Modding / experimenting in the game (Emperor: Battle for Dune)

My comment from another topic:
Yowane's fan on July 20 at 12:30
"By the way. On the English-language forum I also found an interesting topic - an attempt to force the AI ​​to attack your capital and even the world.

The game practically does not give such a chance, because after 5 defeats in a row (whether it is retreating when trying to capture someone else's territory, or retreating from its own when attacking an AI), the game will drop you. This setting is contained in a certain PhaseRules.txt file. It also follows that the game is "the next one needs different conditions. The level of technologies also depends on the phases (the ability to build something other than the first two units, for example).
Also, the level of technology depends on the NUMBER of successful attempts to seize foreign territory. The first mission for one of the houses is phase zero. On it we have 0 technology level, only the very first units are available. The first phase is the first two missions before the heliner, here you are given the opportunity to attack once and defend once. In this phase, we will be given 1 level of technology, i.e. the ability to build all the infantry and tanks there (kharkov tank, laser tank ordos and mongoose atreides). In case of a successful capture during an attack, they will give level 2 - flamethrower tanks and BMP.
Next, there is a jump immediately to the 10th phase - the heliner. After that, there is a jump to phase 2, after which everything is repeated in the same way as in the first. The 3rd level of technology is given if it was obtained before. 2. With a successful capture, you can get the 4th level. After two battles, there will be a jump to phase 11 (for AT and OP, for HK there will be a jump to phase 14 or 15, depending on the choice of the Hanseng or Kopek side). In short, if you intensively lose battles in the first two phases (except for the heliner), then in the end the mission on the home planet will take place with 1 technology level. In my case, when playing for the Harkonen and choosing the side of Ganseng, only circular, tank and infantry were available to me to build. Apparently, the level of technology of the player and the AI ​​is the same, since the latter sent me only the infantry and the first two units. (those,

After the mission on the home planet, phase 3 begins. On it, you can get the remaining 5, 6, and 7 levels of technologies. When attacking the home of another faction (phase 12), level 8 is given. What is the difference between 7 and 8 levels, I still do not understand ... And judging by the comments of the developers, in the 3rd phase you can get 4 levels in total, i.e. 5,6,7 and 8. Not entirely clear.

In the first two phases, you can surrender territories calmly - the game will go on. But this is fraught with the loss of all technological levels. The most interesting thing is that if you surrender all territories up to phase 3, and then start capturing something, you will not be able to make up for the missed levels. In the third phase, the maximum possible number of defeats is 5. As a result, if you are smart in the settings and put, say, 99 instead of 5 possible defeats, you will be able to surrender the maximum number of territories. But letting the AI ​​attack the capital is not. Apparently, complete defeat in the game is regulated not only by the phase rule, but also by some internal scripts - you can surrender all territories, except for two adjacent to the capital and the capital itself. If the AI ​​attacks the territory adjacent to the capital and you surrender it - without any warnings, the game will issue the notorious "gamover" with a cutscene. In addition, I suspect that even without the script and "gamover", the game would simply crash when starting a battle in which the AI ​​attacks the capital. This is evidenced by the following moment - when defending the adjacent territory, the reinforcements that come from the side of the capital come with the message "reinforcements are coming from the null side", that is, the game simply does not know what kind of territory it belongs to the player.

On the forum where the person asked this question, they did not reach the solution of the issue - the topic stalled. I decided to try to check the theory from beginning to end :) It didn't work. The developers have not provided for the opportunity to be on the side of the losing faction.
But you can make the game much more difficult for yourself by surrendering all territories, except the last three, and then beating everything back. Here are just a quest has no will not be on the way -. This is probably also somehow embedded in scripts "
___________________________________________
I may hurry to conclusions - I will try to increase the number of defeats but it is assumed that nothing will happen..

For inaccessible (quest, civil, etc.) units and buildings - I will not write a lot and in detail, but if someone needs it, I will write it down separately. All these units and buildings are described in Rules.txt, there are also lines in ArtIni. The main problem due to which "modders" cannot build this or that unit is the banal absence of a correct entry in ArtIni (at least, the absence of an icon correctly packed into the game archives).

Well, compliance with some conditions when editing:
1) All quest and special units / buildings have a House = Incidental parameter. To be able to build one of these buildings, you will have to specify not only PrimaryBuilding, but also one of the playable races for it. I usually use freemen. For units, it is not necessary to specify the playable race - you can leave Incidental.

2) Be sure to specify PrimaryBuilding, make sure that other parameters such as SecondaryBuilding and UpgradedPrimaryRequired do not interfere with the construction. It often happens that something is specified in SecondaryBuilding, but both conditions cannot be met in the game. The same is about the second parameter - if it is set, either remove it or check for the presence of the building icon in the list of upgrades.

3) For units - I don't know what this is connected with, but the infantry can only "leave" the barracks, and the equipment - only from factories or startports. An attempt to build a Freeman biker from the Freeman camp was unsuccessful - the unit appeared in front of the entrance, but could not move - movement was blocked. Thus, correctly specify UnitGroup for each unit.

