MrFlibble

Hm? Oh, yes. I knew that. Took tons of retries before it let me download the damn thing [edit] Huh, I guess the downloads are completely restricted to donators only now? O_o Seeing as neither their guestbook nor forums still work, I sure am not going to try checking if the donation-to-unlock-downloads actually still works. Guess the site's a lost cause. I've grown to dislike Nahoo's site pretty quickly because of that. Charging (even in the form of "voluntary donation" or "premium upgrade") for downloads that anyone can and should get for free is questionable on its own, applying this tactic to outright pirated games (Dune II might be considered abandonware but Age of Empires certainly isn't) goes beyond outrage. Anyhoo, I've just posted a topic at FED2k to sum up the findings so far: http://forum.dune2k.com/topic/24257-old-unofficial-dune-ii-extras/ I've also uploaded a pack of "Dune Utilities" that have been made by Russian programmers circa 1994. I'm not sure if those are the same people who did the 1994 Russian translation of Dune II v1.0. I got these as a part of an archive I got from a Russian site with various extras, the original file name was supposedly DUNE2ADD.ARJ. I've managed to dig up some more references to obscure Dune II-related files that used to be on Russian BBS's back then, but not the files themselves. DUNE2ADD.ZIP

Also found a download for the Dune II - The Building of a Scenario DUNEEDIT.ZIP DUNE2_TR.ZIP - yet another Dune II trainer

I've attached Jens Defendorf's Dune II Unit Editor that helped me to find the first data about Dune II units and structures, that became the basis of your editor. Still can't remember where I got it, and also I'm pretty sure that its file name is not the original one. IIRC the text on one of that editor's screens alludes to some kind of a text file that was supposed to be included with the editor, but it was also absent in the download that I had (I think it was just an exe file, not even zipped.) I've also attached the Dune II - The Building of a Scenario editor, as the download links I had found seem to be no longer functional. BTW, the latest version of Stefan Hendriks' Dunedit is available at his old site. [Edit] I think I've got the Dune II Unit Editor off Nahoo's website. [Edit 2] Here are some old Dune II saved games: DUNE2SAV.ZIP These aren't saves to help you through the game, but actually new levels distributed as saved games. [Edit 3] Even more stuff: DUNE2MM2.ZIP - Dune II Money Maxxer DUN2TRNR.ZIP - Dune II Razor trainer DUNE2PAT.ZIP - Dune II patch with the included READ.ME file (which is not included in the version currently at Westwood's FTP) EDDUNE.ZIP - DUNE II Saved Game File Editor 1.5 DUNE2FAQ.ZIP - Dune Ii FAQ revision 1.3 And suddenly, believe it or not, I've found the original file of the Dune II Unit Editor, which is actually called D2CHT10.ZIP - DUNE 2 CHEAT: The Ultimate Cheat Program v1.0 ^_^ DUNEEDIT.ZIP Dune2-Unit-Editor.zip

Well, I guess this is the correct place to post it You don't want to go into webcomics with me here... we'd have to split the thread, lol. I follow tons of them Which I gladly do ^_^ Somehow I totally forgot to mention Hark! A Vagrant!, which is simply loveable (Pride and Prejudice and Monster Trucks!) I picked many webcomics while reading TVTropes, but knew of some beforehand as they included references to Dune (like this OOtS strip which Edric O mentioned here). I learned of the Penny Arcade the same way but did not like it a lot, although I do like the GIFT theory. I believe Supernormal Step does a particularly good job combining wacky concepts with interesting storytelling, something which is not always balanced well in webcomics IMO. It is also very well drawn, and has nice character design. Irregular Webcomic! is awesome in all aspects, not only because it has LEGOs (Yay!) but it's the excellent humour and incredibly readable annotations that make it stand out In fact, David Morgan-Mar does a marvellous job when he starts explaining science in layman's terms, I wish my school teachers of math and physics had possessed such a talent back then. He's also got a lot of interesting observations on other things too, a certainly enjoyable read ^_^ Aside from Irregular Webcomic!, I also tried other comics made with LEGO figurines, most notably The Adventures of the S-Team. Legostar Galactica seems like it's very well done from the artistic standpoint but somehow it did not interest me much at all. xckd has a lot of nice strips, but not always IMO. Some others that I (have) read occasionally include Scary Go Round (I think I started reading from the middle of a story, then got bored), The Spinnerette (which is rather nice actually), The Adventures of Dr. McNinja (has got entertainment value but is a little bit over the top for my tastes), Trying Human, as well as some others I can't recall now 8-bit Theatre, nice but the story often went on a very slow pace with jokes that were only mildly amusing. Oh, and I also quite enjoyed reading Stupid Comics

