What do you guys think of the Dune 2000 mod for OpenRA?

[DoMoNiC_HuNtEr]

Has anyone tried OpenRA? It's an open source game that recreates the original Command & Conquer, Red Alert, and Dune 2000. 

OpenRA - Classic strategy games rebuilt for the modern era

It seemingly has all the campaign missions too. Hopefully there are cutscenes too.

Since modding the original Dune 2000 is difficult as you can't add new gameplay mechanics, I figure OpenRA's D2K game/mod is the way to go. Troop transports can be made, finally. Controllable aircraft too. Multiple construction tabs and side bar queuing. Attack move features, etc. Lots of features that are fairly common in most modern Westwood RTS games can finally be utilized in Dune 2000.

[Cm_blast]

OpenRa is a bit different, from what I got told, some units have different stats or behaviours on the bullets which are not the same as in dune 2000.

I am going to say, modding in dune 2000 is difficulty because if anything there is way too much stuff, it may takes time, efford and reading testing a lot, but on 2025, the amount of stuff that you can do on dune 2000 is insanelly big.

To put you on perpsective. The original game (and the older editors by extent) had a total of 21 events. These events are your usuall "reinforcements" "mission win", "show message", "play music" and so on. AT the time at this writing, we are around 250 events.

This new events can "make the player to swap control with a different side (so you are controlling the Atreides base and units, and 10 minutes later you control the Harkonnen base and units while the Atreides now use a generic AI to keep producing while you are not controlling it). You can spawn structures, so you can make a terrain that has no base, make the player moves away, and suddenly that base out of nowhere appears.

You can make that every single unit produced is cloacked, so sthealed tanks or sthealed harversters (no mod required, you no need to mod the units themselves). You can make that the player cannot select an specific unit or structure, you can make that even if you click on the repair icon, the structure stop being repaired on his own. You can make that an unit is always selected and you cannot deselect. You can make the screen to focus on 1 specific area, blocking the player for moving the screen when the mouse is on the edges. <--- you can make a whole cutscene where the player has 1 unit that will move on their own (as you are not allowed to select it), while the camera won´t move away so you won´t miss the cutscene.

You can alter the layout of the map midway! like, putting 5 cliffts on an area, telling the player to use a siege tank and shoot at them, and you may see explosions and those cliffs transforming into actually walkable terrain. You can trigger an "orbital attack" by making stuff to rain out of nowhere, you can make that the player, depending on which position on the map you click, you get the reinforcements on that specific coordinates (withouth moving or attacking anything prior to that, it is just based on where the mouse is on which part of the map and clicking into "nothing").

You can make events to trigger based on the difficulty played, so you can have a reinforcements for the player dropping 20 units on easy, 10 on normal, and not a single unit on hard, you can make that if you play on hard the cost and speed production for the player is the same as normal, so a combat tank may still cost 700 on easy, normal and hard. You can force the enemy AI to produce stuff with events not by their own chose, or even block an entire queue by making the player unable to produce a MCV even if you click. As soon as you click and queue bar starts, it will stop on their own.

You can make messages to appears on the top, bottom, left, right... on the screen, you can make them to show different colors, not always red, or show like on the other C&C where letters appears one by one instead all at once... add your own custom voice lines withouth almost any limit... You can alter which units appears on the starport, and how fast or slow those stocks changes, or just being able to raise the stocks of the quad faster than anything there, or justr straigh swap every unit on the starport and put infantry, trooper, sardaukar, fremen... to order. (this also no mod is required, just events on the regular editor).
Like this: (on this mission, every 5 minutes the units on the starport swaps back and forth, so for 5 minutes you can order devastators and missile tanks, on the next 5 minutes you can order siege  and deviators)

And this is the only tip of the iceberg man, this is only a part that you can do. Right now, in 2025, our imagination (and patiente to actually pull of that) is the onyl limit on what we can do know. I have been modding dune 2000 for 10 years, and the amount of stuff added in this last 2-3 years is way way more than everything that came prior to that.

I am going to show this small clip of a cutscene that triggers only when the player perform what it is the main objetive. This is a nod to the Mammoth tank presentation on Tiberian Sun, where you see the enemy testing the unit against multiple things. Here, since this is also a new structure, I wanted to give players full context of the strenfg of the turret. The trikes that move in position are AI controlled and they move on their own on those specific positions, to also showcase the range of this said turret and the accuracy:
https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxT7Kf9L6afh63Jy5OU-SiqymN6f-nyStN

I will only add that there is a discord focused on modding, and although we are not too many, there will always be at least 1 or 2 of us that can help you with any modification you can think of or need help if you want to join to learn more about it.