If desired, you can change the color of the faction. To do this, just open the ArtIni file and find the Side Colors section, it goes at the very beginning. There are 11 colors, the last three I did not understand why, apparently the quest colors for the units, the first eight are standard. Colors are specified in RGB format, three values ​​in brackets can be from 0 to 255. Absolute white - all three 255, absolutely black - three zeros. The desired color can be obtained through any editor, even a paint.
The colors change only at the game level, the old colors will remain in the skirmish menu - for example, in ArtIni they replaced green with black, which means that in the skirmish you need to select green so that the units are in black paint. The settings in which the colors change from the menu have not yet been found.
By the way, the color changes on the radar too, therefore, choosing black, you risk confusing your units with the fog of war, or vice versa.

There is a UISPOKEN.txt file in the game archives, it is in the STRINGS0001.RFH archive. As I understand it, this file contains text messages for the mentat during the game and the text of various pop-up tips. Nothing interesting.
But there are also texts describing units that can be found in the company. In addition to the main factions, there are descriptions of subdom units (I have not met in the game before). Interestingly, the Guild Maker has a hint: Their bizarre brain emissions drive away the worms of Dune, so they and any surrounding units may pass safely over sand. I will not fully translate, I will only say that these units scare away sandworms. In practice, I did not check it and did not pay attention to it in the game, but I suppose that the sandworms really will not attack these units, as well as the area around them.

For those whose ears are already withering in the skirmish from the initial musical compositions of the factions, you can add all the musical compositions. But we must take into account that they will appear on the initial missions in the campaign.
Here you don't even need to unpack the game archives - all settings are made in unpacked txt files.
We open the directory with the game, go to DATA, there in MUSIC and see several textbooks. Tracks of each faction are in separate files of the same name. Please note that each faction has two tracks commented out in these files - they are also indicated in the CommonMusic file, moreover, with the Phase = 0 parameter. This CommonMusic specifies just the tracks for the skirmish. It is enough just to copy all the tracks of the factions from their separate files into the CommonMusic file, setting the Phase = 0 parameter by analogy with those already indicated, while in the source files they will need to be commented out by analogy with the two that were already commented out initially.

It is noteworthy that skirmish themes (The Machine, Harkonnen Legacy, Ride The Worm, The War Begins of Atreides and Not an Option, A Plan of Attack of Ordos) are marked as HD, i.e. High Quality. Among other things, The War Begins is listed in the Music.txt file as not belonging to any of the factions (obviously because it is used throughout the game, including in the cutscenes).
By the way, the Music.txt file contains a detailed description of all the parameters for the tracks, the design, as well as quite bold hints that you can add your own music to the game. And it is really possible to add it, and even to "stick it out", i.e. to loop. But to add your own music, you already have to go into the archives of the game - at least to pack the tracks. I will not paint, tk. this already spoils the surroundings of the game.

About unit levels. On various forums I saw threads with questions like "how to release units with stripes / birds / ticks from barracks ???". In the vanilla version of the game, only atreides have the ability to train level 3 infantry. If my memory serves me, only level 3 snipers can be trained, but I could be wrong.

Levels, conditions of receipt and effects are set in the Rules.txt file. After the description of each unit, you can add the parameter VeterancyLevel = 10. It is responsible for the unit getting the next level after receiving the specified number of points (in this case, we specified 10). A unit receives points after the destruction of another unit or building. The amount is different and depends on the "cost" of the unit / building in points. By the way, the Score = n parameter is responsible for this cost, and each unit has its own number "n".

Thus, the following VeterancyLevel parameters denote those same birdies. In the game, the units have a maximum level of 3, but I tried to add a couple more after the third VeterancyLevel. Something interesting came out - a unit can get 4, 5 and 6 levels, while starting from level 4 the stripes will disappear, instead of them red inverted triangles will begin to appear (such triangles are usually found in long-range units that have an advantage on hills, in cover, and they are located in front of the unit). At level 4, there will be one triangle, at 5 and 6 - 2 and 3 triangles, respectively. Adding the next levels did not work - after the unit should get level 7, the game crashes with an error.

I don’t know what’s the catch here, but I’ll try to guess. Most likely, levels 4-5-6 are not provided for by the game. What kind of triangles are they then and why are they displayed? Let's get back to the topic with the advantage of long-range (and not only) units. There are several different conditions in the game that give advantages:
a) the unit is on a hill
b) the unit has a long-range weapon
c) the unit is in the shelter of the infantry (such islands with small rocks, impassable for vehicles)

I don't really understand how the advantages work and for which units they work, I'm not even sure I named them correctly (maybe the conditions are different), but I'm sure there are no more than three of them. If I am not mistaken, the fact of having an advantage under certain conditions is described for each unit in Rules.txt. What is the use of these benefits? The answer is obvious - the infantry, which is hiding in cover, lives longer under fire (bonus to health), the rocket tank, which is on a hill, has a slightly larger view, and most likely, the firing range. Perhaps there are some other bonuses.

