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Well, I think the bug is probably that you don't return to the Idle animation after cancelling a construction, in general. The Hi-Tech factory is simply the only building that has a Production animation that's different from its Idle one.

The windtraps don't animate in Dune Dynasty because the icon numbers changed between v1.0 and v1.07, and I hard coded those numbers in.

Odd. Shouldn't that simply be done by palette index? I'd expect it to be a palette-rotated animated colour, like the blinking white, applied on ALL graphics.

Oh, noticed another weird issue: Building animations don't get paused when the game does :P

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I'd think that the game wouldn't HAVE the "building of a Dynasty" intro WSA :|

Actually, the WSA does not contain the subtitle, only the animated DUNE II logo. The subtitles in the intro (as opposed to the main menu screen) are read from INTRO.ENG and displayed with the fancy intro font.

You may have noticed that in The Building of A Dynasty the font on the main menu screen has more colours compared to the one in the intro; in The Battle for Arrakis, fonts are identical - most probably because the font was edited in the three-language releases, to make some letters narrower.

That's because I restored the voices and strings in the code. Notice the lower case "a". Dune 2 will always be "The Building of a Dynasty" to me. :)

You think the lowercase a is a mistake? I've always thought that no matter what, The Building of A Dynasty is the correct, authentic spelling.

But I do agree that the Dynasty title is of course the original one, and sounds better than the more straightforward The Battle for Arrakis.

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General writing rules say to only capitalize words in a title if they are more than 3 characters.

Consider this: why is "A" capitalized, but "of" isn't?

Actually, the WSA does not contain the subtitle, only the animated DUNE II logo. The subtitles in the intro (as opposed to the main menu screen) are read from INTRO.ENG and displayed with the fancy intro font.

Oh neat, didn't know that.

Personally, I don't mind either title, as long as the Battle for Arrakis one uses the Frank Klepacki voices from the Megadrive version :P

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Consider this: why is "A" capitalized, but "of" isn't?

From the standpoint of linguistics, articles and prepositions are two completely different things altogether. It is not to say that I think this being the reason behind the spelling in this case :)

A silly thought just crossed my mind: what if they meant by A, 'A-grade'? Like, build not some lousy B Dynasty, or, even worse, an F Dynasty that doesn't even have CHOAM holdings, but a good, solid A Dynasty that will take the Imperial Seat ^_^

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The lady clearly says "The Building of a Dynasty", and not "The Building of A Dynasty". :P

Sure, but it still does not resolve the capitalization problem. Hard to imagine the Westwood guys overlooked it, so I'm reasoning they opted for the capital A on purpose (perhas for aesthetic reasons, who knows?).

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General writing rules say to only capitalize words in a title if they are more than 3 characters.

I was going to say that's not how we do it in America, but I looked it up, and that's a rule under APA, making you a psychologist. Since you've also mentioned riding a train, and the only other person I've heard of riding a train is Sherlock Holmes, that makes you Sherlock Holmes the Belgian Psychologist/Assembly Hacker. My logic is foolproof.

Sure, but it still does not resolve the capitalization problem. Hard to imagine the Westwood guys overlooked it, so I'm reasoning they opted for the capital A on purpose (perhas for aesthetic reasons, who knows?).

Repeating reinforcements. Track vs Tracked. "Ornithipter". I'm amazed the title didn't wind up being Dune: The Building of B Dynasty.

(More seriously, though, I think they thought that you were supposed to capitalize the A, and were just incorrect.)

More on topic, this sounds really cool. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

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Repeating reinforcements. Track vs Tracked. "Ornithipter". I'm amazed the title didn't wind up being Dune: The Building of B Dynasty.

Well, truth be old, it's the work on the Dune II fix that made me think twice before declaring something an outright mistake when dealing with a finished product.

"Ornithipter" is an obvious typo: the keys for "i" and "o" are adjacent, and this mistake is actually made quite often.

Track vs. Tracked, as well as other code-related stuff is something that is not obvious - testers could have been unaware of the whole team AI feature, and there were several people working on the code AFAIK, so someone could have made this mistake while coding the editor (provided that they used an editor to make the missions).

The title, on the other hand, is something that certainly got its attention from at least several developers. As I mentioned before, the text on the main menu/title screen of the "Dynasty" version uses the same font as all cutscene subtitles in the game, but the letters on the main menu screen have more shades of colour, suggesting that they were probably retouched or created manually from higher-quality font than the one that is used in the cutscenes. Either way, the spelling there is not something that could be overlooked, and I suppose any glaring mistakes would have been reported and fixed.

