At this stage it doesn't have too much in it, will be adding features as I go, so far I have included an easier AI though for compaign. To select AI see screenshot.
== DONE ==
Alpha1
-CampaignAI, easier AI for people who want to play the game like they remember it (
It's not exactly the same, as it fights too early instead of waiting, but is quite easy (play tested)
- Ornithopters movement is now fixed and in line with original game
Alpha2
- Reverted change made to launchers which made it easier for them to kill ornithopers stationary above them as ornithopter movement is now fixed
Alpha3
- Some tuning of quantbot, build order for units and buildings, removed retreat, it still can't handle the unit max cap though
- in keeping with original game, units only return to original repair locaiton if 'manual carryall drop' is enabled. This is similar to original and also - returning to battle zone is a bit imbalanced - allows for snowballing
Alpha 4 quantbot
- reduce refinery spam
- reduce harvesters built
- consider max units when evaluating what to build
- other tuning
*undo 'fix' for repair yard returning unit to where it had been picked up from.
- you can turn it back on by checking 'manual carryall drop' from options, will will also allow you to manually move units around the map at will.
== TODO ==
*unit pathing rework to stop lag with many units
- improve performance when path finding & selecting targets (not sure how at this stage)
*quantBot AI tuning
change from 'military value' to some other limit
reconsider the damage to total spend algorithm used to determine troop ratios (revert to something simpler)
unit rally points need to be adjusted for unit producers
Been getting a large amount of hits on my old Dune Legacy video over the last year and lots of AI too hard comments lol so this is great news! Glad to see this project is alive again! :)
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Actually, it's hard to say whether that change of Ornithopter behavior is good at all. It was probably deliberate intention to have an advanced air combat mechanics considering the game has multi-player. With having them flying the way they do now, the players have basically lost the ability to efficiently utilize them in battles against each other, not to mention Rocket Turrets fail to take the amended units down because of their too rapid speed: the shot projectiles just keep chasing the Ornis across the map.
It would have made much more sense to introduce a toggleable switch of how the unit operates, based on players' liking. The AI's flaw in combating air attacks in the old design was that once its Construction Yard has been destroyed, a new one was never either built or ordered via Starport. Perhaps, the unit's firepower needed to be tweaked downwards a little bit.
As for the difficulty of missions in Single Player, it's actually a much more complex design issue, if the desired goal is having them compatible with the original Dune 2 & numerous Dune Legacy AIs. There are plenty of differences, such as multiple units selection, much easier territory overview, the availability of team hotkeys, etc.
Not mentioning some obvious, likewise game-influencing bugs, such as Devastators not being built by certain AI types, Death Hand missiles not being fired, a diverging behavior of Sandworms, weaker Rocket Turrets alongside with the absence of Teams mechanics application in CampaignAIPlayer's behavior script as of yet.
All in all, it isn't impossible redesigning Single Player this way, but, it's a very time-consuming effort, unless some of the active devs will be willing to consider the implementation of automatical bases & units placement generator within Map Editor, similar with how Dune Dynasty spawns computer-controlled bases for the games started in Skirmish mode.
I've been overhauling the existing Single Player scenarios as time allowed, although, without the means of automating at least 1/3 of the required measures, the whole venture implies multi-year perspective, as designing/playtesting a level takes no less than a day. In this file are 21 which have already been remodelled. :)
Last edit: Dmitri Fatkin 2021-04-26
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Will check out your missions and let you know how I find them :) I can adjust different AI behavior to accomodate
Ornithipters
- Ornithoopter revert was done by @richieq. I'd have to trawl through the code to see how it coud be turned into a game menu option (not saying it can't).
- If it was made into an option - I also need to introduce a toggle on launchers - they can only hit an ornithopter directly above them if their bullets are converted into rocket turret rockets
- Even so - to be honest ornithopters in their previous state were overpowered in the hands of humans
- I agree that there needs to be some tweaks on how they are used by humans, I want them to still be human usable, but asthetically it's much nicer seeing them fly around like they used to.
