Dune Civ2 & ToT scenarios development

[wonx2150]

Moderator Action: This very old abandoned thread by Wonx2150 has now become the tracking & development thread for Dune Civ2 & ToT scenarios. - Blake00

Blake's 2022 Civ2 MGE Dune 2 Dynasty Scenario Project - IN PROGRESS :
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/dune-civ2-tot-scenarios-development.285644/post-16573596



Blake's 2024 Test of Time Dune 2 Dynasty and Dune 2000 Scenario Projects - ON HOLD:
While Blake has done some preliminary work on a ToT conversion of the above scenario as well as a special Dune 2K remaster version, they are on hold until the original MGE version is completed & released.

Wonx2150's 2008 Civ2 MGE HoMM3 Scenario Project - DEAD :
Wonx2150 never finished his project however he did release a alpha version that Blake has fixed up a bit so people can check it out.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/dune-civ2-tot-scenarios-development.285644/post-16324700



Wonx2150's Original Post:

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This is an experiment Ive come up with. Ive been considering creating a Dune related mod later on, after my Command and Conquer mod so this is a demo of my ideas .
Let us know what you think I'm not going to expand this significantly for the near future so if you want to be my guest

Download:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=10208

 

[Gelion]

I am afraid there's not much to comment on. However if you have an outline I will be more than happy to discuss it.

 

[CivPartisan]

Interesting map...

Gelion is right...you might want to post some more info here in the thread about your thoughts...we could generate some ideas for this...it is a good idea to make a Dune scenario...it's the perfect clash of civs battling it out...

Anyone got any spice for this scenario?

Civpartisan

 

[wonx2150]

I'm not sure Ive had a lot of thoughts I'm mostly working on my C&C mod atm this was just an idea. Ill post any thoughts i have Ive not got any on my mind right now .

It will be a while till i do anything with this mod .

 

[alcibaides]

Would your Dune MOD be based on the planet Arrakis during the period of the original Dune book? Or would it be based on the whole Dune Universe spanning the whole time period of all of Frank Herbet's books?

I think that the latter would be much cooler because it would allow you to have a really detailed tech tree, and you would have to have seperate tech trees for each civ (i.e. Ben-Gesserit, House Harkonnen, House Corinno, House Atreides, Bene Tleilax, Spacing Guild, Honored matres, etc.)

Good luck

 

[wonx2150]

I agree with you GarethMann, that it would make it more interesting if it was to be based on the whole Dune Universe. I hadn't had that though so thanks. Id only worked on what the games and movie tells me haven't not read the books. Although its on my list of things to do.

Unfortunately I'm not sure if ill ever get around it. So if anyone wants to play with the idea be my guest . I'm on holiday at the moment then when I'm back home we shall. See although if i do any civ 2 modding it will probably be my C&C mod.

Thanks for your comment though and the idea

 

[Blake00]

Unfortunately I'm not sure if ill ever get around it. So if anyone wants to play with the idea be my guest . I'm on holiday at the moment then when I'm back home we shall. See although if i do any civ 2 modding it will probably be my C&C mod.

It's a shame you never finished this mate. While there's a few other Dune scenarios out there for Civ2 that I've found over the years none of them quite captured the feel of the game, which despite the convo in this thread I can see was definitely more the inspiration for your work than the books or films (as you've got tanks from the game and playable Ordos).

Sadly your work is a bit too early alpha and incomplete for me to finish as I just lack the time but I'm tempted to take one of the other existing Dune scenarios and do a Dune 2 game graphics mod for them as I've got access to a lot of the extracted assets from Westwood classic. Shall see how we go! No promises lol. Either way at least my remaster of your very cool and other much much more finished Command & Conquer scenario you mentioned here will be finished soon!

In the meantime while testing your file I noticed a transparency glitch in your desert sands ocean replacement resulting in nasty visual glitches. I've corrected them and also chucked in a title image. I'll attached the modified copy to this post should anyone wanna play around with it. These visual fixes also gives me something presentable for my big Civ2 HD tour video where I wanna do a Dune fan mods tribute section!

