File Questions (a tour of Nyerguds' Dune II directory)

[3371-Alpha]

I'm a long time strategy game fan and just recently got back into dune. I'm trying to find mods, patches, scenarios and unofficial addons and try them out with the DOS version via DOSBox. Problem is not very many of them have descriptions leaving me to download them, hope they have a readme included and if not guess what they are. I know I mention tour of Nyerguds' Dune II directory in the title, but I'm actually talking about files from any site really. Where can I find some of the scenarios/maps found in this{/url] thread?

[3371-Alpha]

No response, I hope this place isn't abandoned. Anyways I think I may have answered my own question, most of them at least. There were a few I couldn't figure out, like "d2te_0-based_hacks.txt" and "dune_niggas.zip", as they had no included instructions.

I've been exploring this forum for the last few days. Found a few mistakes in some of you threads. Got nothing better to do atm so I'll list them here (better than bumping each individual thread). You mentioned in the gus drivers thread that the original gravis drivers for dune 2 didn't work in DOSBox; I found they actually do but, technically, the original "driver" you linked isn't really a driver, it's an installer. The drivers can be found here, the AIL/DIGPAK 1.0 and .96; they have to be placed in the Dune II directory before you run the installer. Either way, I have issues with the digital gus driver: speech is garbled in the intro to the game. I also have occasional issues with the MIDI driver in that some times notes get stuck. You also mentioned issues where the Tandy driver for Dune wouldn't work in DOSBox, found a fix for that here. I also recall a thread where a user had issues getting the game to work on his AWE32(something), possible fix here.

Edited December 3, 2017 by 3371-Alpha

[X3M]

You might find more activity on cncnet.
But in overall, this place is pretty darn abandoned to my feel.
Some lurk around here, from time to time. Give it a month or two.

If you are addressing someone's topic or post, please use their name. And give a link to that topic. Saves them time searching or pondering if it was them you where talking too. I for starters, have no idea what you are talking about. There are several smart people on this forum, talking about each others mods or files or whatever they discovered, tested or created. Simply point, and things get done more easily. PM is also an option.

---

Great though that you are a Strategy fan. (Not to confuse with RTS?)

Which Strategy are you talking about, aside of Dune 2? (Not to confuse with Dune?)

[3371-Alpha]

Alrighty, the gus driver thread is here, and the AWE thread I believe is this one.

On another note/discussion, I notice this thread has info on some exe fixes. Dose the 1.07 patch fix have most of them?

[MrFlibble]

Hi there 3371-Alpha, and welcome to the forums! Indeed there isn't a lot of activity here lately (sadly).

We have accumulated quite a lot of info on Dune II over the years, I have tried to document this stuff in separate threads, but probably not in a format that makes everything immediately clear.

The unofficial patch fixes many bugs and issues with v1.07, but doesn't incorporate some of the recently found fixes, including that for the bug which causes a unit to get deselected after you give it an order sometimes, or the Saboteur exploding upon reaching its destination.

On 03.12.2017 at 11:28 PM, 3371-Alpha said:

No response, I hope this place isn't abandoned. Anyways I think I may have answered my own question, most of them at least. There were a few I couldn't figure out, like "d2te_0-based_hacks.txt" and "dune_niggas.zip", as they had no included instructions.

Some files were actually not meant for public use, or were only uploaded for current needs.

On 03.12.2017 at 11:28 PM, 3371-Alpha said:

You mentioned in the gus drivers thread that the original gravis drivers for dune 2 didn't work in DOSBox; I found they actually do but, technically, the original "driver" you linked isn't really a driver, it's an installer. The drivers can be found here, the AIL/DIGPAK 1.0 and .96; they have to be placed in the Dune II directory before you run the installer. Either way, I have issues with the digital gus driver: speech is garbled in the intro to the game. I also have occasional issues with the MIDI driver in that some times notes get stuck. You also mentioned issues where the Tandy driver for Dune wouldn't work in DOSBox, found a fix for that here. I also recall a thread where a user had issues getting the game to work on his AWE32(something), possible fix here.

It's been a long time since I messed with the GUS drivers, but I'm pretty sure you didn't need to put anything into the Dune II folder except the modified game data files, which already include the drivers that have been confirmed to work with the game and DOSBox.

[Cm_blast]

10 hours ago, MrFlibble said:

The unofficial patch fixes many bugs and issues with v1.07, but doesn't incorporate some of the recently found fixes, including that for the bug which causes a unit to get deselected after you give it an order sometimes, or the Saboteur exploding upon reaching its destination.

aaaand Just now I discover there is a patch to fix the Loops T_T. I remember me using Dune Legacy's Editor to add/change buildings, units and reinforcements, saving the map but playing it in Dune 2. Sad I didn't found this thing before.

[3371-Alpha]

On 12/9/2017 at 7:09 AM, MrFlibble said:

Hi there 3371-Alpha, and welcome to the forums! Indeed there isn't a lot of activity here lately (sadly).

We have accumulated quite a lot of info on Dune II over the years, I have tried to document this stuff in separate threads, but probably not in a format that makes everything immediately clear.

The unofficial patch fixes many bugs and issues with v1.07, but doesn't incorporate some of the recently found fixes, including that for the bug which causes a unit to get deselected after you give it an order sometimes, or the Saboteur exploding upon reaching its destination.

Some files were actually not meant for public use, or were only uploaded for current needs.

It's been a long time since I messed with the GUS drivers, but I'm pretty sure you didn't need to put anything into the Dune II folder except the modified game data files, which already include the drivers that have been confirmed to work with the game and DOSBox.