- Quantbot and maybe smartbot do order new construction yards if they lose theirs, or build one via heavy factory. I know this because I wrote the AI
Diverging behavior
- Repair yards returning units to where they were picked up from is diverging but is actually fixing a bug. In alpha I've made it so that if 'enable manual carryall drops' is checked in options then the repair yard will return to the location otherwise it will deploy by repair yard. In the original it would return to the original location if the repair yard was completely surrounded, but this wasn't a design feature - or rather is was an 'unintended' feature :) like speed jumping in quake
- THe original AI only attacking with one unit instead of a squad was also a code bug, but the campaign AI @richieq wrote does something similar.. almost even easier tbh. I think it's good to provide an AI similar to the original for novice gamers...but in all honesty I don't get why modern gamers would enjoy that.. personally I enjoy a challenge which is why I wrote smartbot and quant bot to begin with... it was too easy to win otherwise!
- My take on bugs/vs features is that you want to maintain the spirit of the game but allow for to be more challenging... one of the reasons many AIs don't build certain units is because.. they're bad! That means either rebalancing unit stats, just having an AI which will always be outclassed by a human opponent, or coming up with even more advanced AI troop management strategies which can utilise different units.
-
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Dmitri - I tested out your map. I think level 9 gives the player too many credits, especiallly considering the starpot is full. A decent player would win the game pretty easily.. my quantbot took a while but its got a few bugs in it I introduced :)
how do you turn it into a custom campaign i wonder. I can load your maps in to the build for custome games but i don't know how to make it into a campaign.
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Think it's too far from completion to be talking about campaigns. I also consider what's being done an enhanced, Legacy-accommodated version of The Building of a Dynasty and Super Dune 2, implementing the original Power C's concept of a few interconnected factions per map, but in a much more comprehensive way.
Back in 1993 him and Shadow Knight basically did it the way it was released mainly because they wanted the AI to be harder, and yet weren't aware of the existence of Team Wheeled and Tracked erroneous specifications. Ironically, it aided their final levels to function properly, because if all of provided scripts worked right, the maps would be cluttered by awaiting team's preparedness units & would be almost hung up due to the engine's unit generation limit and its "Unable to create more".
I originally wanted to try to release an amended version of The Building of a Dynasty and SD2 back in 1996, but, map editors existing back then had too many constraints to consider the work an enjoyable designer's experience, despite the fact I actually had almost every mission amended one way or the other, however, in the end, I didn't like the resulting work, and decided it would be better to simply abandon it. Looking back, it was absolutely right decision, as too many similarities existed with original Westwood's levels, along with numerous design omissions. Nevertheless, I'm hoping "redesign effort 2.0" will finally allow to appropriately implement what I had in mind.
The easiest way to run these missions is by simply placing them within Dune Legacy folder and then picking the associated level number through Skirmish menu.
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I didn't think there would be an update in 5 years! Thank you! I have some questions!
Is this an official update or from a fan?
Are the damage and hp of rocket turrets increased?
Does the game still freeze when there are more than 80 units on the map?
Qbot is now using a passenger car factory?
Has the health of all buildings in the game been increased?
Limit units in the starport. If the limit is in the settings, then it only affects the factory of heavy and light equipment.
In the new version of the game, Qbot is now developing very slowly and does not use the technique from the heavy factory for the first 20 minutes of the game.
Ornithopters were not noticed by the bots, they stopped using them ?!
Make ornithopters attack without my commands, Hunt command is not working.
Set a unit limit for ornithopters.
Sorry for google translate.
Dune legacy fan =)
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Hi there, first of all thx for putting this together and Iam glad that Iam not the only one that got stomped by the AI in original legacy. But i have a weird problem lately. When i first tried your version, it ran without a problem. I wanted to play the game today and the music is all messed up, sound crackles and sounds metallic. The normal legacy runs without problem. Sorry, there is not much information i can give you besides that the music is messed up.
Just an update. The version0.96.4 worked fine without any sound issues. I switched from 5.1 to stereo output 0.96.5alpha4 s music played normal again.