So, each condition is one red triangle. Now let's try to comply with all three conditions in the game - I did it with the sardukars, whom I drove into a shelter on a rock. As a result, three small red triangles flaunted in front of each unit.

Now let's get back to the levels. At each level, the unit is given some kind of bonus - for example, the ability to self-repair or additional damage. Or additional armor. Doesn't it look like anything? Yes, roughly speaking, the infantry in cover has increased armor. In fact, triangles are the same stripes, but received not for points, but for meeting conditions. Their ultimate goal is the same - to give bonus stats to the unit. And their maximum number is three.
So we come to the conclusion that the bonus calculation algorithm is the same for both triangles and stripes. Perhaps the game scripts allow you to add 4-5-6 more levels from above because they recognize them as compliance with the game conditions. And instead of a bird, they draw a triangle. But these are just my assumptions.

As for the topic with the release of high-level units, everything is simple. It is necessary to assign the Elite = true parameter to the bonus at the third level. In general, it is not necessary to give this bonus at level 3, it is possible earlier. But then the meaning of being elite is lost. Any unit can be made elite, i.e. and equipment and infantry. I did not check it on air units, but I think you can.

And finally - the presence of levels for the defensive towers (I saw this question in some topic, perhaps even on this site) - I tried to register the levels for the turrets, and they worked. After several kills, the turret got a level with a characteristic animation and sound, but the stripes above it did not appear, I do not know why. I did not check the maximum number of levels, but not less than six for sure. I haven't checked whether the bonuses work either, but I think they should. The question is, are they needed?

One of the most popular questions on both Russian-speaking and English-speaking forums about this game - is it possible to somehow pull out the most beautiful campaign cards for use in a skirmish? What is remarkable, I never saw the answer to this question anywhere, but it lies on the surface - you can! And it's pretty simple to do it.

All cards in the game are packed into archives with the name MAPS000X.RFH. I know for sure that there was only one archive in the release, MAPS0001.RFH. In version 1.09, we added MAPS0002.RFH, it seems like there should have been two additional cards. In addition, the developers had at least two more packs with additional. skirmish cards, also in the form of separate archives.

Also, the source of cards is other players - the game has an official map editor that allows you to create your own cards. I myself am not familiar with the map-editor, I know that the raw map has the dme format, but the finished one is already CPF or CPT, I don't remember exactly. The game archives contain a bunch of files for each card - CPF, CPT, lit, xbf, inf and dat. Also, an icon in tga format is attached to each skirmish card. Each archive contains one Baseinfo.ini file, these files contain a list like #MX Y, where X is the card number, Y is the maximum number of players. This list is kept only for skirmish cards.

In general, in these game archives, there is some kind of mess and confusion. Map files have the same name "test", and to distinguish where the files of one map ended and the files of another started, you can only use the Path parameter. This parameter is exactly our key to fishing campaign maps and adding them to single player mode. This parameter stores a string like #XY ZZZ , where X is a letter denoting the type of card (there are many of them, from A to X), Y is the number and ZZZ is the name of the card. There may also appear lines like S, LOD2 (in my opinion, the level of detail of the game world is equal to 2) and something else there. I don't know the meaning, except that only campaign maps have LOD2. This is probably why the campaign maps are more beautiful - the level of detail is maximum. Perhaps those who have dealt with the map editor know more. I found out about LOD2 just because of the map editor,

So, all we need to do is pull out the files of the map we need, the line in the Path parameter of which does not start with #M. For example, you can take the card "# E1 End Mission Emperor Worm LOD2 " - a card from the last mission. We take out all the files, then open the most recent of the available map archives (mine is MAPS0002.RFH), and push these files into it. Now, for each file we register the Path parameter, by analogy with skirmish maps. Consider the card number - continue the numbering further, if your last skirmish card has the number 72 - write something like "# M73 Mymap ", a backslash at the end is required. Now, in this archive you need to extract the Baseinfo.ini file, add the line # M73 X to it, where instead of X write the number of players. Save, push the file back into the archive and start the game.

I managed to add a couple of cards to the skirmish, but for some reason, the line "ERR" is additionally displayed in front of their name. Probably, I missed something, but it's too lazy to figure it out.
The cards themselves are playable, but only if they are cards of the usual territories of arrakis.
For example, the map from the very first mission behaves strangely - the enemy does not build and does not attack.
Map from the last mission - the enemy is being built, the AI ​​goes on the attack. But the game crashes when the player who spawns at the top of the map (where we usually start the last mission) goes down the map, to the place where the worm was. Probably, at this point the script that starts the timer should be triggered. And since the map is launched without scripts in the skirmish - goodbye.
All sorts of unique buildings, civil buildings, gallows are preserved, but for some reason they are given under the control of one of the parties, either the AI ​​or the player (this was the case with the map from the first mission).
Also, it is not clear how the initial positions of the players are processed. For the first map, there were initially 4 of them (although I indicated 2 in the Baseinfo.ini file), after restarting the game and changing the archive, adding another position map became 2. In general. maps where special scripts worked (crappy AI on the first map, timer on the last) work poorly and there is no point in throwing them into skirmish, although for multiplayer the first map will do - all the same, the AI ​​is stupid, not the person.