At any rate, I don't think a mistake is the only explanation for the capitalized spelling of the article. It could have been an aesthetic choice, as I said before - the title on the main menu screen is set against black background, and there's a horizontal line that separates the title from the sub-title, maybe the of a part would leave a noticeable gap right in the centre of the screen which didn't looks quite right. Or maybe they thought that the capital A would remind of old-style spelling.

Now if the spelling differed, for example, between the main menu screen and the in-game options screen, then there would be reasons for suspecting a mistake, but this is not the case.

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At any rate, I don't think a mistake is the only explanation for the capitalized spelling of the article. It could have been an aesthetic choice, as I said before - the title on the main menu screen is set against black background, and there's a horizontal line that separates the title from the sub-title, maybe the of a part would leave a noticeable gap right in the centre of the screen which didn't looks quite right. Or maybe they thought that the capital A would remind of old-style spelling.

The aesthetic thing didn't seem likely to me until you explained it. Now it actually makes perfect sense.

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Version 1.2 is released. It fixes a couple of crashes and performance issues on Windows.

Controls and Gameplay:

  • Fix crash when active unit dies while choosing a target.
  • Add starting from mid-way through a campaign.
  • Mouse wheel zooms viewport.
  • Fix keyboard scrolling.
  • Add refinery rally points.
  • Construction yard sidebar icon triggers placement mode.
  • Repair bay sidebar icon ejects unit.
  • Restore maximum saboteur and sandworm count to 3 each.
  • Remove unit slow-down when outside of viewport.

Graphics:

  • Fix crater graphics on rock.
  • Fix sandworm and sonic tank blur effect.
  • Improve blur effect on older video cards.
  • Restore screen shakes.

Sounds:

  • Fix crash when playing AUD files on Windows.
  • Add support for Sega Mega Drive music.
  • Add structure captured voice.
  • Fix infantry acknowledgement sound.
  • Restore soldier squishy sound.
  • Reduce cracking/choppy/poppy sounds.

Other:

  • Add reading configuration and saved games from executable directory.
  • Add introduction subtitles.
  • Faster startup time.
  • Improve game speed, menu lag.

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Got a bit of a problem on win7....

I haven't tested if vanilla OpenDune has the same issue, mind you.

The buttons in the Mentat screens seem to be missing too.

This probably hasn't been fixed, but let me know either way.

Well, I did try out this program with the files from Dune II v1.07 (and with the 1.07 patch fix). However, after playing an hour of some great returning gameplay, every time I exited the program, I got this error message:

The executable of Dune Dynasty was still being seen in the processes tab of the Windows Task Manager after I exited the program with an error message.

I got a similar error on Win7; it says "application stopped working" when I quit. I chose "continue anyway" or something like that, and it exited normally.

This might have been fixed, please let me know if it is still a problem.

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oh wooow. I gotta try this out :)

Personally I'd prefer it if something like ctrl+mouse wheel would zoom though, and normal mouse wheel would just scroll the sidebar, even when on the viewport. I normally play in one single zoom mode, and it doesn't seem handy to accidentally zoom because you didn't move your mouse all the way onto the sidebar.

[edit]

Another suggestion: Put the Dune Dynasty version on the main menu rather than the '1.07' from Dune II.

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Playing it now... noticing loads of great improvements you didn't mention. Glad you followed a lot of my suggestions :)

-The upgrade stuff is perfect now; it shows the upgrade price on the thing that needs the upgrade, and the completed percentage when put on hold. :D

-The Mentat screen is cleared correctly now.

-You added scroll speed! Yay! :)

-The placing on the CY icon is really handy. It means I no longer have to scroll down to the icon of the last built thing if I decide not to use my keyboard.

-Units shoot at Spice Blooms when targeting it directly.

-The edges can be fully revealed.

-Scroll wheel works on the Mentat screen. Don't know if this worked before, but either way, nice :)

The selection thing when moving the cursor out of the window still fails though. It seems to fail because it switches to scrolling when you come back into the window, and cancels the selection when you move further into the screen, out of the scroll area. Maybe this is just a matter of confirming the selection rather than cancelling when starting the scrolling.

Some more oddities / bugs:

-Scrolling with arrows works while the game is paused. I'd expect it to go through the menu options instead.

-Switching to fullscreen doesn't retain the configured resolution, but instead switches to the desktop resolution.

-The zoom state of the sidebar and top bar aren't saved when you exit the game.

-Right-clicking on the minimap still doesn't seem to work.

-Soundblaster sound effects doesn't generate the sonic weapon sound unless I enable the effects option. Though, since apparently the duplicate effects problem is gone, this isn't really a problem anymore, I guess. I suppose the old beeps will come back if I disable the sbsounds option?

-When cancelling a construction, the next queued one gets put on hold. It would be a LOT handier if the next one would continue right away, since I often cancel a construction to let the next one I queued build first.