Last edit: Jan Bendetson 2021-07-22
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Alpha 4: Huzzah! Game no longer crashes upon saving options like it did on the 0.96.4 official installer release... Music is a garbled mess though.
Alpha 3: Music is fine - again, or rather still, I suppose; but the game crashes on saving options again.
Alpha 2: Music is good here too; but the game still crashing on saving options.
Alpha: Music good! Game does not crash on saving options! There's a version of the game I can actually play as intended!
A few things; I don't suppose it is possible to selectively apply the HD upscale thing, right? The actual game looks good, but any text displayed like the "victory test" is blurred, blotchy mess. Similarly the mentat screen between missions the artwork shown does not look good with the upscale option. (This screen is also not fullscreen for some reason, having black bars on all four sides.)
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I'm also having an issue with the sound as described above. No matter what version of the alpha I try, I get the same issue. I've tried to change the music from adl to xmi and it plays the midi music correctly, but I'd really like to have the proper version of the music playing.
Jan Bendetson mentioned changing from 5.1 to stereo, but I can't find any such option anywhere, so I'm kind of at a loss.
My main issue with the previous version was that I got into an endless carryall war where me and the ai keep repairing our units until there is no resources left in the map. Very tedious, and not much fun. I can't break through the endless stream of tanks and rocket launchers.
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Hi all - Dune 0.96.5 APLHA now underway. Up to second alhpa build, alpha2
I've just done a first build of a Dune 0.96.5 alpha (Windows 10, 64bit) which can be found in the following folder: https://sourceforge.net/projects/dunelegacy/files/dunelegacy/0.96.5alpha/
At this stage it doesn't have too much in it, will be adding features as I go, so far I have included an easier AI though for compaign. To select AI see screenshot.
== DONE ==
Alpha1
-CampaignAI, easier AI for people who want to play the game like they remember it (
It's not exactly the same, as it fights too early instead of waiting, but is quite easy (play tested)
- Ornithopters movement is now fixed and in line with original game
Alpha2
- Reverted change made to launchers which made it easier for them to kill ornithopers stationary above them as ornithopter movement is now fixed
Alpha3
- Some tuning of quantbot, build order for units and buildings, removed retreat, it still can't handle the unit max cap though
- in keeping with original game, units only return to original repair locaiton if 'manual carryall drop' is enabled. This is similar to original and also - returning to battle zone is a bit imbalanced - allows for snowballing
Alpha 4
quantbot
- reduce refinery spam
- reduce harvesters built
- consider max units when evaluating what to build
- other tuning
*undo 'fix' for repair yard returning unit to where it had been picked up from.
- you can turn it back on by checking 'manual carryall drop' from options, will will also allow you to manually move units around the map at will.
== TODO ==
*unit pathing rework to stop lag with many units
- improve performance when path finding & selecting targets (not sure how at this stage)
*quantBot AI tuning
Last edit: Stefan van der Wel 2021-05-02
can you disable the annoying money counting sound or give us a option to?
and rebalance the aircraft or give us the option to buff it
Last edit: Nikola Vuletic 2022-08-06
Been getting a large amount of hits on my old Dune Legacy video over the last year and lots of AI too hard comments lol so this is great news! Glad to see this project is alive again! :)
Amazing to see this back in development, thanks for your hard work!
Have you had a chance to look at the balance patch I sent you? Would love to hear some more feedback on it.
Good morning, everyone.
Actually, it's hard to say whether that change of Ornithopter behavior is good at all. It was probably deliberate intention to have an advanced air combat mechanics considering the game has multi-player. With having them flying the way they do now, the players have basically lost the ability to efficiently utilize them in battles against each other, not to mention Rocket Turrets fail to take the amended units down because of their too rapid speed: the shot projectiles just keep chasing the Ornis across the map.
It would have made much more sense to introduce a toggleable switch of how the unit operates, based on players' liking. The AI's flaw in combating air attacks in the old design was that once its Construction Yard has been destroyed, a new one was never either built or ordered via Starport. Perhaps, the unit's firepower needed to be tweaked downwards a little bit.
