything to send, please send to stefanhen83@planet.nl

[stefanhendriks]

Superb, i recieved all atreides chatter today! I can now add that content and finish the campaign in the game. Very nice feature for the next demo!

Hope to recieve more data soon. Harkonnen is being worked on (i assume) and Ordos is not being done yet, so anyone who'd like to help, you're welcome! :D

[MrFlibble]

I've started doing the Ordos Mentat descriptions today. I hope to make some progress in that soon. The mission talk will be more complicated, as I'll have to push through the missions (I've got the final missions savegames, so there's the full description list, but missions 2-7 will have to be completed anew).

[MrFlibble]

Okay, I've finished all the Mentat description lines for the Ordos. I've checked it for spelling so it should all right. I've also done about a half of mission texts, so I hope to complete them in a matter of a week or so.

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]

[Gilneas]

I'm working on Harkonnen, I'll give it a full afternoon ASAP.

[MrFlibble]

@Gilneas

Please put the ready work here for download, if you don't mind.

@Stefan

What if we introduce a universal syntax for ini files with mentat/mission text? Something like this:

Sample Mission Briefing

[HK06] ; Harkonnen mission 6 (sample)

[Advice]

1=Build up a sizeable force then crush all opposition.

2=Rely upon heavy firepower - the Ordos are well prepared.

[Order]

1=The Ordos are starting to annoy us.

2=Their pesky activities in this region lead us to losing spice profits.

3=Finish that.

4=Take no prisoners. The fate of the Ordos will set a fine example for the others.

[Win]

1=This was a magnificent show.

2=The Baron is pleased.

3=We await future victories by your hand.

[Lose]

1=How could you fail us so?

2=Apparently, you're a complete and utter imbecile.

3=The Baron thinks you don't even deserve to be tortured or killed.

4=We think to sell you to the Tleilaxu as a natural curiosity to play around with.

P.S. I've got Ordos missions 1,2,3,6,8,9 completed with all text, 4 and 7 without winning text and 5 totally missing yet.

[stefanhendriks]

Well i have been thinking about a structure too, since its getting very disorganized. I have a new directory tree now:

DIR : Briefings

SUB-DIR: Atreides

SUB-DIR: Harkonnen

SUB-DIR: Ordos

SUB-DIR: <any house for in the future>

SUB-SUB-DIR: Win

SUB-SUB-DIR: Lose

SUB-SUB-DIR: Mentat

I don't say its perfect, as its difficult to expand. Its for temporary usage probably. I already changed its design 3 times, but i am still not satisfied.

For an INI structure i'd say, keep a similiar way as you propose, but:

- keep per mentat house a different file

- different [] tags. Ie

# Scenario: <number>

[sCENARIO: 1]

[bRIEFING]

# must use "" in order to determine sentence length easily.

# max lines = 10

Line="Hello world"

Line=""

Line=

[ADVICE]

[WIN]

[LOSE]

As you can see, its similiar, but its a bit more easy to read for me and to code as well. In order to know its for house x, i'd say call the file: MENTATX.INI (like in the original dune 2 btw.. ) , so for Atreides: mentatA.ini , Ordos mentatO.ini, etc

Another comment; this is the step where we take all the bits and put them into 1 singular file. As i have made also ini files for the campaign flow, here is a file that is controlling the strategy map after winning mission 1:

# Per mission the campaign 'evolves' on the strategy map.

#

# Region=<number> - will start new index, must be first!

# RegionConquer=<number> - will conquer this area, behaves as region

#

# All other properties will be assigned to that region:

# House=<House> - This region will be conquered by this house

# Text=<text> - If specified, this text will be shown when the region is

#   conquered.

# Select=TRUE - Only specify this when the region is 'attackable'

# This first mission introduces the strategy map, so here we go conquer all

# of them.. wohoo

# Atreides begin

RegionConquer=13

House=Atreides

Text="The Atreides claimed strategic regions."

RegionConquer=7

House=Atreides

RegionConquer=20

House=Atreides

RegionConquer=14

House=Atreides

RegionConquer=21

House=Atreides

RegionConquer=22

House=Atreides

# Ordos come now

RegionConquer=19

House=Ordos

Text="House Ordos moved in on the east."

RegionConquer=27

House=Ordos

RegionConquer=26

House=Ordos

RegionConquer=25

House=Ordos

RegionConquer=24

House=Ordos

RegionConquer=23

House=Ordos

# Harkonnen now

RegionConquer=6

House=Harkonnen

Text="The Harkonnen invaded from the north."

RegionConquer=5

House=Harkonnen

RegionConquer=4

House=Harkonnen

RegionConquer=10

House=Harkonnen

RegionConquer=3

House=Harkonnen

RegionConquer=9

House=Harkonnen

# Now selectable areas

Region=8

Select=TRUE

Region=15

Select=TRUE

Region=23

Select=TRUE

# END

This could also be into a singular ini file but using an extra [MISSION: <number>] tag and save it into a file like REGIONX.INI for example.

P.S. I've got Ordos missions 1,2,3,6,8,9 completed with all text, 4 and 7 without winning text and 5 totally missing yet.

Thats great, currently the Atreides campaign works fully mission briefing wise and strategy map wise too. There are still a lot of things to do, but seeing the game like this makes you almost believe you truly play dune 2.. ;)

[stefanhendriks]

The mentat now chats via mentatx.ini

Here is a snippet:

# HOUSE DESCRIPTION

# Told by the Bene Gesserit

[DESCRIPTION]

Text="House Atreides    "

Text="              "

Text="Caladan, home planet of the Atreides, has a warm, calm climate and the"

Text="lands are lush and green."

Text="The rich soils and mild weather supports and extensive variety of"

Text="agricultural activities."