-The Hi-Tech factory still doesn't switch back to Idle animation when cancelling a construction (though as I said, I think this is a general flaw in your Cancelling logic - the hi-tech factory with my fixed graphics is simply the only building that shows it)

Suggestions:

-I know Dune II savegames can't save queues, but when loading a savegame, if you have a building selected that's currently producing something, can the sidebar scroll down to that item?

-Could the mouse cursor zoom with the play field? It's horribly tiny compared to the units unless you're fully zoomed out.

-Could a sandworm flash when you put an attack command on it? I always have to check the sidebar to see if I actually let my units attack it or if I just moved them on the sand to serve as its dinner. And with Atreides, where I have to use the 'a' command, even that won't tell me.

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Personally I'd prefer it if something like ctrl+mouse wheel would zoom though, and normal mouse wheel would just scroll the sidebar.

Agreed. Whereas box selection is second nature to anyone who uses Windows, every browser I ever used used ctrl+mouse wheel to zoom in or out.

(I should note, though, that I do like the zoom feature.)

Could you add an option in the controls menu to use a more Command and Conquer style command system (that is, left click selects and commands, and right click deselects)? Also, it seemed like I couldn't get my infantry/soldiers to shoot at a structure in the second Atreides level (the one where you attack Ordos), despite both right clicking on the building with the guys selected and then trying the same after clicking "Attack" on the side. I admit, though, that I am so new to actually playing Dune 2, that I have no clue if I'm supposed to be able to do that. If so, a "no attack" cursor would be useful. Also, could you make a "move" and "no move" cursor? And make them green, and the attack/no attack cursor red?

Holding ctrl and clicking with a unit selected didn't force attack. Additionally, force attacking the ground with the sidebar didn't cause them to actually attack it. I know that's a stupid complaint, but I've been playing Tiberian Dawn for years and I kind of expect that to work, regardless of how stupid it is.

Can you run over units? If so, can you order a vehicle to attempt to run over a specific infantry with force move (alt)?

-Scrolling with arrows works while the game is paused

I noticed that, too. I was trying to enter "001" as a savegame name with the numpad. I only use the non-numpad number keys for groups in Command and Conquer, so could you fix that?

Entering your score doesn't let you enter more than 5 characters, and doesn't let you use capital letters. I know this is a stupid request, but could you fix this?

-Switching to fullscreen doesn't retain the configured resolution, but instead switches to native resolution

If you change that, please leave fullscreenwindow exactly the way it is. Also, thank you for adding fullscreenwindow. Fullscreen applications somehow crash Windows 7 explorer, but fullscreenwindow (which, I've heard a long time ago somewhere, is now supposed to be the preferred way of doing fullscreen), whereas I can alt-tab between fullscreenwindow and other applications easily.

Suggestions:

-I know Dune II savegames can't save queues, but when loading a savegame, if you have a producing building selected, can the sidebar scroll down to the currently producing item?

Why not just add a new savegame format that can save queues? When loading, check if it's using the Dune Dynasty magic number (maybe "DYNASTY"), and if not, load the old way. Otherwise, load the new format.

The sidebar suffers from CnC3's problem: When you select units, you can't see what you're building. Does every production building have it's own queue? If not, I'd suggest ripping off Tiberian Dawn's sidebar layout (left column is for structures, right is for everything else, including superweapons). If so, I'd suggest ripping off CnC3's sidebar layout wholesale (but not ditching the currently selected production tab whenever you select a unit). A slight modification you could make is to make it so above the production tab, you see the currently selected unit's information/action selection.

You have a drop-in thing for Dune 2000's music. How about it's sound effects (and by that, I mainly mean the unit/EVA speech)? They're also .AUD files.

When the harvester is selected, the text box tells you what percent full it is. Instead of that, could you superimpose that percentage onto the harvester, either as a number or bar? Also, could you make it so when a unit is at the top of the map, you can still see it's healthbar?

Esc should open the pause menu. Currently, esc exits it, but doesn't open it.

In the sidebar, instead of having the name of the building, have all the icons touching each other, and make the name come up when you hover over them (like in Tiberian Dawn). Instead of a percentage (or maybe in addition to it), do the grayed out circle thing CnC does when you're building a structure. When it's done, make it's icon pulse to make it jump out. Do the same to the construction yard icon if it's the currently selected building.

Add an option to gray out all construction options except for the one being built (don't make it the default, because grayed out generally means "not available," but I use it as a crutch when trying to find what I was building).

Also, add an option to make new entries on the sidebar appear after old ones, rather than the sidebar showing the structures in what I assume is the order they're programmed into the game. I say make that an option because I assume some people would prefer the sidebar to always have a certain order.

