[Civ2] Missing Final Fantasy, Dune, Starcraft, & Dawn of the Dead scenarios on Dustin Dunn's Civ2 Site

It's a cruel world lol..

There probably isn't a hope in hell that anyone will have these but I'll try anyway...

I'm in the middle of a Civ2 lost websites search side project as part of my bigger Civ scenario hunting work to feature in a video series. I located a webarchive backup of an old Civ2 website called The Zandanian League by DSquared (it was also described as 'Dustin Dunn's Civ2 Site' in the link to it). This long lost site hosted a number of scenarios not found in any other repository I've searched through. Some of them relate to topics of great interest to me!

I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan especially the retro SNES/Super Nintendo ones and so I've been keeping an eye out for Civilization 2 scenarios based on it. Other than a vanilla Civ2 scenario with no changed graphics or sounds I'd found nothing in all the big repositories I've searched through. Yet on this site sits a full total conversion Final Fantasy 4 (2 in US) modpack for Civ2 by a fellow named Frank Johnson. As you can see in the surviving picture the trees, grass and hills are taken directly from the original game as well as the units and even the friggin cities are built from castles and villages you'd find on the world map. But of course this modpacks main download and 4 sound downloads were not backed up by webarchive.. such a shame that something this cool is likely lost forever..



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Then just as I'm reeling from that painful discovery I then visit his scenarios section to find that there is a Starcraft scenarios called Starcraft Terran War by aland007. I'm also a big Starcraft fan and have been hunting for any scenarios or modpacks related to it and was surprised to find none considering it's a late 90s game with 2.5D isometric graphics that would convert in pretty well. Now sure enough it appears someone did.. and of course the bloody download for that is not backed up either lol. Even the screenshot wasn't backed up so I don't know how good it is, however the site describes it as having "new graphics".

I don't suppose by some flukey chance that someone here has these?

I notice there are emails for these guys posted.. long shot after 20 years but I guess it's worth a shot to email them and see what happens.. but yeah.. not holding my breath!

 

I wonder what happened to Dustin Dunn / DSquared .. his Civ2 site was huuuuge.. is gonna take me a while to finish going through all his pages. Such a shame none of his stuff got backed up!

ah man.. there's also 3 Dune scenarios on his site that appear to be different from the Dune scenario I've found elsewhere and already know about.

Sands of Dune by James Dahl


Dune - Pour L'epice! by N.Chautru


The Battle for Arrakis 1.0 by Isaac Ashdown


They're about 3/4 down this page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20030829213113/http://dsquared.fiwh.com/civ2/scenlist/d/d.php

No screenshots (other than those maps) and wow.. no luck.. dustin links to the authors homepages.. I find their backups and go to their downloads sections and while some of the other downloads work fine but the dune ones fail.. coooommmoooon... give me something universe haha

 

omg there's ANOTHER final fantasy scenario on dustin's website (about 5 or so down on this page)..
https://web.archive.org/web/20030829214038/http://dsquared.fiwh.com/civ2/scenlist/f/f.php
total conversion again with awesome imported graphics except this time it's from the classic NES era instead of SNES.. once again no luck lol.. it links to authors page where there's NO webarchive backup of the download... this is torture lol!

 

Many things from the classic internet era are lost for ever, dude - It's just a sad fact of life.

 

Yeah I know mate, I've got next to no friggin chance finding these.. need a bloody time machine

However I've recused so many long lost mods & scenarios now that I've learned there's no harm in trying and asking around as you just never know who has a copy of something. Just the other day someone replied to one of my posts asking about an old Starflight fan game demo posted 20 years ago on a long dead forum and offered me a copy lol, couldn't believe it! Another good one was when fellow on a German site came forward last year with a Civ3 scenario that had been missing for 10 years and I'd been posting about for 2 years but no one seemed to have it lol.

I've been trying to post this post below all day but I've been having massive internet problems preventing me from attaching the image [EDIT: Fixed!].

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UPDATES:

Found another copy of Dune - Pour L'epice! by N.Chautru posted on a French Civ2 site I found during my ongoing Civ2 lost websites search but surprise surprise.. download failed there too lol.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010422045027/http://www.multimania.com/meuh/civ2/scenar/sf.htm

Posted around lots of Civ forums and social media groups about these 5 scenarios but am not holding my breath of course. I did get a couple of leads of interest though..

