Spring RTS Engine

Is there anyone that's trying to make some kind of Dune look alike mod?

That's something that I'd love to see

there have been a few threads about it. however, we have no way to create spice patches or resource gathering units. Also there are no neutral characters for mapping. If/when we get this we will have the capability to make a dune mod.

smoth wrote:there have been a few threads about it. however, we have no way to create spice patches or resource gathering units. Also there are no neutral characters for mapping. If/when we get this we will have the capability to make a dune mod.

Either way, Dune's gameplay is only trivially different from C&C, and there is at least one C&C mod I saw in development. And really, the basic necessity is just a "reclaim-only" nanos - you wouldn't have them returning to base, but otherwise you'd have harvesters there. Just fill maps up with non-obstructing features for spice.

There are 2 ways you can go about making a mod of DUNE.. you can either follow the books in which case Spring is a terrible engine to do it in.. or your can go the gay C&C way and just be a C&C with and look alike... your choice..

smoth wrote:there have been a few threads about it. however, we have no way to create spice patches or resource gathering units. Also there are no neutral characters for mapping. If/when we get this we will have the capability to make a dune mod.

Fanger wrote:There are 2 ways you can go about making a mod of DUNE.. you can either follow the books in which case Spring is a terrible engine to do it in.. or your can go the gay C&C way and just be a C&C with and look alike... your choice..

I got late from my bus home today and i had some brainstorming about Dune and a Dune mod and i came out with some ideas that involve both the original Dune books AND some parts of the C&C way


i thought something like this: MCV(mobile construction vehicle)has a ON/OFF switch, when ON it is immobile with a nanolathe.

when OFF it is mobile without the nanolathe. This unit would be the unit you start with (commander) .

Next about the spice patches. In the book the spice was usually buried DEEP UNDERGROUND and it was extracted with special spice factories that were transported by a carryall, during a sandworm sighting or enemy units getting near the carryall could load the spice factory and take it out of the harm's way.

SO create a mobile harvester unit again with 2 stances ON/OFF.

WHEN ON the harvester is immobile and it extracts "melange" from the spots.

when OFF it becomes mobile, but slow. So you could move it around with the Carryall Transport.

The 2 resources would be Melange (metal) with the gathering idea i told above and the second would be WATER. The energy would be replaced by water collected by wind traps that gather moisture from air to deep undeground "water banks"

WATER would be equvalient to ENERGY in ota mods, henche units would need water to sustain themselves.

About the unit building i was thinking about a "star port" building.
The commander doesn't build spesifically "kbot labs, air labs or vehicle labs" instead it builds a space port, where the orbiting GUILD heighliners keep reserves, the startport would then call down reserves when the need arises (nanolathe) whilst sending the gathered melange away.

Some unanswered things would be the "Holtzmann" shield and how it could be implemented. I thought something like this:

units that have the "holtzmann" shield would project missiles and projectiles away, but when struck by laser the laser's damage would be 10x bigger than normal

(imitating the holzmann effect in the dune book, the Holzmann shield deflects projectiles and fast-moving objects like bullets and arrows, but when struck by a laser weapon it would produce an explosion the size of a small atomic weapon)

Also about the the worms and "thumpers" i have no idea.

The factions could be something like

House Harkonnen: with all the common buildings like starport and wind trap carryall and harvesters. This army would be based around slow and heavy hitting units (flamers perhaps)

House Corrino: The ruling emperor's house that would employ the use of Sardaukar army.

House Tleilaxu: These would have wind trap replaced by Axlotl tank. The axlotl thank would create "gholas" out of dead bodies of the enemy (could perhaps be done with "resurrect"?) also they would have Face dancers and overall a "fleshy" theme that could be done by a nice UV-mapping(?)

House atreides/Fremen: these 2 allied would focus on mainly infantry units, with some cloacking or stealth abilities and the powerful Fedaykin men.

The Guild: This corporation has a monopoly over transports. they employ guild Navigators on Guild heighliners to move ships by folding space around the heighliners at the speed of thought. Im not sure about this faction though

Every faction could get 2 "game ender" or "superweapons"

First the House atomics (nukes)
And secondly a house-dependant weapon (NO-ship for harkonnen)

altho i have no idea how to do this stuff or even if it is possible in the first place, but a DUNE mod would kick ass anyway!

/me crawls back to his hole and starts modelling the cowboy Mavericks riding fidos and psycic jetpack peewees

The guild dosn't fight. Its not profitable enough. But they can do much better things then fighting! They can cut you off ecinomically and sociealy from the rest of the galaxy!

