[HN Gopher] Dune: The Battle for Arrakis - Extended Reference (2...
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Dune: The Battle for Arrakis - Extended Reference (2003)
Author : tosh
Score : 109 points
Date : 2020-07-07 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ledmeister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ledmeister.com)
| petepete wrote:
| > Saboteurs can pass over enemy walls, and may do so without
| slowing down.
|
| What? I played through Dune 2 several times with every house and
| had no idea about that!
| humanistbot wrote:
| Loved this game! If you want to play it in a slightly more modern
| version, the OpenRA folks have done made a pretty faithful
| version of it, which runs on their "clean-room implementation" of
| the original Command & Conquer engine:
| https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA
| fegu wrote:
| I remember Dune 2 fit on two floppies (2x 1.44MB). That is
| impressive. It was compressed and decompressed itself on install,
| but still.
| glandium wrote:
| I think it was 4 floppies.
| hursortue wrote:
| The text formatting of this document is great.
|
| Reminds me of all the other gamefaqs which were just plain text,
| e.g.
|
| https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactic...
| dwighttk wrote:
| I can remember my friend patiently explaining to me that House
| Harkonnen didn't actually have invincible troops just because the
| guy said "our invincible Harkonnen troops" in a cutscene. I was
| all like "we should play as those guys!"
| novaRom wrote:
| This game was released first for MS DOS in 1992. It was amazing
| experience - unlike many games of that time (most popular were
| side-scrollers like Prince of Persia), it required mouse.
| fabiensanglard wrote:
| What a coincidence, for the past week I have been looking for the
| author of the never published book "Dune II - Insider's Guide"
| which was allegedly based on the featured article.
|
| Anybody has more information about it?
|
| https://twitter.com/fabynou/status/1280304687594397696
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Off-topic, but I saw the 1984 Dune film in theaters. It remains
| the only film I've been to where the theater handed out a sheet
| of paper with a glossary.
|
| How familiar with the books do you need to be to play this?
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| You don't have to be familiar at all. I've played the game
| first (and enjoyed the built-in animated encyclopedia, just for
| fun - that wasn't necessary either), watched the movie in some
| years and read the book in more than a decade (when I grew up).
| cornstalks wrote:
| > _How familiar with the books do you need to be to play this?_
|
| Assuming this game is like the Dune II computer game: you don't
| need any familiarity. For example, House Ordos (one of the
| three major houses in the Dune RTS games) isn't even in the
| books if I recall correctly. I grew up playing (and loving)
| Dune II (and all its sequels) long before I ever read Dune.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| If you haven't read the book, do yourself a favour and read it.
| I envy you, you'll be able to read it for the first time.
|
| Movie is also great. It's just not finished. :(
| rebuilder wrote:
| Jodorowsky's version?
| tunap wrote:
| Villeneuve's, hopefully...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2020_film)
| tildedave wrote:
| I'm really excited for the movie and the casting looks
| incredible so far. I wonder how the 2 movie split is
| going to work narratively. The book itself has kind of a
| perfect 3 act setup but I'm not sure breaking the story
| at the end of the book's part 1 (or halfway through part
| 2) is going to feel very satisfying.
| toast0 wrote:
| I think you could stop as a cliffhanger when Paul and
| Jessica escape from the worm, and are confronted by
| Stilgar. Then you start with a knife battle for the
| second movie, and who doesn't like a knife battle?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I have high hopes for Villeneuve, but Lynch's dune is
| still one of my favourite sci-fi movies from 1980s.
| milesward wrote:
| [insert instant best friends meme here]
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Of course not. That would have been horrible. Lynch's
| version is great: it has superb sets and production design,
| actors, music. One thing it lacks is screentime: first half
| of the book takes 80% time, while the second half is rushed
| in the remaining 20%. If we could have 2 (3) part movies in
| 1980s, it could have been extremely great.
| toast0 wrote:
| > first half of the book takes 80% time, while the second
| half is rushed in the remaining 20%
|
| Yeah, once you get to the end of the first half, it's
| like oh crap, we're out of time, montage montage, end
| battle, fight with Sting, plot plot plot, end credits.
| The film that's supposed to be released this year is
| reportedly only the first half of the book; I guess we'll
| see how that goes.
| usrusr wrote:
| If you haven't read the books and haven't played the game and
| want to do both, do the game first. RTS need a lot of
| suspension of disbelief, all that units getting created in
| seconds, then barely move out of visual range from the factory
| before getting destroyed, it makes no sense in any fantasy
| world. Familiarity with the source material will only make it
| worse. I'd say that having faint memories of having once seen
| the Lynch movie is the best level of preparation for the game.
|
| Having played the game will in no way spoil the books.