I'd like it if placing concrete was a really quick thing, rather than the drawn out process it is now. In Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, you can place a bunch of wall by building one wall, then holding down the button while placing the wall and letting go at the end of the wall. Something like that, but rectangular, would be extremely nice. Also, I guess the wall thing could apply to walls, too.

Would it be possible to use Dune 2000's tilesets for the majority of the map? I understand unit graphics would be a pain (Has anyone figured out how to extract those, yet?), but at the very least, the Dune 2000 map editor has the tilesets in .BMP format. I'm not sure every D2 map tile has a D2k match, though.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

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Could you add an option in the controls menu to use a more Command and Conquer style command system (that is, left click selects and commands, and right click deselects)? Also, it seemed like I couldn't get my infantry/soldiers to shoot at a structure in the second Atreides level (the one where you attack Ordos), despite both right clicking on the building with the guys selected and then trying the same after clicking "Attack" on the side. I admit, though, that I am so new to actually playing Dune 2, that I have no clue if I'm supposed to be able to do that. If so, a "no attack" cursor would be useful.

That seems really weird. There is nothing in the entire game you can't attack.

Also, could you make a "move" and "no move" cursor? And make them green, and the attack/no attack cursor red?

Not really, seeing as it uses the game's original graphics. Though automatically getting a targeting cursor over enemy units or structures would be nice once the left-click mouse style is available.

Holding ctrl and clicking with a unit selected didn't force attack.

Well, no. This isn't C&C. Use 'a'. :P

Additionally, force attacking the ground with the sidebar didn't cause them to actually attack it.

Really? Odd. Never tried that, but that sounds like it should work.

I know that's a stupid complaint, but I've been playing Tiberian Dawn for years and I kind of expect that to work, regardless of how stupid it is.

You should play some original Dune II then. No multiple unit selections, no context sensitive automatic commands... just always having your fingers near A, M, B and P :P

Can you run over units? If so, can you order a vehicle to attempt to run over a specific infantry with force move (alt)?

Again, this isn't C&C; no 'alt' for force move. Just use the move command, by pressing 'm' :P

Entering your score doesn't let you enter more than 5 characters, and doesn't let you use capital letters. I know this is a stupid request, but could you fix this?

This always annoyed me in Dune II too, but I think it's related to the ridiculously long rank that follows it.

If you change that, please leave fullscreenwindow exactly the way it is. Also, thank you for adding fullscreenwindow. Fullscreen applications somehow crash Windows 7 explorer, but fullscreenwindow (which, I've heard a long time ago somewhere, is now supposed to be the preferred way of doing fullscreen), whereas I can alt-tab between fullscreenwindow and other applications easily.

Would be easy to have somewhere to set the full screen resolution then, though. It'd be nice to play in original Dune II resolution, but full screen. You know, just stretching the complete game to full res while still 'playing' in a set lower resolution.

[You have posted more than the allowed number of quoted blocks of text]

What the ass :|

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Double post because, retarded forum.

Why not just add a new savegame format that can save queues? When loading, check if it's using the Dune Dynasty magic number (maybe "DYNASTY"), and if not, load the old way. Otherwise, load the new format.

Well, having messed with C&C savegame loading and saving, I know it might be possible to attempt to make the savegame read extra sections after the end, so, it might even be possible to make savegames that can do this and are STILL compatible with Dune II, as long as the game doesn't complain about a file that is too long.

The sidebar suffers from CnC3's problem: When you select units, you can't see what you're building. Does every production building have it's own queue? If not, I'd suggest ripping off Tiberian Dawn's sidebar layout (left column is for structures, right is for everything else, including superweapons). If so, I'd suggest ripping off CnC3's sidebar layout wholesale (but not ditching the currently selected production tab whenever you select a unit). A slight modification you could make is to make it so above the production tab, you see the currently selected unit's information/action selection.

Hell no. It took them until C&C3 to finally get back to a system where you can comfortably have different build queues together. And yes, every different building in Dune II has its own production, including superweapons. The only exception to this is the Starport.

You have a drop-in thing for Dune 2000's music. How about it's sound effects (and by that, I mainly mean the unit/EVA speech)? They're also .AUD files.

Do note Dune II has different speech for all mentats, so this is not really possible. Not to mention Dune II's speech is created from voice clips pasted together as needed. When you hear "Harkonnen unit destroyed", each of these words is a different file, to also allow "Harkonnen structure destroyed" or "Atreides unit destroyed" with mostly the same voice clips. This game is optimized for 1992's disk space limitations.

When the harvester is selected, the text box tells you what percent full it is. Instead of that, could you superimpose that percentage onto the harvester, either as a number or bar? Also, could you make it so when a unit is at the top of the map, you can still see it's healthbar?

