Battle for Dune, Remake Modification

[AnimalMan]

REPOSTING HERE AS IT IS THE CORRECT MESSAGE BOARD FOR THIS SUBJECT
 
The Aim of this modification is to improve the original game content without over modifying specific aspects. Houses and Subhouses will remain the same, Subhouses will receive additional units/bonus's and combining specific Subhouses will allow for usage of cross technology. AI is considerably improved they will train all new units and construct all new buildings, they will construct all buildings faster and build more air pad's. AI playing without any Subhouse alliances will construct more refinery's, more manufacturing structures and will acheive full tech much faster.
 
ALL NEW ADDITIONS HAVE ICONS THAT FIT WITH ORIGINAL EMPEROR THEME, NO LOSS OF QUALITY VIA TOTAL ICON CHANGES
 
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SubHouses


The Fremen-

Fremen Camp: Can now be placed on Sand and Rock

Fremen Outpost: Allows for further construction radius, small foundation for easy placement, can be placed on Sand and Rock, req upgraded Fremen Camp.

 
The Tleilaxu-

 

Tleilaxu Flesh Vats: Now Self Heals

Tleilaxu Contaminator: Now self heals and trains faster

 

The Ixians--

Ixian Scientist: A new stealth engineer unit, very slow walker, stealhed, requires upgraded Ixian Research Center.

 
The Imperial Sardaukar

 

Sardaukar General: A new tactical Unit, long build time, they can be promoted six times and self heal. requires upgraded Imperial Barracks.

Elite Sardaukar: Uses knife more often +2 cells.

 

The Guild of Navigators--

Guild Pyramid:  Provides 600 Power, same as x6 Wind Traps with saving of 350 Spice,  -25% Construction Time) req. upgraded Guild Palace.

 

The Smugglers- 

 

Smuggler Goods are available to all sides at the Starport.

 

Smugglers Quad: An AA, AG rocket quad with high attack but low hit points. 

Smugglers Combat Tank: This tank packs good firepower, but lacks in armor.

 

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Houses

 

- Atreides -

Atreides General: Available for order at Starport, Can gain six vetracy levels, Self Heals.

Air Drone: can now be deviated

Guard Post: can now can gain up to four vetracy levels. Specialized.

Rocket Tower: can now gain up to four vetracy levels. Specialized.

Smelter: Decreases Production time of Hanger and Factory. Requires Upgraded Conyard, Hanger.

 

- Harkonan -

Harkonen General: Available for order at Starport, Can gain six vetracy levels, Self Heals.

Air Defense Platform:  can now be deviated.

Flame Turret: Can now gain up to four vetracy levels. Specialized.

AA Turret: Can now gain up to four vetracy levels. Specialized.

Smelter: Decreases Production time of Hanger and Factory. Requires Upgraded Conyard, Hanger.

 

- Ordos -

Ordos General: Available for order at Starport, Can gain six vetracy levels, Self Heals.

Deviator:  Can fire at Aerial targets

Eye in the Sky: Can now be Deviated

AA Mine: Can now be ordered at the Starport.

Gas Turret: Can now gain up to four vetracy levels. Specialized.

Pop-Up Turret: Can now gain up to four vetracy levels. Specialized.

Smelter: Decreases Production time of Hanger and Factory. Requires Upgraded Conyard, Hanger.

 

Misc Changes - 

All Tracked Units including (Kobra, Assault Tank, Sonic Tank, A.P.C, Inkvine Catapult, SM Tank etc), excluding (Flame Tank, RepairVehicle) have decreased TurnRate : 0.075 (from 0.175) for realistic ground vehicle maneuvers. Two Legged Mech Units such as (Devastator, Minotaurus) also have turn rate of 0.05 (from 0.15) for realistic maneuvers. 

 

"Basically"

-1 Rate of turn for all Units except, Buzzsaw, Trike, Dustscout, Harvester, Flame Tank, Repair Vehicle.

Hover Units and Mongoose need no Balance Modification for they can move in Any Direction

 

 

A.I and Maps:

-More credit injections on Non Arrakis maps (for longer ai battles)

-Ai production ratio's changed, ai trains more infantry ratio (balances ordos ai vs harkonan ai, allows for better base defense)

-Ai constructs all new buildings and manufactures all new units, even starports generals.

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[vota dc]

But is pyramid smaller than 6 windtraps? Once you put Guild Palace you always have space problem because it is huge.

[AnimalMan]

Pyramid is about the size of 9 wind traps in a block

at the moment the stats are as follows...

