[Release] Tleilaxu Infestation (dune 2000 campaign) + Tleilaxu plague part 2 (mission)

[Cm_blast]

Back in the day I created a Tleilaxu campaign. It was only 7 missions long, and had the concept of having a building which I called “Axlotl Tank” creating infantry units for the player every few minutes.

It is about time that I expand that campaign, as this is not a sequel, but a continuation. Now, with an actual name: Tleilaxu Infestation, a 20 mission campaign that brings a new version of the Axlotl Tank, an actual new building that will create the gholas on their own. New color for the screen, new logo withouth the radar, new color for the player’s units…

Story:
The story is the same as it was before. In times of war the 3 main Houses were using the Spacing Guild’s Starport to bring their armies from the respective planets, paying a lot to the Guild in the process. But now all of them are weakened and declared a truce, so nobody is using the Spacing Guild anymore.

The spice must flow, so the Tleilaxu offered themselves. The plan is sneaking the Tleilaxus into Arrakis and using their new developed ghola tech to destroy those weakened houses, capture all the territories and, in Exchange, they will start mining all the spice they can and giving a good portion of it directly to the Spacing Guild.

The original story ended with the Tleilaxu defeating the 3 main houses in an “all or nothing” kind of attack. This expanded version still use the same story on those early missions, but then something happen...

Campaign:
For this campaign I wanted to bring the Tleilaxu ghola army alive. So I created the improved Axlotl Tank. Using a new graphic (given by the user “The Dragon” who created the graphic specifically for this campaign), this new Axlotl Tank will produce gholas at a similar ratio the original did but, instead of creating all the units at once, now it will create 1 unit every few seconds.

Now, as the story progress, player will get to use more than 1 Axlotl Tank, and each one will produce units on their own, plus new acquisitions will be added as gholas as the campaign progress, so the infantry kind of units become the special weapon of the player.

Difficulty:
The campaign has been made to be overall easy. I wanted to step down from the high difficulty from my previous works. This includes the original 7 missions, which now are completely more beatable and it is not needed to be ultra-defensive or to deploy a base in a specific order just to survive. I recommend playing all the missions including these 7 even if they were played before. Now they are much more easy and there are a few minor (and 1 or 2 major) changes to them.

Changes on the maps per Difficulty:
The new editor and the new modified dune2000.exe allow to change certain things to happen depending on the difficulty. Overall the changes are subtle, like more/less reinforcements, upgrades that are (or not) ready from the start, some terrain revealed... The Axlotl Tank itself will also produce units at a faster/slower ratio depending on the difficulty. Even for hard difficulty the game is still on the easy side, or at least not as hard as you may expect compared to my previous works.

Tleilaxu Plague 2: (stand alone mission)
I created a new "tleilaxu plague" that it is included on main download but it is not part of the campaign but a single mission that works as an alternate ending. The first "tleilaxu plague" was release as a single mission that work as an alternate non-cannon ending, and the new mission "Tleilaxu plague 2" is another alternate non-cannon ending that happens after the oficial ending. This mission (as with the first Tleilaxu plague) is not part of the "ordos" side which is where it is stored the campaign, but instead, it goes into the Emperor side. I am releasing this mission along the campaign because both needs an specific mod to work and didn't want to duplicate downloads.

I must warn that this single mission is as hard/annoying as it was the first one (and it doesn't have difficulty specific changes, it plays the same regarless the difficulty).

Screenshots:
A basic Tleilaxu base with custom color uib, custom color for units and the new Axlotl Tank which produces infantry on it's own.

A base destroyed and broken due a storm and gholas being damaged as a result.

New Icy tileset, fighting at the pole.

New tileset. A cave. Pick up crates with money using the engineer and reach the exit.

The Spacing Guild`s Starport has available units from the beginning of the mission.

Tactical map available showcasing the progress of the story.

Screenshot (tleilaxu Plague 2):
The units available on the Starport will change overtime.

Files: (Update: June 2023)
Tleilaxu Infestation.rar And dune2000-sp-patches_2022-06-30.7z

The patch is provided by Klofkack and it is needed to be able to play my campaign.
If you want to read more info you can see his post on the next link:
https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/29411-dune-2000-singleplayer-game-patching-new-features-and-bug-fixes-d2keditor-211-release/

Note:
(The original 7 missions are still available on the older post here, which are totally much more challenging).
The mission "plague Tleilaxu 2" is on the Emperor side of the launcher, outside the 20 mission campaign.