I think that Arrakis maps, which do not have special scripts, will work perfectly - there are many spawn points there, and there should not be any scripted zones. The only thing is that civil buildings can be given to one of the parties.

As for editing campaign maps, I don't know. I have met a couple of opinions that it is impossible to convert ready-made maps back to dme format, and therefore cannot be processed by a map-editor. I suppose that if there was such an opportunity, we would have already seen on the forums for this game map-packs from campaign maps that have been corrected (unnecessary buildings removed, AI zones are normally configured, spawn points added), but since they are not there, then nothing can be done with these cards. We are content that they can be pulled out at all.

Hi) I am glad that people are still playing the game and the game is not forgotten. Even on Moddb I saw a mod that one person saws - https://www.moddb.com/mods/dune-iii-the-battle-for-universe

Yowane's fan wrote:
There is a UISPOKEN.txt file in the game archives, it lies in the archive STRINGS0001.RFH. As I understand it, this file contains text messages for the mentat during the game and the text of various pop-up tips. Nothing interesting.
You are mistaken about the fact that there is no interesting :) If you delve into the text messages of the mentat, it becomes clear that some missions in the game simply do not exist :)))

Yowane's fan wrote:
In the vanilla version of the game, only atreides have the ability to train level 3 infantry ... If my memory serves me, only level 3 snipers can be trained, but I could be wrong.
Changes)) Any Atreides infantry can be trained, except engineers.
Unfortunately, I found out about this only by the 3rd playthrough, the game does not particularly hint about it. In general, the balance in the game is strange in places - why, for example, did the developers need to cut out repairs from the Harkonnens or advanced wind traps from houses? Repairpods were a good alternative to mobile repair for AT and regeneration for OR. And advanced traps could be countered by high prices, and the power system would become more vulnerable to attacks. So it is with the elite - if the infantry of all houses could be trained, nothing much has changed. Rarely has a flamethrower survived to the 3rd stripe, and OR chemical troops are already deadly against infantry and useless against equipment. I would love to look at an HK engineer with three stripes, haha.

White
I play it in rushes. I’ll play for a couple of months - I’ll give it up for a couple of years, then again I stumble upon it and everything is new. I have been familiar with the game from an early age, which is probably why I return to it periodically.

I did not pay attention - the text in the file is a solid volume, it was too lazy to re-read everything. Just a glance caught on the names of the units, so I fished out some information.

Digging through the archives six years ago, I saw many different names that I had not seen in the game. Then I wondered what kind of non-playable content it was. There were attempts to build and remot sites, and some other crap from the described - did not work.
This year I returned to the game, decided to go through the vanilla version, and then again to hit modding. With the help of someone, the mod learned how to properly adjust the parameters in order to build any crap out of the reach of the player in a regular game.

By the way, all factions have these same repair points - I can say for sure that I met in each separate block of houses. In the same place, all these wind traps are large (by the way, they are 100% playable - for them, in my opinion, there is even an animation of the construction), furnaces for melting and a special unit for this furnace.
And the answer to your question is simple - the game was in a hurry to release. In my post about the cards above, I wrote that the archives with the cards are a complete mess - the CPF and CPT files have the name "test", and for all cards. There is a lot of garbage in the Rules and ArtIni configurations. Almost all units have a Debris parameter with different values. I suppose these are debris that should have remained after the destruction of the unit and which could have been picked up by GUScavenger (the same special unit) and sent to the furnace. Met such a theory somewhere on the forums.
Some units have characteristics that are completely copied from other units, about which the developers themselves write in the comments. For example, the Harkonen air defense platform has parameters identical to the gunship. With the flying niab, the same crap - all the characteristics are taken from the Atreides ornithopter, only the parameter with the weapon is commented out, and they never came up with a special weapon.
There are also three types of worms in the description of the game rules, although we see only two in the game. It is likely that stoves, repeirpads and other crap were cut out due to bugs. Perhaps the release was close, and the ovens were breaking the game, but there was simply no time to look for problems. These ovens, by the way, can be built. And they seem to even work. Only the game crashes from time to time. In general, here's your answer.

I tried to climb even further here the other day - to try to invade the game code. I have no idea what language it is written in, I guess it's on the plus side. This is supported by the fact that not so long ago EA posted the source code of C&C and Red Alert, which were developed by Westwoods, into the github, and these same sources scream that the game is written in C ++. I don’t think the dune that came out a couple of years later was written on something else. And the language was quite suitable for such cases in those days.

I tried reverse engineering, went through a bunch of software, several times tried to open dlls and exe's from the game folder, nothing really came of it. I found an interesting window in one of the executables for launching a skirmish game - it looks like a simple window with a bunch of signed fields. You can choose the difficulty of the game, the color of the opponent, his type and character (or something like that). There is also a function for recording the battle and playing this recording. A very interesting window was apparently used to test the game. Why the release got into - hell knows. They were in a hurry and did not remove it, apparently. Or forgotten.

