OpenD2k - cross platform reimplementation of Dune 2000

[Matthias M.]

JOo did a complete reskin of the in-game UI. The Ordos Logo is cut because it's the radar moving in and I have to hit the screenshot button really fast because it will disappear fast.

[Matthias M.]

Grab the latest playtest which is a d2k bugfix release (changelog: http://sprunge.us/HZHO) at http://openra.res0l.net/download/

[Feda]

Cool!

Also, are those new units planned? And what about improving the AI? From what i saw, it doesnt attack at all.

EDIT: game crashes when i create it.. hmm lol..

EDIT2: Ok, after i retried 5 times it didnt crash anymore.. weird.. but the superweapons are very unbalanced.. hark DHM owns everything, atr airstrike is useful only vs infantry and the orni moves slow, which means that enemy can see it and move out the units, while the ord paratrooper is totally useless . They need to be balanced. Then, the combat tanks have to have different properties . They can't be the same :D

In rest, good job, the game looks quite good now.

[Pawonashi]

It is attacking sometimes, but in some way... weird. When AI attacks, he is sending all of his about 100 units and it's retreating his units a bit behind, when he can see our units...

Also, good work with harvester animations! Also... in changelog concrete plates are mentioned. Is there a way to build them?

[Matthias M.]

The AI will amass a squad of 10 units and then simply attack move all units to your spawn point. Have a look at rules/system.yaml "HackyAI" lines. You can add your own and see if it's an improvement (simply let it play against mine). See http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=15659 and https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/Hacky-AI also has some documentation.

We had the first match without crashes now so I think it's stable. It needs to redownload the gamefiles though because some new files were added. Have a look at your exception.log file which can be found in My Documents/OpenRA/Logs if there are still crashes.

I have not balanced everything at all. Currently you get far too much money because the harvest animation is missing and spice density is too high. Most of the unit stats are copied from Red Alert. Maybe plough/wuschel will crunch some numbers and take care on balancing. I doubt that changing the combat tanks stats would be a good idea. They look identical and creating weaker tanks for one faction will repeat the same mistake Dune 2000 did which might be the worst balanced RTS game ever created. Sure superweapons need to change. They are currently just placeholders and use RA weapons.

[Feda]

Man, i dont get it. C&C and RA have weaker+faster tanks and stronger + slower tanks. Why this is a mistake in Dune? And the tanks dont look the same, there are differencies. The reason of dune being unbalanced is NOT represented by 3 types of tanks. It is the fact that all combat tanks are a MUST NEED in any match, and also, the spamming thing. To remove this, u dont need to make all the tanks same. Also, Sonic tanks are way too strong in maps with choke points, like habbanya erg. Deviators are innacurate, infantry are useless. These things make the game unbalanced. Not the types of combat tanks :)

[Matthias M.]

Then present some yaml changes for discussion. You can edit https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/tree/bleed/mods/d2k/rules via the web interface to create a patch once registered. There is no build speed enhancement when creating new factories. Only the starport offers a new queue. The gameplay is still quite spammy. Don't know how to fix it. Maybe more expensive units that build longer.

[D2k Sardaukar]

Omg, that is sexy sexy (post 101)! Keep up the great work!

If you need help with images (as in editing, not Dune2000 file format stuff) I can help.

Oh wait, just reading a post -> there are no emperor palace and smugglers factory icons. Hmm, interesting. I'm gonna try to make something.

//edit: is there already a way to export 16bit images and so get the high quality icons?

[Matthias M.]

I am not sure if OpenRA supports 16 bit SHPs. Use http://ijw.co.nz/d2kout.zip which are Contents of DATA.R8, as PNG8 with correct palette embedded.

[D2k Sardaukar]

Thanks.

About the "massive unit spamming problem", you could just like Age Of Empires introduce an unit maximum, say for example 100 or 200.

I downloaded the game and it's very cool to play Dune 2000 on wide-screen (1680x1050). Only comment is that panning the map goes slow, but perhaps I should just use the minimap for that.

I cheated on the two icons by using "ingame" graphics, but this looks almost always better than home-made stuff. Al thought I'm still gonna try some home-made icons.

[Matthias M.]

Try middle mouse button or change the scroll speed in settings. The Sietch is 2x2 not 3x3. I think Intelligent Games always used renderings for their icons. Maybe screenshot the FMV endings like

[Pawonashi]

I've found a bug. After getting Sardaukar to the Trike and selecting Trike, game crashed. Also, is there a way to make Carryals faster and more... automated?

Sorry for my poor English.

[Nyerguds]

I am not sure if OpenRA supports 16 bit SHPs. Use http://ijw.co.nz/d2kout.zip which are Contents of DATA.R8, as PNG8 with correct palette embedded.

Shp format itself doesn't support 16 bit. It is a colourless 8-bit sprite format that always need an external 256-colour palette to even have colours. Even in Tiberian Sun, which has 16 bit graphics, all used SHP graphics and even voxels are 8-bit. The only difference with C&C1 and RA1 is that there's no global palette for everything together anymore, meaning that (just like in OpenRA, I assume) every SHP object can use its own palette.