| redisman wrote:
| I played it at 8 years old when I didn't know almost any
| English other than what I could deduce from what the commands
| did on the screen. The first day of English in school I went to
| the glossary to verify many of the commands. Going back to it
| now after reading a few of the books is a better experience but
| the story is fairly bare-bones in the game and you can tell
| that Fremen are brown-clothed powerful infantry without knowing
| their lore.
|
| As others have said the controls have aged fairly badly if
| you're used to all the quality-of-life improvements in modern
| games.
| jm4 wrote:
| Not at all. The book is worth reading though. The 1984 movie is
| garbage and doesn't do the source material any justice.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Lynch's screening requirements are the stuff of legend. Isn't
| this also the movie whose screening notes require a +2 dB
| setting on the theatre amps?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I'd forgotten David Lynch's directed... but of course can't
| forget Sting's appearance!
| [deleted]
| ido wrote:
| If it's similar to the DOS original, not at all.
| cbanek wrote:
| This was my first RTS game and I was hooked! So many fond
| memories of running over baddies with my spice harvester!
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Dune 2 was great, but Dune 1 was even better. It will forever
| have a warm place in my heart. A completely different game,
| though.
| petercooper wrote:
| Dune 1 is probably the most atmospheric 90s DOS game I've
| played. There are few games that will sweep you into a world
| like that.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Star Control 2 immediately sprang to mind.
| crocal wrote:
| The game was developed by Philip Ulrich, already behind the
| Ark of Captain Blood. The guy is a genius. This [1] is a
| short video of him explaining how the game was developed,
| alas in French only.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/5nHX_74mjss
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| What kind of person can block video titled "Dune : il faut
| sauver la planete des sables | Retrogaming Made in France |
| ARTE" from being viewed in certain countries?!
| MayeulC wrote:
| Arte itself, maybe? I hit this quite frequently in the
| opposite direction. Try invidio.us, or duckduckgo. A VPN
| as a last resort. Or other channels.. I'd have uploaded
| it, but my upload is _very_ slow today...
|
| The documentary is nice, if a bit short. The target is a
| general audience, so you might not be missing out _that_
| much.
| dpio wrote:
| Dune 1 fan here too. I will never forget the thrill of taking
| over a sietch with overwhelming force.
| slim wrote:
| It was great indeed, if you did not wait forever for charcters
| to animate on the screen. At the time, I finished the game in
| like 1h after installing a TSR that accelerated the clock
| speed.
| dmichulke wrote:
| ... with the most fascinating thing being that it starts as RPG
| and ends as kinda turn based strategy.
|
| Also, it's a great intro to the Dune lore...
| alasdair_ wrote:
| Games that create a completely new genre (in this case, Real-Time
| Strategy) are rare. Dune II is the even-more rare case of a new
| genre being created at the same time as the game itself being
| quite excellent and popular at the same time.
|
| I've fond childhood memories of playing this for many hours.
| Great game!
| subsubzero wrote:
| I have the same fond memories of this game. I fell in love with
| the books and was amazed at how great a game it was. Played it
| over and over with all the different houses and their strengths
| and weaknesses. Such a anomaly that a movie/book based game was
| that well put together.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The little cartoon animated heads in the cut scenes was
| pretty cool for the time, and I remember trying different
| exploits on the last level just to see what could work, iirc
| expanding your base/towers over the cpu bases was the only
| way I could stop the harkonnen from respawning.(when I was
| house atreides)
| jandrese wrote:
| I remember coming to it a bit later and being annoyed by
| several aspects of the game, even though it was obviously
| groundbreaking.
|
| In particular I remember my units just sitting around allowing
| themselves to be shot by enemy units that had longer range
| instead of moving two meters to get in weapons range. I recall
| it wasn't good at letting you form groups and issue mass
| commands too.
|
| C&C and especially Warcraft really nailed the UI and gameplay
| details for the RTS genre a couple of years later.
| kayoone wrote:
| It was the first game of its kind, the UI and the AI
| obviously had many weaknesses which Westwood improved upon in
| later games (while C&C still had issues that are annoying by
| todays standards). That being said, Dune2 for 10 year old me
| was magical, like many games of this time.
| forgotmypwbctbi wrote:
| i played through d2 before c&c and loved it. after c&c, same
| feelings as you. context...
| tnecniv wrote:
| Indeed. I think the original C&C is still pretty playable. It
| might not be fun after a few levels compared to a modern RTS,
| but all they core elements of the modern game are there.
|
| Dune II does not hold up in the same way (and I love the
| source material). Not being able to select multiple units at
| once is alone a game breaker.
| davedx wrote:
| > Not being able to select multiple units at once is alone
| a game breaker.
|
| Well, it's really not, because the game was fantastic and a
| lot of people enjoyed playing it. Game breaking would have
| been if when you played against another player they had
| multi select and you didn't.
|
| Modern RTS players get very good at issuing actions to many
| specific units individually at high speed, it's an
| acknowledged skill today.