Libraries and executables first tried to open some old program to view the source resources. Through it I saw a window. Then I went through a bunch of newer and, as it seemed to me, more efficient software, but I didn't pull out anything more interesting.
I decided to use IDA Pro as a more interesting option, and disassembled a couple of files - I got the code in assembler. But such code cannot be called the source code (people with the appropriate education / experience will understand me), and getting something valuable out of there is painstaking, complicated and useless work. Even if you collect all the assembler code and rewrite it for pluses, and then try to compile, I think the game will hardly start. Probably, there will be problems even at the compilation stage. As far as I know, the same source code of Red Alert is difficult to compile, and you need to add something to rewrite it in order to run it on those sources that EA posted. The article can be found on the Internet.
In fact, it would be nice to ask EA for the source code of the dune, but if it worked with a multi-million crowd of C&C fans (I think it was also affected by the fact that EA did the remaster), then with a small handful of old dunes it is unlikely.

Yowane's fan wrote:
I play it in rushes. I’ll play for a couple of months - I’ll give it up for a couple of years, then again I stumble upon it and everything is new. I have been familiar with the game from an early age, which is probably why I return to it periodically.
Yes, there is such a thing) I'm even too lazy to go through it, I just play a couple of evenings. I have been playing since the year of release.

Yowane's fan wrote:
This year he returned to the game, decided to go through the vanilla version, and then again to hit modding. With the help of someone, the mod learned how to properly adjust the parameters in order to build any crap out of the reach of the player in a regular game.
I usually just amuse myself by adding superweapons to the barracks or wind trap and changing the reload time to 1 second: D Or I screw Tleilaxu bombs to X's cars. They are equal in power to a nuclear explosion, but without radiation)
This is to see the mission behind all the houses and not build every time.

Yowane's fan wrote:
The same crap with the flying niab - all the characteristics are taken from the Atreides ornithopter, only the parameter with the weapon is commented out, and they never came up with a special weapon.
I don't know about a combat unit, but he added the atmosphere for the last mission to me))

Yowane's fan wrote:
By the way, all factions have these same repair points - I can say for sure that I met in each separate block of houses.
As far as I remember, among the buildings in the resources, only HKRepairPad was met with an icon, so perhaps they did not want to, or simply did not begin to make them for the rest of the houses.

Yowane s fan wrote:
I suppose these are debris that should have remained after the destruction of the unit and which could have been picked up by GUScavenger (the very special unit) and sent to the furnace. I met such a theory somewhere on the forums.
This is not just a theory, this is a cut-out concept confirmed by the game developer.

JasonRedway:
"Incidentally, the Smelter was going to be the orignal refinery, we were not going to have harvesters and spice in Emperor. The plan from the start was to have debris scattered about the maps that was left over from the previous war on Dune. There was a flying unit we called the Scavenger http://www.reddixcgi.com/development/portfolio/projects/emperor/html/project_empmov_sc.htm that was going to pick up the dedris and take it back to the smelter to make the necessary resources for building units and buildings. The idea that anything that was destroyed in the game would leave bits behind that could be recycled by picking them up and smelting them down. It was intended that this could create more ferocious competition for players because they would be able to pick up anyone elses dead units for themselves so it would be a race to recycle.
The idea was dropped though, months into production we decided that spice and harvesters were really too central to the Dune universe that they could not really be cut from the game. So the smelter and the scavenger were 'removed'. There were probably a couple more units / buildings that ended this way too but I think that most would have been repurposed to either non-player incidental units / buildings or for subhouse groups. "
Https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/ 24780-battle-for-dune-remake-modification /? Tab = comments # comment-383961

Generally I advise you to visit the forum if you haven’t been there yet. Maybe you’ll find something you need.
Yowane's fan wrote:
Libraries and executables first tried to open some old program to view the source resources. Through it I saw a window. Then I went through a bunch of newer and, as it seemed to me, more efficient software, but I didn't pull out anything more interesting.
DuneEx go :)) It was a good program.

Yowane's fan wrote:
I tried to climb even further here the other day - to try to invade the game code. I have no idea what language it is written in, I guess it's on the plus side. This is supported by the fact that not so long ago EA posted the source code of C&C and Red Alert, which were developed by Westwoods, into the github, and these very sources scream that the game is written in C ++. I don’t think the dune that came out a couple of years later was written on something else. And the language was quite suitable for such cases in those days.
I can only tell you which engine the game was made on - this is not SAGE, as many think, but W3D Engine, which in turn is a modification of the SurRender 3D engine developed by Hybrid Graphics. Therefore, Dune's half-brothers are C&C Renegade, Supreme Snowboarding, Wizardry 8, Starlancer and Entropia.

"We started out doing everything in 32-bit assembler on the x86, eventually converting most code over to C ++ but creating dynamic compilers to generate rendering loops at run-time. During the development we went from 60 MHz Pentiums to GHz + processors with 3D accelerators , meaning we were living in quite exciting times.

