Dune 2 Modding & Remake Development at FED2k Dune Wiki

[dvalin]

Would anyone have any interest in a Dune 2 wiki?

A lot of really nice information is posted to these forums, but hunting them downs requires a lot of searching

through the forum, reading through several threads covering the same issues etc., and you also often have to

know about what in specificall you're looking for etc.

A wiki would be very nice for collecting and organizing this information in one place easy to navigate and

update information at.

I have a wiki for Doon Lunacy already where I cover such, this could certainly be used for this purpose,

but a more dedicated wiki at dune2k might perhaps be more appropriate?

Feel free to cover topics at our wiki (http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net), if anyone else besides me

have the interest, I'll start doing a better job doing this myself as well.

[stefanhendriks]

I'm all for it to have the knowledge in one place. It would be better to  have it stored in a wiki than to digg through the posts here.

It is kinda like my proposal to create a txt document about the SCENxxx format in DUNE II. A wiki would fit nicely to that.

There is already a http://wiki.dune2k.com/Main_Page

Perhaps that is the place to start.

I'll take a look at the dunelegacy wiki soon.

Edit: I've been checking the wiki at dunelegacy, but most did not work properly? (ie, screenshots links are broken and a lot is outdated). But i presume this is why you started this topic ;)

[dvalin]

Oh, cool, didn't know about the dune2k wiki, I guess I'll start covering dune 2 topics not specific to doon lunacy

there in stead then. :D

yeah, I'm planning on updating it soon as I plan on making a release soon in hope of attracting some attention

and interest of possible developers etc., so I want to better document stuff and it's wrapping to be more

"inviting".

Btw. related to this I'm thinking more and more about getting the python bindings for libeastwood in place

to provide people with a complete tool suite based on it and the ability to easily create tools of their

own as well. So if anyone expresses interest in such, lemme know and I'll get around to it right away, they

can be done in rather short time! :)

[MrFlibble]

Very good initiative, proyvind, I'm glad you've brought up this topic ;D I've been planning to contribute to our wiki myself, but currently I'm short of free time for that. I will be happy to help though, so feel free to ask questions any time you want :)

EDIT: Whoah, hello there, dvalin! ;D You've changed your nick, eh? I didn't recognize you at first :D

How does DL development go? I think you guys should post updates/news right here in the Dune Editing or maybe in Other Dune Games too, since we've somehow almost lost track of the game lately :)

[stefanhendriks]

Btw. related to this I'm thinking more and more about getting the python bindings for libeastwood in place

to provide people with a complete tool suite based on it and the ability to easily create tools of their

own as well.

Libeastwood is in Python? To be honest, I haven't taken the time yet to figure out what it does exactly. Is there a reason for doing it in Python, and not in C?

[dvalin]

No, libeastwood is written in C++, but I plan on implementing python bindings for the library in stead

for tools etc. rather than implementing the tools also in C++.

This way you'd have a python module using the C++ library that would be a lot more flexible with direct

access to library functionality. With this you could easily write a tool in python using just a few lines.

Implementing the tools in C++ able to make full use of all library functionality would be a lot more painful, complex

and hard to maintain.

With the bindings I was thinking that it would be easier for others to help out write the tools if they'd like or whatever

they'd feel like using the library for.

As python code is platform independent, very popular and easy to write, it would also ensure that the tools could be

used by everyone. As the current tools around is written in a lot of different languages and very platform specific,

they're not usable by everyone (especially not for us on linux!), this would be very nice. :)

[dvalin]

Btw. related to python, I've embedded it with doonlunacy.

Some of the reasons for this are:

* Better separate the game from the engine (similar to Stratagus (formerly known as Freecraft) vs Warcraft 2)

* Make things easier to maintain

* Make it possible to write other games for the engine (ie. once engine is done for Dune 2, it should be "fairly" easy to

add C&C support as well)

* Make it easier for other's to make their own changes and improvements

So with this you'll get a pretty flexible engine that I'd think a lot of people in here would like and be able to do pretty

much all the things they ever wanted with Dune 2 in a relatively easy manner. :D

[Gobalopper]

If you guys want to use the Dune2k.com Wiki just let me know. Currently it is closed for new account signups due to spammers.