Spoke with @Solver who's always super helpful with my ongoing rescue work (cheers mate ) and he went through his archives and confirmed that these files never made their way to Poly's servers sadly.. however he then went above and beyond and managed to locate a very old archived conversation over at Poly about Frank's FF4 mod for Civ2:
https://apolyton.net/forum/miscella...creation-archive/98022-final-fantasy-scenario

In that thread a member named Elok also talks about making his own FF mod for Civ2 (great.. now there's possibly friggin 3 FF scenarios out there I can't find now lol) so I did my own Poly search for any FF posts by Elok and that lead to another ancient Final Fantasy Civ2 poly thread where once again Franks mod was discussed but that time it was by our resident Civ2 guru @techumseh ! (ironically calling the mod ancient even back then haha).
https://apolyton.net/forum/miscella...chive/92957-ff-scenario-a-survey-for-interest

I can see Elok is still active at Poly so I've PM'd him and crossed my fingers. As he seems like a huge FF fan like I am, so hopefully he still has a copy of his FF mod, Franks FF mod or Jomb's FF mod! @techumseh I know that posting a link to a mod and downloading a mod for yourself are 2 different things haha but if you did grab a copy for yourself all those years ago and it's laying around on a drive somewhere of if you or any of the other veterans here know of a way to reach DSquared Dustin let me know! But yeah.. 20 years.. I know I don't have a hope in hell of finding these again as no one will have them.. but I had to try heh. If Techumseh and Elok both say no go then that'll be it for this hunt unless of course someone else shows up like 2 years from now, sees one of my threads and says "Oh I've still got that"

PS Oh and I've also done a thorough Final Fantasy search of the Civ2+child forums here at CFC too but didn't find anything about these scenarios sadly. Although I did find an interesting conversation over in the SL forums between
@JPetroski and @Broken_Erika a year or 2 ago about making either a Final Fantasy 6 (3 in US) scenario or a Final Fantasy 7 one for ToT. So @JPetroski if you're still pondering that FF6 idea then something else I found on Dustin's site might interest you as it looks like he did up a whole set of FF6 units (looks like he exported and converted possibly all of them!) and thankfully webarchive backed up the file. I think they're MGE though so probably not good enough quality wise for a new ToT scenario but figured I'd mention it in case it helps inspire the mind!
https://web.archive.org/web/20060516104251/http://dsquared.fiwh.com/civ2/downloads.php

If you ever do end up taking on that project let me know as maybe by then I will have finished all my never ending projects and will have more free time to help out on it, or at the very least play it and promote it out there!

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UPDATES:
My catalogging of lost Civ2 website backups continues and I managed to find a site called SciFilization which specialised in Scifi Civ2 Scenarios and was hosted at Sidgames giving it it's own download file hosting that had the Starcraft scenario and 2 of the 3 Dune scenarios! But yeah.. once again downloads not backed up by Webarchive.. so close but so far.. especially as I used to be a member of the sidgames forums back in 1999 and chatted a couple of times with it's 'infamous' owner Whistler.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000903074847/http://scifi.sidgames.com/other.cfm

I also notice both this site and Dustin's have a Dawn of the Dead scenario too that is apparently a full total conversion zombie survival scenario set in the US where you have a small by powerful force surviving against a huge hoard of zombies. No sign of its files in Poly backups, here at CFC (other than some forums posts where people talk about how great it is) or anywhere else so that's another cool one I'll have to chalk in as lost forever too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20021116191412/http://dsquared.fiwh.com/civ2/scenlist/d/d.php
https://web.archive.org/web/20000903074949/http://scifi.sidgames.com/genscifi.cfm
https://web.archive.org/web/2000052...imesSquare/Chamber/1550/Previews/daydead.html


And finally I also spoke to Elok over at Poly, he confirmed he did indeed have the Final Fantasy 4 modpack but that the computer died so his copy was lost long ago.

So yup.. I think that's it for these ones unless someone comes forward on one of the forums I've posted about them at. You win some you lose some haha!

EDIT: There's also a few more rare scenarios I've found on an old German Civilization 2 website called Civ 2 Paradise by Willi Gross:
- A German Babylon 5 scenario (so presumably different to the 2 English ones I know of)
- A English Star Wars - The Dagobah System scenario
- A English Orion - Alpha Centauri scenario
- A English Alpha scenario (no description but possibly just the regular Alpha Centuari scenario also on Apolyton).

Considering these seem to only be on a German Civ2 site there's even less chance of finding them lol. But I've created a thread over on the German Civ2 forums about these just in case and will leave it at that.

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So close! Glad you're doing this, I'll be following your work with great interest!