My (miserable) attempts in dune2 editing

[Windwalker]

Greetings again.

I decided to gather information about my little, amateur experiments with dune2 editing here.

Me and a bunch of friends here are hardcore fans of novels... I was 12 or so when my father brought the game to me. I played it for a long time, instinctively chosing harkonnen (maybe for red color or the bull head?) and finished it a couple of times. Then i saw the book in a store. My humble brain could make the connection and i bought it. Thats how i became a lone guy. Till i made a few friends read it too.

After some time dune2 became a great nostalgia. (I suspect most of you guys here have similar experiences.) I remember sitting with my friend "O" till the morning when i was 20, playing dune and trying to finish the game with ordos.

Nowadays, i am trying to modify the game to change the story to something similar to the novels. I am addicted to writing stories; I read alot, been a dungeon master for dnd for 10+years. Anyway i want to make a nice surprise for "O"

So, i visited these pages, read some basic clues, clicked some links...

Currently i am using

siberian string editor for text editing.

pakwest to unpak/repak files.

Nyerguds wonderful editor to toy with exe.

Stefan Hendrix Dunedit to create scenarios.

***What i was able to do***

1) I was able to translate the whole game into Turkish. Well not the whole game indeed. All in game messages like "harvester is %s full and harvesting" or building names, cost, vehicle names... Subtitles in introduction, the main menu and the in game menu, order list of units. No problems here. However, i couldnt change briefings, mentat speach, mentat information on units. See **what i couldnt do**

2) I was able to change some basic values about infantry units. Balancing is not complete yet; but basically, i made them a little bit cheaper, a little bit more hp, increased sight. Currently i am trying to make them uncrushable by vehicles. I will try to exclude harvesters and devastators. My plan is to change every other vehicle movement status to "wheeled". I hope this will prevent them from crushing infantry. I do this because i feel they are useless after some point in the game, which i dont like much because i believe "human" should be primary subject in any dune environment.

3) I was able to change the story towards the books. Player will be a young commander Thufir Hawat was secretly training. While Duke, Thufir, Duncan and other heroes of the Novels were busy with what they did, this young commander will be executing Thufirs orders. There will be many connections to the book. Like the second level : Player will have begin with a single refinary and 10 harvesters. He will have a quote target of 4000. Harvesters will be in the opposite corner of the refinary in the map. What he has to do is to harvest, and make 6 harvesters reach to refinery alive. In briefing Thufir will laugh and say :"In the meeting last night, i told harvesting process was to collect as much as you can and run away, and Duke said "Perfectly suitable to Harkonnen understanding of Honor!" or sth like that. However there are a few issues here. See what i couldnt do.

4) I was able to create the first level, completely playable, and in an enjoyable difficulty. I also made a tiny "in game message" attempt. It was puny though. When you play the game for the first time, anytime you click a building, a text box appears and gives information. I changed the infobox of construction yard to change into a "in-game-story-box"

***What i couldnt do (and need help)***

1)I couldnt change the voc files for introduction movie. To see the new stroy, player will have to choose "no sound" in the setup menu.

2)I couldnt change between-mission briefings. This one is very, very important. Its my only way to give the new stroy to player.

3)It would be nice if i could change the mentat picture to thufir Hawat. this one is also important. I know MrFlibble has succeeded it and i pm'ed him, but no response yet.

4)I couldnt place Mercenary silos to first level. The game keeps crushing when i do this. I dont know why. There is no problem when i place Ordos silos.

Thats it for now. I keep toying around with the game when i have time, but my work is killing me nowadays, so almost stopped. When i find time i secretly keep modding the game teh heh he. And i need help guys. And i also can help anyone in any humble way i can.

Will keep updates, cya!

[Windwalker]

Its done and working properly! Infantry cant be crushed by vehicles anymore. Only exceptions for now are harvesters and devastators. However i still might exclude the harvesters and include basic combat tank.

reasons : I did this because infantry becomes useless after some point. (an early point indeed.) But dune is about people, so i want this little pixel buddies to play a more important role. They wont rule over or own tanks still (unless they outnumber them seriously)

This, coupled with some other balance issues like all kinds of turrets increased energy requirement, will shift gameplay into a new style, i hope. Now against them, you can still use your basic harvester to crush, but while doing so your harvester is not doing its primary job, which is to gather resources. A player may just build another one for just crushing infantry though...