Actually, I never noticed that. On a side note, IIRC the AI in Dune II differs from the player in how much it spends on repairs.

I haven't looked closely, but that editor seems like a very rare thing - I remember looking for it on the net before, but found it nowhere. What's more, I can't recall where I got it in the first place - I thought it was FED2k downloads but apparently they only have the stuff I listed above. Must have been some other Dune II fansite, or maybe even someone posted a link in the FED2k Fourms Dune II section - it used to still have some moderate activity in mid-2000s when I joined. Maybe cd.textfiles.com has it somewhere, or maybe it can be found on a CD in the Shareware CD Archive at archive.org. On another note, the alleged Dune II walkthrough I linked to above turned out to be for Cryo's Dune.

Meaning the developers somehow couldn't or didn't want to make the reverse exception (uncapturable except for mission X)? And went as far as to modify the player's cursor behaviour so that the Adv. Comm. Center can't be captured by the player even if it is theoretically possible to do so? Weird. BTW, can this exception via cursor removal be circumvented by the force-move command on the engineers? (I mean, in the original game.) Yeah, I noticed that only after posting already What I certainly did recognize is the player character image and the computer in the "bunker" (?) he operates from. Strange that I remember everything else rather vaguely, if at all. On an unrelated note, recently I got into webcomics (had been reading some before, like Alien Loves Predator or the aforementioned Command & Comic, but very infrequently - probably due to the slow dial-up connection I used to have), most notably The Order of the Stick, Irregular Webcomic!, Darths & Droids, Freefall and Supernormal Step

Wow, this is a very impressive piece of info! Thanks for sharing that! Pity that so many things in Westwood games got half-baked like this. I wonder what's the cause - too many people working on the project so they just lost track of some features? BTW, I've always been wondering, when the AI player has the Adv. Comm. Center, does it fire the Ion Cannon whenever it's charged, or does it do so only when a trigger is activated? Also, any idea why there was such a strange exception to this? It is my understanding that there's a "can't be captured" option for building, like in Dune II already, and stuff like the Temple of Nod uses it? [Edit] BTW, I completely missed the fact that you have a C&C webcomic! I only knew of that hilarious issue of Command & Comic with the Akira reference [Edit2] Although I seem to recognize some strips... Read and later forgot about it? O_o

More stuff here, but those are mostly trainers, as it seems: DUN2TR07.ZIP DUN2TR10.ZIP DUNE2CH.ZIP DUNE2CHT.ZIP DUNE2ED2.ZIP DUNE2T11.ZIP DUNE2TR.ZIP DUNE2TRN.ZIP DUNE2WLK.ZIP [this is actually for Cryo's Dune] Those CDs at cd.textfiles.com sure have stuff for C&C too, but I guess most if not all has been already documented and archived by the community. Not that there's no chance for some rare obscure (and most probably obsolete but interesting none the less) stuff still out there ^_^ I know that leileilol (who frequents RGB Classic Games Forums) collects rare goodies (link to her website), but she's mostly focused on stand-alone obscure games or mods for Quake and Doom.

