Leolo wrote:

Yes, please! Could you test it with your CRT?? I'm really interested in knowing what's the proper aspect ratio on the original game (I don't own any CRT anymore, I dumped all of them years ago) 🙁

Sure thing. I took pictures of the game running on a 17" Compaq V720 CRT monitor. First I adjusted the height and width to fit the screen, with the screen controls. Then took the two pictures with that setting.

I think the developers did not design the core game to take rectangular pixels in account, and just 'assumed' square pixels. So the players had to accept the distortion back then on CRT's. (Or squeeze the monitor settings when entering the game map.)

I always thought Dune II looked kind of vertical. The harvester being an obvious example as well as the fonts, probably due to multiplatform development with Amiga (and possibly the Genesis, although a port did come out, it came much later and has different artwork)

Command & Conquer didn't "suffer" this.

Thanks a lot, gerwin. It looks like you're right, the original aspect of the Construction Yard is rectangular, and not square.

Drat, I liked the square aspect better! Now I don't know what to do 🙁

Are you guys playing it in the original aspect ratio? Don't you think that the "distorted" aspect ratio seems more pleasing to the eyes?

By the way, the Amiga version is also 320x200, no? I'd suppose that it suffers the exact same problem 😕

Leolo wrote:

By the way, the Amiga version is also 320x200, no? I'd suppose that it suffers the exact same problem :confused:

Depends - on NTSC displays, it does. On PAL displays, 320x200 gives pixels that are much closer to square (in fact stretched horizontally a tiny bit, which isn't really noticeable).

I'll always like the non-square VGA aspect ratio - round planets in the intro and the "Select your House" screens, plus it's just the way I remember the original. But you could make a case for square pixels during the main game... it certainly stopped bothering me after a couple of missions in Dune Dynasty (and this is coming from someone with acute aspect-ratio OCD). ;)

While we're at it, aspect correction should be mandatory for dosbox videos on youtube. I wonder how many people out there (who have never seen an 1980s-era PC) are convinced that CGA was a widescreen standard.

VileRancour wrote:

While we're at it, aspect correction should be mandatory for dosbox videos on youtube. I wonder how many people out there (who have never seen an 1980s-era PC) are convinced that CGA was a widescreen standard.

Or EGA even. 640x350 is 10 vertical pixels away from being 16:9.

I noticed Dune Dynasty V1.4 is up, it has considerable improvements. Actually most if not all of the above suggestions have been complied with.

yep, aspect correction is there -- the default value is 1.1, but can be changed to the correct 1.2. It does "blocky" scaling, but the options are flexible enough to avoid it where you don't want it. Very nice!

Don't think I've ever played any of those custom mods... guess this is a good time to try (beats starting an Ordos campaign).

May I recommend Stefan Hendriks' campaign, which he made with his own map editor and contains new map seeds.

dynasty wrote:

May I recommend Stefan Hendriks' campaign, which he made with his own map editor and contains new map seeds.

already 4 missions into this one - pretty challenging stuff compared to the original campaigns (a good thing).
Keep up the good work.

[EDIT]: noticed an apparent bug with arriving reinforcements - in some situations the carryall just keeps flying in circles over a certain spot, without ever setting the unit down.

dynasty, I've got a couple more suggestions for your excellent port.

- Would you consider selecting all visible units of the same type when you double-click one unit?

- And what about MIDI support? We have great soft-synths (like Roland Virtual Sound Canvas) that could be used to get a sound quality very similar to the Roland SC-55.

It would be better if somebody could record those MIDIs in a real SC-55 device, but there aren't many people who own those old synths... 🙁

Kind regards.

Leolo wrote:

..It would be better if somebody could record those MIDIs in a real SC-55 device..

Here you go, taken from my SC-55 mixed with SC-88Pro:

Original MIDI files (52KB)
FLAC (taken from SC-55 + SC-88Pro) (241MB)
MP3s (256kbps) (84MB)

EDIT: updated file locations

To use these MP3s with the game, simply put them in the music\fed2k_mt32 folder (!!) and alter dunedynasty.cfg to use the fed2k_mt32 pack by setting "default=fed2k_mt32" in the [music] section. I've found that audiopack-detection is a bit buggy (seems to fall-back to OPL every now and then), so you may also want to disable all other audio packs by setting:

dune2_adlib=0
dune2_c55=0
fed2k_mt32=1
d2tm_adlib=0
d2tm_mt32=0
d2tm_sc55=0
dune2_smd=0
dune2000=0

The reason that I chose to (ab)use the 'fed2k_mt32' pack is because that pack has files for all game events.

regards,
Ronald

Leolo: is there something wrong with FluidSynth?

rcblanke, that's awesome! I'll add that as a music pack into the game (FLAC filenames).

The second way is the correct thing to do if you want to force the game to use a single music pack. The default music pack is there so that it won't be silent if the chosen packs are missing a few songs (e.g. if you're using the smd music pack).

dynasty,

The advantage of having MIDI support is that you can use any hardware synth or any software synth of your choice.

There is Roland Virtual Sound Canvas, but there's also Roland Hyper Canvas, or Yamaha YXG50. All of them are really good soft synths.

rcblanke,

Man, thanks a million for the recordings! That's a very very nice addition for this game! 😀

rcblanke wrote:

Here you go, taken from my SC-55 mixed with SC-88Pro: […]
Show full quote

Here you go, taken from my SC-55 mixed with SC-88Pro:

Original MIDI files mirror (52KB)
FLAC (taken from SC-55 + SC-88Pro) mirror (241MB)
MP3s (256kbps) mirror (84MB)

Man, fantastic work - thanks! very much appreciated.

The FLACs can be used in-game as well, so here's a windows batch file to rename them to what the game expects (rename it to .bat first, of course... the forum doesn't like that extension).

Glad I could help. And good to know that flacs can be used for the game as well, thanks.

This Dune Dynasty v1.4 is excellent. David Wang (Dynasty) you have done an outstanding programming and design job in getting OpenDune to this point!

I will try out some of the addon campaigns later. And maybe try to create a map myself, for the fun of it.

No direct midi support indeed, I did not even realise that until now. I am using this 4MB Voice-Crystal General Midi soundfont ($15). As used in in the Gravis Ultrasound Max and Turtle Beach Monterey/Maui. And it sounds very good and quite authentic.

PS. a tiny glitch that I noticed, is that ordering units to move by clicking on the map sometimes gets misunderstood as starting a unit selection window. (Using left click orders.)
Also after loading a game, and clicking an enemy palace, it will display "This is your palace".

I've noticed that FLACs will make the game a bit unstable, so it's best to just stick with the rcblanke's mp3s for the time being.

Thanks gerwin. Reported the hint bug to OpenDUNE.

I'm happy to announce Dune Dynasty v1.5. Changes include support for MIDI and rcblanke's SC-55 FLACs. You can test these out in the new jukebox!

(Instabilities due to FLACs mentioned above are fixed.)

VileRancour: reinforcement bug should be fixed, thanks.

gerwin: the previous version would begin a selection box if you held left-mouse button for a short time. I removed this behaviour altogether.

AFAIR the original dune 2 has only MT-32 music with custom profile.
When was that converted to SC-55 GM/GS ?
Is there a patch for the original Dune2 to get SC-55 support? I don't mean just simple MT-32 instrument mapping.
(Or is the SC-55 conversion just MT-32 instrument mapping?)

"Version 1.5 Features:
- Add skirmish mode with random map generator."

Cool !

I never went on with making a map myself, as Dune 2 has a strange seed based map system, instead of a simple tile map.