 

[Blake00]

I'm tempted to take one of the other existing Dune scenarios and do a Dune 2 game graphics mod for them as I've got access to a lot of the extracted assets from Westwood classic. Shall see how we go! No promises lol.

I know I shouldn't but I couldn't help myself..

 

[Blake00]

As I hinted above I've been working on a Civ2 Dune 2 Dynasty Scenario side project over the last couple of years. I knew back when I started it that it would probably be my last ever MGE mod before moving to ToT and I also have a rather fun idea where I'll do a special enhanced Dune 2000 version of this scenario for Test of Time as ToT can better handle the Dune 2K high colour & higher res assets (& I can access Dune 2k's assets using the same extraction programs I used to get things for my C&C Africa and Red Alert 2 scenarios). Anyway here's where things are at with this project...

• Created a map where Civ2’s land is the rock and Civ2’s ocean is the sand inspired by David Greenfield's CivDune scenario and Wonx2150's Dune 2 scenario.
• Using David Emery's Dune 2: The Battle for Arrakis scenario’s buildings as inspiration I converted even more of Civ 2 buildings over to Dune 2 equivalents. Dune 2 had far less buildings however it used an upgrade system for many buildings so I brought that across (level 2, 3 etc). For buildings with no suitable Dune 2 equivalent I used Dune universe inspired buildings with graphics from Cryo’s Dune 1.
• Added Atreides, Harkonnen, & Ordos houses from Dune 2 as playable factions. Also added Fremen, Mercenary Guild, & House Corrino (Emperor) from the popular Super Dune 2 & Dune 2 eXtended Edition mods to make things more diverse and interesting.
• Increased all infantry/human unit squad sizes from 1 or 3 up to 5 due to Dune 2’s infantry units being so small and being hard to see in Civ 2.
• Gave the Saboteur a little dark grey cape like it has in its big Dune 2 portrait due to them normally appearing too plain & similar to Light Infantry in Dune 2.
• Gave Imperial Sardaukar dark hazard suits & green visors like they have in Dune 2k & David Lynch’s film due to them normally appearing identical to Heavy Infantry in Dune 2. Gave them red rocket launcher tips like in Dune 2 portrait though along with a tint of House Corrino’s pink/purple (pure dark grey disappears in rocks).
• Gave the Fedaykin Elite a little brown cape & darker weaponry like the Fremen unit has in its Dune 2 portrait due to them normally appearing identical to Heavy Infantry in Dune 2. Gave their weapons blue tips to further differentiate them from regular units.
• Used Spy slot for Deviator which should allow it to bribe units and cities which is the closest Civ 2 gets to capturing other units.
• Gave Death Hand access to all factions for better balancing as Civ 2’s systems are too different to Dune 2’s so it’s too much of an advantage for just the Harkonnens to have. Plus in the Dune universe all the major houses had atomics and even the Atreides used them to destroy the shield wall in the battle against the Emperor & Harkonnens.
• Created a lighter ‘Heavy Hand’ variant of the Death Hand missile in the cruise missile slot to take advantage of Civ2’s conventional missile combat systems.
• Made the original Death Hand bigger so it’s more different to the Heavy Hand missile.
• Gave Ornithopter access to all factions for better balancing as Civ 2’s systems are too different to Dune 2’s so it’s too much of an advantage for just the Atreides to have. Plus in the Dune universe all the major houses on Dune had access to Ornithopters of various designs.
• Made the Dune 2 Frigate an accessible unit in the Civ2 Bomber slot to better suit Civ 2’s aerial attack/defence combat systems. Ornithopter’s in the fighter slot will be their counter. All factions except Fremen will have access to Frigates (they’ll be compensated in other ways). In the Dune universe and the films in particular Frigates were used to fire down on surface armies a number of times.
• Made Carryals a naval transport unit so that it can carry Spice Harvesters & other units through the desert and be vulnerable to worms.
• Made Sand Worms a powerful naval unit so that they can attack Carryals along with ground units and bases on the edge of the deserts (oceans).
• Made a special Fremen Sand Worm Rider unit (to help compensate for their lack of Frigate air power). Worm Riding was introduced in Emperor and was not in Dune 2 so I created some quick and dirty custom graphics for it.
• All factions bases start off with the standard Construction Site graphics however once city walls are built the Fremen get a walled version of the Construction Site (using Dune 2 Silo walls graphics), while the major houses get the WOR graphics (as it has that cool fortress / mini palace look), the Emperor of course gets a walled version of the big Dune 2 Palace, while the Mercenaries get a walled version of the Dune 2 Starport. This gives the factions a bit of extra individuality and allows the use of more Dune 2 building graphics for fun. I also rounded their edges a bit to squeeze them better into the Civ2 diamond cell.
• Replaced special resources with Dune 1 Sietchs as Dune 2 didn’t have controllable/extractable special resources other than spice but in Dune 1 you fought to control mining and farming Sietchs.
• Created custom coast lines (BIG job) using ripped dune 2 rock edges, the 2D square to 2.5D isometric conversion was tough. I used diamond cutouts to grab corners and bits I wanted and then pixel by pixel corrected all the joining bits until things looked okay. In the end it worked out really good and different to what we’re used to in Civ2!
• Since the sand is ocean then other than using the sporadic whale and fish slots I can’t decorate it with big orange spice fields, or can I heh. Using the special railways over ocean decoration trick @Metro Polis used for our Civ2 HoMM2 mod I was indeed able to create large spice formations in the deserts!
• Added custom GUI window borders & fillers based on Dune 2’s original GUI.
• Added custom font colours into GUI using tricks learned while making Civ2 HoMM2 mod.