So i believe, they will have a better role in both offance and defance, more in the latter. In offance, they wont just fade away instantly, and they will better be able to capture buildings. In defence, they will be able to delay an enemy, and being cheap and quick to produce, they may well be chosen instead of tanks especially in situations with low resource and time.

Devastator may shot down them as easily as crushing them, and is painfully slow... So it may crush anything as it moves towards target, to better use its time.

---Still need help---

1-)Why cant i place mercenary buildings? It keeps crashing when i do so?

2-)Why cant i change mentat speech in briefings? I cant even find the related text! Where is it?

3-)Why cant i change mentat explanations of units&buildings? Even a single letter change turns it into a masterwork of frenzied and drunken glyph writer! Siberian cant see these texts, and any other medium i use to edit this file ruins it i guess! (mentata.eng) Should i use another text editor?

4)To create better missions, i must be able to play with win/lose flags... Does anyone have information on them?

Regards!

[Nyerguds]

You need to enable the option in Siberian String Editor to save the file in compressed format

[MrFlibble]

---Still need help---

1-)Why cant i place mercenary buildings? It keeps crashing when i do so?

2-)Why cant i change mentat speech in briefings? I cant even find the related text! Where is it?

3-)Why cant i change mentat explanations of units&buildings? Even a single letter change turns it into a masterwork of frenzied and drunken glyph writer! Siberian cant see these texts, and any other medium i use to edit this file ruins it i guess! (mentata.eng) Should i use another text editor?

4)To create better missions, i must be able to play with win/lose flags... Does anyone have information on them?

1) Use BGAFC Dune 2 Scenario Editor, and everything should work fine.

2), 3) These are TEXTA.ENG, TEXTO.ENG, TEXTH.ENG for briefings and MENTATA.ENG, MENTATO.ENG and MENTATH.ENG for unit descriptions. All located inside ENGLISH.PAK.

4) Look at the flags in the original missions, they represent known win/lose conditions (e.g. in the first mission win=reach quota, lose=no buildings etc.)

[Windwalker]

Thanks alot! I will try your advices tomorrow morning.

[MrFlibble]

BTW could you tell what exactly you did to make infantry uncrushable?

[Nyerguds]

He made the vehicles Wheeled instead of Tracked.

[Windwalker]

Yes, exactly. I was worried it would cause some other errors, like about traces in sand or speed handling, but no such error occured so far. In fact in theory it is possible to turn everything into "foot" movement type, and leave one tank tracked... so that it can crush them. Not suitable for my theme, but... i will try it today and post the result.

[Windwalker]

Notes on changing movement types of vehicles...

I dont know if anybody tried these before... but let me explain a few points i experimented this morning...

First, i wanted to make a vehicle that can climb on rocks. I believed this could be done by changing their movement type to foot.

result: In the first step modified vehicles takes, it is destroyed instantly.

Second; i tried a flying trike. I hoped to give ordos a special, flying unit, and other houses to witness the true power of raider trike...

result: It flies! However, you cant select it and give orders to it. Still, this seems to lead some interesting options. The test subject trike was given "hunt" as inital behaviour, and it attacked enemies that were closing into base. Enemies were able to shoot it back, however, i couldnt notice if they really hurt it, because i was not able to select it. More experiments are going to made toda, with stronger attackers.

This may lead to an ordos spesific "defender drone" kind of new unit, or any other combinations of sort. Jetpack troopers, or to be more precise the kind of equipment in dune novels (i dont know in english) that enable you to jump great distances, could be created. (giving a real reason for WOR)

The flying trike was also able to move over rocks. A small bug occured; enemy moved directly under the trike, and while trike was trying to shoot it, it instead shot the closest thing, which was construction yard. In the great joy of my experiments, i failed to notice if it damaged it or was the damage being dealt to enemy under it. More experiments will hopefully answer these questions.

Windwalker out.

[Windwalker]

Here are some more results on Flying Trike experiments (and some of the unknown vaules explained)

Well, flying trikes were moving and acting just like ordinary trikes; when an enemy aproaches, they move towards it and attack. If an enemy moves right under them while doing so, they cant attack that enemy, and vice versa.

