Deidril's Thread (Former Lead Designer of Dune Generations)

[Deidril]

Hello,

it's nice to see than after 6 years, some people are still mourning about dune generations.  8) As said in the topic, DG people splitted 6 years ago. As far as i know, most of us doesn't work anymore in the video game industry.

However, if you want my opinion on the subject:

  1) The game design of dune generations was/is good. A game based on politics, military and genetics is an idea still unexplored, by any dune or non-dune games.

  2) The code source doesn't value a copper. If i were given the money to make a new dune game and all the rights from R.I.P dune generations, i would use the game design but not the code source. However, the code source has never been lost since the last day we all received two DVDs, one with all the game source and materials and another with some videos trailers ( the 600mb ones i uploaded for dune2K in 2002 ). But really, honestly, the code source and the technology behind are not adequate for a 2008 MMO game. Even a non-pro game !

  3) If i were starting a new dune game, i would think about a browser based game. However, i would never do this without the right license. I don't want to see my house been given to Herbert's license holders...

Have a good day D2K folks :

PS: Hi Mahdi, have been a long time..

Deidril, ex Lead Designer of R.I.P DG.

[Deidril]

Deidril!  Long time no see!  How are you doing?  It's great to see you drop in, you should come by more often.  What are you up to now?

Any thoughts on writing a bit on what happened with DG now that it's been so long since the game was cancelled and the company went under?

Hi,

As said by email, i left the video game industry in 2005. I now work as R&D engineer, and, honestly, it's far quite better paid. Perhaps one day I'll return to video game, if the industry rise up more in France and the salary not only for hungry, young and single and no-life men.

About DG closing: In 2000, Cryo Networks got over 50 millions euros and Cryo's CEO claimed we have enough money to live 5 years and survive the starting internet crisis. 2 years later we closed.

Why ?

Even today i don't know the truth except i understand someone or some people really badly managed the company money. They bought smaller companies ( including vircom, the company behind the 2D MMO The 4th coming ). Some choices were smart but some other were disasters. Instead of building a strong company based on video games, they bought smaller one, thinking they're building a strong consortium or like.

At the same time, the mother company - Cryo Interactive - was near to be closed also. I don't know how and why they made it but Cryo Networks was bought back by Cryo Interactive, shares holders were given a peanut for their shares ( i bought about 3K euros of shares and they valued less than 4 euros at the end ). Couple of months later, Cryo Networks closed.

We were given a first opportunity to continue DG by another video game company I'll not name, under the conditions we continue to work on DG from our homes and without salary for some months while they looks for funds. We all refused. After that, some key people left, finding new jobs, and from then it was impossible to continue DG.

I'll continue to write some things later. It's time to eat there :)

[Deidril]

2nd part!

I would like to mention than we had an horrible human management. We started DG with 30 very motivated programmers. At the end, most of them just were waiting to be fired or looking for another job.

Some examples:

On two another projects, i saw co workers programming like 16h a day and sleeping under their desk, going home once every 2 days for a shower. Even indian or chinese programmers have a better life !

I remember one night we stayed late and for free ( in France, over hours must be paid ), our production director ( Louis ) asked the company to pay pizzas for everybody. The CEO refused. So Louis paid the pizzas himself and said it was offered by the company to keep up the moral. Even today, i think when you ask to your employees to do non-paid extra hours, you could at least call SOS Pizza to feed them !

You never get upgrade on your salary. Whatever you work well or not doesn't make any difference at the end. You have to threat quitting to get something.

At the beginning of Cryo Networks we got the most stupid CEO i ever saw ! I remember bringing Ultima Online  so he can see what is an online game ( he was not a gamer ). I gave him the keyboard and instead trying combat in killing some easy monsters like everybody would do, this smart guy typed insults because he feels funny to see insults above the avatar. My own account was warned because of this. And also, Intel phoned us to ask if we were interrested to have a demo in their next installation bundle. ( The CD packs you receive when you buy a new PC ) and that stupido said we aren't interrested to have our demo delivered on each of the next millions new PC.

I'm quitting here because i could go on several pages about how idiot were our boss. Except our production director ( Louis ) who was human and skilled, our project leaders for DG who were competents. I would add Sylvain, our technical direction who created our in-house language and was a very good technical.

If we were given CEOs with a brain and a heart, maybe DG could have been to the shelves and maybe i would still be there.

Aside our incompetent managers, we have a pleasant day-to-day life.

I remember during some months we gathered at lunch time in the large meeting room and watching japanese animes on the large screen. ( Berserk rocks on a 3 meters screen ! ). We p0wned Dungeon Siege & Diablo II several times. There were 2 groups of dungeon&dragons. We went to see some movies together ( like the Scorpion King !  :) )

It was really pleasant and fun to work with the people of the DG teams. I kept some contact with some of them after the fall of DG. When they moved to new jobs, it was the ultimate end and i never saw them again.

Next part: DG itself.

[Deidril]

About DG:

The heart of DG was to mix an RTS persistent game with politics and with some sort of roleplaying elements.