As for the difficulty of missions in Single Player, it's actually a much more complex design issue, if the desired goal is having them compatible with the original Dune 2 & numerous Dune Legacy AIs. There are plenty of differences, such as multiple units selection, much easier territory overview, the availability of team hotkeys, etc.
Not mentioning some obvious, likewise game-influencing bugs, such as Devastators not being built by certain AI types, Death Hand missiles not being fired, a diverging behavior of Sandworms, weaker Rocket Turrets alongside with the absence of Teams mechanics application in CampaignAIPlayer's behavior script as of yet.
All in all, it isn't impossible redesigning Single Player this way, but, it's a very time-consuming effort, unless some of the active devs will be willing to consider the implementation of automatical bases & units placement generator within Map Editor, similar with how Dune Dynasty spawns computer-controlled bases for the games started in Skirmish mode.
I've been overhauling the existing Single Player scenarios as time allowed, although, without the means of automating at least 1/3 of the required measures, the whole venture implies multi-year perspective, as designing/playtesting a level takes no less than a day. In this file are 21 which have already been remodelled. :)
Last edit: Dmitri Fatkin 2021-04-26
Hi Dmitri
Will check out your missions and let you know how I find them :) I can adjust different AI behavior to accomodate
Ornithipters
- Ornithoopter revert was done by @richieq. I'd have to trawl through the code to see how it coud be turned into a game menu option (not saying it can't).
- If it was made into an option - I also need to introduce a toggle on launchers - they can only hit an ornithopter directly above them if their bullets are converted into rocket turret rockets
- Even so - to be honest ornithopters in their previous state were overpowered in the hands of humans
- I agree that there needs to be some tweaks on how they are used by humans, I want them to still be human usable, but asthetically it's much nicer seeing them fly around like they used to.
- Quantbot and maybe smartbot do order new construction yards if they lose theirs, or build one via heavy factory. I know this because I wrote the AI
Diverging behavior
- Repair yards returning units to where they were picked up from is diverging but is actually fixing a bug. In alpha I've made it so that if 'enable manual carryall drops' is checked in options then the repair yard will return to the location otherwise it will deploy by repair yard. In the original it would return to the original location if the repair yard was completely surrounded, but this wasn't a design feature - or rather is was an 'unintended' feature :) like speed jumping in quake
- THe original AI only attacking with one unit instead of a squad was also a code bug, but the campaign AI @richieq wrote does something similar.. almost even easier tbh. I think it's good to provide an AI similar to the original for novice gamers...but in all honesty I don't get why modern gamers would enjoy that.. personally I enjoy a challenge which is why I wrote smartbot and quant bot to begin with... it was too easy to win otherwise!
- My take on bugs/vs features is that you want to maintain the spirit of the game but allow for to be more challenging... one of the reasons many AIs don't build certain units is because.. they're bad! That means either rebalancing unit stats, just having an AI which will always be outclassed by a human opponent, or coming up with even more advanced AI troop management strategies which can utilise different units.
-
one more thing guys - I'm building out iterations in quick succession. Just uploading aloha3 now, you can read changes in my first post.
Dmitri - I tested out your map. I think level 9 gives the player too many credits, especiallly considering the starpot is full. A decent player would win the game pretty easily.. my quantbot took a while but its got a few bugs in it I introduced :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edY1XJ1ie2o
Too easy is still better than nearly-impossible completion, right? =)
The appropriate changes have been made to the assigned resources on both sides in multiple maps.
how do you turn it into a custom campaign i wonder. I can load your maps in to the build for custome games but i don't know how to make it into a campaign.
Think it's too far from completion to be talking about campaigns. I also consider what's being done an enhanced, Legacy-accommodated version of The Building of a Dynasty and Super Dune 2, implementing the original Power C's concept of a few interconnected factions per map, but in a much more comprehensive way.
Back in 1993 him and Shadow Knight basically did it the way it was released mainly because they wanted the AI to be harder, and yet weren't aware of the existence of Team Wheeled and Tracked erroneous specifications. Ironically, it aided their final levels to function properly, because if all of provided scripts worked right, the maps would be cluttered by awaiting team's preparedness units & would be almost hung up due to the engine's unit generation limit and its "Unable to create more".