Those are both valid suggestions. Maybe make a second bar in orange, right under the health bar, or at the bottom of the unit?

Though definitely not 'instead of' the top bar messages. I like having those messages.

Esc should open the pause menu. Currently, esc exits it, but doesn't open it.

F2 opens the menu. It always has. In Dune II, F1 is help (mentat), F2 is menu, and F3 is the production selection window (which doesn't exist anymore due to the sidebar system)

In the sidebar, instead of having the name of the building, have all the icons touching each other, and make the name come up when you hover over them (like in Tiberian Dawn). Instead of a percentage (or maybe in addition to it), do the grayed out circle thing CnC does when you're building a structure. When it's done, make it's icon pulse to make it jump out. Do the same to the construction yard icon if it's the currently selected building.

Nope. Do not make this into C&C1. I'm probably the biggest fan of C&C1 you can find online, but this is Dune II.

Add an option to gray out all construction options except for the one being built (don't make it the default, because grayed out generally means "not available," but I use it as a crutch when trying to find what I was building).

Greying out the others kinda goes against the build queue thing, yeah... it could be a neat option though.

As for the 'finding out what you were building', he already implemented my suggestion for making the construction yard icon place down the current structure so you don't have to go looking for it anymore (though, 'p' does that too). Showing a semitransparent image of the building you're going to place shown would be neat though, but again, only if you can disable it in the config.

It would be handy to extend my suggestion for savegames to all building selection, though, and let it auto-scroll the sidebar to center the icon of the thing that's currently being built. Well, not sure what it does at this moment though. If it remembers the scroll state of each building's sidebar, I guess that's better.

Also, add an option to make new entries on the sidebar appear after old ones, rather than the sidebar showing the structures in what I assume is the order they're programmed into the game. I say make that an option because I assume some people would prefer the sidebar to always have a certain order.

I disagree... this system is a LOT less chaotic than the C&C one, where the order in which you build prerequisites is the order in which construction options appear. Anyway, this is how Dune II works. Please, just roll with it. It's not C&C, and it shouldn't be, either.

I'd like it if placing concrete was a really quick thing, rather than the drawn out process it is now. In Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, you can place a bunch of wall by building one wall, then holding down the button while placing the wall and letting go at the end of the wall. Something like that, but rectangular, would be extremely nice. Also, I guess the wall thing could apply to walls, too.

The building queueing already kinda solves this anyway. No need to go implementing that imo.

Would it be possible to use Dune 2000's tilesets for the majority of the map? I understand unit graphics would be a pain (Has anyone figured out how to extract those, yet?), but at the very least, the Dune 2000 map editor has the tilesets in .BMP format. I'm not sure every D2 map tile has a D2k match, though.

Not possible. Like in Warcraft 1 and 2, Dune II terrain is generated from about 12 terrain types; dunes, sand, rock, mountain, spice, thick spice, and the transits between those. Dune 2000 doesn't have graphics that fit together in all situations like that; it's like C&C, where maps really have to be constructed manually to look good. Not to mention, the graphic cells are bigger than 24x24 pixels, so they wouldn't fit on.

Overall, EagleEye, you kinda have me wondering why you're playing this, if you want Dune 2000 or Tiberian Dawn.

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Not really, seeing as it uses the game's original graphics. Though automatically getting a targeting cursor over enemy units or structures would be nice once the left-click mouse style is available.

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to add a mouse.png with the new frames needed.

Edit: Aren't Command and Conquer and Red Alert's mouse pointers in Dune 2 .SHP format?

Well, no. This isn't C&C. Use 'a'. :P

[...]

You should play some original Dune II then. No multiple unit selections, no context sensitive automatic commands... just always having your fingers near A, M, B and P :P

[...]

Again, this isn't C&C; no 'alt' for force move. Just use the move command, by pressing 'm' :P

[...]

F2 opens the menu. It always has. In Dune II, F1 is help (mentat), F2 is menu, and F3 is the production selection window (which doesn't exist anymore due to the sidebar system)

Literally every other game I play that isn't exited by hitting Esc is paused by hitting Escape.

A Quake-style key rebinding system that allowed you have attack bound to either a or ctrl-leftmouse and menu to either F2 or esc, for example, would be really nice. (Also, I could never play the original Dune 2. Mainly because between the production screens, the concrete, and the lack of context sensitive commands, things just took too long).

This always annoyed me in Dune II too, but I think it's related to the ridiculously long rank that follows it.

Westwood's coding can be incompetent at times, but there's an index of ranks in code. I doubt they were stupid enough to store more than score, level, side, name, and maybe the rank if they didn't decide to calculate it using the score and level.