Ours was not a full game engine like Unreal Engine is; rather it was genre-independent like RenderWare or Gamebryo. "

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aemof/the_hidden_story_of_the_3d_engine_by_the_people/

I always play the game completely. I like a banal rush with meat or cunning tactics. In the end, of course, protracted battles are boring, especially if there is no additional. quests. I play, for some reason, mostly Harkonens. I think it's about the music.

White wrote:
I don’t know as a combat unit, but he added the atmosphere for the last mission to me))
Craftsmen sometimes collective farms to him with weapons from an Atreides drone, but as for me - bespont. When I was small and played for the first time, miraculously reaching the last mission, I expected these flyers to emit bursts like niab tanks, and with the same high damage. But in the end they turned out to be just a props due to the laziness / haste of the developers. Saddened. A great atmosphere, after all, would be given by combat-ready units :)

White wrote:
Or I screw Tleilaxu bombs to X's cars. They are equal in power to a nuclear explosion, but without radiation)
Well, in general, the Tleilaxu do not have their own bombs. Those same units that look like bugs with a leech texture contain the same DeathHandExplosion as in the devastator and in the hand of death itself. It's just that the splat is set separately (you can probably screw the radioactive trail to the devastator as well).
You can just use my best practices and icons (communicated with the modder who made the ShaiHulud mod), and assign an additional unit to the Tleilaxu - a transport or a beetle, with the ability to explode.

White wrote:
As far as I remember, among the buildings in the resources, only HKRepairPad was met with an icon, so maybe they didn't want to, or just didn't make them for the rest of the houses.
With an icon, you say? It is interesting. It is necessary to check ArtIni for the presence of an icon, tk. it contains links to all the resources of the game related to the interface. The icons for units and buildings are indicated there. I'll take a look at the weekend.


White wrote:
Generally I advise you to visit the forum if you haven't been. Maybe you will find something you need for yourself
So, the spice was not originally planned. And there were obviously more units. Interesting infa. This means that they were not theories, but direct words from the developers. It's clear.
If you are talking about the dune2k forum, then you were on it. I was looking for information on game archives. But I was looking only for specific things, so I might have missed the interesting ones.

White wrote:
DuneEx go :)) It was a good program.
Mmm, no. It can only open game archives (RFH). And I'm talking about files with the extension DLL, EXE. In general, this is the same thing, just the first is used as a library and cannot work by itself, and the second has its own entry point, roughly speaking, it is launched before use.
Such files were first opened by the Restorator program. Old, difficult to find, but still dug up. In it, I found the game launch window:
Spoiler
This is the only program that presented the packed data visually. But it could only open executables, it cannot open dlls. And from exe-files nothing useful except description, version and a couple of dialog boxes to pull out nothing.

White wrote:
I can only tell you which engine the game was made on - this is not SAGE, as many think, but W3D Engine, which in turn is a modification of the SurRender 3D engine developed by Hybrid Graphics. Therefore, Dune's half-brothers are C&C Renegade, Supreme Snowboarding, Wizardry 8, Starlancer and Entropia.

"We started out doing everything in 32-bit assembler on the x86, eventually converting most code over to C ++ but creating dynamic compilers to generate rendering loops at run-time. During the development we went from 60 MHz Pentiums to GHz + processors with 3D accelerators , meaning we were living in quite exciting times.

Ours was not a full game engine like Unreal Engine is; rather it was genre-independent like RenderWare or Gamebryo. "
In general, W3D is one of the first versions of the engine, and SAGE is the same W3D, but with improvements. It is unlikely that the original language is different.
But the commentary that you attached in English is very valuable information. "We started writing everything in 32-bit assembly, on the x86 architecture, and eventually rewrote most of the code in C ++." Then something about dynamic collectors, tri-de accelerators and other crap, which I don't really know much about.
Well, now everything is clear. The game is definitely written on the pluses.

The PG rocked the picture. I'll try to cut it off a little so that the labels are readable:
Spoiler The
settings, by the way, are quite rich. And, in some places, interesting.

UPD: you can open the original in a new tab. I stumbled. It is a pity that the PG did not provide for viewing pictures in the forum topics - why not use the same library as for viewing the local galleries for games.

All the same, I decided to use the "heavy artillery" again and go through the game files. I figured out a little about the disassembly tool, read the guides. Set up a bit.
As a result, I dug up some interesting things - when disassembling, some lines were saved, which are stored in variables. Some are very similar to the function names. When I tried to automatically create a C ++ code from the resulting assembly code (decompile, in short), I got a huge file with 420 thousand lines of code. At the same time, not all functions were decompiled. At this stage, I also noticed that some of the names of the variables were preserved.
The names of the functions and comments themselves have not been preserved - this is understandable, during compilation all garbage is removed, incl. the name of the functions, comments and other things that the developer needs only for semantics. Plus, the compiler optimizes the code, and some things that make the code clearer are truncated.
Here is an example of the lines that are in the code:
Spoiler
And here is where they are used:
Spoiler
Now, let's translate the whole thing into pluses, here you can see the declaration area of ​​variables that have normal names:
Spoiler
And here is the function that uses this variable:
Spoiler
As I said, apart from the individual saved variables, there are no other semantically understandable things. You can try to dig into the assembler code and find out what this or that function does, where it is called, and so on. This is how you can understand the game mechanics and features.

