8 ms·

The Making of Dune II

61 points by vquemener 6y ago

tosh 6y ago
on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dune_2_-_The_Building_of_a_Dynasty_1992 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dune_2_-_The_Building_of_a... love the game, remember playing the Mega Drive (Genesis) port and falling in love with RTS
- jkinudsjknds 6y ago
  Interface here was pretty frustrating but I was impressed with what I saw. It's clearly got a lot of nice little touches that I wouldn't have expected. It crashed for me after level 1. My dude said there was suspicion that I was a traitor or something and so I needed to answer trivia about unit stats in a super ambiguous open ended text response which I thought was hilarious. Can anyone tell me what happens if you get these questions right / wrong?
jakearmitage 6y ago
This website is so hard to read.
pontifier 6y ago
This was as favorite of mine in highschool. My friends and I would all play this after school. We found a bug that made the 1 player missions way too easy. The range of the sonic tanks wasn't really a range so much as a path that the waves took for the duration of the sound effect. We found that by turning the speed of the game up, the shots would travel way too far and made them really overpowered.
- wushupork 6y ago
  We must be around the same age. It was the same for me. I must have played all 3 houses so many times. I loved being able to control the units.
n3k5 6y ago
> ‘Dune II seems very old and clunky by today’s standards,’ says Joe. ‘The biggest single thing I should have added to it was the ability to drag-select units to allow a player to issue one order simultaneously to multiple units. Even though that seems like a simple feature, it was the key change that made C&C such a leap ahead of Dune II.’ That's what I was concerned about before I played through one of the three campaigns a few years ago — that the UI would seem unbearable after having played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. I found it actually quite OK after learning the keyboard shortcuts (of the Dos version). What actually ruined it for me and made me not want to play the other campaigns is the poor AI. Easy enemies would have been alright; I'm not that good at RTS games anyway and being able to finish each level on the first try was nice. But the opponents are so exceptionally stupid that it just got boring. There are a few open source clones of the engine that have online multi-player and some other additional features (such as the standard multi-select). But I'm not aware of one that lets you play the single-player campaigns against a decently fun AI. Waiiit a moment … just found out that I had missed something big: Dune Legacy lets you play the campaigns, not just single-player skirmish, against its improved AIs. I just tried selecting ‘hard’ and (with game speed at maximum) got completely wrecked on the second map. Wonderful! Dune (the adventureish one), on the other hand, is still a good game in its original form.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
I've never been much of a gamer. Dune II was one of the few games I ever really bit into. I played it more than anything else. Honestly, it was like "Okay. I completed the Gaming Experience. Enjoyed that. What else does life have?"
- tetris11 6y ago
  Yep. I genuinely think that teenagers play games because nothing else in their life is so rewarding. I was hooked until I got my first real job, and I guess the thrill of creating something of your own and seeing it produce results was a delayed gratification no game can match. That being said, I do love a good story, and gaming has really become a creative outlet for visual storytelling. I can recommend Disco Elysium to anyone.
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    I dunno, I hear what you're saying, and I too experience enjoyment from work, but I still play a lot of games on the side. The difference is effort vs reward, in that in my day job I spend hours hacking away for some reward, whereas in games there's (usually) enjoyment all throughout. Finished another playthrough of Factorio again the other day, each time I learn of my mistakes and improve on things again. This time I made a proper train network and used premade blueprints for it, it was really neat and things went pretty smoothly. 70 hours or so until first launch.
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      I didn't mean to throw shade on gaming. I meant to say that my Dune II plays were so satisfying, my gaming void was filled. I never enjoyed later games as much & eventually moved on from gaming. sidebar: I ran a Minecraft server for 4 years but that wasn't gaming so much as it was responsibility.
  - thatcodingdude 6y ago
    We're not reaping the benefits of work anymore, it's mostly trickling upwards now so not really interesting. Makes sense to spend time on video games where you feel a bit more rewarded.
CarelessExpert 6y ago
I cannot express how excited I was to see Herzog Zwei mentioned in this write-up. I play the heck out of that game as a kid and it's burned an indelible memory in my mind.
Lorin 6y ago
I believe house Ordos was made specifically for the games
- DylanSp 6y ago
  Not quite; House Ordos originates with the (semi-canon) Dune Encyclopedia, from 1984.
Viper512 6y ago
This guy ported it to the web. http://epicport.com/en http://epicport.com/en https://github.com/caiiiycuk/play-dune https://github.com/caiiiycuk/play-dune
dr_j_ 6y ago
Actually, you can still download and play this on modern platforms. I have it running on my Mac. http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/ http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/ and https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dune-ii-the-building-of-a-dynasty-1e7#download https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dune-ii-the-building-of-a... brings back great memories. Good read :-)
- bni 6y ago
  Dune Legacy is awesome. They added some RTS features that evolved after Dune II like drag select and control groups. Makes it a lot more playable today without impacting the fel of the game. I also like that you can get a much larger viewport than in the original, using todays very big resolution screens. I find having 2x scaling and a large Window works best, as 1x makes units too small.
stevekemp 6y ago
There's a great three-part discussion of Dune, and Dune II here: https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-1-dune-on-page-and-screen/ https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-1-... Click "next" to move forward to the following-parts.
TuringNYC 6y ago
Thanks for the share, this brought back great memories. The explanations in the article partly explain why the game was so enjoyable, and it is nice to hear the behind-the-scenes explanation for choices. Dune II had such an effect on me, I still remember the moments I played it in high school, the ambient music, the feeling of attach, and the feeling of spice running out. Oh, and level 7!