It would be pretty cool if this were changed to a well-formatted Fame.txt file.

Hell no. It took them until C&C3 to finally get back to a system where you can comfortably have different build queues together. And yes, every different building has its own production, including superweapons. The only exception to this is the Starport.

Why would the CnC3 sidebar hurt? (It doesn't have to be the default option, of course.)

Do note Dune II has different speech for all mentats, so this is not really possible. Not to mention Dune II's speech is created from voice clips pasted together as needed. When you hear "Harkonnen unit destroyed", each of these words is a different file, to also allow "Harkonnen structure destroyed" or "Atreides unit destroyed" with mostly the same voice clips. This game is optimized for 1992's disk space limitations.

Dune 2000 has different speech for all the mentats, too. Also, dynasty has source code access, so I assume he could tell it to play a different sound if it's set to use Dune 2000 voices.

Nope. Do not make this into C&C1. I'm probably the biggest fan of C&C1 you can find online, but this is Dune II.

[...]

you mean, disabling the build queue system? Hmm... could be an option in the config, I guess. For more classic gameplay.

As for the 'finding out what you were building', he already implemented my suggestion for making the construction yard icon place down the current structure so you don't have to go looking for it anymore. Showing a semitransparent image of the building you're going to place shown would be neat though, but only if you can disable it in the config.

Those are the visual cues I use in every other game with a sidebar system I play, and they're extremely effective. When I said "greyed out", I meant visually. Honestly, it wouldn't be so much of a problem if I could also queue the position of the building. That way, I could queue up 4 concrete slabs and a windtrap without having to worry about placing them while in battle or scouting. At the very least, there either needs to be an optional big, annoying visual indicator that I have a building that needs to be placed, or a way to place ahead of time.

I disagree... this system is a LOT less chaotic than the C&C one, where the order in which you build prerequisites is the order in which construction options appear. Anyway, this is how Dune II works. Please, just roll with it. It's not C&C, and it shouldn't be, either.

What's the problem with having an option?

The building queueing already kinda solves this anyway. No need to go implementing that imo.

It doesn't really. It makes it less annoying, but it doesn't make it not annoying. If you could place them before they were done, it'd be a moot issue, but even then you could add it to that stage so you didn't have to keep clicking the button.

Not possible. Like in Warcraft 1 and 2, Dune II terrain is generated from about 12 terrain types; dunes, sand, rock, mountain, spice, thick spice, and the transits between those. Dune 2000 doesn't have graphics that fit together in all situations like that; it's like C&C, where maps really have to be constructed manually to look good. Not to mention, the graphic cells are bigger than 24x24 pixels, so they wouldn't fit on.

It feels like there's enough to work with to get it working. I'll see if I can hack something together.

Edit: I can't find any good way to test how certain things would look. I think the rock and sand connecting would be fine, but it looks like the mountain isn't well-represented enough.

Edit2: It's a lot better represented in BLOXBGBS.

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Hmm. Just got a crash. It seemed to happen when an infantry unit died from a sonic wave just before it'd be crushed, and exactly after that weird rubble-clearing terrain bug happened.

http://i.imgur.com/bN1Qe.png

(see sonic tanks in upper right corner)

---------------

I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to add a mouse.png with the new frames needed.

Edit: Aren't Command and Conquer and Red Alert's mouse pointers in Dune 2 .SHP format?

Yes, and at this moment, there's only one toolset that can edit it, and it was requested specifically by MrFlibble.

I personally don't see any point in adding graphics to it though. In essence, this is still a Dune II rebuild, and I like that about it.

Literally every other game I play that isn't exited by hitting Esc is paused by hitting Escape.

Well adding esc as pausing key would be nice, yes. But as a Dune II player, I never even thought about that. It's all in the manual.

(Also, I could never play the original Dune 2. Mainly because between the production screens, the concrete, and the lack of context sensitive commands, things just took too long).

Psh. You have to learn to judge games in their own era, not by the improvements made by their successors. Again, why are you playing this, then? You just seem to want to turn it into something it's not.

Westwood's coding can be incompetent at times, but there's an index of ranks in code. I doubt they were stupid enough to store more than score, level, side, name, and maybe the rank if they didn't decide to calculate it using the score and level.

Not my point. There's no space on the screen to fit in a longer name and that long rank on one line, that's all.

Why would the CnC3 sidebar hurt? (It doesn't have to be the default option, of course.)

What? I like the C&C3 sidebar. I disliked the fact they removed multiple queues in C&C1. Anyway, the point is moot, since, as I said, the game's buildings DO all have their own build queues.

Dune 2000 has different speech for all the mentats, too. Also, dynasty has source code access, so I assume he could tell it to play a different sound if it's set to use Dune 2000 voices.

