
The Making of Dune II - vquemener
https://readonlymemory.vg/the-making-of-dune-ii/
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pontifier
This was as favorite of mine in highschool. My friends and I would all play
this after school.

We found a bug that made the 1 player missions way too easy. The range of the
sonic tanks wasn't really a range so much as a path that the waves took for
the duration of the sound effect. We found that by turning the speed of the
game up, the shots would travel way too far and made them really overpowered.

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wushupork
We must be around the same age. It was the same for me. I must have played all
3 houses so many times. I loved being able to control the units.

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TuringNYC
Thanks for the share, this brought back great memories. The explanations in
the article partly explain why the game was so enjoyable, and it is nice to
hear the behind-the-scenes explanation for choices.

Dune II had such an effect on me, I still remember the moments I played it in
high school, the ambient music, the feeling of attach, and the feeling of
spice running out. Oh, and level 7!

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dr_j_
Actually, you can still download and play this on modern platforms. I have it
running on my Mac.
[http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/](http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/)
and [https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dune-ii-the-building-
of-a...](https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dune-ii-the-building-of-a-
dynasty-1e7#download) brings back great memories. Good read :-)

~~~
bni
Dune Legacy is awesome. They added some RTS features that evolved after Dune
II like drag select and control groups.

Makes it a lot more playable today without impacting the fel of the game.

I also like that you can get a much larger viewport than in the original,
using todays very big resolution screens. I find having 2x scaling and a large
Window works best, as 1x makes units too small.

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tosh
on the Internet Archive:
[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dune_2_-_The_Building_of_a...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Dune_2_-_The_Building_of_a_Dynasty_1992)

love the game, remember playing the Mega Drive (Genesis) port and falling in
love with RTS

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n3k5
> _‘Dune II seems very old and clunky by today’s standards,’ says Joe. ‘The
> biggest single thing I should have added to it was the ability to drag-
> select units to allow a player to issue one order simultaneously to multiple
> units. Even though that seems like a simple feature, it was the key change
> that made C &C such a leap ahead of Dune II.’_

That's what I was concerned about before I played through one of the three
campaigns a few years ago — that the UI would seem unbearable after having
played a lot of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2. I found it actually quite OK after
learning the keyboard shortcuts (of the Dos version). What actually ruined it
for me and made me not want to play the other campaigns is the poor AI. Easy
enemies would have been alright; I'm not that good at RTS games anyway and
being able to finish each level on the first try was nice. But the opponents
are so exceptionally stupid that it just got boring.

There are a few open source clones of the engine that have online multi-player
and some other additional features (such as the standard multi-select). But
I'm not aware of one that lets you play the single-player campaigns against a
decently fun AI. Waiiit a moment … just found out that I had missed something
big: Dune Legacy lets you play the campaigns, not just single-player skirmish,
against its improved AIs. I just tried selecting ‘hard’ and (with game speed
at maximum) got completely wrecked on the second map. Wonderful!

Dune (the adventureish one), on the other hand, is still a good game in its
original form.

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stevekemp
There's a great three-part discussion of Dune, and Dune II here:

[https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-
part-1-...](https://www.filfre.net/2018/11/controlling-the-spice-part-1-dune-
on-page-and-screen/)

Click "next" to move forward to the following-parts.

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WarOnPrivacy
I've never been much of a gamer.

Dune II was one of the few games I ever really bit into. I played it more than
anything else.

Honestly, it was like _" Okay. I completed the Gaming Experience. Enjoyed
that. What else does life have?"_

~~~
tetris11
Yep. I genuinely think that teenagers play games because nothing else in their
life is so rewarding.

I was hooked until I got my first real job, and I guess the thrill of creating
something of your own and seeing it produce results was a delayed
gratification no game can match.

That being said, I do love a good story, and gaming has really become a
creative outlet for visual storytelling. I can recommend Disco Elysium to
anyone.

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Cthulhu_
I dunno, I hear what you're saying, and I too experience enjoyment from work,
but I still play a lot of games on the side. The difference is effort vs
reward, in that in my day job I spend hours hacking away for some reward,
whereas in games there's (usually) enjoyment all throughout.

Finished another playthrough of Factorio again the other day, each time I
learn of my mistakes and improve on things again. This time I made a proper
train network and used premade blueprints for it, it was really neat and
things went pretty smoothly. 70 hours or so until first launch.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
I didn't mean to throw shade on gaming. I meant to say that my Dune II plays
were so satisfying, my gaming void was filled.

I never enjoyed later games as much & eventually moved on from gaming.

sidebar: I ran a Minecraft server for 4 years but that wasn't gaming so much
as it was responsibility.

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CarelessExpert
I cannot express how excited I was to see Herzog Zwei mentioned in this write-
up. I play the heck out of that game as a kid and it's burned an indelible
memory in my mind.

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Viper512
This guy ported it to the web.

[http://epicport.com/en](http://epicport.com/en)
[https://github.com/caiiiycuk/play-dune](https://github.com/caiiiycuk/play-
dune)

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Lorin
I believe house Ordos was made specifically for the games

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DylanSp
Not quite; House Ordos originates with the (semi-canon) Dune Encyclopedia,
from 1984.

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jakearmitage
This website is so hard to read.

