Could there be Dune without tanks?

[MrFlibble]

You could do it Z-style and have it so that the effectiveness (accuracy, manoeuvrability, pathfinding) of the vehicle is dependant on the infantry in the vehicle, and then give the infantry the experience.

The only drawback here is that even a Trike needs more than one person for the crew. Somehow I don't enjoy the prospect of manually loading several units into a vehicle just to make it work.

[Heikos]

Nice ideas. Here's my set of ideas about experience:

- from the crew, only the captain carries experience. When a crew somehow escapes a tank, only the captain is showed. This way you won't get lots of crew wandering around, which is complicating things too much.

- starting experience should usually be quite low, but sometimes a new captain is recruited with lots of talent, he starts with more experience.

- starting experience can be upgraded by technology upgrades, this should result in new little-to-medium experienced captains

- in missions, the closer you get to the opponents leader (emperor, king or whatever), the more experienced captains appear. E.g. the last fortress holding the emperor will be defended by very experienced veterans, resulting in a tough fight, where enemy captains in early missions have little or no experience.

Example of accuracy due to ranking:

Rank/kills*/accuracy

1/0/40% (for starting captains)

2/1/47% (tech upgrade 1, low cost)

3/3/55% (tech upgrade 2, medium cost) (talented captains - happens 1 out of 3-5)

4/5/62% (tech upgrade 3, high cost - not wise to upgrade early during a mission, many cheap bring more than a few experienced)

5/8/69% (tech upgrade 4, very high cost) (very talented captains start with this - happens 1 out of 10)

6/11/76%

7/13/83%

8/16/89%

9/20/94% (best own veterans)

10/40/98% (is almost impossible to achieve, only possible in the last (few) mission(s) (toughest enemy veterans)

*  required for this rank, kills in one mission. Only the fatal shot counts as a kill.

** kills are counted in (value enemy unit)/((value own unit), eg a foot soldier with a value of $100 killing a tank of $700, gets 7 kills. But that happens very rarely, and a soldier with a high rank is still weak. A unit killing an enemy with equal strength gets 1 kill. Multiple versus one attacks are the most efficient way to get a high rank. One versus one is very risky.

[SmaSh]

Hey,

I am at the drawing board, busy sketching the new Dune game i want to create. But i was wondering if Tanks, Launchers, Siege tanks, etc would even be realistic in the Dune scene.

As far as i know, there are only:

- airborn units

- infantry (who can have several type of weapons, lasers, rockets, 'sound' weapon, etc)

I could imagine there would be wheeled units (like fast trikes to explore the dunes, to find spice).

But that would be about it; so what do you think?

I think a dune game should be more focussed on its infantry and wheeled units. Also Ornithopters could be more interesting as a serious weapon. Airborn units in overall would be more interesting i think.

The only tracked (or is it even wheeled?) unit i can think off is the Harvester.

i think it would be great to have this feature in a tech level option in skirmish.

tech lvl 1 is infantry

tech lvl 2 is previous lvl  + WOR

tech lvl 3 is previous lvls + QUAD

...

tech lvl 10is previous lvls + Castle, which means everything(all technologies: infantry, tanks, special weapons, etc.).

I've restarted playing Red Alert(the first) and this is how Westwood implemented the system. So the player has the option to play skirmish with infantry only or with everything.

With this option, i think it gives the player a choice of decision as of if he wants to play inf only or with evrything.

[MrFlibble]

That's actually a good idea. The units will require more balancing though.

[stefanhendriks]

Isn't this basically saying "play Skirmish with techlevel as in mission X on single player" ?

Like, you have 0 to 9 techlevel. Where techlevel 9 equals the technology available to you on mission 9 (either house) where you have your final battle?

[gunner154]

Idea is there but technically speaking, on some single player missions you do get a weird combination of tech, kind of like in between 2 tech levels for skirmish. What he said is right though, it's how Westwood initially planned it since... Tiberian Dawn I think? But better known would be its implementation in Red Alert, since that was when we actually had Skirmish.

[SmaSh]

Isn't this basically saying "play Skirmish with techlevel as in mission X on single player" ?

Like, you have 0 to 9 techlevel. Where techlevel 9 equals the technology available to you on mission 9 (either house) where you have your final battle?

i don't think it's that way. I've just tested 3 missions from the campaign and the 1st mission was a rescue, 2nd was a base building(tech lvl 1) 3rd mission was clearing the area.

i think it needs additional testing.

The game is free to download btw, so any abandon ware of Red Alert 1 should be legal.

[gunner154]

It's not exactly that way. I think Dune 2000 had the level correspond accurately to a skirmish tech level (counting the first level as tech level 0 of course).

[stefanhendriks]

Exactly, thats what  I mean. But perhaps someone could make a suggestion what a good 'tech tree' would be for skirmish games?

I mean, do you really need this? Or could you perhaps want to differentiate further?

Like:

- enable upgrades? enable how much? enable how much per structure type?

- have 'profiles' of houses in Skirmish? Where you can set the availability to certain technology? And, in theory have a super house with everything?

etc

[Rene]

- have 'profiles' of houses in Skirmish? Where you can set the availability to certain technology? And, in theory have a super house with everything?

I like the profile idea. It would mean easy moddability, as you could store these profiles in an INI file.

[stefanhendriks]

I like the profile idea. It would mean easy moddability, as you could store these profiles in an INI file

In fact, that would mean that the current houses would be 'merely' profiles as well :) You could 'define' your own houses this way :)

[MrFlibble]

Well, that's how it is in Dune II - all houses (and unplayable sides too) share the same tech "core", and the differences in availability of certain units makes each House more-or-less unique.