Text="In recent centuries industrial and technological development has added"

Text="to the propsperity of the Caladanian peoples."

# Mission 1

[sCEN]

# What scenario is it?

Number=1

[bRIEFING]

Text="Greetings, I am your Mentat Cyril."

Text="                                "

Text="Together we will purge this planet of the foulness of the other Houses."

Text="                      "

Text="The High Command wishes you to produce 1000 credits."

Text="          "

Text="You may earn credits by building a refinery and harvesting spice."

[WIN]

Text="Congratulations!"

Text="    "

Text="I knew you would achieve your goal with very little trouble."

Text="        "

Text="I look forward to assisting you in future missions."

[LOSE]

Text="This is very disappointing."

Text="        "

Text="We had such high hopes for you."

Text="          "

Text="We must insist you try again."

Text="            "

Text="Our confidence is surely not misplaced, and we look forward to the "

Text="successful completion of your first test."

[ADVICE]

Text="First build a two by two group of concrete slabs."

Text="        "

Text="Then build a windtrap and place it upon the concrete."

Text="            "

Text="Do the same for a refinery so that you can reach your quota of 1000 "

Text="credits."

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]

[stefanhendriks]

If you have time and would like to poor your information into an ini file, here you have the skeletons needed for it. Atreides is already done by myself.

Harkonnen ini file contains information about how to stick with the rules, i quote it here so you don't need to download it if you want to do Ordos. (ie, for mr Flibble ;)).

So far:

Harkonnen - still being worked on by Gilneas

Ordos    - being worked on by Mr Flibble

Atreides  - Finished, being ported into this INI format by myself

INI Instructions

# Mentat Harkonnen text information

#

# Format:

# [sCEN]

#

# Number=<scenario number> 

#

# The scenario number links the briefing to the SCEN<house>0<number>.ini file.

# Number 1 , House Harkonnen, means : SCEN H 001.INI , changing the number will

# make the ini loader think the briefing belongs to that specific scen number

# therefor do not change them!

#

# [bRIEFING]

# [WIN]

# [LOSE]

# [ADVICE]

#

# Each section holds : Text="string"

#

# Maximum of 10 text strings allowed

# HOUSE DESCRIPTION

# Told by the Bene Gesserit

[DESCRIPTION]

Text="House Harkonnen"

Text="              "

Text="From the dark world of Giedi Prime the savage House Harkonnen has spread"

Text="across the universe."

Text="A cruel people, the Harkonnen are ruthless towards both friend and foe in"

Text="their fanatical persuit of power."

# !!!! REMEMBER !!!!

# Mentats show the text in pairs of 2. (each time 2 "text=" are used)

# Use spaces to give the user more time to read if nescesary.

#

# Note: In dune 2 , missions have the same briefings, ie, mission 2 region a b c have the same briefings

#      However, i do want you to specify them all since later on we can change these missions.

...

GRR, cannot upload as .ini (forum wont allow), so i added the extention .txt

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]

[Swordmaster_Duncan]

Mmmm, Mentat Briefing goodness in action.

Is there a specific way you want the unit details set out?

[stefanhendriks]

I think thats even more simple, unit descriptions are given through the same file. However, the sections are like in game.ini, ie:

[uNIT: ORNITHOPTER]

and then:

Text="bla bla"

Like the other briefings.

For a proper picture, i will add some word type for that.

[MrFlibble]

Stefan, is it absolutely necessary to truncate the lines? If yes, then what is the max char length of a line?

BTW, if lines are truncated, I think sometimes 10 lines may not be enough for briefings... or maybe not ???

[stefanhendriks]

It is nescesary to truncate yes. However, i can add more lines for the mentat with ease, however, i don't think it is nescesary. If you do encounter trouble with this. Then simply add more text lines and i will deal with the engine code to support it.

The house description gives a pretty good understanding of what the max width is of a sentence, since the characters are not fixed in width, i can't say what the max width is in character amount. It depends on the characters used.

[MrFlibble]

Okay. I'm happy to tell that I've got all the Ordos text (Yay!), and I hope that converting it into ini format is a matter of days/hours.

[stefanhendriks]

so far i did not encounter any problems with 'truncating' so i think you should be fine as well ;)

[MrFlibble]

All right! I've finished the Ordos. Here's the ini file - hope there aren't too many mistakes (I mean those that could occur while converting text to ini, for I've doulbe-checked everything else). As a bonus, I post all the Ordos missions savegames.

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]

[stefanhendriks]

works fine!

Though i think some sentences where 'single' , so to fix them up, there should be 'Text=""' lines, since the mentat reads 2 sentences a time. :)

[Gilneas]

Ok, I'm done with the missions!

It took me a while, because I kept postponing it, sorry. I did have it in my mind all the time.

When I found the right trainer and dosbox, I was able to do it quite fast.

Here are all the metat mission briefings, wins, losses, and Emperor intermissions.

I will do the mentat unit descriptions too.

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]

[stefanhendriks]

What trainer did you use? I am quite interested in that.

Thanks for your effort! :D Superb! All houses are there!

[Gilneas]

I used a Super Dune 2 trainer (or so the site says)

http://www.destinys-darlin.com/play/dune/sd2/index.html

It's +4 (Inf Money (F4 or F5), Insta-build (F4 or F5), Lose mission (Num-pad minus), Win mission (Num-pad plus))

When I played the game for the first time (so many years ago), I used this trainer as well, so I knew it would work with regular Dune 2.

I installed Super Dune 2, and ran the command "sd2.bat off" and then ran the trainer "trdune2", all in Dosbox of course.

I'm about half-way done with the Mentat babble, but I noticed that every mission has different 'Advice' too...