Dune themed buildings - Although I'm going to redo the icons as they're too blurry.

Early promotional shot (faking ground units in sand ocean).. will probably redo the GUI (pillars/rails were bigger in Dune 2) and double all the imported unit sizes as they're too small and only look good zoomed in.

 

[Blake00]

As planned I've changed the GUI pillar/rail thingos to a bigger size to better suite the classic Dune 2 GUI look and I've pretty much finished setting up the map and scenario now. I've created double sized units but they look terrible so I'm keeping the 1:1 units as the main and offering the 2x as an optional. Here's an updated promotional shot...
(Click to expand)

I've also created an intro video (plus a death video) and 1080P Civ2 main menu replacement...
(Click to expand)

The Civ2 spaceship is now a Guild Heighliner orbiting Dune and yes I've made custom spaceship launch and victory videos too..

And I'm particularly proud of this one.. I got lucky with the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 project in that @Knighttime gave me his awesome Medieval Millenium Diplomacy background, so I needed to create something new for Dune, C&C and Red Alert 2 and am not really talented enough to build something for each of them from scratch. However then I remembered my reusable Paint Shop Pro 7 template file I use for my scenario City backgrounds that has a background layer setup to receive whatever cool image I insert and a foreground layer that uses transparent dark boxes where all the city stats display. So I took that and converted it into a new diplomacy screen template that has the dark shadow boxes where it displays the rival civ stats but I added transparent glowing edges to make it look like a holographic display and also recoloured the stat icons and made them both match the colour of the custom font used in the scenario. Using this template I'll be able to do a green version for my Command & Conquer scenario and red version for the Red Alert 2 scenario soon too! Oh and naturally just like in the HoMM2 mod I've replaced the leader faces too. Here I am talking to Stilgar the leader of the Fremen... EDIT: And here's a finished Harkonnen one too..

 

[Civinator]

Especially Stilgar looks cool!

 

[The_J]

Looks nice .

 

[Civinator]

The added Harkonnen leader looks very nice, too! This diplomacy format could be interesting for my Galactic Conquests mod, too.