Dune - Wind Trap
Moderators: MR.D, Moderators
Nice
Can't really do it too well in Dune though. New engine code would be needed for the sandworms, at least.
Here's how I'd handle it though:
1) Energy is replaced with Water. Windtraps gather water. Water is your supply - building units, owning units, all requires water. The catch is that windtraps rely on wind, so your water supply is jumpy.
2) Spice is mined from surface features, not from mines. There may be a few "pre-spice masses" that can be mined from, but they're weak.
3) keep the Dune gameplay that disconnects between sand and stone. You build on stone, not sand. I'd push much more towards infantry and air combat, in keeping with the novels - vehicles are only used on stone, because they're worm bait. Tanks travel over sand by carryall or not at all.
4) the Atreides aren't the faction. They got killed in the first 5 minutes of the story. The factions are the Harkonnen (backed up by the Imperial Sardaukar) and the Fremen (backed up by the remnents of the Atreides). If you want a 3rd faction, don't make it a noble house - make it the Smugglers. To give the Smugglers some beef, say that the Spacing Guild and the house of Ix have secretly thrown in their chips with the Smugglers, wanting to wrest Dune from the unstable control of the nobility.
The problem is that there would be a lot of engine changes needed for the sandworms, for shields (which drive Worms insane if used on sand), for atomics (the use of which against a live target will cause the Lansraad to align against you and wipe you out), for las-cannons (which cause a thermonuclear explosion at both origin and target if they hit anything shielded). Troops are trained, mechs are built, but vehicles are purchased and imported from offworld. As such, most of those would be built at a "starport" which would be graphically tricky to handle. Perhaps child-pads could be used? Say you have a six-pad starport. The starport is actually six seperate costruction facilities that can be used to build vehicles and aircraft. All vehicles have the same build time, and that building process is invisible - the build time represents the time taken to import the tanks. The build times are long, but you have many pads so a single starport can import many units at once.
My focus would be as follows: Harkonnen get strong tanks, and infantry that is good for very little but brute force. Smugglers get decent tanks and stealthy, powerful aircraft, but weak infantry - and smaller, cheaper starports. Fremen get strong and stealthy infantry but weak tanks and middling aircraft. So the fremen rely on their infantry to control the whole desert and only a few small bases in stone, the Harkonnen play a defensive game where they try and control all the stone and use it to keep artillery control over the spice fields, and the Smugglers focus on playing an air-superiority battle, backed up with spies and artillery.
Oh, and the David Lynch movie was mindblowing. It had very little to do with Herbert's book, but it was a visual orgasm. The TV series, by comparison, was a slavish reproduction of Herbert's book that was totally bereft of any soul or deeper understanding of the themes.
At any rate, any videogame outlook of Dune is missing the point - the first book, where all the action happens, was just the set up. It was the classical warrior-messiah story in the desert, similar to Moses or Mohammed. The only difference is that Herbert uses it as a tool to tear down the Moses/Mohammed concept - he spends the next six books showing how Muad'dib's existence has developmentally stunted the empire, dumbing them into a fundamentalism when they needed to be developing both physically and culturally to prepare for invasion from a more advanced and powerful culture of humans.
Here's how I'd handle it though:
1) Energy is replaced with Water. Windtraps gather water. Water is your supply - building units, owning units, all requires water. The catch is that windtraps rely on wind, so your water supply is jumpy.
2) Spice is mined from surface features, not from mines. There may be a few "pre-spice masses" that can be mined from, but they're weak.
3) keep the Dune gameplay that disconnects between sand and stone. You build on stone, not sand. I'd push much more towards infantry and air combat, in keeping with the novels - vehicles are only used on stone, because they're worm bait. Tanks travel over sand by carryall or not at all.
4) the Atreides aren't the faction. They got killed in the first 5 minutes of the story. The factions are the Harkonnen (backed up by the Imperial Sardaukar) and the Fremen (backed up by the remnents of the Atreides). If you want a 3rd faction, don't make it a noble house - make it the Smugglers. To give the Smugglers some beef, say that the Spacing Guild and the house of Ix have secretly thrown in their chips with the Smugglers, wanting to wrest Dune from the unstable control of the nobility.
The problem is that there would be a lot of engine changes needed for the sandworms, for shields (which drive Worms insane if used on sand), for atomics (the use of which against a live target will cause the Lansraad to align against you and wipe you out), for las-cannons (which cause a thermonuclear explosion at both origin and target if they hit anything shielded). Troops are trained, mechs are built, but vehicles are purchased and imported from offworld. As such, most of those would be built at a "starport" which would be graphically tricky to handle. Perhaps child-pads could be used? Say you have a six-pad starport. The starport is actually six seperate costruction facilities that can be used to build vehicles and aircraft. All vehicles have the same build time, and that building process is invisible - the build time represents the time taken to import the tanks. The build times are long, but you have many pads so a single starport can import many units at once.
My focus would be as follows: Harkonnen get strong tanks, and infantry that is good for very little but brute force. Smugglers get decent tanks and stealthy, powerful aircraft, but weak infantry - and smaller, cheaper starports. Fremen get strong and stealthy infantry but weak tanks and middling aircraft. So the fremen rely on their infantry to control the whole desert and only a few small bases in stone, the Harkonnen play a defensive game where they try and control all the stone and use it to keep artillery control over the spice fields, and the Smugglers focus on playing an air-superiority battle, backed up with spies and artillery.
Oh, and the David Lynch movie was mindblowing. It had very little to do with Herbert's book, but it was a visual orgasm. The TV series, by comparison, was a slavish reproduction of Herbert's book that was totally bereft of any soul or deeper understanding of the themes.
At any rate, any videogame outlook of Dune is missing the point - the first book, where all the action happens, was just the set up. It was the classical warrior-messiah story in the desert, similar to Moses or Mohammed. The only difference is that Herbert uses it as a tool to tear down the Moses/Mohammed concept - he spends the next six books showing how Muad'dib's existence has developmentally stunted the empire, dumbing them into a fundamentalism when they needed to be developing both physically and culturally to prepare for invasion from a more advanced and powerful culture of humans.
You could also stick to the game (dune 2 mostly), becouse you won't be worrying about al sort of aspects you need to addept for game play.
(Gameplay>realism)
I happend to bump on Dune2 The Maker again, which I forgot the development still is running strong. http://d2tm.duneii.com/
(Gameplay>realism)
I happend to bump on Dune2 The Maker again, which I forgot the development still is running strong. http://d2tm.duneii.com/
