
Dune: The Battle for Arrakis – Extended Reference (2003) - tosh
http://ledmeister.com/dunexref.htm
======
alasdair_
Games that create a completely new genre (in this case, Real-Time Strategy)
are rare. Dune II is the even-more rare case of a new genre being created at
the same time as the game itself being quite excellent and popular at the same
time.

I've fond childhood memories of playing this for many hours. Great game!

~~~
Grimm665
This is why I felt bad for the PUBG devs, who seemed to have successfully
pushed the Battle Royale genre with a game that wasn't perfect but that they
put a lot of effort into, only to be outsold in days by Fortnite upon its
release.

~~~
kbenson
Given that PUBG has apparently sold 50 million copies across PC and Xbox (as
of two years ago!)[1], and the amount of time and effort that goes into
Fortnite _continuously_ to keep it fresh and the people playing it happy, I'm
not sure that PUBG hasn't payed a higher dividend on investment percentage-
wise, even if it's of lower total amount.

Bottom line, I'm not really really feeling bad for PUBG at all. It's kind of
like feeling bad for Minecraft because a lot of people are playing Fortnite
now. Minecraft made most its money on the purchase. There's some loss in
future revenue because of the network effect, but they probably made most the
money they were going to make from you already (and to bring it back to PUBG,
it's not for everyone. I didn't let my currently 10 year old son play it, but
I let him play Fortnite, even a year ago when this was a discussion).

1: [https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/19/17478476/playerunknowns-
ba...](https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/19/17478476/playerunknowns-
battlegrounds-sales-pubg-number-of-players)

~~~
Grimm665
I see your point but Minecraft didn't get usurped in popularity by a game that
ripped off it's core gameplay loop. As another commenter mentioned, I did
forget about DayZ, so maybe Battle Royale wasn't an entirely original concept
from the PUBG developers, but I think it's fair to say Epic Games saw the
popularity of the genre, pivoted their lackluster game into the genre, and
then undercut PUBG on price to rise in popularity. I guess that's just
business, but I do hold sympathy for the PUBG devs.

~~~
kbenson
Okay, but are we really considering the Battle Royale gameplay features all
that innovative? If a large map you can find stuff on that eventually shrinks
qualifies as something enough to differentiate it, doesn't Fortnite's building
mechanic qualify enough to differentiate _it_?

I don't play either game (unfortunately my system needs a refresh), but from
what I've seen of my son playing Fortnite the fights are like nothing I've
seen in an FPS before. There's a mad dash to build fortifications right in
front of people as quickly as possible as well as break through and navigate
these fortifications while under fire. To outside eyes at least, the
experience looks qualitatively different.

> I think it's fair to say Epic Games saw the popularity of the genre, pivoted
> their lackluster game into the genre, and then undercut PUBG on price to
> rise in popularity.

To my eyes, Fortnite differs in a few very important ways which makes it much
more complex than one company copying another and undercutting them.

\- It's targetted at a wider range of ages. e.g. it's much more acceptable for
parents to allow a younger set of kids to play.

\- It has a building mechanic, which changes both the strategy (pre-battle and
route planning) and tactics (on-the-fly shielding during live fire) of a game.

\- They are constantly updating it. I'm not sure how many "seasons" they are
in now, but not only are the changes they introduce often fairly large, the
end of season events are quite the spectacle, from the one or two I've seen
after the fact.

If you combine that with the fact that PUBG seems to have made at _least_ a
few hundred million dollars on what I expect is a few million (or a couple
tens of millions at most) investment, and I'm not really all that sorry for
them. They had an idea, they executed on it and made a bundle of money, and
then someone else iterated on it and happened to make a whole lot more money.
What's the alternative, Epic not change Fortnite and all the people that play
for free and all the younger players and all the people that like the building
mechanic just lose out? I just don't see a situation where PUBG came out on
top where more people are better off, and helping PUBG devs make billions
instead of hundreds of millions isn't something I think we need to optimize
for as a society, nor really care about.

~~~
Grimm665
> Okay, but are we really considering the Battle Royale gameplay features all
> that innovative?

Yes. Either accidentally or on purpose, the Battle Royale genre is a near
perfect game type for streaming, which it evolved along side with.

> If a large map you can find stuff on that eventually shrinks qualifies as
> something enough to differentiate it, doesn't Fortnite's building mechanic
> qualify enough to differentiate it?

Yes! I am in no way suggesting that devs of Fortnite didn't innovate on the
core concept, or that Epic owe the devs of PUBG anything. You're also correct
about the wider age appeal and constant updates, though PUBG also receives
updates albeit at a slower pace.

But Epic has far far greater resources, and though I don't think game genre's
should necessarily be patentable, I do think Fortnite's Battle Royale would
not have existed without the success of PUBG, and the fact that they could
work off of a skeleton they knew was already tested and successful, especially
with the lucrative streaming community.

I don't know about optimizing for society or whatever, it's just games man. I
like that both can exist and be successful, while also feeling some sympathy
for what could have been for the PUBG devs. Both can be true.

~~~
kbenson
> I like that both can exist and be successful, while also feeling some
> sympathy for what could have been for the PUBG devs. Both can be true.

I accept most of what you said. I'm more just defining why I don't really feel
sorry for them at all. If they were the inventors of the idea and they never
were able to capitalize on it, sure. But they did capitalize on it, and it
looks like extremely lucratively. It feels sort of like lamenting that Ford
doesn't own more of the auto market given that they popularized (or invented
in the modern era) the assembly line that all major automakers use. Ford's
doing just fine, and we're all better off for the idea being spread.