To fix this, i tried to give them thopter like movement. In fact, i began changin all unknown values to the ones of a thopter. Many of them did not change anything, but when i hit unknown 26-27-28 values and changed them to thopters, they began moving like a thopter, continously circling around the enemy till they kill it. A final aproach showed it was unknown 28 (which is -124 and -128 for thopter and carryall respectively)

There were three trikes in the beginning; their initial behavours being guard, areaguard and hunt respectively. The guarding one did not move an inch, no matter what happened. The area guarder and hunter began moving as soon as an enemy aproached, and when all enemies died, they moved off the screen and did not attack other buildings or units around the map, i lost contact with them and was not able to see them again. But i did not open all around the map. This is not good indeed as a defender drone will seemingly go away after all enemies around the base are dead.

Other problem was their speed and movement making them almost invulnerable. First, i tried giving unknown 28 a value of -60, hoping the number meant speed and the (-) gave the movement pattern. It did not work, and they acted like normal flying trikes. Then i slowed down their actual movement speed to 10. It worked, however not without problems. They moved slow, yes, but they moved and kept circling so close to enemy that enemy couldnt shot them down. Increasing sight or weapon range did not solve this.

At this point i tried changing other unknown values so that they shot their enemies like thopters; however other unknown values did not work. Only something strange happened when i changed 36-39-40-41 altogether: They were initally harvesters, when flying they flickered between a harvester and a trike, one of them instantly destroyed (the hunter one) and the others kept fighting like a thopter trike that keeps flickering. Weird....

So I increased their speed back to 40, and began experiments with lowering their hp. I tried 1 (one) hp first. They instantly get pawned. Closing enemies were basic tanks and they deal 25 damage a shot; so i increased their hp to 26. It took a minute or so for two basic tanks to destroy 2 actively flying "guardian drones" and which seemed fine to me at the moment.

I will try giving it another weapon, or to try a "trooper" as a flyer. I wonder if misile attack acts differently in a flying unit.

For now, i am sure unknown 28 is the movement type (pattern) of unit.

all units share the same value, 0 in unknown 22 and 31

Results of further experiments soon;

Windwalker out.

[Windwalker]

Many more experiments with almost no results. Some things just cleared;

Unknown value 40 is responsible for harvester glitch mentioned in above post.

Unknown parameter 1 in Woca/Turo values added a shadow to my flying trikes, which felt like they were really flying. Sometimes shadows leave traces on screen but they fade away when screen is scrolled. Unknown 1 did not give shadow to my flying troopers.

Some other strange happenning: Most of the time when flyers move out of covered terrain and enter dark zones, they dissappear. Sometimes they come back and attack. When not looking at them, troopers move away from their target, and strike back when you pan the view back to their target. Trikes dont do that. One of the unknown values are responsible for that; however i couldnt figure which one.

Unknown value 45 is like a "xor" effect. I dont know how to describe it; in basic it was xor parameter. Umm... lets sat old sprite is not deleted when new sprite is put to screen; causing subject in hand to be drawn many times on screen. When vaule is something else than 0, this happens. Unknown 34 36 and 39 interfere with this situation too. The results are not clear yet; i will return to this subject soon.

An interesting sight was: flying, shadowed, worm camouflaged trikes. Overall effect was like wraiths of starcraft; cloaked air fighters.

I screwed something else and have to reinstall whole game. More results will be shared when i have them. And if you guys still want to hear them.

Windwalker Out.

[Windwalker]

More information available;

I switched to basic trooper in my experiments. The results were very different than the trike and I learned many new things.

Trooper flies just like an ornithopter. It makes "dives" into enemy, where trikes kept circling around their targets. None of the unknown variables changed this flight pattern, making me believe its the kind of weapon that decides how a unit flies.

Some more unknown variables covered, one with very good result:

Unknown 26 is about unit flight. When set to 0, unit is flying, and gains altitude, it casts shadow when WoCa/TuRo unknown 1 is set. It is also unselectable. However when it is set to 22, this unit is selectable. You can give commands but it does not follow these orders. It keeps flying like an ornithopter.