[Matthias M.]

I've found a bug. After getting Sardaukar to the Trike and selecting Trike, game crashed. Also, is there a way to make Carryals faster and more... automated?

Sorry for my poor English.

The crash bug is fixed: https://github.com/M...b20aaa48f9beb85 and I also reworked unit speeds with https://github.com/Mailaender/OpenRA/commit/b42ecd2f36d9e394c23bbe7216a9723ad4723746

Carryalls are still a problem: https://github.com/O...nRA/issues/2160 and automation requires new AI methods https://github.com/O...nRA/issues/2246

[Grand_Leo]

I cheated on the two icons by using "ingame" graphics, but this looks almost always better than home-made stuff. Al thought I'm still gonna try some home-made icons.

[Matthias M.]

Looks great, but it's not using the Dune 2000 8-bit indexed palette so this won't work in-game.

[D2k Sardaukar]

Looks great, but it's not using the Dune 2000 8-bit indexed palette so this won't work in-game.

Good idea Grand_Leo. I took the liberty to recreate the image with correct image size and image palette. Here it is:

[D2k Sardaukar]

long bitching list:

*Using the thumper gives strange animations.

*walls don't link.

*infantry spawn on one spot

*rocket sound is wrong and looks different

* infantry feet move too fast

* supposed to only get special tank unit after building IX research

* getting money for destroying enemy units is wrong

* unit upgrades after winning battles is not original

* there are no building "lights" blinking when creating tanks

* heavy tanks spawn from wrong building.

[Matthias M.]

Good idea Grand_Leo. I took the liberty to recreate the image with correct image size and image palette. Here it is:

It still crashes the SHP converter because the ripped PNGs only have 255 colors. Don't use the .zip file as a template. It's broken: here is a new one using OpenRAs current rip algorithm:

[D2k Sardaukar]

Does this one work?

[Matthias M.]

Does this one work?

Yes, I added it in https://github.com/M...d21b2cf607fab26

[Matthias M.]

It is attacking sometimes, but in some way... weird. When AI attacks, he is sending all of his about 100 units and it's retreating his units a bit behind, when he can see our units...

The AI attack behavior is indeed a problem: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2186

Also... in changelog concrete plates are mentioned. Is there a way to build them?

Does not work yet: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2249

[Feda]

Please dont add the feature from dune 2000 where if u dont build on concrete u have half of the buildings health.

Also i would have some more requests. First , fixing the map editor would be nice. Then, is the legacy map importer gonna be implemented in the next unstable release? Also, making the AI to attack more frequently would help. I dont get it; why the AI from all mods is waiting, when infantry rushes, with the army near ur base, but its not attacking. Sometimes after some time the AI builds masses of units and keeps them in base.

[Matthias M.]

I fixed or put your problem reports on the TODO list. I am using http://bugs.open-ra.org/ for now instead of my own text file so you can report stuff there. Search for "[d2k]" prefix first to see if it is a known bug and if it is d2k-only use this prefix so I can easily find them when I am in bug-fixing frenzy.

*Using the thumper gives strange animations.

Thanks, I did not notice: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2348

*walls don't link.

Yes, they do? Screenshot?

*infantry spawn on one spot

That annoys me, too: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2340

*rocket sound is wrong and looks different

Which sound is correct: ROCKET1.aud, MISSILE1.aud, BAZOOK1.aud (you can listen to them with VLC) The projectiles are still backfalls to RA https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2341

* infantry feet move too fast

fixed: https://github.com/Mailaender/OpenRA/commit/3966a32752d0f6c5c85f39d1529c8c534d65e7df

* supposed to only get special tank unit after building IX research

Guess you meant the Ordos Deviator that, fixed: https://github.com/Mailaender/OpenRA/commit/76c6b09089f533581311d25fb19ac9da3e1d941c

* there are no building "lights" blinking when creating tanks

Even more building animations are missing: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2211

* heavy tanks spawn from wrong building.

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/2323

Please note that this is not a clone: bounties and ranks are features, not bugs.

[Matthias M.]

Please dont add the feature from dune 2000 where if u dont build on concrete u have half of the buildings health.

Added it to the TODO list https://github.com/O...nRA/issues/2349

EDIT: I just read the "dont"

Also i would have some more requests. First , fixing the map editor would be nice. Then, is the legacy map importer gonna be implemented in the next unstable release? Also, making the AI to attack more frequently would help. I dont get it; why the AI from all mods is waiting, when infantry rushes, with the army near ur base, but its not attacking. Sometimes after some time the AI builds masses of units and keeps them in base.

I don't know what to fix in the map editor? Also these are all problems I can't solve alone. The legacy map importer is contributed by https://github.com/ew07002 but he did not release any code yet. However screenshots show that it is coming along quite well:

Sadly I am not the AI expert of the team, but the weird attacking algorithm is a known bug https://github.com/O...nRA/issues/2186 I think it is especially a problem in d2k because the only map is really big and he builds masses of slow infantry at the start that take ages to reach you so the first squad will most likely never get near you in time.