It's okay if you don't agree, I just wanted to make sure I expressed myself
accurately. :)

------
TedDoesntTalk
Off-topic, but I saw the 1984 Dune film in theaters. It remains the only film
I’ve been to where the theater handed out a sheet of paper with a glossary.

How familiar with the books do you need to be to play this?

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
If you haven't read the book, do yourself a favour and read it. I envy you,
you'll be able to read it for the first time.

Movie is also great. It's just not finished. :(

~~~
rebuilder
Jodorowsky's version?

~~~
tunap
Villeneuve's, hopefully...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(2020_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_\(2020_film\))

~~~
tildedave
I'm really excited for the movie and the casting looks incredible so far. I
wonder how the 2 movie split is going to work narratively. The book itself has
kind of a perfect 3 act setup but I'm not sure breaking the story at the end
of the book's part 1 (or halfway through part 2) is going to feel very
satisfying.

~~~
toast0
I think you could stop as a cliffhanger when Paul and Jessica escape from the
worm, and are confronted by Stilgar. Then you start with a knife battle for
the second movie, and who doesn't like a knife battle?

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
No, that would be like moving Luke vs Darth Vader fight to the beginning of
episode VI.

This actually reminded me of a colossal mistake made by Hobbit pt.2 movie,
when they ended the part with a dragon flying away to burn the city after the
cringiest of chase scenes.

They could have _easily_ end the part with slaying a dragon, and then show it
_again_ in part 3. All they needed was to find a different POV character!! One
dragon kill, shown twice.

------
fabiensanglard
What a coincidence, for the past week I have been looking for the author of
the never published book "Dune II - Insider's Guide" which was allegedly based
on the featured article.

Anybody has more information about it?

[https://twitter.com/fabynou/status/1280304687594397696](https://twitter.com/fabynou/status/1280304687594397696)

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humanistbot
Loved this game! If you want to play it in a slightly more modern version, the
OpenRA folks have done made a pretty faithful version of it, which runs on
their "clean-room implementation" of the original Command & Conquer engine:
[https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA](https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA)

~~~
jdhawk
For DuneII or Dune 2000?

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hursortue
The text formatting of this document is great.

Reminds me of all the other gamefaqs which were just plain text, e.g.

[https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-
tactic...](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-
tactics/faqs/3849)

------
petepete
> Saboteurs can pass over enemy walls, and may do so without slowing down.

What? I played through Dune 2 several times with every house and had no idea
about that!

------
orionblastar
They have an open source version of Dune here:
[https://github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE](https://github.com/OpenDUNE/OpenDUNE)

For those who miss the Dune gameplay and don't want to pirate the Genesis ROM.

------
dwighttk
I can remember my friend patiently explaining to me that House Harkonnen
didn’t actually have invincible troops just because the guy said “our
invincible Harkonnen troops” in a cutscene. I was all like “we should play as
those guys!”

------
Andrew_nenakhov
Dune 2 was great, but Dune 1 was even better. It will forever have a warm
place in my heart. A completely different game, though.

~~~
petercooper
Dune 1 is probably the most atmospheric 90s DOS game I've played. There are
few games that will sweep you into a world like that.

~~~
crocal
The game was developed by Philip Ulrich, already behind the Ark of Captain
Blood. The guy is a genius. This [1] is a short video of him explaining how
the game was developed, alas in French only.

[1] [https://youtu.be/5nHX_74mjss](https://youtu.be/5nHX_74mjss)

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
What kind of person can block video titled "Dune : il faut sauver la planète
des sables | Retrogaming Made in France | ARTE" from being viewed in certain
countries?!

~~~
MayeulC
Arte itself, maybe? I hit this quite frequently in the opposite direction. Try
invidio.us, or duckduckgo. A VPN as a last resort. Or other channels.. I'd
have uploaded it, but my upload is _very_ slow today...

The documentary is nice, if a bit short. The target is a general audience, so
you might not be missing out _that_ much.

------
novaRom
This game was released first for MS DOS in 1992. It was amazing experience -
unlike many games of that time (most popular were side-scrollers like Prince
of Persia), it required mouse.

------
rtchau
I couldn't even begin to guess how many hours I spent playing this game as a
kid (and how much I dreaded hearing "Warning - missile approaching" in the
last level).

------
cbanek
This was my first RTS game and I was hooked! So many fond memories of running
over baddies with my spice harvester!

------
valdagger
Love this website. Wish more people made sites like this.

------
toyg
I remember having to mess with memory settings in the DOS boot files in order
to squeeze enough RAM out of my little PC to play Dune II. Fun times.

------
fegu
I remember Dune 2 fit on two floppies (2x 1.44MB). That is impressive. It was
compressed and decompressed itself on install, but still.

~~~
glandium
I think it was 4 floppies.

~~~
menybuvico
The Amiga-version was on 4 floppies, as most Amigas were equipped with drives
for DD floppies (880k when formatted for the Amiga), while contemporary PC's
had drives for HD floppies (1.44 MB formatted with FAT).

~~~
glandium
AFAIR, the PC version was 4 floppies too, and ebay seems to agree.
[https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZKoAAOSwsrBcwbR8/s-l1600.png](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZKoAAOSwsrBcwbR8/s-l1600.png)

~~~
orionblastar
Some of the 3.5 inch floppies used on PC games were 720k DD disks because not
everyone had HD drives.