Research is an important step in writing a design doc.

For example you cannot controll unit speed with a script.

I think he was just putting out an Idea.. I dont think he really intended to go forward on that..

Well its 99.999% impossible to do a mod that 's faithful towards the book . . .

I was just having a (retarded) idea Dont flay me alive :'(

I am not flaying you or anything similar, don't blow it out of proportion. I am telling you it would be worth your time if you want to see it happen to look into what spring can and cannot do. That is all.

For the mobile spice mines; if they had to be loaded up, why not have two units? The mine and the mine transporter (which would have to made 'special' to transport buildings)

Is that bug where the extraction radius of mexes don't move with transported mexes still present?

In the latest Spring versions, it IS possible to control a unit's speed via script. So, the mod isn't that impossible.

but when struck by a laser weapon it would produce an explosion the size of a small atomic weapon)

no it doesnt. it produces a explosion (or doesnt) of a random size and power (and as i said, it might not even explode).
so there

Sean Mirrsen wrote:In the latest Spring versions, it IS possible to control a unit's speed via script. So, the mod isn't that impossible.

Except that that thing doesn't actually work

Min mat.. what are you on about.. lasguns hitting a shield results in an explosion on the scale of a nuclear blast.. always granted a larger shield hit by a larger lasgun would result in a larger blast there is however always a blast and a person sized shield hit by a person sized lasgun would result in somthing on the scale of Hiroshima or Nagasaki.. I dont knwo where you got your info from but its crap..

Both the shilded guy and the lasgun user would both be killed, no exptions.

it says it is HIGHLY UNPREDICTABLE and MAY NOT EVEN EXPLODE AT ALL in the first of the dune books. No idea if this changes over time but they are random IIRC i'll see if i can drag up a quote

Heres one quote

. Lasguns would knock them down, but lasguns were expensive and notoriously cranky of maintenance--and there was always the peril of explosive pyrotechnics if the laser beam intersected a hot shield

the PERIL of explosive pyrotechnics if the laser beam intersected with a HOT shield

And another

The fact that feedback from a shield would explode both lasgun and shield did not bother the Harkonnens. Why? A lasgun-shield explosion was a dangerous variable, could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target.
The unknowns here filled her with uneasiness.

Hmm seems it WILL explode, but the SEVERITY of the explosions vary, meh...i was half right

In the books a reverend mother put Tio Holzmann to test this possibility, by shielding up an asteroid and shooting at it with a lasgun, but it did nothing.

he was killed by a rebel with a lasgun while wearing a shield and the explosion devastated his entire state

Sleksa wrote:Well its 99.999% impossible to do a mod that 's faithful towards the book . . .

I was just having a (retarded) idea Dont flay me alive :'(

A few things I'd do to "improve" the faithfullness, similar to earlier suggestion:

1) vehicles do not drive on sand. Ever. Only harvesters do. Vehicles are either airlifted or they stay on the rock. Sand is for infantry only. As such, the game is much more infantry-oriented. In fact, static defenses could be minimal since the mobility limits on vehicles practically make them static anyways.

2) Factions are not "Atreides" and "Harkonnen". The Atreides bought the farm right off the bat. It's the Fremen against the Harkonnen. Likewise, the Imperial Sardaukar do not operate in the open, they're a group of units within the Harkonnen buildtree. If you want a 3rd faction, bring in the Smugglers, with maybe some weird Ixian and Tleilaxu stuff for flavour.

3) Two kinds of harvesting - stable "spice masses" that work like mines, and surface-spice that his harvested/reclaimed from the surface.

As for the "nuclear" stuff - use of lasguns against shielded targets was a thermonuclear explosion, and was illegal. Even Paul only used nukes for terrain modification. I'd just leave out the nuclear stuff and say that shielded targets were 100% unshootable by lasguns. Doesn't matter anyways, shields would be "vehicle only" things, to keep them on the rocks.

And yeah, water and money are the resources. Spice gets you money for units, and you can use money to import "water tanks" to supplement your water supply. Water is effectively your "supply". All units have standing and moving water costs.

The factions could be laid out along EE lines, with the Harkonnen similar to the GD, the Fremen similar to the URC, and the Smugglers similar to NI.

Sleksa wrote:In the books a reverend mother put Tio Holzmann to test this possibility, by shielding up an asteroid and shooting at it with a lasgun, but it did nothing.

he was killed by a rebel with a lasgun while wearing a shield and the explosion devastated his entire state

That was in the Brian Herbert books right?

They don't exist.