You start the game by creating a noble house of the Lansraad. You name your family, choose an herald, name your planet, create an house leader and share some points between some attributes and skills. You characters doesn't have level or classes but your house has. You increase your house level by receiving experience points. The more your house level was, the better were your characters.

One of the first thing to do was to marry your leader and have children who will become new characters. Each of your new characters, if a boy could then marry a woman and start a new branch of your house, if a girl been married to another player's character. It was up to you how your daughter were 'given' to another players. You could ask for alliance, money, nothing, whatever...

Every mariage received secretly a compatibility score. There was a secret matching score between male character and female character. Your 'Bob' could have a matching score of 10 with 'Poppy' but only 3 with 'Susan'. The higher was your score, the better would be your children ( stronger, smarter, etc ..). Build some generations of 9 / 10 and you were given a chance to have a kwisatz haderach. Of course, it was pretty rare to find a perfect matching girl for a boy, and fortunaly you could make your boy dating a girl and you receive a rapport from your boy how was the dating. It could go from 'I want to marry it now' to 'Even sand worm look better!'. In a way, DG was a breeding game :) I was really waiting to see situation like 'What ! You sold Jessica to that Sparta house when my 'Leto' was really in love with her ? Our alliance is dead !' If you were really unable to find a woman for your guy, you could ask to the Bene Gesserit who will UPS you something you could marry to continue playing. ( Matching score like 1,2 or 3... )

The technology part looked ogame. You could also find, spy or buy technologies pieces who could advance or help to advance ( the same way experiences point advance level ) one research field.

The RTS part was also ok and brought only a few new features above what existed in 2002. Main new feature was the unit of mercenary house who could rampage other house planets and get ressources from destroying building and killing other unit, the same way you get gold and items from killing monsters in mmorpgs. I'm not sure but it seemd to me it was something new in the RTS games to mixe such rpg concepts. Aside your units you could also use your family member. Any family member was enough strong to beat some units alone. Warcraft hero units before everybody :) Family character who lost a fight have a chance to flee, a chance being killed and a chance becoming prisoners. You could then execute them or ask for a ransom. I just remembered you could also force mariage of a girl prisoner with one of your boys. As today DG would surely be Adult rated !

A really another new feature of the game was spying. Spying was in itself a game in the game. You could spy almost everything and get advantage from it. Spy a character of another family and you could kill it easily in duel because you already know his fighting style. Spy technologies and you could receive advancements in yours. Spy mails, reports, character locations, troops, etc ...Spying was really a daily action of the game. You could spy other spies and make sure they find false report. Like finishing in a duel with 'Sorry, you thought i was left handed but you're wrong. Now you're dead bevause i know all of you.'

Aside your family character you could of course hire doctors, weapon masters, mentas( not sure of the english name) , and some special npcs who will help you in your actions. They could do some actions only available to family member, like dueling for the weapon master, allowing you to save an important family member. Better to sacrifice a weapon master you can hire than your last boy.

Dueling was, in 2002, a large unexplored feature. We ended with a card-game like minigame in waiting the first expansion and delivering something better. Although we felt it was a necessary element of the game, we couldn't find time to design it.

One thing also new to the mmo games: In DG you could loose. In any mmorpg you have your character revived after death, but in DG, if one of your character die, he is erased. If you lost all of your family member, you have lost and must restart a new house. So yes, you could see one player building up an house as powerful as the corino and see an alliance of player destroying him forever. As today i think it was a little too harsh. If i were restarting DG i think i would split servers into hardcore and normal to avoid the ultimate destruction of your family for players who can't live with it. Of course you could ready clones of your character under some conditions and there was a newbie protection to help new players.

It's all i can think for now, searching in my brain for 6 year old rememberings. If you have questions i'll try to answer them :)

Add: I forgot maybe one of the most important thing: Spice and Arrakis! Every real month, an house was choosen by the emperor to rules arrakis. While 15 real days you have to exploit spice saving your spice recycler from the fremens units. through an unique mini game only available for the ruler of Arrakis. Get a good production at the end of the month and you'll receive your share of spice. Fail and mister Sardaukar will be on your home planet before you return from Arrakis. Aside black market and incredibly high prices of the Guild, it was the only way to get stocks of Spices. You could of course steal spices from an old arrakis ruler or rampage his ome planet to steal his stocks. As Arrakis ruler you could cheat the emperor and try to keep a part of the spice production. But if the emperor's spies get you, you'll battle the 50 legions of sardaukars and have a good chance to be permanently destroyed. It was the highest risk action of the game !

In any order, there was also: market and black market, pirates, RTS campaigns ( solo missions ) with each of the duniverse factions, server events and even one special and hard RTS mission to do every month to receive special & uniques rewards, secret units to unlock ( Arrakis ruler could learn to befriend fremen and go out of Arrakis with a few units of them... ), secret technologies ( creating gholans ), and really plenty other things.

[Deidril]

In house language? How do you know this?

I'm fairly sure they wouldn't have developed a compiler to build a game from scratch, if they did no wonder it failed...

We did.

I was hired by Cryo in 1996 to work on a new language to build online only games. If i put aside the choice of the language structure, the idea behind was to allow mobile/floatingcode who could be send, executed, or called from another computer, something like AJAX+RPC allow it today. They wanted to create a standard language for web and online applications.

