Old Dune II extras

[MrFlibble]

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

[Nyerguds]

Awesome! I'm totally saving all of those

 

[MrFlibble]

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.

[Nyerguds]

Does that contain the old Dune II stats editor for v1.00 which I based my editor on?

[MrFlibble]

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.

[MrFlibble]

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

[MrFlibble]

Also found a download for the Dune II - The Building of a Scenario

DUNEEDIT.ZIP

DUNE2_TR.ZIP - yet another Dune II trainer

[Nyerguds]

[Edit] I think I've got the Dune II Unit Editor off Nahoo's website.

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.

 

Ah well. I made a better editor anyway

 

[edit]

 

Heh, still got a download link through some clever url hacking.

Basically: paste the download link after nahoo.co.uk/cgi-bin/download/load.cgi?

Like this:

http://nahoo.co.uk/cgi-bin/download/load.cgi?/games/dune2/Dune2-Unit-Editor.exe

 

If it tries to access "downloads.nahoo.net" and is unable to reach the server, just change the url to 'downloads2.nahoo.net' and it'll work again

[MrFlibble]

[Edit] I think I've got the Dune II Unit Editor off Nahoo's website.

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

[MrFlibble]

Another very interesting thing I've found is a version of SETUP.EXE that allows not only to pick a language from the official three but also select separate devices for sound effects, music and speech:

DUNE2STP.ZIP

 

The description on that CD says:

DUNE2STP.ZIP    45441  11-09-92  Update for Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty

                              | that allows for two sound cards to be used at

                              | the same time (Roland SBlaster, etc.).

                              | (Newest File Date: 11-09-92)

Which suggests that this must have been some official release (it certainly can't be a hacked version of the US version SETUP.EXE because the strings with language names on the language selection screen are inside the EXE, not in SETUP*.DIP, and are not present in the US version of the setup programme).

 

For some reason the files is called SETUP2.EXE and the date stamp is November 9, 1992, which makes it a very early version of the three-language edition (the dates on the files from three-language releases are from 1993 already). In fact, the date stamp on the official sound fix available from Westwood FTP is November 23, 1992.

[Nyerguds]

ooh, interesting

[MrFlibble]

BTW, will you be able to host this stuff at your site? (Well, maybe trainers aren't of much interest, although the could be useful for debugging purposes too, but editors are definitely useful.)