[Question] Dune2 - armor

[Micr0Bit]

@Nyerguds : did armor not exist in dune2 ? ... while studying your .ini-dumps i could not find any values so far , indicating any armor on vehicles or buildings

edit : another question ... can a sandworm actually eat a devastator ? ... cause the rules tell me that a sandworm-attack does actually 300 damage ... but a devastator has 400 hp

[Nyerguds]

I don't think there's armor in Dune II, no.Though MrFlibble or TrueBrain or Dynasty might know more about that; they've done a lot more research into Dune II than I have.

Fairly sure I've seen Devastators eaten, yes. Whatever damage is set on the Sandworm is mostly likely ignored in favour of the special logic they have to eat stuff. Do note, according to Dune's internal rules, Sandworms can only eat 3 things before they vanish automatically.

Oh, interesting note on that... when fiddling around with that, and making sandworms not disappear from eating units, we noticed that in Dune II's earlier missions, sandworms are often set to Area Guard instead of Ambush, which makes them behave radically differently. It makes the sandworms a lot more unpredictable and fun: rather than the classic "discover worm, pull everything back on concrete, kill worm that's stupidly hugging the rock to try to get to you", you get worms just moving around a limited area around their spawn point, and they might be aggressive (but not mindlessly so; go on rock and they just start wandering again), they might be docile, and they might change that behaviour during gameplay. A docile worm might change to aggressive when attacked, or just randomly. It's great fun to have them that way, since 1. they last a lot further into the games, 2. killing them is harder because they move on when there are no targets on sand, and 3. attacking a docile one is not just eliminating a potential risk, but also holds the risk of making it aggressive :)

Dune Dynasty has an "Insatiable Sandworms" option now, which both removes the eating limit, and forces all "Ambush" sandworms to "Area Guard".

[Micr0Bit]

@Nyerguds : i saw on fed2k that you auctioned an original box of dune2 for dos ... did you actually try them on a computer already ? if so ... can you recommend a machine / laptop to play the originals ?

a "compaq lte" could be a good idea ... according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2v7k-wAm2E

problem though ... i rarely find any of those on ebay ... so i thought you might have found an alternative solution , since you already own the game itself

[Nyerguds]

I already collected all installer files of all versions of Dune II, so I never saw a need to check the disks. Also, as I wrote there in the thread:

The box arrived yesterday, and I immediately got to work. Sadly my current PC doesn't have a floppy drive, so I couldn't get the content off the disks, but I'm fairly sure I already got that version on my disk anyway. The main reasons I had for buying this didn't really include the floppies, anyway.

These reasons, besides the fact this is a treasure of gaming history, and the fact the box is complete even down to the original receipt of the sale in a game store, are these:

-The cover art. I haven't found any place online that has a high resolution version of that, or even a good quality one.

-That cute little newspaper thingy, which is more or less their newsletter with added internal development anecdotes, and some hints and tricks for their games.

-The lovely ring-bound manual.

As for playing the original... well, I'd recommend either DOSBox (which was largely developed using Dune II as primary test case), or the aforementioned Dune Dynasty. Given the fact Dynasty is not a clone, but actually built on the reverse-engineered source code from the OpenDune project, it acts exactly like the original, aside from its UI upgrades.

Dune Dynasty info Official page: http://dunedynasty.sourceforge.net/ My own installation/tweaking guide: https://forum.dune2k.com/topic/24316-dune-dynasty/?page=12#comment-391240 Some hints on the resolution settings: https://forums.cncnet.org/index.php?topic=6176.msg45369#msg45369

[Micr0Bit]

yeah , i know all those options ... im constantly firing dune2 in dosbox up .. to check behaviour of units , check values ,gameplay and so on ...

the thing is , i dont trust emulations (dosbox) 100% ... in terms of speed ... because different cpus might have a different effect on the gameplay or am i wrong ? i know i could just play around in the dosbox-settings ... but having a 100% the same experience as a Dune2 - player in the 90s ... is only given when you actually use a machine from that era

anyway , for the dune2 -> openra translation ... dosbox will do the job