Well I still severely doubt that Dune 2000 will contain all necessary clips. I've done this kind of voice set conversions, between games as similar as C&C and TS (once for making a C&C1 EVA voice set for some TS-to-C&C1 total conversion mods, and the other way around when using the Spanish TS voices as C&C1 EVA), and I still had to go copy and paste vowels to fill in missing ones.

Those are the visual cues I use in every other game with a sidebar system I play, and they're extremely effective. When I said "greyed out", I meant visually. Honestly, it wouldn't be so much of a problem if I could also queue the position of the building. That way, I could queue up 4 concrete slabs and a windtrap without having to worry about placing them while in battle or scouting. At the very least, there either needs to be an optional big, annoying visual indicator that I have a building that needs to be placed, or a way to place ahead of time.

Yeah, sorry, I misunderstood the greyed out thing, and edited my post.

Hmm. Maybe a "building ready" style message could be added in the top messages bar, telling you which building is ready, too.

What's the problem with having an option?

The fact Dynasty still has to program it in? Us programmers get no respect :P

It doesn't really. It makes it less annoying, but it doesn't make it not annoying. If you could place them before they were done, it'd be a moot issue, but even then you could add it to that stage so you didn't have to keep clicking the button.

Again, judge the game by its time. I'd have been satisfied with just the high res and sidebar, really. The whole queueing system is nothing but a neat bonus to me.

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Some more bugs:

-Credits music keeps playing on the main menu when stopping the credits loop.

-The scrolling credits text suddenly disappears when reaching the top of the screen, rather than scrolling out of it. I tested this in the original dune II, and it doesn't happen there.

-Credits music doesn't loop during the credits. Note that it's possible that it just normally loops with the actual credits loop; in that case it's just because I'm using the SEGA megadrive music, and it's not long enough for the credits. It did restart when the credits looped.

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I personally don't see any point in adding graphics to it though. In essence, this is still a Dune II rebuild, and I like that about it.

It seems to me like a project to enhance Dune 2 and make it more accessible to modern gamers. Having the option to use C&C's cursors to better represent the context sensitive action seems like a good idea to me.

Well adding esc as pausing key would be nice, yes. But as a Dune II player, I never even thought about that. It's all in the manual.
Dune Dynasty

============

Classic Dune. Modern Controls.

Psh. You have to learn to judge games in their own era' date=' not by the improvements made by their successors.[/quote']

I'm not judging Dune 2 a bad game because it's not up to modern standards, I'm suggesting control and UI improvements to a project about improving Dune 2's controls and UI.

Again, why are you playing this, then?

This isn't a feature request for vanilla Dune 2, this is a feature request for Dune Dynasty. The main reason I'm playing it is that Dune 2000 doesn't work right on my system.

What? I like the C&C3 sidebar. I disliked the fact they removed multiple queues in C&C1. Anyway, the point is moot, since, as I said, the game's buildings DO all have their own build queues.

My main point was that losing the current production list I was looking at whenever I select a unit was disorienting, and that a way to fix that would be to still display the current unit and it's actions when they're selected, but show a CnC3 style sidebar under that.

Well I still severely doubt that Dune 2000 will contain all necessary clips. I've done this kind of voice set conversions, between games as similar as C&C and TS (once for making a C&C1 EVA voice set for some TS-to-C&C1 total conversion mods, and the other way around when using the Spanish TS voices as C&C1 EVA), and I still had to go copy and paste vowels to fill in missing ones.

It could gracefully fall back to the default Dune 2 clips if there isn't a Dune 2000 clip available, the way it does with Dune 2000 music.

The fact Dynasty still has to program it in? Us programmers get no respect :P

I wrote this in about half an hour today (consider this Public Domain):

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;

namespace WorldwideWarfare
{
class Section
{
public string name;
public List<string> keys;
public List<string> values;
public Section(string s)
{
name = s;
keys = new List<string>();
values = new List<string>();
}
public Section(bool b)
{
name = "!!INVALID";
keys = new List<string>();
values = new List<string>();
}
public string this[string key]
{
get
{
int i = 0;
foreach (string k in keys)
{
if (k.ToLower() == key.ToLower())
{
return values[i];
}
i++;
}
return null;
}
/*set{}*/
}
}
class Ini
{
public List<Section> sections = new List<Section>();
private Section section;
public Ini(string fname)
{
string[] ini = File.ReadAllLines(fname);
foreach (string s in ini)
{
string s2 = s.Trim();
bool start = false, end = false, equals = false;
string s3 = "";
foreach (char c in s2)
{
if (c == ';')
{
break;
}
if (start)
{
if (c == ']')
{
end = true;
break;
}
else
{
s3 += c;
}
}
else
{
if (c == '[' && !equals)
{
start = true;
}
if (c == '=')
{
equals = true;
}
}
}
if(start && end)
{
section = new Section(s3.Trim());
sections.Add(section);
}
else if (equals)
{
bool half = false;
string k = "", v = "";
foreach (char c in s)
{
if (c == '=')
{
half = true;
}
else if (c == ';')
{
break;
}
else
{
if (half == false)
{
k += c;
}
else
{
v += c;
}
}
}
if (sections.Count > 0)
{
section.keys.Add(k.Trim());
section.values.Add(v.Trim());
}
}
}
}
public Section this[string name]
{
get
{
foreach (Section s in sections)
{
if(s.name.ToLower() == name.ToLower())
{
return s;
}
}
return null;
}
/*set{}*/
}
}
}