Be carefull, the name of the campaign is "Tleilaxu infestation" and it contains 20 missions, don't be confused with the previous 7 missions "tleilaxu" since I renamed the files, which means you are going to have duplicates (feel free to keep the previous one if you want to play in a more challenging missions, as the new versions are much more easy).
 

How to install:
Unzip and move the whole folder in the correct place.
It is needed an updated dune2000.exe (recently updated by Klofkack) in order to be able to play this missions, as it use many new stuff. You can download it from the link I provided on "files:" I am not adding it directly due being an .exe so it is more safe to download from his post (my direct download is just from his post).

Report any possible mistake like a mission not loading. graphics wrong, game/briefing in the wrong language and so on.

Update March 2023:
The update has to be with small fixing maps/events, and in bewteen missions 9 and 18 they have been slighly altered, making the enemy to send a few units early just so the player doesn't wait 10-15 minutes (on maps with a base already deployed) before a really small wave come, so small you can kill it even afking. This doesn't means that the missions are much harder, they are just barely harder, adding a few enemy tanks, maybe some quads... some "noise" to keep the player busy until the enemy sends decent waves. Maps are still easy.

Update June 2023:
-New graphic: a new visual graphic of the Fremen Sniper provided by the user "PsYcHo", now with a long rifle to look like an actual sniper. 1 Tactical map/intel will show it.
-Mission 2 enemy send less units to let newcomers to not be heavily assaulted that early into the game plus extra harversters will be delivered if the player loose any. In hard difficulty no changes except for an enemy looping drop that triggers later into the game that has been removed for all difficulties.
-Mission 10, the cave/puzzle map, now the enemy that chase the player will focus much more on trying to kill the player's Engineer, so the position where the player place the light infantry is not that important now.
-Mission 14: The enemies won't build Siege tanks anymore, and will use the new unit that debut on this specific mission. On hard difficulty there is no longer any turrets to help the player.

Edited June 19, 2023 by Cm_blast

[Cm_blast]

Quick note to mentiont that I forgot to add the custom color uibb for higher resolutions on the download.
Custom colors (top and right bars) will appear playing at 800x600, 1024x768 or 1920x1080.

file updated.

[Adrian]

1 Question, where do I put the "Patches" file?

[Cm_blast]

56 minutes ago, Adrian said:

1 Question, where do I put the "Patches" file?

You need to overwrite the one from your game, at the root (after unzipping), the file is just named "dune2000.exe" that is to overwrite the one from your game, whatever it is gruntmods or dunemaster versions (or any other version it should work the same), on whatever folder you installed the game itself.

In my case I didn't needed to copy other files included with the zip, but depending on the computer they may be needed.

feel free to copy-paste the original dune2000.exe (and rename it) prior to overwrite if you are not sure of what result you will get and want to revert back if something goes wrong.

Don't forget that you also need the mission launcher 1.2 to make the campaign to properly work.

Edited July 14, 2022 by Cm_blast

[Cm_blast]

I did a small update on these maps. some map fixes, an event that didn't work, and on a mission the gholas were clustering the starport making hard for regular units to land (or sometimes the game not even delivering them) so I changed them to regular reinforcements instead.

I made some missions with enemies that send just a few units before they attack normally, this added enemy attacks are really small, maybe 2 combat tanks + 2 quads, maybe a few troopers, or maybe just 1 of each heavy vehicle plus a few light infantry, nothing that will make you sweat but at least making the player to move units and being prepared for later/bigger attacks.

It barely changes the difficulty, it only makes more entertaining to play.

[Ghost.B88]

The download links are broken or expired. Can you re-post them?

[Fey]

15 hours ago, Ghost.B88 said:

The download links are broken or expired. Can you re-post them?

They work just fine for me. Didja try to download before making an account, make an account to report the issue, and then not try again? Since the files are linked directly to the forum, an account is required to download them.

If you're referring to the second link, you'll find the most up-to-date exe in Klofkac's thread, which Cm linked just after the campaign download link. Klofkac designs the new features and stuff, so his thread is the place to go!

Hope that helps.