 

 

 

• Wind Trap
• Cost = 225

• Health = 1500 

• Armour = Building
• Terrain = Rock
• PowerGenerated = 100
• BuildTime = 240

 

• Guild Pyramid
• Cost = 1000 (x6 - 25%= -350)
• Health = 2500 (+1000)
• Armour = CY (Better)
• Terrain = Rock, Sand (Bonus Placement)
• PowerGenerated = 600  (x 6)
• BuildTime = 1080 (x 6  -25% = -360 )

Other than its loss of 3 cells in construction space, it is overall more efficient than purchasing 6 wind traps, but not too overpowered

 

I did originally plan to have the pyramid act as x9 wind traps, and do the maths of (windtrap cost) 225x9=2025....-506(25%)=1519 and everything else would raise respectively. Although i think this would make it rather overpowered. The balance at the moment is so fragile that it mainly revolves around tactic-ability of the player as a slight mistake in the guild players tactics can remove the 25% advantage if were talking speed constuction. If we were to increase the advantage it would be considerably harder to out balance this, must remember, wind traps will build faster and can be placed faster, the constuction of the pyramid will render the conyard out of use during constuction and takes away the ability to build a single wind trap and then another structure. The real power of this bonus only comes into play once the structure has been placed, only then will the 25% build-speed bonus become fully effective as the enemy will take 25% longer to reach a similar power output as the guild player. In simple terms... if it were a straight up power plant race, by the time the guild player is able to place the pyramid the enemy would have built a mere 4.5 wind traps giving the guild player a 1.5 power bonus and a 1.5 build speed bonus for a short period of time,.... :) this is not even to take into consideration the armor and terrain placement bonus.

 

I came to the conclusion Increasing this effect to x9 windtraps would only work during balance if the buildtime was raised respectively, but this would then render the conyard out of use for a much longer period of time, in which the enemy could pump out a nice attack force whilst the guild player is still waiting for enough power to build defenses

 

 

 

[JasonRedway]

Hi guys,

 

I was wondering how you make these mods?  Do you have tools for creating the assets and modifying the files?  I still have some of the original tools that we used to make it but the XAF exporter only worked on 3DS Max V3 and the FX Editor doesn't seem to work on 64Bit OS.  It'd be really cool to make some mods.  We did a demo for WWS and EA for Red Alert using the Emperor Engine near the end of development and we started doing a Frank Miller inspired Spartan game called Age of Heroes too (http://www.reddixcgi.com/development/portfolio/projects/heroes/html/project_heroes.html) but when IG folded in 2002 it all stopped...

 

Cheers

 

-Jason

[MrFlibble]

Hello Jason! Welcome to FED2k Forums! :D

I can't answer your question since I'm not involved in any Emperor modding whatsoever, but it's very nice to have someone from the original development team to get in touch with the modding community :)

[JasonRedway]

Thanks, its good to be here :-)

 

I was a massive fan of Dune (the books and films and then the games) so it was a great honour to get the chance to work on the remakes.  To be fair though I did very little in the production of D2K, mostly preproduction work and prototyping but I was very heavily involved in Emperor.  To me it is probably one of the best games that I was involved in and I still play it from time to time so it would be great fun to mod away...  Maybe I could pickup on the Star Wars mod that I messed around with before release!

[shai]

Thanks, its good to be here :-)

 

I was a massive fan of Dune (the books and films and then the games) so it was a great honour to get the chance to work on the remakes.  To be fair though I did very little in the production of D2K, mostly preproduction work and prototyping but I was very heavily involved in Emperor.  To me it is probably one of the best games that I was involved in and I still play it from time to time so it would be great fun to mod away...  Maybe I could pickup on the Star Wars mod that I messed around with before release!

Nice, D2K is my most liked game of all time. 

[AnimalMan]

Updated, Screenshots, Info, New Units

[AnimalMan]

[AnimalMan]

 

More Side Bars, Starport, Atreides General, Better Quad icon.

[AnimalMan]

New Building Addition,

 

 

The Smelter, Avail for all Sides.

 

The Smelter operates as a Factory and Hanger, units may not be produced at the smelter but it is able to decrease production time without the player having to build multiple factories or hangers, it also consumes less space good for use on small maps. Requires, Factory, Hanger and Upgraded Conyard.  

 

 

maybe i first person to re-introduce the smelter with an actual function?

[AnimalMan]

 

Side Bars, Smelter before Palace. 

[Kindjal]

Where do i get this mod? It sounds amazing!

[athanasios]

LOL, nice question.