[dvalin]

please do! :)

can't you just use captcha or something?

[Gobalopper]

Ok registration is back again. Spammers now are starting to be actual people and not scripts so we'll see how it goes.

[segra]

is anyone else having trouble registering?

ive tried both firefox and IE now, and it just tells me...

"Incorrect or missing confirmation code. "

must of tried about 6 times now.. hmm

ive attached a shot of the last attempt, just incase i am a complete idiot and mistyped one of these letters ;)

[Gobalopper]

Should be working now, the private key variable didn't copy/paste properly.

[stefanhendriks]

Btw. related to python, I've embedded it with doonlunacy.

Some of the reasons for this are:

* Better separate the game from the engine (similar to Stratagus (formerly known as Freecraft) vs Warcraft 2)

* Make things easier to maintain

* Make it possible to write other games for the engine (ie. once engine is done for Dune 2, it should be "fairly" easy to

add C&C support as well)

* Make it easier for other's to make their own changes and improvements

So with this you'll get a pretty flexible engine that I'd think a lot of people in here would like and be able to do pretty

much all the things they ever wanted with Dune 2 in a relatively easy manner. :D

Although I understand the architectural decisions, I believe it is more important to have your goal cristal clear. Because, writing an engine that is able to 'support everything', sounds all great but is doomed to abstraction.

Also, isn't LUA anything that would be interesting to use if you want to code the 'game' part of the engine? (instead of python).

Oh well, I'm going to watch this, sounds very interesting :)

[MrFlibble]

So have you updated anything yet? The current version of the Dune II article is particularly bad (not to mention its 99.99% copied from Wikipedia).

BTW, maybe this thread would be better off in the Dune 2 sub-forum?

[dvalin]

Although I understand the architectural decisions, I believe it is more important to have your goal cristal clear. Because, writing an engine that is able to 'support everything', sounds all great but is doomed to abstraction.

Also, isn't LUA anything that would be interesting to use if you want to code the 'game' part of the engine? (instead of python).

Oh well, I'm going to watch this, sounds very interesting :)

Hehe, you're not the first to make those comments. :D

The primary reason for these architectural decissions was simply because they made sense on their own and that it helped

keeping a better structure and better code lifetime etc.

Writing the engine to 'support everything' is more of a side-effect of how things are implemented, actually supporting other things is not a top priority, but certainly something I like to keep in mind and hope for others to welcome and perhaps make use of. I have a lot of other similar ideas that I hope to get around to some day (ie. I'd like to fork SDLmm, moving relevant parts of the engine to it, actively developing it further etc., this to help make code more modular and also of better use to others etc.), but who knows when I actually get around to those. I must admit that I've had some bad discipline focusing on getting stuff "done", frequently letting myself getting distracted with new things that I figure out would be really cool and nice etc., but in the long run I hope that it will make stuff more attractive to others to make use of and/or contribute to, which hopefully should help out project progress and activity. :)

Regarding python I chose it first as a replacement for the configuration files we used earlier for units, game data etcetc. as it provided object orientation, boost which we heavily use already provided nice c++ interface for it, making it easy to adopt (therefore also easier than lua), and of the possibility of extending it's usage for a lot of purposes.

Python is also one of my favorite languages which I'm quite intimate with it's C API already, making me quite biased about any alternatives. I don't even really know lua that much, but python is quite powerful and far more popular language in general, so I think it will be more welcomed by others as well. :)

[segra]

before anything is posted, we're looking to put technical data in this wiki yeah?

[MrFlibble]

All specific data deserves being in, especially that which cannot be found anywhere else.

[Gobalopper]

Yeah, feel free to put whatever you want. Maybe not all the technical data in the main Dune II article but I have no problem with that information being posted. If someone wants to spearhead the effort I can give them some extra privileges too.

[MrFlibble]

Maybe not all the technical data in the main Dune II article but I have no problem with that information being posted.

Unlike Wikipedia, we can afford making as many separate articles on different aspects of modding, remaking and such as we want :)

[MrFlibble]

I've marked some topics in the Dune II forum that contain useful info with the INFO tag. Hopefully someone will update our FED2k Wiki accordingly :)

EDIT: I decided to move this topic back to Dune Editing, albeit with a bit different name.