Yowane's fan wrote:
In the end, of course, protracted battles are boring, especially if there is no extra. quests. I play, for some reason, mostly Harkonens. I think it's about the music.
Yes, it is the protracted battles that get boring)) And levels without bases slow down the pace of the game. I almost always play for Atreides, but I like the music for everything at home. She's awesome there, albeit in different directions))

Yowane's fan wrote:
Craftsmen sometimes collective farms for him weapons from an atreides drone, but as for me - bespont. When I was small and played for the first time, miraculously reaching the last mission, I expected these flyers to emit bursts like niab tanks, and with the same high damage. But in the end they turned out to be just a props due to the laziness / haste of the developers. Saddened. A great atmosphere, after all, would be given by combat-ready units :)
I think this is definitely a flaw due to lack of time, since the last mission itself is very easy to speed up even on Hard for AT / HK with the help of improved carriers. That is, this is a very fat jamb of game designers. Perhaps the Flyers were needed to shoot down planes on the way to the worm. For this should not be so in the last mission))

Yowane's fan wrote:
Those very units that look like bugs with a leech texture contain the same DeathHandExplosion as in the devastator and in the very hand of death.
Yes, but there is also a significant difference. The fact is that the Nuclear Missile (and Devastator) has the bullet type [DeathHandBomb], and the beetles have [BombBomb]. The difference is that [DeathHandBomb] BlastRadius = 96, and [BombBomb] - BlastRadius = 320. That is, the explosion from the bugs covers the territory more than 3 times. I found this out when, in the company of the Ordos, the beetle explosion seemed disproportionately powerful.
To be honest, the original Nuclear rocket always seemed very weak to me, and this power is just right for it. Although I understand that this was done on purpose, since in relation to the rest of the houses, the superweapon is still powerful and would completely break the balance. It would be fun for a devastator to make a trace of radiation, because this trace is not so powerful, it was possible to shorten the duration of the action for an extreme. The explosion is nuclear, but there is no radiation.

Yowane's fan wrote:
Mmm, no. It can only open game archives (RFH). And I'm talking about files with the extension DLL, EXE. In general, this is the same thing, just the first is used as a library and cannot work by itself, and the second has its own entry point, roughly speaking, it is launched before use.
It's clear. Well, there and in the year of release, it was not very good with the tools for the game, and right now, and even more so ...
Yowane's fan wrote: The
settings, by the way, are quite rich. And, in some places, interesting.
The window is really cool) It's funny that the game is referred to as Dune3. What does it mean to pretend to be Tib Sun? Like, tools from Tiberian Sun were also used)) WOL is interesting.

White wrote:
Yes, it's the protracted battles that get boring)) And levels without bases slow down the pace of the game. I almost always play for Atreides, but I like the music for everything at home. She's awesome there, albeit in different directions))
I still listen to her separately. Due to the peculiarity of the compositions that are written / written specifically for games, especially of this genre, you are not distracted in the process of something. I turn it on when I work or do something at the computer. Does not distract, does not interfere, but at the same time it is easier to work.

White wrote:
I think this is definitely a flaw due to lack of time, since the last mission itself is very easy to speed up even on Hard for AT / HK with the help of improved carriers. That is, this is a very fat jamb of game designers. Perhaps the Flyers were needed to shoot down planes on the way to the worm. For this should not be so in the last mission)) I
must say that the Atreides have an imbalanced technique in terms of damage. Sonic tank, which takes down 30,000 hit points from two or three volleys (this is how much for an imperial worm building) - this is too much.
But there is already a lot of air defense for the Tleilaxu. And live wind traps, by the way, are a hoax. Destroying them all will not affect anything. Generally.

White wrote:
Yes, but there is also a significant difference. The fact is that the Nuclear Missile (and Devastator) has the bullet type [DeathHandBomb], and the beetles have [BombBomb]. The difference is that [DeathHandBomb] BlastRadius = 96, and [BombBomb] - BlastRadius = 320. That is, the explosion from the bugs covers the territory more than 3 times. I found this out when, in the company of the Ordos, the beetle explosion seemed disproportionately powerful.
To be honest, the original Nuclear rocket always seemed very weak to me, and this power is just right for it. Although I understand that this was done on purpose, since in relation to the rest of the houses, the superweapon is still powerful and would completely break the balance. It would be fun for a devastator to make a trace of radiation, because this trace is not so powerful, it was possible to shorten the duration of the action for an extreme. The explosion is nuclear, but there is no radiation.
Didn't pay attention to it, apparently. Anyway.

