DEMO 3 - (Released!)

[stefanhendriks]

Yay, 10 days ago, DEMO 2 was yours. Now enjoy DEMO 3!

Link: http://arrakis.dune2k.com/downloads/D2TM-DEMO3.ZIP

full list of changes; features, etc... read version-history.txt

but, for your convenience:

==================================

BALACING NOTES / UNIT DESCRIPTIONS

==================================

One of the things DUNE 2 lacked, was real balancing. Mostly you would win by just having bigger

better , and mostly, more units then your computer opponent. In D2TM this issue should be solved;

though I am not there yet, I do intent to get there!

In order to tackle this issue, a few things have been changed:

Troopers/Trooper:

-----------------

These units have big impact on units now. They can take out a tank/quad in a few shots. Though tanks

cannot kill any infantry with their massive firepower. Yet they do have effect on structures and other

units.

Infantry/Soldier:

-----------------

These units have little to no effect on bigger units, but they are the best weapon against the Trooper

and Troopers. Having no soldiers around your base, makes it a lot tougher to defend it. Even trikes

and Quads will have a more harder time to take out Trooper/Troopers then the Infantry/Soldier.

Quad/Trike/Raider:

------------------

These units are quick and have machineguns, so they are better against legged units. They can take out

any infantry (troopers, etc) quicker then any other tracked unit. In groups these units can be a

massacre for any infantry legion.

Tank/Siege Tank:

----------------

With their massive brute force firepower, the tanks can take out any wheeled units without trouble.

They do have a lot of trouble with Troopers and the Trooper. A few Troopers take out tanks in no-time

so its not wise just to use these units.

Rocket Launcher:

----------------

Like in the original Dune 2. These units are devastating, when set on the right range towards their

target. It is not wise to use them against units who like to fire at close range. Once the target

gets too near, the rockets will never hit their target and miss terribly. These units are perfect

for taking out bases quickly, especially turrets while your tanks distract the turrets firepower

from the Launcher.

Devastator/Sonic Tank:

----------------------

These units are accessible once you have built the House of IX and upgraded your Heavy Factory.

The units deliver more firepower. The Devastator has more armor and is harder to destroy; yet it is

a slow tank. When destroyed the Devastator will take any surrounding units/structures with it or

damage them horribly.

The Sonic Tank uses a sonic wave to attack its units. Effective against infantry and troopers! It

is fast but it lacks armor. Therefor it is easy to destroy.

Deviator:

---------

The Deviator acts like a normal Rocket Launcher. However, by firing its nerve gas it will convert

any unit to its own side. (Unline Dune 2, the units will STAY that way and not be converted back).

The unit is fast, light-weighted and has little armor; thus easily to destroy. However, do NOT

underestimate the power and danger of this unit!

==========

TO-DO LIST

==========

* Make tech-tree 100% accurate

* Ability to let heavy units (tanks/harvester) squish infantry

* Balance game more (game.ini)

* Mentat for 'advice' and unit descriptions

* Eventually clean up code (perhaps release source code?)

New features:

* Skirmish

* Multiplayer (<- will be tough, i cannot code networking stuff)

* Options

===========================

CHANGELOG: (current -> old)

===========================

DEMO 3 - DEMO 2 (released at: dd/mm/yyyy)

-----------------------------------------

BALANCING:

* In General:

- Infantry, Troopers, Trooper and Soldier are more of use now. Harder to kill, tougher in fights.

  NOTE: Do not take this to lightly , the above units where nearly useless in Dune 2,

        in D2TM they are really functional!

- Quads and Trikes have a bit weaker anti-infantry guns now (though they are the best to kill infantry with)

- Special weapons are balanced more; deviator is not as dangerous as before, and can easily be

  killed. Though if used well, it can be a very usefull weapon as it turns units into yours

  for all time.

* Detailed:

- Trooper HP INCREASED from 45 to 80

- Troopers HP INCREASED from 110 to 140

- Troopers sight/range INCREASED from 4 to 5

- Troopers damage to vehicles INCREASED from 8 to 16

- Troopers Attackfrequency LOWERED from 25 to 18

- Soldier HP INCREASED from 20 to 80

- Infantry HP INCREASED from 50 to 150

- Quad damage to infantry(*) LOWERED from 12 to 8

- Quad attack frequency INCREASED from 10 to 12

- Trike damage to infantry LOWERED from 7 to 6

- Deviator chance to deviate lowered from 100% to 40%

- Deviator move speed LOWERED from 4 to 3 (means faster!)

- Deviator turn speed LOWERED from 4 to 3 (means faster!)