I suppose the answer is nowhere!

You will have to wait till it gets completed.

[AnimalMan]

Well. Development is limited, but a few more things i would like to add. If you check back and follow im sure i will be more inclined (pressured) to release aha. And Eventually, i would like to play online aswell.  If you are a true dune fan, you won't mind the wait. Ai -wise i have turned the original game on its head.

[AnimalMan]

Some Screens of AI,

 

I am ORANGE, Harkonen. 

 

 

 

Above: Increased Infantry usage, Better tactical, Forms Large attacks. More Usage of Air Drone, Advanced Carryall. More Successful Attacks.

(notice size of Atreides attack on radar)

 

Below: Makers will now be used by ai as regular base defense aswell as for attack i.e they will idley defend ramps, defenses buildings and such as well as respond to harvester threats (Same for Fremen Warriors, Sardaukar Warriors, Smugglers Quad and Contaminator)

 

Smugglers Quad and other new units such as AT and IM Generals are also included in various defense tactics and cliff patrols.

 

New Tleilaxu structure which reduces production time of the Flesh Vats. It is inoperable as a vat, but will provide the extra boost needed to reach maximum production speed, it also has Saving of 25% Spice, 25% Power, 20% Buildtime and takes up less space than vats; however suffers loss of hitpoints.

 

[JasonRedway]

New Building Addition,

 

 

The Smelter, Avail for all Sides.

 

The Smelter operates as a Factory and Hanger, units may not be produced at the smelter but it is able to decrease production time without the player having to build multiple factories or hangers, it also consumes less space good for use on small maps. Requires, Factory, Hanger and Upgraded Conyard.  

 

 

maybe i first person to re-introduce the smelter with an actual function?

Hey AnimalMan, how are you making these mods?  Do you have some tools?

 

Has any mod ever been made that uses new artwork that was not already in the game res files?

 

Incidentally, the Smelter was going to be the orignal refinery, we were not going to have harvesters and spice in Emperor.  The plan from the start was to have debris scattered about the maps that was left over from the previous war on Dune.  There was a flying unit we called the Scavenger http://www.reddixcgi.com/development/portfolio/projects/emperor/html/project_empmov_sc.htm that was going to pick up the dedris and take it back to the smelter to make the necessary resources for building units and buildings.  The idea that anything that was destroyed in the game would leave bits behind that could be recycled by picking them up and smelting them down.  It was intended that this could create more ferocious competition for players because they would be able to pick up anyone elses dead units for themselves so it would be a race to recycle.

 

The idea was dropped though, months into production we decided that spice and harvesters were really too central to the Dune universe that they could not really be cut from the game.  So the smelter and the scavenger were 'removed'.  There were probably a couple more units/buildings that ended this way too but I think that most would have been repurposed to either non-player incidental units/buildings or for subhouse groups.

 

Technically any in-game asset can be controlled by the player, if someone was so inclined to change the rules of the game.  I did mess around with a version of Dune that used Star Wars models, I have a sand speeder, AT AT, sail barge, the sand crawler (which I think actually made it into the game - if you're in the right map looking in the right place at the right time you might see it along with the Fremen Speederbike - don't ask me which map, there is no way I can remeber that!  ha ha).  I also have some models from the Red Alert 3D pitch that I did for WW Studios, for an unnamed supernatural horror game that we looked into tech demo with the Emperor engine and for the Age of Heroes which also never made it past demo stage.

[JasonRedway]

 

 

New Tleilaxu structure which reduces production time of the Flesh Vats. It is inoperable as a vat, but will provide the extra boost needed to reach maximum production speed, it also has Saving of 25% Spice, 25% Power, 20% Buildtime and takes up less space than vats; however suffers loss of hitpoints.

 

 

The Flesh Vat was one of my favourites to produce, I was asked to make it as disgusting as I could so I hit the internet for texture ideas.  I found an image take from a real life autopsy of an eight month old baby that had died from a genetic neurological disorder.  The back of the Flesh Vat is the image of the baby's spinal column with some colour modifications to make it less gross!  The animation was done with 3DS Max's XForm modifier, a loop of vertecies selected for each XForm that expanded and contracted in a sequence making the vomitting action as it 'gives birth'.

[athanasios]

JasonRedway: Interesting info. Thanks a lot. Should be written somehere (Wikipedia/Dune encyclopedia?) It is 'our heritage'!

[JasonRedway]

 

It's cool to see someone's still modding Emperor.