Unknown 40 : when set to 5, unit is always facing up. It does not rotate in flight, and moves and shots while always facing upwards. When set to 3, unit turns towards its (movement or attack) target.

I decided to gather all info i found about these unknown values in some complete list. Will be posted soon.

Windwalker out.

[Windwalker]

About changing briefings; no matter which option i enable or disable in syberian editor, i cant read those text. For texta texth and texto, syberian does not even open them (unknown file format), i keep viewing the last file i was looking at. For mentata mentath and mentato, i get an error message "range check error"

Is it my windows? Is it my syberian(1.0.2.24)? Is it my unpak? Is it me?

Thanks.

(Btw i keep posting new messages instead of modifying the last one. Is this alright? It gives a (false) feeling of progression...)

Windwalker out.

[Nyerguds]

Try unpacking them with XCC Mixer?

[Windwalker]

yes. i can unpak them with xcc mxer, however with no kind of editor i can read them! I could modify some parts of the mantata.eng with siberian, but other parts dont show up in it. And when i modify other areas (which are the mentats explanations on selected unit or building) or their names in mentat list, it goes all wrong.

and texta, texth and texto.eng show up like

[MrFlibble]

If SSTEditor refuses to open the files, you need to change file type in the "Open file" dialog from "All supported formats" to "Westwood string table files (eng, ger, fre etc.)" in the scroll-down menu.

Very interesting research on unit behavior, keep it up! ;)

[Nyerguds]

To fix this, i tried to give them thopter like movement. In fact, i began changin all unknown values to the ones of a thopter. Many of them did not change anything, but when i hit unknown 26-27-28 values and changed them to thopters, they began moving like a thopter, continously circling around the enemy till they kill it. A final aproach showed it was unknown 28 (which is -124 and -128 for thopter and carryall respectively)

You have to see these values as blocks of on/off switches, like the Woca/Turo one. Press [F2] on the option to see which bits are activated in that value. It makes it easier to understand how parts of a value can be separate options.

I'll take a closer look at all of the information you posted here later, and see if I can update some unknown variables in my program. Thanks a lot for doing this research :)

Oh, and about the string editor, as I said, that's the compressed format thing. Make sure the option to automatically detect compression is activated in SST.

[Windwalker]

Thanks for moralizing replies, friends.

Nyerguds, i have already checked this option. I tried it on/off and with combinations of all other options available in syberian. However, i did not try MrFlibble's advice yet. This is the first thing i will check tomorrow.

Today; i playtested first level (played it about 10 times or so) and finalizad second. There is a mercenary silo and a refinary in the first level, and i forced myself trying to capture one of them. It is difficult without being able to build infantry and frequent enemy soldier drops. Player begins with a trike and 4 soldiers. I succeeded having all them alive and could capture the silo by spending all my soldiers in it. Another trike from a reinforcement helped.However, no credits were given.

Second level was great! I enjoyed it very much, even when i knew what was going to happen when. I tried the "+" option in the reinforcements after the time, but they did not repeat themselves. (I tried a 1 minute repeating ordos soldier drop...) What i guess now is that this "+" means a random latency to given time. Anyway, i am very happy with my second level (destroy all or quote of 5500) because in natural development of the play, i sawy worms eating soldiers, enemy reinforcements in my base, my quad stepping on a spice bloom, and some great timings like in jackie chan films.

The player begins with a half-hp harvester , three trikes and a quad escort, northeast of the map. His already built base (many silos, 2 refs, 3 windtraps, an outpost, barracks and cyard, deployed with gaps in between them, walled around but some parts of the wall missing) is southwest and under siege. There are some leftover defenders of the base, trying to hold of until help arrives, which is the player.

There is a worm close to enemy base in line of sight, so when the game begins, a message box about worms appear. However, it is a young liutenant from escorts speaking to base. He says they had found the base, and it is under siege and requests backup.

En route to base, harvester and escorts are attacked by some small amount of soldiers and trikes, however each minute passing means a possible destroyed building. Tension arises with enemy cpu begins sending newly built trikes. Player seems desperate, but the young liutenants call is heard and 4 atreides troopers arrive.