- Deviator HP DECREASED from 110 to 70

(* Infantry=Troopers, Trooper, Soldier, Infantry)

FIXED:

- Several bugs in attack thinking, guard thinking of AI etc. AI units should be tougher

  to beat and also units behave more correctly.

- Gun turrets damaging friendly structures.

- Several bugs concerning odd movement. (mostly after attacking)

- Now you will REALLY get a reinforcement when you have lost all harvesters, but you still have

  a refinery...

- Bug where ai would suddendly attack own unit or structure.

- Fixed a bug where walls turn into spice (by field= entries).

- Sandworm is now drawn ok (under units, not 'above' them).

- Devastator who would explode and damage surrounding units will not cause a stack overflow anymore.

- Fixed several bugs in moving code.

- Fixed 'harvester suddendly dissapearing'.

- Fixed 'shroud reveal' bug on up and left part of the screen.

  (When unit was moving upwards and visible , or going left and visible, the shroud would not

  be removed correctly when revealing parts that are not visible on screen).

CHANGED:

- Upgraded concrete slabs can be placed even when red squares appear. The only exception is you

  cannot build them out of range (ie, not bordered to another concrete or friendly structure)

- Some unit graphics are upgraded, thanks to Nema Fakei.

  - Combat Tank

  - Launcher

  - Siege Tank

  - Sonic Tank

- Better removal of unit data on map (faster, more effecient).

- Logging of pathfinder in log.txt

- Harvesters prioritize spice hills above normal spice now.

NEW:

- DEBUG mode EXE file delivered.

- Low power means:

  - twice as slow building

- Spice blooms are generated 'instantly'. There is a minimum requirement of 3 spiceblooms a map.

- Compile date and time are now in log.txt (check this to be sure to have the latest

  version if you are not sure).

- Damage done by units/structures is now House depended:

  - Ordos do at least 80% damage

  - Harkonnen do 120% damage

  - Atreides = 100% for everything

  (as you may have noticed, moving , harvesting, dumping etc is already House

  dependant. So is Ordos quicker with moving, dumping and harvesting)

- Return harvester to refinery: Select harvester, press D. (from Dump/Deploy spice)

- Ornithopters work now. Swift attacks of 2 rockets. However, in order to be taken down

  the Rocket Turrets are able to shoot "homing missiles" which will track down the ornithopters

  for an amount of time. Units are able to damage the ornithopter mostly with luck.

- Rocket Turrets will now shoot 'bullets' when target gets too close.

- Rocket Turrets have priorities now in targets

  - Aircraft (ornithopters) , high priority

  - Enemy ground units, normal priority

  - Sandworms, lowest priority

  EXAMPLE: When the enemy attacks with aircraft & enemy units. The aircraft is the target

          , then the ground units.

- Worm leaves now a trail of 'distorted sand'.

- When insufficient concrete is built beneath a structure, the structure will damage easily

  through time and will require frequent repairs. Eventually it will stop at 50% damage.

  AI will react to this and repair at 75% damage.

- Clock-wise progress indicator is now 32 frames instead of 16, more fluently and only

  on ICON-picture (not text).

- Repair facility works. Hold R and hover above units to order them to repair. They will be

  picked up by Carry-Alls automaticly if available. They will be brought to the nearest

  available repair facility.

AI SPECIFIC:

- AI will build more harvesters, and will rebuild harvesters when eaten or destroyed to keep

  harvester/refinery ratio 1/1. If possible, it will try to build the ratio as 2/1

- AI will build carry-alls.

- AI will build ornithopters

- AI will use repair facilities for damaged vehicles.

- AI will blow up spice blooms by walking over them with light infantry or troopers.

Enjoy! Comments.. here please!

[Arbryls]

Lol Fast.

I just downloaded demo 2 about 30 min ago ... lol

Time for 3.

The Change log looks great can't wait to start testing for you.

Keep up the great work

Edit:

1. One thing that I see is the hot keys "B" and "P".

[Andrew]

Looks great!

Feature:

When I make a group a number, and then I go off and do something else, but I want to bring up the group, when I press group number twice in a row it will bring up the group in focus.

Umm, my construction yard was destroyed, yet i can still build stuff. Oh, it goes away once I select something else.

Havn't noticed any worms yet. ok, it's there on 3rd mission. :)

I love the smoke effect!

I don't think I've tried the demos since .92 or something.

My own units damage my buildings when trying to shoot an enemy on the other side.

[Dunenewt]

It's divided not devided.  Also I had a rock crater mark on the sand, although it was close to the border with the rock.  Just minor things.

But the rest of it is great stuff :) 

[Sfon]

This bug was also in Demo 2.