The good news it a place is only as abandoned as you make it. A long as there is SOME activity this place isn't truly abandoned....yet.

I hope you don't give up on the unofficial patch, even if the reverse engineered ports are in some ways better. I'm a hobbyist who likes to play with old tech and my stuff could benefit from your patch. I'm looking forward to another release with the latest fixes.

Speaking of not for public use you should warn Nyerguds that he has a full rip of the hitsquad release of the game on his server, don't want lawyers harassing him.

Well your gus drivers do work and there's no real need to use the originals (the ones you said you based your's on), but tried them out anyways just for the hell of it since it like experimenting. I can confirm they actually work as well as yours. The problem is that PUTGF1.EXE will return an error if GF1DIGI.ADV and GF1MIDI.ADV are not in the game folder as they are the drivers them selves. With this logic PUTGF1.EXE is technically just an installer that performs and organ swap on the SOUND.PAK.

[Nyerguds]

@3371-Alpha

Ahhaha. Sorry, I rarely document stuff in there, but I can help you with these two mystery files.

On 12/3/2017 at 9:28 PM, 3371-Alpha said:

No response, I hope this place isn't abandoned. Anyways I think I may have answered my own question, most of them at least. There were a few I couldn't figure out, like "d2te_0-based_hacks.txt" and "dune_niggas.zip", as they had no included instructions.

The d2te_0-based_hacks.txt text is a piece of assembler code (you'll see more of that stuff in the Command & Conquer related folders on the site), and it details a bug fix I made on the exe file of the Dune 2 Tile Editor you'll find in the folder. You will notice there are two versions; one is marked as "zerobased".

I did this fix because the indices used in the tiles editor started from "1", whereas the references to these tile indices I found used in the exe file itself actually started from 0. So all the numbers in the tiles editor were off by one compared to the real data. That's why I quickly hacked the exe file of the tiles editor and fixed that. There's another tool with a similar hack on the site, namely the Ingame Strings Editor in instr212_0based.zip located in the /tools/ folder on the site.

 

The second file is actually referenced here on the forum, in the Dune Dynasty thread:

On 8/20/2015 at 10:36 AM, Nyerguds said:

•  Bonus silliness: Ghetto up your House selection screen by putting these voices into the data/ folder. 

So yeah, that's all that is; Me being silly with a microphone ten years ago and making custom house selection voice clips for the game 

I'm not sure if the clips work outside of a .pak file on the original game, though. But it works on Dune Dynasty.

 

On 12/12/2017 at 2:42 AM, 3371-Alpha said:

Speaking of not for public use you should warn Nyerguds that he has a full rip of the hitsquad release of the game on his server, don't want lawyers harassing him.

I have all releases of the game on my site. Whose lawyers, though? Nobody is even sure who owns the rights to sell Dune II. The game rights are probably owned by EA, but even if they are they can't sell it because the licensing from the Dino De Laurentiis company for the game has long expired. It's a large mess and it'd take an army of lawyers just to figure out which lawyer would have the right to sue me. It's uploaded on several abandonware sites, including Abandonia, which is pretty strict on its rules of what is considered "abandonware".

Also, I'm pretty confident that if the rights indeed belong to EA, they won't care. They rarely do, unless it's costing them money. They didn't mind me uploading the expansion packs of Command & Conquer and Red Alert after they made the base games freeware, and the community managers have even given me several games for free as thanks/help for my patching work on C&C.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Nyerguds

[3371-Alpha]

@Nyerguds

I know it's been like 4 years since, but I recently got a longing to play Dune II again and was looking for custom scenarios to play and I noticed a mod on moddb called "2019 NewMissions" (not going to post a direct link cause it contains more than just the missions if you know what I mean) and I noticed it's identical to your file "dune2_missions_mrXyz.zip". Did someone reupload your file without permission, is one an older version or what's the deal there? It's worth mentioning some of the file checksums are different. Anyways sorry for bumping such an old thread at this point, but I wasn't sure I could justify creating a new one when one with an identical topic already exists.

P.S. you might also want to preserve the save scenarios here and here (second to bottom). Note that I had issues with the second URL so here's a direct link to an archive.org copy just in case. Now if only these save scenarios could be converted in to standard ini mission format for use in source ports, and at that, if only the source ports properly supported custom single player scenarios. *sigh*

[Nyerguds]

@3371-Alpha 

I honestly don't remember where that mission pack came from or why I hosted it, but it is not mine. I'm assuming they were made by the "mrXyz" mentioned in the filename.

Yea, I'll make sure to grab those for preservation purposes. Modern browsers generally sadly don't contain FTP support anymore.

With the source code release of C&C (for the remaster), we actually got the entire internal map editor, which is probably capable of indeed converting back savegames to scenarios, if it would be compiled on a code base somehow completely reconstructing the old version the savegame is from. Alas, for Dune II, we have no such code.

Edited November 2, 2022 by Nyerguds

[Visions]

@Nyerguds any chance you could link us to some of these preserved files? 

Interested in doing a playthrough of some of the base and custom dune II scenarios.

[segra]

On 11/2/2022 at 11:18 PM, Nyerguds said:

@3371-Alpha 

With the source code release of C&C (for the remaster), we actually got the entire internal map editor, which is probably capable of indeed converting back savegames to scenarios, if it would be compiled on a code base somehow completely reconstructing the old version the savegame is from. Alas, for Dune II, we have no such code.

There is OpenDune, and the entire savegame format is here

https://github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE/blob/master/src/save.c#L79

It should be possible to write a script to read in a save game, then write out an INI.. cant remember all the details, so unsure if everything is possible in an INI.. but you could probably get pretty close