I could barely handle the situation, and lost one of the refinaries. Initial 225 credits were spent for repairs, worms made it hard to harvest, enemies kept coming from north and from east. Some more reinforcements for both the player and the cpu's give color... I could hardly defend and began gathering some trikes, and had been able to destroy half of mercenary base when quota was reached. Ordos base was unharmed. It seems very well now...

ON EDITING GAME

This new information about unknown data bytes is very usefull and will help alot. I will keep toying with all the variables and report the results. I hope they help you somehow.

PROBLEMS

1-) When the initial half hp harvester is destroyed, a new harvester is delivered to player, which removes the meaning of escorting the harvester to base. Does anyone know how to prevent this?

2-) I was able to start harvester with half hp, but failed doing the same with buildings. Any idea? (I used BGAFC's variable of "256" for both. Reduced harvester to 128 and it was done. Reduced wintrap to 200 and it was not done. Maybe it has to be 64,128 or 256?)

3-) I now know winflag 6 means reach quota, 7 means reach quota or destroy all enemies. Does anybody know any other win/lose flags?

Thanks in advance,

Windwalker out.

[Windwalker]

IT WOOORRKSS!!

Following MrFlibbles advice, i was able to open texta.eng and modify mentat speech as i needed. It seems I can keep it as long as i want to! Nice! (thank you friend!)

Next step is changing mentat image. I know how to use XCC mixer to extract the files and change their format. But I dont know how best to edit them, change back to apropriate format and repak them. Will toy around with this today.

Afternoon, i will try if cpu ordos can handle defence drones (that is, flying raider trikes. I will try to make them producable from high tech, and see if computer can actually create them, and try to see what is happening after they deploy.

News tonight (hopefully)

Windwalker out!

[Nyerguds]

I succeeded having all them alive and could capture the silo by spending all my soldiers in it.

Huh, isn't it a lot more efficient to just damage it to red status and then send one soldier in?

1-) When the initial half hp harvester is destroyed, a new harvester is delivered to player, which removes the meaning of escorting the harvester to base. Does anyone know how to prevent this?

No, sorry... this keeps happening unless the player can build his own havesters.

2-) I was able to start harvester with half hp, but failed doing the same with buildings. Any idea? (I used BGAFC's variable of "256" for both. Reduced harvester to 128 and it was done. Reduced wintrap to 200 and it was not done. Maybe it has to be 64,128 or 256?)

Odd. That should work.... did you try just editing it manually in the ini text file? Then you just need to use the editor to see which cell the building is on. Normally the health just works as a percentage (but /256 instead of /100), but I don't think there's any restrictions on the values.

3-) I now know winflag 6 means reach quota, 7 means reach quota or destroy all enemies. Does anybody know any other win/lose flags?

Hmm... seeing as it's called "winflagS", it is very possible that this value in itself acts the same way as these bit flags in the editor. I've seen things like that before. In that case, after conversion to binary,

6 = 0000 0110

7 = 0000 0111

If this is correct, this means '0000 0001' is the "destroy all enemies" (well, enemy buildings, actually) flag. Seeing as ALL other missions have uneven numbers there, this seems to fit, since they're all (sum of different powers of 2) + 1.

Also, none of the missions after scenario 4 (mission 2) seem to have the third bit active, so I'm guessing that that's the Reach Quota one. You could try enabling it on one of the later missions and see if it works. A "harvest 10.000 credits" mission later in the game would be fun :)

Wow... never thought we'd ever get to figuring out the Dune II trigger system :)

I wonder if we could find a lose flag that allows you to play on until you have no units left instead of the classic 'no buildings left', so we can make missions without a base.

On that subject, do note Dune II contains a bug where deploying an MCV if you have no buildings at all immediately reduces your credits to 0.

[Nyerguds]

This is odd... LoseFlags seem to be the conditions that make you NOT lose. When I put it to 0, I ALWAYS lose after a while, without any clear reason. The only lose flags used in the game are 4, 1, and the combination, of the two, 5. In binary, that's 1, 100 and 101.

I tested a bit in the first mission, and I can't seem to find any difference between the two. I didn't lose after losing my construction yard (if I still had power plants left), I didn't lose when I had no units left, and I didn't lose when I had wasted too much money to still build a refinery and reach my quota. I only lost if I had no more buildings left.