And finally, if you have the chance, play Summers solstice, that campaign is the peak of modding, adding new units, new structures, new visuals, new voice lines...  so many new cool things, including a hero unit that can transform into different units, from a tanky to make it easier to survive, or a high damage one to help you finish enemies. Play this and you will find how this specific custom campaign could be the "dune 2000 lost unreleased sequel".

Edited Monday at 02:12 PM by Cm_blast

[Fey]

10 hours ago, DoMoNiC_HuNtEr said:

Has anyone tried OpenRA?

oh yeah, we interact with those folks! they asked us for some of our new art assets a while back. we've ported over a couple they've made for OpenRA-based projects, but I'm not sure they've seen too much use yet. I worked personally with the prior dev on the Cameo project, who did stuff like this (streamable links expire eventually, so for posterity I'll just say this is a Terran v Protoss game in the OpenRA engine on the Tiberian Dawn temperate tileset I played back when I was testing bruv's new-at-the-time brutal AI)
https://streamable.com/0tp0h1

10 hours ago, DoMoNiC_HuNtEr said:

I figure OpenRA's D2K game/mod is the way to go. Lots of features that are fairly common in most modern Westwood RTS games can finally be utilized in Dune 2000.

no shade to the OpenRA folks, but it's simply not Dune 2000 ^^ that's a whole different engine. it certainly has its advantages, but make no mistake! there's plenty we can do with Dune 2000 nowadays! this old timer still has teeth!!

10 hours ago, DoMoNiC_HuNtEr said:

Since modding the original Dune 2000 is difficult as you can't add new gameplay mechanics

I recently released a debut mission to showcase the aesthetic of a new tileset we have (and the assets are available in both vanilla and expanded size to map with), as well as some new features made possible through Klofkac's ingenuity. here're the first ten minutes:
https://streamable.com/b8rwm8

amphibious units, shielded hovertech laser tanks, multi-shot bursts, explosive units and structures, ECMs throwing off homing rockets, repeat queue, a new hotkey for spamming structures... lots of stuff! Klofkac didn't just add new features; what he designed was an entire new system, essentially a programming language, atop which we could design our own features!

the thread detailing those recent experiments and their fruits is over here:

vanilla-sized tileset files for editing with are in the OP, and the second post in the thread has links to the example mission and some other stuff, like an editor capable of handling the expanded tileset size. remaps are also included for automatically swapping existing Arrakis maps to the new tileset, though they're not perfectly accurate, so some adjustments will probably be necessary on some maps. a notable example is the ice cliffs, which... I guess I could have remapped those to water instead for more precision, but there are no equivalents in the regular cliff tiles for some of those ice cliff pieces

I've also notated lotsa stuff in the example mission so even if the events themselves are confusing, the notes describe what they're meant to do

2 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

I will only add that there is a discord focused on modding, and although we are not too many, there will always be at least 1 or 2 of us that can help you with any modification you can think of or need help if you want to join to learn more about it.

that server would be over here ^^

stop by sometime! I'd be happy to help ya get some new systems figured out for your maps and stuff!

 

[DoMoNiC_HuNtEr]

Cool. I just got OpenRA and tried out it's Dune 2000. I was wrong, they still don't have all of the original campaign missions.

Have you guys been able to make a transport unit? Like an Armored Personnel Carrier from C&C? It's the one thing Dune 2000 doesn't have. That, and controllable Ornithopters.

[Fey]

19 hours ago, DoMoNiC_HuNtEr said:

Have you guys been able to make a transport unit? Like an Armored Personnel Carrier from C&C? It's the one thing Dune 2000 doesn't have. That, and controllable Ornithopters.

naww, APC logic ain't a thing. probably possible to design somehow with the new systems, but we do have custom airlift unit behavior. you can give Carryalls new behaviors easily that way, like automatically helping vehicles cross impassable cliffs.

the 'terrain restriction' behavior used on the new hovertech units can apply to a flying-type unit too, allowing traversal of cliffs and stuff. however, due to game logic, they can't pass over tiles with other units or structures in them, so... theoretically, it's feasible to make a "low flying" air unit that could navigate any kinda terrain, but not go over buildings and stuff. or something. maybe we get more proper flying unit logic later  who knows lol

[X3M]

I remember trying out the OpenRA version of Dune2000. What I remember is that siege tanks had much more  attack range. And the projectile looked and sounded differently. But this is all I remember. And it is such a long time ago. I am not even sure if it was really from OpenRA.

I liked that long ranged Siege tank.