Sometimes the AI's harvester will simply stop. This causes it to run out of spice and basically become a sitting duck. I assume this is because the pathfinding fails to find a way for the harvester to get back, as my own units also stop when their pathfinding fails.

This happens a lot in one of the Atreides mission 3s. I think it is the middle one. In it, the enemy buildings form a sort of crescent around a patch of spice, and it is there where its harvester gets stuck.

My suggestion is this: Either time how long it takes for each of the AI's harvesters to get back, or simply run through and check for stopped harvesters, or something to signal when one of the AI's harvesters has stopped functioning. Then have a carryall come and deliver it to the refinery. If the AI has no carryalls, one could come and do it then leave the map when its job is done.

--Edit--

The right shift and ctrl keys do not seem to work with commands for assigning group numbers, adding to selected units, etc.

==========

TO-DO LIST

==========

* Make tech-tree 100% accurate

Do you need help with this? I still have the original manual for the game and have no problem with playing through it to test what needs what.

The inaccuracies I've noticed so far:

In the original, the radar outpost was available as soon as mission #2. Also, you only needed a windtrap before it could be built. It was actually the third thing I always built in the original game upon starting a mission.

Ordos were able to build troopers in the original. They just needed to build an infanty factory before they could build the WOR, the same way a light factory must be built before a heavy factory.

In the original, the house of IX made available the house special unit in the heavy factory. You did not need to upgrade the heavy factory at all in order to produce them.

[stefanhendriks]

Wow, thanks for all the reactions thus far.

Those harvesters give me the creeps, i will have to recode that i think. Do they simply fail path or don't even find a harvest spot?

For the tech-tree, yes, i could need help with that!

I also think in mission 5 you are given a repair facility + high-tech, which is now in mission 6 only (in demo 3).

[DuneFan]

thing i have found for nows is the path problem for trike and others

if you click like right and then completly left for mapping if the trike found anothers one in is patch it will stop right there and not move...

And you can't click on the radar screen for moving vehicule you can do this with the original dune2...

Continue your great work...

[stefanhendriks]

What do you mean exactly?

Units should recalculate their path when it suddendly fails.

[gunner154]

Excellent. Good that the AI is fixed. Will start trying in a couple of days. Will the enemies attack each other in the last mission this time? Also, I noticed the Devastator bug fix isn't on the list. Is it fixed yet? Just wondering.

[stefanhendriks]

Devastator bug is fixed ;) probably forgot to add that to the list.

i figured the harvester bug is there indeed, but somehow i am unable to fix it.

[DuneFan]

What do you mean exactly?

I mean take a trike click completly left when it is at the edge off the map

click completly right to others edge in a straight line if possible of the maps IF a vehicule is in his path it will stop there and do nothing.

I try this several times and he always get stuck and do nothing...

Hope you unterstand now if it i will try to post picture.....

[Dunenewt]

One small thing.  Can you introduce a delay for when you move the cursor to the right edge so that everytime you go put the cursor across to the sidebar it doesn't briefly scroll to the left.

[nemafakei]

Do worms avoid spice blows?

[Arbryls]

1. One thing that I see is the hot keys "B" and "P".

[The_Beast]

D2TM is getting nicer and nicer trought the release, good job Stefan

1 : In my opignon the new balencement for Quads/Trikes and Trooper/Infantry need some fixing.

    A single Trooper's squad can take more than 2 quads in a faceoff. The missile damage is way to hight(from 8 to 16 this is crazy, you should set it a maximum 12). Why Infantry have more hp than trooper, they have weaker armor. Quads and Trikes are supposed to be infantry killer, now with their damage reduced to infantry they are useless. The rate of fire is a bit to fast.

At the moment 3 trooper's squad is best than 3 tank to destroy a base. All the bonus to Trooper's make's atreides infantry more useless than ever.

Try out mission 4(the mission when you gain the tank) playing atreides and you recive a drop of 2 harkonnen trooper's squad you are almost doomed unless you have build massive infantry squads. Cause they blow up trikes and quads in 1 second.

2 : To balance the stuff here my suggestion

- Trooper HP INCREASED 45 to (70)

- Troopers HP INCREASED from 110 to 140

- Troopers sight/range INCREASED from 4 to 5

- Troopers damage to vehicles INCREASED from 8 to (12)

- Troopers Attackfrequency LOWERED from 25 to (20)

- Soldier HP INCREASED from 20 to (60)

- Infantry HP INCREASED from 50 to (120)

- Quad damage to infantry(*) LOWERED from 12 to (10)

- Quad attack frequency should remain as in dune 2

- Trike damage to infantry INCREASED from 7 to 8

Also in addition there should be a new weapon for infantry, they use bullets for infantry and grenades for thank/structures. To make atreides infantry significan in an army

(mabe add a gateling gun for trooper's squad only as a second weapon would make them more polyvalent)

the rest is really great, continue your great job!

