Dune 2 Redux Beta 1 Is Out!

[neonext]

Can be downloaded at:

http://www.angelfire.com/empire/dune2redux/

any problems, please post here

[Gobalopper]

Well other then being impossible to win it has been great. :)

Now available from our servers as well:

http://www.dune2k.com/download.php?id=569

[Desert_Eagle25]

this is great!

[DukeLeto]

Man, you da bomb! ;D

If anyone has Emporer, try my Corrino's Revenge Beta v.1 (While we're on the topic of Betas):

Since Gobbalopper hasn't uploaded it yet...  :'(

[neonext]

i'm sure you guys will start noticing all the wierd bugs. i have somewhat of a list drawn up already from alpha testing. i will start an official buglist soon but until then no mass complaining about certain things ;D

i'm glad some of you are enjoying it already, and i hope that continues.

[Desert_Eagle25]

alright umm....you can see outside of the map...theres no tool-tips..you can only control 1 units at a time...these bug me, but you gamr still rocks!!

[rheo]

Whee, Dune 2 for windows :)

Your game manages to capture the flair and style of the classic pretty well.

Here are a few things I noticed, without any sort of dispraise, of course (much of that you'll probably know already):

- my Atreides harvester has some red parts, making it look quite psychedelic

- it seems it's not possible to chose your side yet

- the scrolling of the map is quite a bit too slow

- the graphics in the lowermost area of the screen aren't removed properly, e.g. the mouse cursor leaves artifacts there

- if a unit shoots but misses the target, the bullets still keep flying pretty far, probably further than the unit's range actually

- the game will get quite sluggish and unresponsive soon if you build a lot of units, even on my 1GHz Athlon

- there aren't any health bars yet, not for your own units, and not for checking how much damage has been done to the enemy either

The click-the-factory-first interface is somewhat cumbersome. I understand that Dune II had the same interface, but then Dune II also had no group selection and some other interface weirdnesses (at least by modern standards). Also, I noticed that there isn't too much stuff in the menu area yet. Therefore, how would it be to add a "quick button" on the menu bar for every factory you have? Clicking the quick button would select the respective factory building without the need to scroll around the map. Also the graphic of the quick button could indicate how far the building process in that factory has progressed, giving the player that information without having to select the factory at all.

Please understand that I'm not trying to criticize your work. As your project is beta, I'm trying to point out some issues hoping that it might help improve the game until it is finished.

Anyway: Congratulations, and keep up the good work!

[LPC-Disco_Inferno]

Lol i no it`s a beta but i have some serious problems.

I have error collors flashing under my screen.

u can build units but fac will not deploy them

some buildings i place cant be seen

get no harvester

maybee my pc who has the errors

anyway nice work and keep up the work!!!

Bless

[neonext]

oh one thing i need to mention is that the building restrictions is not working right now, so if you are placing a structure you just built, and it is all red, you can still put it there - in fact you can put it anywhere on the map as long as it's on rock and nothing occupies the space. there are some bugs which makes spots occupied even tho they are not, and i will work those out.

[neonext]

- it seems it's not possible to chose your side yet

you can change what house you want in the menu by left clicking the name of the house, you can pick teams by right clicking the names, and for what i think you are talking about, you can select which color you would like to be by editing the d2redux.ini file (i have not built that into the menu yet, but u can change it)

[neonext]

ok, here's the bug list i've got going so far. please add to this- wierd flashing on bottom of the screen (fixed)- build menu indexes aren't saved (fixed)- siege tank turrets are not properly positioned (someone can probably fix this by editing UNITS_A)- smoke for units/structures is misplaced when unit/structure is on edge of screen.- cells sometimes act like they are occupied when they clearly aren't- there are no restrictions on where you can build structures (aside from terrain) and the placement cursors display incorrectly (red instead of white).- the ai players' harvesters sometimes sit around and watch the sky instead of looking for spice- harversts rarely ever know how to get back to refineries (fixed)- harvester deposting areas of refinerys dont show in the correct position when the structure is on the edge of the screen- some of your units sometimes dont listen to your orders to attack- mcv's start out with wierd colors- right edges of big units (such as harvesters) are not properly colored- ai units don't properly move out of the way so that other units can be built (also positioning for base defence) (fixed)- house of WOR and heavy troopers can be built even though their weapons haven't been added yet (fixed)- structure costs are lowered to 1 per cycle instead of 0 when in free mode- infantry colors are not all properly converted (or are stored wrong)- selected structures greater than 2x2 still uses a 2x2 icon- queueing other units queues the original queued unit- various clipping problems with units/turrets/cursors (disappearing/cutting on edge of screen) THIS IS SLOWING GAME DOWN A LOT, BUT IS A LONG PAINFUL PROGRESS TO FIX WITH SMOOTH SCROLLING- all but the south-east section of structures are drawn over units and shots.- ai players choose to not attack at all sometimes- ai players hate building harvesters, no matter how much they are told to (fixed)- canceling building orders doesn't erase the progress done so far- structures built on map edges don't place units they have built (fixed)- the ai doesn't like to attack color 0 (blue)- units sometimes make an incomplete move and thus create problems for the map data (not to mention looking odd, sitting in between spots)- ai units will sometimes move around instead of attacking enemy structures right next to them- scroll rate is affected by game speed- ai units will not return fire unless they were sitting there doing nothing to begin with (fixed)- unit bases and turrets instantly rotate- single soldier is shown as multiple soldiers in build menu- random freezes, possibly related to single soldiers, harvesters and/or refineries.and missing features badly needed so far:- adjustable scroll rate (game menu/saved)- unit/structure costs (no more "free mode", but i'll leave that as an option) (done)- finished end of game stats screen- message when a player is defeated (done)- health bars- color pick in skirmish screen- spice that is removed when harvested- fps display (done)- in game scroll speed adjust (done)- in game game speed ajust (done)not to mention the #1 concern at the moment, which is the speed of the game. i will work this out through a long course of optimizing the code. there are probably some quick fixes, however. For example, maybe adding lines in the ini file that allows you to set the max number of units, max number of path finding cycles, etc.