I originally wanted to try to release an amended version of The Building of a Dynasty and SD2 back in 1996, but, map editors existing back then had too many constraints to consider the work an enjoyable designer's experience, despite the fact I actually had almost every mission amended one way or the other, however, in the end, I didn't like the resulting work, and decided it would be better to simply abandon it. Looking back, it was absolutely right decision, as too many similarities existed with original Westwood's levels, along with numerous design omissions. Nevertheless, I'm hoping "redesign effort 2.0" will finally allow to appropriately implement what I had in mind.
The easiest way to run these missions is by simply placing them within Dune Legacy folder and then picking the associated level number through Skirmish menu.
alpha 4 released, mostly just ai tuning, repair yard change and a few pther things see above
no - how did you send it to me? i can test it out def and add it as an option
I sent another message to your profile with a dropbox link.
I didn't think there would be an update in 5 years! Thank you! I have some questions!
Is this an official update or from a fan?
Are the damage and hp of rocket turrets increased?
Does the game still freeze when there are more than 80 units on the map?
Qbot is now using a passenger car factory?
Has the health of all buildings in the game been increased?
Limit units in the starport. If the limit is in the settings, then it only affects the factory of heavy and light equipment.
In the new version of the game, Qbot is now developing very slowly and does not use the technique from the heavy factory for the first 20 minutes of the game.
Ornithopters were not noticed by the bots, they stopped using them ?!
Make ornithopters attack without my commands, Hunt command is not working.
Set a unit limit for ornithopters.
Sorry for google translate.
Dune legacy fan =)
Hi there, first of all thx for putting this together and Iam glad that Iam not the only one that got stomped by the AI in original legacy. But i have a weird problem lately. When i first tried your version, it ran without a problem. I wanted to play the game today and the music is all messed up, sound crackles and sounds metallic. The normal legacy runs without problem. Sorry, there is not much information i can give you besides that the music is messed up.
Just an update. The version0.96.4 worked fine without any sound issues. I switched from 5.1 to stereo output 0.96.5alpha4 s music played normal again.
Last edit: Jan Bendetson 2021-07-22
Alpha 4: Huzzah! Game no longer crashes upon saving options like it did on the 0.96.4 official installer release... Music is a garbled mess though.
Alpha 3: Music is fine - again, or rather still, I suppose; but the game crashes on saving options again.
Alpha 2: Music is good here too; but the game still crashing on saving options.
Alpha: Music good! Game does not crash on saving options! There's a version of the game I can actually play as intended!
A few things; I don't suppose it is possible to selectively apply the HD upscale thing, right? The actual game looks good, but any text displayed like the "victory test" is blurred, blotchy mess. Similarly the mentat screen between missions the artwork shown does not look good with the upscale option. (This screen is also not fullscreen for some reason, having black bars on all four sides.)
I can open alpha1, but I got runtime error for alpha 2,3, and 4. Any advice so I can fix it? I've tried on two laptops but same error.
not sure - anyone else getting the problem? its a 64bit build
Quantbot now attacks after taking damage from the player. This could be due to the carryall drop the ai makes on your base on different levels
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dunelegacy/files/dunelegacy/0.96.5alpha/dunelegacy-0.96.5alpha5-windows10-x64.zip/download
@svan058 can you please update the source code too, since it's at version 0.96.5alph2 currently
I'm also having an issue with the sound as described above. No matter what version of the alpha I try, I get the same issue. I've tried to change the music from adl to xmi and it plays the midi music correctly, but I'd really like to have the proper version of the music playing.
Jan Bendetson mentioned changing from 5.1 to stereo, but I can't find any such option anywhere, so I'm kind of at a loss.
My main issue with the previous version was that I got into an endless carryall war where me and the ai keep repairing our units until there is no resources left in the map. Very tedious, and not much fun. I can't break through the endless stream of tanks and rocket launchers.
Hi, i changed the sound output within windows not the game itself.
Last edit: Jan Bendetson 2021-09-27