[Piroa]

Stefan, this is some really great work.

Is there any chance of a binary for Linux? (Please take pity on me if this has been asked before, I searched and couldn't find anything)

[Sfon]

D2TM is getting nicer and nicer trought the release, good job Stefan

1 : In my opignon the new balencement for Quads/Trikes and Trooper/Infantry need some fixing.

    A single Trooper's squad can take more than 2 quads in a faceoff. The missile damage is way to hight(from 8 to 16 this is crazy, you should set it a maximum 12). Why Infantry have more hp than trooper, they have weaker armor. Quads and Trikes are supposed to be infantry killer, now with their damage reduced to infantry they are useless. The rate of fire is a bit to fast.

At the moment 3 trooper's squad is best than 3 tank to destroy a base. All the bonus to Trooper's make's atreides infantry more useless than ever.

Try out mission 4(the mission when you gain the tank) playing atreides and you recive a drop of 2 harkonnen trooper's squad you are almost doomed unless you have build massive infantry squads. Cause they blow up trikes and quads in 1 second.

2 : To balance the stuff here my suggestion

- Trooper HP INCREASED 45 to (70)

- Troopers HP INCREASED from 110 to 140

- Troopers sight/range INCREASED from 4 to 5

- Troopers damage to vehicles INCREASED from 8 to (12)

- Troopers Attackfrequency LOWERED from 25 to (20)

- Soldier HP INCREASED from 20 to (60)

- Infantry HP INCREASED from 50 to (120)

- Quad damage to infantry(*) LOWERED from 12 to (10)

- Quad attack frequency should remain as in dune 2

- Trike damage to infantry INCREASED from 7 to 8

Also in addition there should be a new weapon for infantry, they use bullets for infantry and grenades for thank/structures. To make atreides infantry significan in an army

(mabe add a gateling gun for trooper's squad only as a second weapon would make them more polyvalent)

the rest is really great, continue your great job!

In responce to gatling gun for troopers:

In the original, troopers fired bullets at close range. This the sort if thing you were talking about?

To the rest:

Soldiers and troopers are very powerful now. Remember, though, that the ability to run them over seems to be planned. This will hopefully balance that out.

Yes, it is a weakness that Atreides doesn't have great foot units, but remember the other houses have disadvantages too. I played the Atreides for a number of missions in this version, and didn't find this to be a much of a problem. The infantry are great against troopers and are fine as they are.

[stefanhendriks]

The idea of troopers and Atreides infantry is:

- troopers are good at taking down strong units / structures

- some units can tackle down troopers 'easy' (ie, quad/trikes).

- Atreides infantry will do heavy damage on troopers. I do think the atreides infantry can be a little more stronger.

There is a significant difference between "HP" and "firepower" ofcourse. Troopers have higher HP since i don't want them to be destroyed easily. They do a significance hit to structures/units (though i plan to seperate that too) and less damage to infantry. Infantry has lower HP but greater infantry damage (troopers in this case).

For the moment units do:

- damage to other units & structures

- damage to infantry

i want to split this into:

- damage to units

- damage to structures

- damage to infantry

[stefanhendriks]

I did several tests with my pathfinder, only on rare occasions somehow a path could not be calculated , and the harvesters where bugged by that.

So , after a day of work but no result, i added a 'work around'. (for now).

When the path fails; the harvester will move to a randomly close cell and then try again.

[stefanhendriks]

Stefan, this is some really great work.

Is there any chance of a binary for Linux? (Please take pity on me if this has been asked before, I searched and couldn't find anything)

Well, eventually i would love to have it compile under linux/mac etc. ;)

[stefanhendriks]

What do you mean exactly?

I mean take a trike click completly left when it is at the edge off the map

click completly right to others edge in a straight line if possible of the maps IF a vehicule is in his path it will stop there and do nothing.

I try this several times and he always get stuck and do nothing...

Hope you unterstand now if it i will try to post picture.....

I have tried to replicate the bug, but i can't seem to do so. I did change more stuff in the pathfinding code so perhaps i fixed it before i could even figure it out ;)

I have tried:

- horizontal lines (upper left/upper right)

- vertical (upper right/lower right)

- diogonal (upper left/lower right)

i moved the unit, then i moved someone in its path and all units got 'blocked' but recalculated their path.

[gunner154]

Nice. This time the AI is really challenging. Missile tanks are fun!