[Desert_Eagle25]

also, are we able to control multiple units at a time?

[LPC-Disco_Inferno]

yes we are!

Bless

[rheo]

you can change what house you want in the menu by left clicking the name of the house, you can pick teams by right clicking the names, and for what i think you are talking about, you can select which color you would like to be by editing the d2redux.ini file (i have not built that into the menu yet, but u can change it)

oh i see... in the menu with all the different houses, i thought i could chose my side by left-clicking on the one i want. instead i always get to use the first entry in that list and the rest is ai players, but i can cycle through the different houses for every list position.

also, are we able to control multiple units at a time?

you can already draw a rectangle around the units with the mouse and so select a whole group at once.

[Desert_Eagle25]

didn't work on mine. I clicked, then dragged, yet nothing.

[TonyD]

Cool start ui thing u got going there, much better then my start ui.

Ok Im gonna release a version of mine too, hope it wont bother u much...

[TonyD]

Its out now on in Dune Editing called "Dune Legacy"

[neonext]

controls for the alpha map editor:

+/- on the keypad = make cursor larger and smaller

arrow keys = make the map bigger or smaller

1,2,3,4 = place starting positions, best to do this last of course

s = save map, however there is no confirmation on the screen, you just have to trust it ;D

the map editor, like the game, will automatically load newmap.map every time you run it. unlike the game though, if it doesn't find the file it will still load, but with a blank map. to make and play different maps without losing them, just rename them to edit and rename them to play (a way of selecting what map to play will be added hopefully soon).

[neonext]

i need to know some info. for those of you who are experiencing slowdown in the game, have you first of all tried 640x480 resolution because it i believe i released it set at 1024x768. also, the game speed was left on fast i think, which a reason why it may have seemed so hard at first, not to mention the fact this increases the amount of work your processor has to do to play the game the way it should.

so, for those of you with slowdown, please try:

1) lowering the resolution

2) slowing the game speed

3) choosing the play a 1v1 game

and tell me the results of each, i would appreciate it very much. i want to get this game as playable as possible on a wide range of machines.

[rheo]

i haven't actually tried to change the screen resolution, but i've chosen different game speeds. the game isn't slow at the start, even though it's slower than dune legacy (which may or may not be a good thing). however, if there are many units, like 20 or more, the game will become slow, no matter the speed setting. this also shows in the mouse cursor always lagging behind my mouse movements with a short delay. i noticed that the game became considerably faster again when i scrolled away from my large group of quads and tanks, even though they were of course still there, just not visible to me. that makes me suspect that it's the drawing of the units that's slowing the game down.

[neonext]

thanks for the feedback rheo.

do you know what kind of video card you have, and how much video memory it has?

[rheo]

the computer i ran dune 2 redux on had a 1GHz Athlon and a geforce 2 mx 400. the guys at hp sure provide some crappy manuals with their hardware (there's no manual for the graphics card, only one for the complete system saying that the graphics card has "lots of memory"), but i think those cards usually have at least 64 MB.

i also tried the game on another computer with a Athlon XP with 1,6 GHz and a SiS 315 graphics card, and the slowdown wasn't that noticealbe (though still there). as i don't think the budget card outperforms the geforce 2, it's probably because of the faster processor.

[Frodo]

i am deeply impressed with your game neonext. I only noticed the one bug and that is that when I scrolled down, it kept blinking and was flashing at the bottom of the screen. But other than that I was deeply impressed. ;D

[vidiware]

Well my game are freezing sometimes... and i think it has something to do with harvesters... and the little infantry texture problem

[Frodo]

yeah, but those little bugs will be fixed in the next version right?