|
| If your only strategy is a mass siege tank zerg, then yeah,
| no multi select is a little bit inconvenient.
| tunap wrote:
| You could always target a string of consecutive units and
| send the leader to (x) and the rest would follow. And get
| picked off 1 by 1 if you forgot about them long enough.
| jandrese wrote:
| However, if the leader stopped when he got in weapons
| range the rest of the units would just sit back there and
| watch him fight. Westwood learned some lessons from Dune
| 2 that made Command and Conquer much better to play.
|
| I'm a bit surprised there isn't a remake of Dune 2 out
| there that fixes the UI quibbles and updates the
| graphics. There was a lot of neat stuff in the game (it
| was surprisingly feature rich for being basically the
| first of its genre) but few people these days remember
| it. Maybe someone will get the rights for a remake when
| the new movie comes out? Sadly Westwood is buried out
| back in the EA studio graveyard.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Well, I found this within one minute of searching: https:
| //github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE/blob/master/enhancement...
|
| Engine or full reimplementation are common for previously
| widely popular games, some are even supported by the
| developers: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/05/ea-to-
| open-source-part...
| tunap wrote:
| IDK about Dune 2, but Dune 2000 has a ton of
| expansions/mods on the moddb.
|
| On that note, there was an official reboot to C&C
| released last month.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer_Remaste
| red...
| MayeulC wrote:
| More importantly, Dune2000 can be played using the open
| source engine OpenRA, see my sibling comment: EA
| announced it would release some old source code to help
| with the project.
| grawprog wrote:
| I've never played dune 2, but I played Warcraft then c&c, c&c
| felt like such a huge improvement over the first Warcraft.
| You could select far larger groups, the pace was faster and
| building was much more free. It wasn't really until Warcraft
| 2 and StarCraft that it really caught up to the command and
| conquer series.
| paulmd wrote:
| OG Warcraft is one of those games that was groundbreaking
| at the time but is nigh unplayable to modern sensibilities.
|
| Warcraft II is still very retro and missing a lot of
| quality-of-life stuff (especially the original pre-
| Battle.net edition) but it's at least tolerable. OG
| Warcraft is nails on chalkboard level bad.
| vertis wrote:
| I remember C&C being hard until you realised that you could
| ring your base with sandbags that the enemy would never
| destroy.
| elihu wrote:
| ...or build a line of sandbags across the map and ring
| the enemy base.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| in unpatched version, you can place sandbags near enemy
| tanks, click sell button, move your cursor inbetween the
| sandbag and the enemy tank and click to sell the enemy
| tank.
| hyperpl wrote:
| I agree. It was one of my favorites growing up. I remember
| being blown away when I installed my first ISA SB16.
|
| I didn't realize this game was ported to Mega Drive. Must be
| awkward trying to control the cursor with a gamepad having
| grown up playing these games using a mouse.
| robin_reala wrote:
| There was a Mega Mouse accessory that was supported by
| various games, but it doesn't look like Dune is one of them (
| http://web.archive.org/web/20120304195213/http://my.execpc.c.
| ..)
| blondin wrote:
| played it on the sega genesis first!! before i even knew a pc
| version existed.
|
| the soundtrack and the sound effects were particularly amazing
| to me. i can still remember most of them clearly in my head
| after all these years... "yes sir, moving on!" "construction
| complete" "reporting... acknowledged!"
|
| this game inspired command and conquer in my opinion!
| RangerScience wrote:
| Wait, Dune II was the _start_ of the RTS genre? That 's
| amazing.
| petercooper wrote:
| Start of the genre really, but not strictly the "first RTS"
| which was probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herzog_Zwei
| .. the term RTS was coined for Dune II, however, and it was
| the first popular such game.
| RTSlave wrote:
| Wow you're good at history. If you would like to moderate
| both the Transformers site, and Lord of the rings, send me
| an email. Subscribed! <3
| inetknght wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ancient_Art_of_War
|
| > _published by Broderbund in 1984. It is generally
| recognized as one of the first real-time strategy or real-
| time tactics games._
| Keyframe wrote:
| That would be Herzog Zwei, but Dune II was definitely the
| popular one, a trend-setter.
| Grimm665 wrote:
| This is why I felt bad for the PUBG devs, who seemed to have
| successfully pushed the Battle Royale genre with a game that
| wasn't perfect but that they put a lot of effort into, only to
| be outsold in days by Fortnite upon its release.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > only to be outsold in days by Fortnite upon its release.
|
| I'm not sure it was days, but the part that's kind of galling
| is that Fortnite was a wave defense game that had some pretty
| lackluster reviews, so the developers instead turned it into
| a battle royale game because of PUBG's unexpected popularity,
| and it was the battle royale version that made waves.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Arguably, DayZ was the first to popularize the battle royale
| genre.
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(page generated 2020-07-07 23:00 UTC)