We get Dune's licence in 2000. So yes, we didn't created a language for Dune but yes, we used an in-house language for DG.

As today i would use C++ for the barebone serveur/client and a script language for games features, the same way ultima online & civization IV or the Multiverse mmomaker use python. But i would surely not use the cryo in-house language.

[Mahdi]

In order to make things easier for the link on the news page, and for people just joining in the conversation, I've split Deidril's posts off to a new thread.

Thanks for these posts Deidril!  It's amazing the stuff that happened at Cryo.

[Andrew]

Great info Deidril.

More is always welcome.

[TMA_1]

this thread has brought a smile to my face! I remember being very excited for the game, still have one of the wallpapers of the sardaukar running into battle somewhere on my computer.

[Egeides]

Thanks Deidril. The DG website lurkers never got more than the basic description, making this design information a nice jewel for our curious little minds. The closest to DG's design out there now might be some webgames or EVE Online, but it's not so close.

"If you have questions i'll try to answer them"

Do have:

You haven't mentioned NPCs. Were they very present or even independently active (Arrakis, rp..), for gameplay or game politics?

[Dunenewt]

Dune Generations videos

[Deidril]

Thanks Deidril. The DG website lurkers never got more than the basic description, making this design information a nice jewel for our curious little minds. The closest to DG's design out there now might be some webgames or EVE Online, but it's not so close.

"If you have questions i'll try to answer them"

Do have:

You haven't mentioned NPCs. Were they very present or even independently active (Arrakis, rp..), for gameplay or game politics?

NPCs were factions. Think 1 NPC = 1 house or 1 NPC = 1 faction ( Bene gesserit, pirates... ). They were passive NPCs most of the time although there was events who could force them interacting with your house more frequently. Otherwhile you could get missions ( quests! ) from them, trading, and some special interactions ( like ordering a bride to the bene gesserit ).

[DragoFire]

NPCs were factions. Think 1 NPC = 1 house or 1 NPC = 1 faction ( Bene gesserit, pirates... ). They were passive NPCs most of the time although there was events who could force them interacting with your house more frequently. Otherwhile you could get missions ( quests! ) from them, trading, and some special interactions ( like ordering a bride to the bene gesserit ).

Interesting ideal, a bit like the sub-houses in Emperor:Battle for Dune. I'm guessing there was no favor system (if you attack and destroy their things they hate you a little bit more, the more you do the worst they hate you, till the point they will attack any of you units/building on sight, or the complete opposite to the point they defend your units/buildings).

Would you think TGE or TGEA (tribes development crews new engine for indenpendant developers www.garagegames.com) would be able to handle what was done in DG?

[DragoFire]

Just on another note, if a Dune Universe MMO game was going to be made I'd start it at the time when the Free League of Humans start the final push against the Cyneks and the Thinking Robots. The time the personal shield and Larger shields were invented and the Bene gesserit sisterhood was not formed, but were in the making, along with the first rediscovery of the Spice and it's effects.

This is the time Vor Atreides leaves the Thinking Robots and joins the FLH and partners with Xorain Harkonnen against the robots.

Other main reason for this time period is it's the start of everything, new tech, the guild, the sisters, the main houses, everything.

[Deidril]

Interesting ideal, a bit like the sub-houses in Emperor:Battle for Dune. I'm guessing there was no favor system (if you attack and destroy their things they hate you a little bit more, the more you do the worst they hate you, till the point they will attack any of you units/building on sight, or the complete opposite to the point they defend your units/buildings).

That's exactly that !

Would you think TGE or TGEA (tribes development crews new engine for indenpendant developers www.garagegames.com) would be able to handle what was done in DG?

i don't have any knowledge about the real features of TGE.

However I guess any 2008 3D engine will be able to do at least the same things than DG's 3D Engine ( old from 2002 ).

One major feature you'll need would be Perlin-noise ( or like ) based terrain generation AND textures to render the battle map of all the planets of your universe.

If TGE can't do this, make sure you can do this aside and inject results into your 3D engine.

I would rather look at a 3D engine like Infinity's one ( http://www.infinity-universe.com/ ) but i don't know of anyone doing terrain generation except this one.

Just on another note, if a Dune Universe MMO game was going to be made I'd start it at the time when the Free League of Humans start the final push against the Cyneks and the Thinking Robots. The time the personal shield and Larger shields were invented and the Bene gesserit sisterhood was not formed, but were in the making, along with the first rediscovery of the Spice and it's effects.

This is the time Vor Atreides leaves the Thinking Robots and joins the FLH and partners with Xorain Harkonnen against the robots.

Other main reason for this time period is it's the start of everything, new tech, the guild, the sisters, the main houses, everything.

Cryo Networks bought the Dune licence of the first TV mini serie and we have prerequisites like doing the game while the same timeline of the miniserie. As well as not using any Dune elements not in the tv serie.

if you start your project using a (fan)licence from all the books, there is surely a better timeline to use for a MMO game than Paul Atreides's life.

[Mahdi]

Two years since the last post - this will be added to the Interview and chat archive.

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