Just stumbled upon a zip on one of the numerous disks at cd.textfiles.com that contains the very useful WWPAK tool and some Dune II cheating programme: DUNEC101.ZIP. At the same disk there's the old GUS patch that inspired my own attempt to enable GUS support in Dune II: DUNE2AIL.ZIP. So I thought that it'd be a good idea to have a thread for old Dune II goodies and extras, for historical purposes. Some files can be found at the FED2k site: D2ED.ZIP - scenario and save game editor DUNE2EDIT.ZIP - scenario editor And more from cd.textfiles.com: DUNE2ED2.ZIP - same thing as D2ED.ZIP above but different ZIP file name DUNE2CHT.ZIP - cheats plus another PAK unpacker tool DUNE2_T2.ZIP - some sort of trainer

Nope, the Orca mission is level 7. You probably picked a different version, with the village near a Tiberium field.

Yeah, I've heard that urban legend of Zelda before. Maybe there were plans for a Yuri campaign, and there certainly are leftovers and unused things in the game files (well, I think every Westwood game has 'em ), but nothing more than that. Still fun if you're digging in the files and find something unusual

Oww, pity, that. Crate collection was a neat idea. In fact, I'm sure C&C was the first to pioneer the concept of consequences of the player's actions that span across missions in RTS games, and the potential of this hasn't really been explored to the fullest still. Speaking of which, the briefings of the Nod mission 10 kind of suggest that the outcome of each mission may affect the availability of Mammoth tanks or the Ion Cannon to the GDI later on (especially when Kane says "They haven't started production yet and they won't if you continue to meet expectations and maintain your performance" in the mission to destroy Mammoth prototypes), but I'm not sure if this was ever actually implemented. Would've been cool (well, they did that sort of thing in TS). Haha, that's exactly how I played that mission for the first time Found the obligatory backdoor into the Nod base later on though BTW, Nyer, returning to the score question, how does mission time factor into it (if at all)? My impression was that the score is calculated as Leadership * Mission Number + Efficiency * Mission Number.

Same here

100% = ending with at least as much as you started with. Ah-hah, that makes sense Yeah, but where's the fun in that? Actually I also don't build more troops usually, but I still build the base. Maybe I just like following orders ^_^ The same way you don't need to build the Temple of Nod in the last mission - even though making that a victory condition via the "Built It" and "Allow Win" variables is perfectly possible. Not building a Temple of Nod would especially make sense in the DOS version if the player had not previously collected all the crates. And in any case, those 3k can always be invested into something else.

Hmm, I actually played that one, but I think I never bothered capturing the base. I didn't even remember there are engineers available on that mission. Anyhoo, for some time I didn't know that you can select different map choices by clicking on arrow pointers, and just clicked on the country territory (similar to Dune II). That way, I'd always land on the C variant of the final Nod mission, which I somehow find the most cool one. I also think it's the only one with a Commando available. Once I used the Commando and a small infantry task force to capture the northern GDI base (spamming it with Obelisks to crush heavier enemy vehicles), and then built a huge army of Mammoths to just wipe out everything. GDI doesn't stand a chance against Mammoths. Pity though, I still got a lousy score, and also it took quite some time to sweep the rest of the map with Mammoths. Talk about awesome but impratical. I also remember that when I first played through that mission, I didn't figure out immediately that the village also belongs to the GDI and must be removed too, which made the mission even longer. I also remember building huge numbers of SAM sites on the small island where I built the Temple of Nod, hoping that it'd stop A-10's, but somehow it didn't. The SAM site in C&C are cool and all, but the time it takes to deploy the launcher and aim is too long, sometimes A-10 just fly by and out of range before a SAM can fire on them. BTW, speaking of scores, I noticed that I can only get the 100% economy only if I sell the construction yard in the first GDI mission - I wonder why?

Hallfiry, a retro gaming enthusiast and Blizzard Entertainment historian, has started up a website specifically for his huge collection of magazine cover CDs: Kult Cover Disks

Argh, I suspected something like that! (actually, I suspected Nod still loses points for destroyed civilian stuff even if they're non-friendly). Hmm, isn't Nod 4 a choice between the "intercept GDI convoy" and "Mao civil war" missions? I don't remember any engineers there... I like the version of Nod 7 (I think) choice (not the Orca mission) where you start with no base, just some troops near a broken bridge, and need to fight your way through before you get a functional base. BTW, I think C&C was the only game in the series (don't know about the newer EA's games though) that had choices of actually different missions for certain levels (complete with different briefings), not just different map layouts for essentially the same missions (I don't count TS in this because there, one of the missions in a choice is optional and you'll play the "main" mission regardless of whether you complete the optional one or not, just with some extra bonuses if you complete the optional mission).

