The History of the Dune Wars Mod

[Deliverator]

I thought it would be good to collect the old Dune/Dune Wars threads in one place. Then people (with a lot of time) can read the history of the mod and perhaps resurrect good ideas that may have got lost along the way.

As far as I can see the story begins here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148315

After the project was picked up by Keldath and others it continues here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7995595

After Dune Wars version 1.0 was released and before the creation of this subforum, all the discussion was here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=321914

 

[davidlallen]

Good idea. We can also consider the "pre-history" of the Dune mod and related items.

Before this Dune mod, there was another one which never passed the thinking stage, called The Spice Must Flow:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=272838

Slightly before this Dune mod, there was a Modcast discussion about how cool a Dune mod would be. They're right, it's cool.

http://civcomm.weplayciv.com/polycast/modcast

Or get the MP3 directly at this link. Discussion starts at about 5 min and continues to about 12 min.

 

[Deliverator]

Not exactly history, but recently I have been drawing a lot of ideas from the Dune Appendix reproduced here.

Each time I re-read it I get at least a couple of ideas...

 

[davidlallen]

Version 1.3 was released on July 10 and as of early September, it had a little over 600 downloads.

There was a temporary diversion to a "mod mod" while we worked out some differences of opinion. The 1.4.x versions were released in a separate thread "A mod-mod: Dune Wars Reduced" in this forum, so there is no download count.

 

[Deliverator]

It's amazing what you find trawling these old abandoned Dune mod threads.

Here's a link to a PDF of all 708 pages of the out-of-print Dune Encyclopedia:
http://www.thedune.ru/duneenc/download/DUNE_ENCYCLOPEDIA.pdf

There's bound to be loads of interesting stuff in there.

Also, found another abandoned thread for a Civ3 mod, Dune:Fight for Arrakis:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=121203

 

[davidlallen]

1.5 was released on September 13, 2009 and had about 1500 downloads. It is also now available at moddb.com, which had about 300 downloads, and other mirror sites we may not even know about. The 1.5.4 and 1.5.5 patches each had over 400 downloads.

1.6 was released on October 20, 2009.

 

[Deliverator]

Dune Wars is six months old today!

Dune Wars 1.0 was released on the 23rd of May 2009. Looking back at screenshots like this helps you appreciate how far the mod has come.

 

[davidlallen]

Dune Wars 1.6 had its 2000th download today! The patches 1.6.3, 1.6.4, 1.6.5 have been downloaded over 500 times each.

 

[Ahriman]

Hard to know if its just 500 people downloading all the patches

Still, seems like we're doing well! Probably ~1000 unique users.

 

[davidlallen]

Please note that each patch requires downloading the 1.6 release. So I feel we have 2000 unique users, who at least ran it once. Many of them are uninterested in the patches, but we have 500 "core" users who download every patch.

 

[Ahriman]

Ahh, I misunderstood. Yes, that sounds right.

 

[davidlallen]

Version 1.7 was released on December 13 and passed 1000 downloads December 31. (About 100 Steam users had downloaded a special zipfile version instead of the main installer. This is now fixed.)

 

[Deliverator]

Version 1.8 was released April 25, 2010.

Facts and figures on the last release:

Version 1.7
Civfanatics: 2783, ModDB: 891, StrategyInformer: 384, Fileplanet: 192

Version 1.7 for Steam
Civfanatics: 389, ModDB: 152

Total: 4791 downloads of 1.7 since December 13 2009

Patch 1.7.1
Civfanatics: 584 (includes 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 I think?), ModDB: 224, StrategyInformer: 240

There were definitely way over 1000 patches for Dune Wars 1.7 downloaded.

Music Pack
Version 1.7 - Released 23rd February 2010 - 384 downloads

 

[davidlallen]

Different modders use different ways to count downloads. Some mods put each new version or patch into the same download database entry, so one person could account for 10-20 downloads. I put each release and each patch into a separate download database entry. So 1.7.1, 1.7.2 and 1.7.3 each had separate download counts, each around 500. My read is that most people are "happy" with the main releases, so that's almost 5000 occasional players and 500 dedicated players.

 

[dammitbiscuit]

Each time I re-read it I get at least a couple of ideas...

Write them down somewhere, or you'll be sad!

 

[Deliverator]

Happy Birthday to Dune Wars! One year old today...

 

[Jester Fool]

(I hope it is okay to post this here...) 25 visitors (and me of course) on the Dune Wars sub-forum (the most I have ever seen at one time)! Yes, (@ visitors) Dune Wars rocks. Please see screenshots thread and strategy discussion thread (you won't be sorry).

 

[Deliverator]

Dune Wars has had some good exposure since 1.8 was released, such as being picked up by blogs like Gnome's Lair and User Created. Perhaps that's something to do with it...

 

[Ahriman]

Dune Wars has had some good exposure since 1.8 was released, such as being picked up by blogs like Gnome's Lair and User Created.

Very cool. Some high praise from those blogs; particularly for the artwork.

I think I may have also attracted a handful through posting in the Civ5 forum.

*edit*
Oh, just a thought; should we create a stickied "reviews" post with links to reviews that others have posted?

 

[keldath]

wow these blogs exposure are awesome!