I also tested the win flags... and indeed, putting it on 1 in the first mission made me win after a while, when the game realized the enemy had no buildings "left" ;D

I wonder what the second flag does... it's ALWAYS activated.

[Windwalker]

Somewhere in the bfgc editor there is something like "timeout" (In scenario settings to be exact)

I wonder if this could be used to make some scenario like "destroy enemies in 20 mins" or "defend your base for 15 mins" etc. It could even be like "harvest x amount of spice in y time" I want to try it, but for now i am pretty busy with the unknown variables.

Today i spent most of my time on them, i was trying to find the direct code which changed unit sound type. All infantry say "yes sir!" when you select them, and vehicles say "reporting"

I believed one of the unknown variables could be for that. However, after wasting hours for it, i noticed it is directly read from movement type. When i change trooper movement to tracked, it says "reporting" when selected. So far this was only achievement if it is.

And, i woked on unknown 6 to no avail. I couldnt decide what it does and many more time spent for nothing. I am currently trying to find if some of them makes the unit "burn" under half hp, and if some of them is the probability of spawning a soldier when it is dead. I also worked hard on finding trooper and troopers can fire minirockets as primary, while in gameexe their weapon type is stated is bullets.

Will work on them more...

[Windwalker]

Attempts on a regenerating trike failed. No matter which variable (known or unknown) of harvester i apply to a trike, it couldnt regenerate its wounds to half hp. At final stage, i had completely changed all the unknown (and some known too) variables of a trike to a harversters, but nothing changed. Nothing at all... Did anyone had success with regeneration before? It could lead to new unit structures. Healing troops would have been nice.

[Nyerguds]

Eh? No unit in Dune II regenerates... the game simply doen't have unit regeneration code.

As for the spawning of infantry.. that's probably programmed in unit.emc

As for that list there... um, a lot of these options don't seem to apply to Dune II at all, and the rest seem more like unit.emc programming

-Burn under half hp: You mean the smoke? Isn't that linked to movement type too?

-Initial behaviour: probably in unit.emc

-Command options: already in the editor

-Gas resistance: that'd be a value, not a true/false switch. It might even be side specific.

-Starport rating: is set in each mission

-Entering building & mountain climb: probably just linked to the Foot movement type

-Capture or damage: you haven't figured this out yet? All infantry damage buildings, but when the building's health is red the building will get captured if you send in infantry.

-Repairable: probably also linked to movement type, so Tracked and Wheeled can but Foot can't

-attack option target capability: No restrictions. You can target anything, including the ground and your own stuff.

-being targetable: you can target everything you can select. That is, ground units.

-miss chance/dodge chance: doesn't exist in this game balance. The WEAPONS have accuracy, depicted in where they physically hit on the map. Nothing else counts. If a missile hits a vehicle right on, it WILL get the full damage. Always.

-movement behaviour: Eh, that's just the movement type. I'm pretty sure the tracks are linked to that too.

[Windwalker]

Thanks for clarification NyerGuds :)

That list i have made in my solo brainstorm was everything i could think of in some small time. They were not just for uk6.

When i state initial behaviour, i mean what unit does when it gets out of a building. Like thopter directly attacks. Harvester begins harvesting if there is a spice field close by. Others just born guarding. I will check this at unit.emc.

Starport rating: I can set how much unit starport has when game begins; but its refill time? refill amount?

Entering building: I tried giving vehicles movement type of foot. They die in first step so i couldnt check this out.

Capture: I know only infantry can capture. However, when infantry enters an enemy building it gives more damage than a single soldier. I wonder if this is a set value? Besides, saboteur destroys an enemy building instead of capturing. The thing is i never tried entering a red hp enemy building with a saboteur.

I will try repair option today.

Attack options: I am not sure of this. Some units cant target air units while some others can. Is this about weapon type? Or another vaule? Besides, you cant target a vehicle with a saboteur... Is this about attack option?

Movement behavour: Infantry slows down while on the edge of rock, trikes move square by square (they take a "step" and pause for a small amount" but harvesters dont.)

Perhaps my brain is starting to melt down so i began seeing dreams. But i thought harvesters could repair themselves up to half hp? Am i dying? Is this you elvis?

Thanks for info and support! :D