Recently a member of the site's development team posted the following response in another forum in the thread about the engine: And indeed, the keyword search (you can type as many keywords as you want, just separate them with hyphens) does look promising: http://gamedipper.com/keyword/greek-mythology http://gamedipper.com/keyword/fantasy-strategy etc.

OCUK PC Games - ( INDIE ) ( RETRO ) Database This is a list of over 300 retro indie games (both complete and WIP), including remakes of well-known PC and Amiga classics.

Hmm, didn't play that one a lot. I'd say I like Blackout (GDI) and Deception (Nod). Nod Death Squad was surprisingly easy, there's an awesomely huge GDI base but taking out the Adv. Comm. Centre with stealth tanks isn't much of a difficulty. Also, The Tiberium Strain is cool because of the Chem. Warriors (also quite easy though), as is the GDI mission where you need to rescue your informant's wife (uh, forgot the title). Generally, The Covert Operations really pushed the mission designing capabilities almost to the limits, I wish there were more official missions with such diversity Here's it's hard to argue I guess, I also like the mission (number 12 IIRC) where you need to evacuate Moebius from a besieged base. Love that one, I managed to capture he GDI base and eventually wipe out all their forces once, but you get some really lousy score if you do that simply because it takes some time, and this is kinda unrewarding. I should say the Nod campaign is a lot more dynamic, there are frequent Commando missions which are cool (#9 where you retake Egypt, both versions of #10, and #11), I even wonder why the Commando has become a GDI symbol after all, with the majority of his appearances being in the Nod campaign (well, Covert Ops helped balance the scales a bit, as did the extra console versions missions). Nod is often more fun to play because of the tactical missions with limited reinforcements, but the GDI airstrikes are really annoying (and IIRC you're never officially told that you need to take out the GDI Comm. Centre in each mission to stop them). I wonder if anyone managed to play Nod missions with 100% score at all.

Just found this, it seems quite functional and handy: http://gamedipper.com/ Like you'd expect, you enter a title and it brings up a list of games that supposedly have at least a certain degree of similarity to your query.

I also like Under Siege: C&C. I remember once I decided to play it through in an insane way, by setting the speed to max, then selling everything and sending the huge infantry army at the enemy. I think I even managed to wipe out most of the GDI forces (or at least, a considerable number thereof), but didn't have the patience to play it through

The Games Shed - a retro gaming blog that also includes a video section (and an affiliated YouTube channel).

Yes, I should have mentioned that too. I told you the site isn't easy to browse. That is very likely. The site seems to have received little maintenance for a long time, which is a shame. They have some quite rare stuff out there. I found most directories by Googling (e.g. type a game title and see where it gets you). You can see that there's a typical structure for each OS, the other folders names I haven't mentioned are "/misc/" (e.g. http://volftp.tiscali.it/pub/pc/windows/win95/games/misc/), "/patches/", "/simulations/", "/duke/" (for Duke Nukem 3D extras ), as well as some others. There's also other software (not games) folders but I didn't bother with that. The genre categories are pretty loose so it's a good idea to browse through everything. The sort order is by file name, so you can get several demo versions of a single game in different places of a list, or in different folders entirely (the weirdo distinction between Win95 and Win98 contributes a lot to this). BTW, there are some extras for C&C games scattered throughout the folders (editors, maps and stuff, I've taken notice of things for Red Alert 1 and 2, not sure about other games). Oh yeah, and there are also other systems alongside the PC, namely Mac, Linux and Amiga. This is a pretty handy Google query that helps unravel what other folders there are. [Edit] Oh, they also have a separate WinNT 5.0 folder, how lovely. These Romans are crazy! ©