White wrote:
Got it. Well, there and in the year of release, it was not very good with the instruments for the game, but right now, and even more so ...
I stole everything I could from all the forums. And a map packer, and some kind of dune visual mod creator, and some kind of EBFD-IE (simple ini-editor, changes the cost and speed of building units), and DuneEx is already known to everyone, and even some kind of CampaignMapUnlocker. The latter, by the way, does not work. It's easier to pull out the cards with your hands (wrote above). Map-packer, it seems, too. But they are not needed - they are replaced by at least slightly straight arms and DuneEx.

White wrote: The
window is really cool) It's funny that the game is referred to as Dune3. What does it mean to pretend to be Tib Sun? Like, tools from Tiberian Sun were still used)) WOL is what is interesting.
I heard somewhere that they originally wanted to call it that. Then they decided to rename something for the sake of marketability and lack of direct connection with previous games.
WOL is most likely an abbreviation for WOL API, that is, Westwood Online API, in human translation - a set of functions for working with a network game. I think it is the same for all Westwood games, because in all online strategy games one and the same - server, client, chat, some functions. The game itself shouldn't be too influential, so WOL is a shared library for C&C, Red Alert, and dune.
In short, a library for organizing an online game. And in this case, perhaps, the WOL API has not yet been attached to the dune, and therefore slipped the dune to it as the Tiberian Sun. And we tested the network game like this. But this is just a guess. But I'm sure about the WOL API, because a few years ago this library already fell under reverse engineering, and the abbreviation WOL appeared there. By the way, the C&C and Red Alert sources also included the WOLAPI library. So this is 10000% network function.

As you can see, in the window you can set LOD - graphics settings go. But this is unlikely to refer to the levels of detail of the map. There is also Random Seed for AI, hell knows what it is for. In the game, in the source, I have not seen it. Or overlooked.

Yowane's fan wrote: I
must say, the Atreides have an imbalanced technique in terms of damage. Sonic tank, which takes down 30,000 hit points from two or three volleys (this is how much for an imperial worm building) - this is too much.
On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, it is one of my most disliked units, due to the fact that it demolishes not only strangers, but also its soldiers equally well, and it needs to be constantly micronized so that it does not do things. Devastator is better than IMHO without a doubt.
As for the worm and air defense, even on hard they do not help and the
Desty fly perfectly in full force) From 2:36:21 the author rushes in literally 2 minutes, using only the game mechanics)


In terms of this mission, the Westwoods are not like themselves. I think they really were in a hurry, and there was no time to think well.

Yowane's fan
Regarding the firing GUniap / TLINFlyer - both lack the firing animation. there are a couple of people who were able to fix it using the XBF-VVE editor (XBF Viewer / Editor). If I understand correctly, using DuneEx 2 from 3DDATA0001, extract the .xbf files of GUniap / TLINFlyer and the drone of adrides .. and then transfer the FXData section from the drone GUniap and TLINFlyer .. this is what they write on dune2k.com:

"Copying the entire FXData section That a unit from shoots to one's That does not worked in a couple of cases (GUNiap and TLFlyer using the ATADP FXData), But in will most cases, the section called FXData of one's XBF is not compatible with another XBF.
"

or this:

"Yes, there is a way to fix it. I replaced the FXData section from the Guild Niap flyer's XBF files with the FXData section from the Atreides Drone XBF files, and with the modified XBF files, the Niap shoots. I'm adding the Niap and 2 other aircraft to a new version of my Emperor Fast Units Mod. If anyone wants to include the Niap in a mod, send me an email to [email protected] and I'll email you copies of the modified XBF files. " (mail is not available - I already wrote there).

It's a pity I don't understand the schedule. Maybe you will succeed)

I think with the help of XBF-VVE - you can bring life back to many models - including a scavanger (by attaching an animation to raising troops from an improved carrier, for example) .. a guild worm hunter (GUWormCatcher) and other units / buildings.

You can download it here: https://forum.dune2k.com/files/file/1125-xbf-viewereditor-version-2k/

Yowane's fan wrote:
In the same place, all these wind traps are big (by the way, they are 100% playable - for them, in my opinion, there is even a building animation
Yes .. playable .. but they, like a smalter, destroy the company. Look what happens if you include them in the game. The models on all the maps of the company seem to be shifted down the list - and instead of some models others appear. By the way, it becomes impossible to pass the company for the Harkonens, because instead of the army there are Ixian scientists ...

In general, similar glitches are observed for all models of remote buildings of large houses and the Tleilax Palace (TLdome), i.e.:

// ORSmelter
// HKSmelter
// ATSmelter
// ORLaWindtrap
// HKLaWindtrap
// ATLaWindtrap
// ORHelipad - if there are .Xbf files, you can borrow fixed models from different mods.
// HKRepairPad - if there are .Xbf files, you can borrow fixed models from different mods.
// TLdoom

These buildings can be added to the game - but it will be comfortable to play only in the "shootout" mode.

TLdoom is of course gorgeous .. it's a pity you can't use it in a company, even as a decoration for enemies.


In general, in my opinion - now you need to understand 2 things:

1) How to put these buildings into the game without breaking the company.
2) How to issue weapons to GUNiap and TLFlyer - in my opinion 2 new shooting units in the game - and even with the original models they would simply not be replaceable there.