 

Hello Jason,

 

it has been many years since I modded Emperor but back in my 'time' we could: modify your ini and script files (unit attributes, names, dialogues), override your textures, music and videos, as well as edit xbf files to some extent. (and there was an official map editor as well)

 

As a matter of fact, I 've been playing with reading xbf files recently, but I 'm not sure I 'm inclined to write a full-blown editor (or perhaps it's possible to convert them to a format blender can use? if only I knew how to use blender in the first place).

 

One last thing: back in those days, there was one great mystery: was the number of houses hardcoded, or was it possible to add one through modifying the ini files alone? Ultimately, we concluded the former. It would be cool if you could clarify this once and for all.

 

 

Interesting.  So no-one was ever able to create mods that contained really new units etc?  All that the  mods could do was to unlock what was already there and change the unit behaviour.  I guess if someone was to create a new mod that had new things in it would be well recieved.  I have the original editors, the FXEditor that I used extensively to create the unit animations and effects, I also have the map editor and the shadow maker utility.  I have found that they all work and can still be used under Windows 7 64Bit.  I have the XAF exporter that only runs with 3DS Max 3 and here is my problem - I no longer have 3DS Max 3.

 

The original workflow for creating units was to use 3DS Max, we then used the XAF exporter to create what is essentially a text file that describes the objects and geometry.  That was then loaded into the FX Editor where the animation names were defined and any particles or texture animation was applied.  That was then exported as an XBF file as used in the game.  There are text files that associate the game object to the mesh and a rules file that defined its speed, size and gun types and that was all there was to it.  I was looking at the XAF file recently and believe if I can figure out what the values mean I could write a maxscript exporter to create them so I would then be able to create a whole new set of assets for a mod - unless I cen get a hold of 3DS Max 3, and then there is no problem at all.

 

In answer to your question about the number of houses, I would expect it to have been hardcoded.  It was a part of the game that really defines its place in the Dune Universe.  There was only ever three main houses and each its own subhouse, that was never going to change so there would have been no need for it to have been defined by ini file.

[AnimalMan]

Jason: ... Are you able to make the GUScavenger work as a carryall? Ive been trying with hex editor lately but with no success. 

 

Would be cool to use it as an Heavy duty storm resistant Harvester Carryall.

[JasonRedway]

Jason: ... Are you able to make the GUScavenger work as a carryall? Ive been trying with hex editor lately but with no success. 

 

Would be cool to use it as an Heavy duty storm resistant Harvester Carryall.

If you can extract data/model/rules.txt from the MODEL.RFD you can add the carryall=TRUE attribute under the GUScavenger section, you'll also need to remove the house=Guild attribute so that it can be used by all houses and drop its tech level down to 1 so you can use it from the start of the game.

[AnimalMan]

Yes i know this, But the Scavenger go's to pick up object but never actually picks it up, it lacks info in the xbf but i am trying to work out what.

[JasonRedway]

Yes i know this, But the Scavenger go's to pick up object but never actually picks it up, it lacks info in the xbf but i am trying to work out what.

My guess is that its because it lacks the animation definitions.

[JasonRedway]

That doesn't sound very forward-thinking with regards to an expansion though.

 

If the definition of "really new units" includes entirely new models, then indeed we could not make any.

 

 

That's what we tampered with. It was enough to create 'total conversion' mods, with everything reskinned and renamed.

 

 

This is the xbf editor we used, created by one of the community (contains a readme with pretty much all the knowledge of xbf files we had).

 

Certainly it will be exciting to see new models created. It 'd have been more so 10 years ago, when there were still people actually playing  the game ;)

There was not any real need for forward thinking, the houses used in the games were defined by the legalities of what were were allowed to use based on the books.  However, I have been looking into the text files that define everything in the game and it appears that there could be a way to add more houses.  There are declarations for houses in the rules.txt file and then there are definitions in the artini.txt file too so in combination it may be possible to add new ones.  You'd have to give them an AI.ini file too but copying one of the existing houses may be enough.

 

I understand that mods would have been better recieved 10 years ago, the problem there was that all the companies involved either were consumed by bigger ones or just plain and simply went under.  And Emperor was a number one title when it was released, but only for about a week.  Apparently people took it back for refunds because it was too processor hungry for the computers of the day, so it appeared that the actual sales of Emperor were pretty small - this is probably why there has not been another release based on the IP since.

 

But now I have kind of rediscovered all the original files I am in a position to make a mod with completely new everything with a better poly count than the original and just for the fun of it.  I am interested to see if anyone else would like a mod or should I just make it for myself?