[stefanhendriks]

I think it would be even more cool to have each house its own core; meaning you have to specify everything for every house. This would mean a bit more work to lay down the house profiles; but also complete control :)

[MrFlibble]

Yes, that would be more useful. In Dune II, the tech trees have the form of "adjustments" - e.g. whenever the Ordos have a Trike available for production (be it produced from a Light Factory or anywhere else), it is automatically replaced by a Raider Trike. Which means that the Ordos can never ever produce regular Trikes. Analogously, the Harkonnen Light Factory always comes already upgraded to be able to produce Quads straight away. This is why Dune II isn't easy to mod - most of these commands that override the "core" tech tree are still not found (and even if they were, adding new ones is probably impossible). Certainly an easier (modding-wise) way would be to have separate Light Factories for each House, each with its own build list.

[stefanhendriks]

I can imagine the reasons why Westwood did that. However, while I am rebuilding the logic for the sidebar, I also have now a much more flexible way to configure what a side can build or not (house specific).

For now, it is hard coded in a factory, but it would be much more easy to read information from a file and then set it up accordingly.

Modding is not my first priority, but it would certainly become more and more possible while refactoring the code.

[muz]

Just saw a mention that you would be interested in making new graphics for the game.

Im a digi artist, and i wouldnt mind contributing art if it means a new indie dune game that isnt just a remake :).

I dont really have any examples of pixelart online right now but you can see my standard work here. http://www.muzzoid.com

If your interested send me an email at muzzoid@hotmail.com, same for msn.

Really like what you have been doing with your remake btw :).

[MrFlibble]

I dont really have any examples of pixelart online right now but you can see my standard work here. http://www.muzzoid.com

That looks really nice :) It's always good to have a game artist around ;D

[stefanhendriks]

Yes, very nice indeed. I wonder if you could make C&C/Dune 2000 like gfx? Ie, sort of 3d (from top) but still being sprites?

[MrFlibble]

BTW, Stefan, I remember you mentioned somewhere the possibility of implementing true 3D GFX in D2TM. Is it a realistic prospect? I think it'd be very cool if Dune II were remade in full 3D (in my opinion, the visuals in Dune II are the best out of the 3 Dune-themed RTS games).

Other than that, maybe we could look forward to high-quality remakes of Mentat portraits and large unit/structure images? ;)

[stefanhendriks]

Theoretically it is possible, but it would require a lot of changes in order to keep the 2d support. A first step would be to use Allegro GL.

With an approach of the "Shai Hulud" project , which died long ago, it had already basic support. It did not use allegro as library though.

[Xaroth]

Hey,

I am at the drawing board, busy sketching the new Dune game i want to create. But i was wondering if Tanks, Launchers, Siege tanks, etc would even be realistic in the Dune scene.

As far as i know, there are only:

- airborn units

- infantry (who can have several type of weapons, lasers, rockets, 'sound' weapon, etc)

I could imagine there would be wheeled units (like fast trikes to explore the dunes, to find spice).

But that would be about it; so what do you think?

I think a dune game should be more focussed on its infantry and wheeled units. Also Ornithopters could be more interesting as a serious weapon. Airborn units in overall would be more interesting i think.

The only tracked (or is it even wheeled?) unit i can think off is the Harvester.

The books do indicate artillery and other conventional weaponry being used in the Harkonnen assault on the atreides... but they do have a real big preference for ornithopters, and every house uses them, which also differs with the games

The variety, but not-so-variety of units is one of the things that made Dune a good game, also the special units gave each house their own feel, and there's not that much variety in troops and planes

[MrFlibble]

The books do indicate artillery and other conventional weaponry being used in the Harkonnen assault on the atreides... but they do have a real big preference for ornithopters, and every house uses them, which also differs with the games

Firearms and projectile wepons were not generally used in the Dune universe because of the shields:

"The cannons you brought," Rabban said. "Could I--"

"I'm removing them," the Baron said.

"But you--"

"You won't need such toys. They were a special innovation and are now useless. We need the metal. They cannot go against a shield, Rabban. They were merely the unexpected. It was predictable that the Duke's men would retreat into cliff caves on this abominable planet. Our cannon merely sealed them in."

"The Fremen don't use shields."

"You may keep some lasguns if you wish."

As for 'thopters, ground vehicles were not feasible on Dune because of the risk of being swallowed by worms.

Generally, a Dune-themed RTS closely following the book would be more like Warcraft rather than C&C.

[Xaroth]

Firearms and projectile wepons were not generally used in the Dune universe because of the shields:

As for 'thopters, ground vehicles were not feasible on Dune because of the risk of being swallowed by worms.

Generally, a Dune-themed RTS closely following the book would be more like Warcraft rather than C&C.

Shields were a big no-no in the desert, as they are worm-magnets, but indeed, so are ground vehicles, but the game has that already taken in mind by having sandworms move to attack the second you get on sand, which is something you'd expect (besides the speeds of units being a wee bit off, if tanks were as fast as infantry they'd be lunch for worms)

as for the WC vs C&C, I tend to agree on you with that..

[stefanhendriks]

This topic is a bit old, because I've already focussed on improving the current D2TM, rather than starting a new concept. Yet it is always interesting to know what could be possible.

I think the biggest pitfall is that a lot of ideas dont really work out in a game. :)

[muz]

Ah fair enough.

I was just putting out the offer incase you were interested.

:).