61 points by vquemener 6y ago

tosh 6y ago

on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dune_2_-_The_Building_of_a_Dynasty_1992 https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dune_2_-_The_Building_of_a... love the game, remember playing the Mega Drive (Genesis) port and falling in love with RTS

jkinudsjknds 6y ago
Interface here was pretty frustrating but I was impressed with what I saw. It's clearly got a lot of nice little touches that I wouldn't have expected. It crashed for me after level 1. My dude said there was suspicion that I was a traitor or something and so I needed to answer trivia about unit stats in a super ambiguous open ended text response which I thought was hilarious. Can anyone tell me what happens if you get these questions right / wrong?

jakearmitage 6y ago

This website is so hard to read.

pontifier 6y ago

This was as favorite of mine in highschool. My friends and I would all play this after school. We found a bug that made the 1 player missions way too easy. The range of the sonic tanks wasn't really a range so much as a path that the waves took for the duration of the sound effect. We found that by turning the speed of the game up, the shots would travel way too far and made them really overpowered.

wushupork 6y ago
We must be around the same age. It was the same for me. I must have played all 3 houses so many times. I loved being able to control the units.

n3k5 6y ago

> ‘Dune II seems very old and clunky by today’s standards,’ says Joe. ‘The biggest single thing I should have added to it was the ability to drag-select units to allow a player to issue one order simultaneously to multiple units. Even though that seems like a simple feature, it was the key change that made C&C such a leap ahead of Dune II.’ That's what I was concerned about before I played through one of the three campaigns a few years ago — that the UI would seem unbearable after having played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. I found it actually quite OK after learning the keyboard shortcuts (of the Dos version). What actually ruined it for me and made me not want to play the other campaigns is the poor AI. Easy enemies would have been alright; I'm not that good at RTS games anyway and being able to finish each level on the first try was nice. But the opponents are so exceptionally stupid that it just got boring. There are a few open source clones of the engine that have online multi-player and some other additional features (such as the standard multi-select). But I'm not aware of one that lets you play the single-player campaigns against a decently fun AI. Waiiit a moment … just found out that I had missed something big: Dune Legacy lets you play the campaigns, not just single-player skirmish, against its improved AIs. I just tried selecting ‘hard’ and (with game speed at maximum) got completely wrecked on the second map. Wonderful! Dune (the adventureish one), on the other hand, is still a good game in its original form.

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

I've never been much of a gamer. Dune II was one of the few games I ever really bit into. I played it more than anything else. Honestly, it was like "Okay. I completed the Gaming Experience. Enjoyed that. What else does life have?"

tetris11 6y ago
Yep. I genuinely think that teenagers play games because nothing else in their life is so rewarding. I was hooked until I got my first real job, and I guess the thrill of creating something of your own and seeing it produce results was a delayed gratification no game can match. That being said, I do love a good story, and gaming has really become a creative outlet for visual storytelling. I can recommend Disco Elysium to anyone.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  I dunno, I hear what you're saying, and I too experience enjoyment from work, but I still play a lot of games on the side. The difference is effort vs reward, in that in my day job I spend hours hacking away for some reward, whereas in games there's (usually) enjoyment all throughout. Finished another playthrough of Factorio again the other day, each time I learn of my mistakes and improve on things again. This time I made a proper train network and used premade blueprints for it, it was really neat and things went pretty smoothly. 70 hours or so until first launch.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    I didn't mean to throw shade on gaming. I meant to say that my Dune II plays were so satisfying, my gaming void was filled. I never enjoyed later games as much & eventually moved on from gaming. sidebar: I ran a Minecraft server for 4 years but that wasn't gaming so much as it was responsibility.
- thatcodingdude 6y ago
  We're not reaping the benefits of work anymore, it's mostly trickling upwards now so not really interesting. Makes sense to spend time on video games where you feel a bit more rewarded.

CarelessExpert 6y ago

I cannot express how excited I was to see Herzog Zwei mentioned in this write-up. I play the heck out of that game as a kid and it's burned an indelible memory in my mind.

Lorin 6y ago

I believe house Ordos was made specifically for the games

DylanSp 6y ago
Not quite; House Ordos originates with the (semi-canon) Dune Encyclopedia, from 1984.

Viper512 6y ago

This guy ported it to the web. http://epicport.com/en http://epicport.com/en https://github.com/caiiiycuk/play-dune https://github.com/caiiiycuk/play-dune

dr_j_ 6y ago

Actually, you can still download and play this on modern platforms. I have it running on my Mac. http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/ http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/ and https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dune-ii-the-building-of-a-dynasty-1e7#download https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dune-ii-the-building-of-a... brings back great memories. Good read :-)

bni 6y ago
Dune Legacy is awesome. They added some RTS features that evolved after Dune II like drag select and control groups. Makes it a lot more playable today without impacting the fel of the game. I also like that you can get a much larger viewport than in the original, using todays very big resolution screens. I find having 2x scaling and a large Window works best, as 1x makes units too small.

stevekemp 6y ago

There's a great three-part discussion of Dune, and Dune II here: https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-1-dune-on-page-and-screen/ https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-1-... Click "next" to move forward to the following-parts.

TuringNYC 6y ago

Thanks for the share, this brought back great memories. The explanations in the article partly explain why the game was so enjoyable, and it is nice to hear the behind-the-scenes explanation for choices. Dune II had such an effect on me, I still remember the moments I played it in high school, the ambient music, the feeling of attach, and the feeling of spice running out. Oh, and level 7!