I have noticed a few bugs/problems though:

1.) I somehow seem to get new infantry appearing out of nowhere with a team number assigned to it - either 1 or 2. And it's always a single soldier. For Harkonnen, I get a Trooper. What's going on?

2.) When I create teams, I somehow end up selecting enemy units together with my own units when I hit the corresponding number.

3.) Whoa, troopers are really really powerful. Playing Harkonnen is easy. Just get lots of quads and troopers. For Ordos, it gets quite tricky though. When you don't have troopers, I had to resort to massing infantry and missile tanks (Ordos with missile tanks? It was in the mission)...

4.) Can you manually detonate the devastator? I found myself unable to.

Great stuff though. I just loved the difficulty of it now :)

[Elec]

Hello,

I just want add something to the Demo2, so please excuse my post in this topic. ;)

You've done a great job. :) I played the Demo2 and I like it really. :) But for further improvement I will list some bugs I found:

1. If I have clicked on a unit and will then place a completed struckture, the mouse-cursor will being like in "move"-mode.

2. Some buildings (like refinery) weren't finished after the money has counted down and sound were already changed back (no more click-click-click-click-...).

3. It's impossible to start to create a building when I have less money than it will cost.

4. The money is still counting up, even if any harvester isn't in a refinery any more.

5. I let my harvester taking some spice, then I said to move to a place in my base. He did this, but after waiting 5 seconds, he autonomous go back to the spice and harvesting. Also he doesn't understands when I want him moving into my refinery, when he isn't filled up.

6. I played the first Harkonnen-Mission and won. On the following map-selecting-map is a bug: After I moved my mouse over an terretory and then over another and over another again, they start blinking now in another rythm.

7. I said my quad to move upon the darkborwn hills. I know he can't, but he even move to the border of them.

8. Harkonnen Mission 3: Ordos units attacking each other.

9. There a some grafics-Error around the radarmap (See attached file)

10. In the left menue ist still a gray button for troopers and soldiers

11. Sometimes my units couldn't move cross.

12. The enemy units didn't attack really. They come and fireing a little bit.

13. Therer is an mouse-errror on the mentat-screen, if I finished the last mission and had before clicked on a unit.

14. Atreides attack their own base

15. My rocketturret attack my buildings if an enemy unity stands behind it.

16. I can not drive over enemy footsoldiers

17. If I pressed tab+F2 on the mentat-screen, it begins shaking.

18. I missed the "tush" when i placed a building.

19. If I selecting a group and came with my mouse-arrow over the building-menue on the right; the build-menu will changing

20. I missed the outro after I finished the last scenario.

21. Why can I build strait from the beginning baracks or an wor?

22. The damage-bar goes into the negative site.

23. Sometimes I can't read the whole written text on the mentat screen.

24. My MCV can't expand

25. My devastator can't explode by myself

26. My units don't get into the repair facility, even if I said it to them

27. I missed the feature to say to my footsoldier and other units to attack a spicebloom, not move to it.

28. If I explored the map I can build concrete slabs and then buildings in an enemy base.

29. I don't understand the white symbol on some buildings (see attached file)

30. Why making the right side of the building-menue (units) approaching and the left side (buildings) not ?

31. Why using an alternative building order in the construction yard (i.e. the windtraps were always the last ones in the list)

32. I missed some mouse-over-text at the two bars near the radar-map: which value they have and what they are representing.

33. I missed the option (I know the are still no options) to make the upper information-textfield displaying continiously.

34. Can it be possible when I'm explore the whole map by pressing "F5" to getting an radar-map without build an outpost ? (Will be good for debugging)

35. In the original game the button "Yes", "No", "Proceed" and "Repeat" were just flipped over.

36. When my mentat says something before a new mission to me and I click on "Proceed" the mouse-arrow jumps insted to the center-screen instead being there where it was.

37. I can't on the "select your next territory"-map speed up the text-switching by clicking.

38. I can't say to my units moving there or there by clinking into the radar-map.

39. When I place an outpost, the map-incoming is in wrong order. First the white point comes, then he becomes a bar, then the map is visible (in light colors) and then the bar gets up to fullfill the rectangle, then the map ist visible with normal colors. The map should only visible at the end of the little movie.

40. I missed the "d-d-dong-g-g"-sound if I cant't place a buldiung where I want.

41. I missed my buildings and the white frame in the radar-map, even if I havn't build an outpost.

last. Will I be listed onto your Credits ?

[Elec]

  Here the files to Demo2 ...

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]

[Elec]

  Here more files to Demo2 ...

[attachment deleted by Gobalopper]