Again, judge the game by its time. I'd have been satisfied with just the high res and sidebar, really. The whole queueing system is nothing but a neat bonus to me.

That would be valid were I saying Dune 2 is a bad game. I am not. I am saying that Dune Dynasty could be improved if concrete was less annoying to place. That is my number one problem with the project as-is, and if it were alleviated, then the project would be essentially perfect. (After that is using the TD cursor to show that you can/can't move/attack/scroll the screen.)

Honestly, I'd make some of these changes myself, but legally it'd be risky for me to look at OpenDUNE's source code. Not because the source code itself is illegal or anything, but because it wasn't a "clean" disassembly and reimplementation (wherein different people look at the disassembly than implement the new code), and I'm currently working on a commercial RTS.

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The selection thing when moving the cursor out of the window still fails though. It seems to fail because it switches to scrolling when you come back into the window, and cancels the selection when you move further into the screen, out of the scroll area. Maybe this is just a matter of confirming the selection rather than cancelling when starting the scrolling.

-Right-clicking on the minimap still doesn't seem to work.

I'll be taking a look at these in the next version. Just thought I'd make a release before breaking everything.

-Scrolling with arrows works while the game is paused. I'd expect it to go through the menu options instead.

The scrolling thing is a bug. Probably can't be bothered with arrow key menu navigation. It wasn't in Dune 2, and I didn't bother when I redid the main menu.

-Switching to fullscreen doesn't retain the configured resolution, but instead switches to the desktop resolution.

...

Would be easy to have somewhere to set the full screen resolution then, though. It'd be nice to play in original Dune II resolution, but full screen. You know, just stretching the complete game to full res while still 'playing' in a set lower resolution.

The game only changes the screen resolution at the start of the game, and only if you set window_mode=fullscreen in the config file. Alt-enter will only toggle between windowed and fullscreen window modes. Note that alt-enter doesn't work in this mode, and alt-tab didn't work for me and caused windows to go a bit weird (but you can alt-tab back). This should probably be disabled if I could figure out how.

Note that v1.1 had a habit of deleting the various commented out window_mode choices (because they were commented out with a semicolon), so they might have been missing from your config file.

-The zoom state of the sidebar and top bar aren't saved when you exit the game.

The config is only saved when you leave the game controls submenu (i.e. when Dune 2 decided to save its config file), when really it should save as you quit the game.

-Soundblaster sound effects doesn't generate the sonic weapon sound unless I enable the effects option. Though, since apparently the duplicate effects problem is gone, this isn't really a problem anymore, I guess. I suppose the old beeps will come back if I disable the sbsounds option?

Sonic tank sounds are synth only. Not sure what old beeps you're referring to.

Personally I'd prefer it if something like ctrl+mouse wheel would zoom though, and normal mouse wheel would just scroll the sidebar.

Agreed. Whereas box selection is second nature to anyone who uses Windows, every browser I ever used used ctrl+mouse wheel to zoom in or out.

(I should note, though, that I do like the zoom feature.)

I tend to use zooming quite a lot actually, e.g. instead of scrolling large distances.

Could you add an option in the controls menu to use a more Command and Conquer style command system (that is, left click selects and commands, and right click deselects)?

Maybe after the GUI fixes, as I mentioned earlier. Also, what MrFlibble said in the cncz forum.

I'd like it if placing concrete was a really quick thing, rather than the drawn out process it is now. In Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge, you can place a bunch of wall by building one wall, then holding down the button while placing the wall and letting go at the end of the wall. Something like that, but rectangular, would be extremely nice. Also, I guess the wall thing could apply to walls, too.

Haha, it sounds like you're playing like I used to. You don't *need* concrete, and it is supposed to be time consuming. After all, you are getting 50% structure health for about 20 credits. Keeping up with production during battle is part of the game.

What Nyer said is pretty much right though. I'm not making Dune 2 with a CnC interface.

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