It's much creepier upon closer inspection, such as how there's no connecting hair from above my upper lip to my lower cheeks, how there's virtually no growth on the front of my face, and that the hair above my upper lip and on my chin is already going grey. That was over a month of growth with zero maintenance or trimming...

*shrugs* No baldness in my genes at least so even if I go totally grey in the future at least I'll still actually have all my hair. (Dad still does.)

Also, just FYI for everyone, next episode will probably be going up a couple or three hours later than usual. I'm going to be going to bed shortly and it's not going to be ready to render by then, but will be close, so I'll have to render and upload after I wake up. :B

Actually, after looking at it again on second thought, it is CREEPY. It literally resembles that neck-beard that the internet continuously chides on about.

Oh, well. At least it's not so difficult for you to maintain your facial hair. 😉

Gemini000 wrote:

It's much creepier upon closer inspection, such as how there's no connecting hair from above my upper lip to my lower cheeks, how there's virtually no growth on the front of my face, and that the hair above my upper lip and on my chin is already going grey. That was over a month of growth with zero maintenance or trimming...

*shrugs* No baldness in my genes at least so even if I go totally grey in the future at least I'll still actually have all my hair. (Dad still does.)

Also, just FYI for everyone, next episode will probably be going up a couple or three hours later than usual. I'm going to be going to bed shortly and it's not going to be ready to render by then, but will be close, so I'll have to render and upload after I wake up. :B

Gemini, please do not encroach on one of LGR's trademarks, his ever changing facial hair 😀

Ancient DOS Games Episode 164 - Sam & Max Hit the Road is online!

Don't really have much to say about this one outside of what's said in the video... although I do like how much EASIER it was to get working than Full Throttle.

That, and I did investigate the framerate of the car surfing minigame and I couldn't get it to run any better than you see in the video. Either it always ran that bad since the game was released, or DOSBox doesn't like it for some reason. :P

Also...

Great Hierophant wrote:

Gemini, please do not encroach on one of LGR's trademarks, his ever changing facial hair :)

Why not? I've already co-opted his start-of-episode quotes! XD

I'm just kidding of course. Clint and I actually have quite a number of things in common, to the point where we're worried we might rupture the space-time continuum if we were to get within 100 feet of each other. Maybe we'll find out for sure one day while the universe holds its collective breath... ;)

Also, in case you're curious since I mentioned it, I liked those start-of-episode quotes Clint had in his early LGR videos. When I realized he was never likely to bring them back I decided to take matters into my own hands at the start of Season 2 of ADG. :B

Sam and Max Hit the Road is one of my favourite games from my childhood 😀

The highway surfing minigame always had a poor framerate on real hardware, on every machine I've ever tried.

Also, I believe there is one way to make the game unwinnable: (SPOILERS BELOW)
You need the golf ball retriever and Jesse James' hand to get the robot repair manual. If you add the magnet or the cup to the retriever/hand item after getting the mood ring but before getting the repair manual, there is no way to remove the cup or magnet - and no way to get the manual. At least I never figured out a way to do it.

DonutKing wrote:

Sam and Max Hit the Road is one of my favourite games from my childhood :) […]
Show full quote

Sam and Max Hit the Road is one of my favourite games from my childhood 😀

The highway surfing minigame always had a poor framerate on real hardware, on every machine I've ever tried.

Also, I believe there is one way to make the game unwinnable: (SPOILERS BELOW)
You need the golf ball retriever and Jesse James' hand to get the robot repair manual. If you add the magnet or the cup to the retriever/hand item after getting the mood ring but before getting the repair manual, there is no way to remove the cup or magnet - and no way to get the manual. At least I never figured out a way to do it.

If you use the retriever equipped with the cup or magnet in that situation, Sam will just remove the cup/magnet before retrieving the book (and make a comment like "First I'll take the magnet off the retriever.").

SquallStrife wrote:

DonutKing wrote:

Also, I believe there is one way to make the game unwinnable: (SPOILERS BELOW)
You need the golf ball retriever and Jesse James' hand to get the robot repair manual. If you add the magnet or the cup to the retriever/hand item after getting the mood ring but before getting the repair manual, there is no way to remove the cup or magnet - and no way to get the manual. At least I never figured out a way to do it.

If you use the retriever equipped with the cup or magnet in that situation, Sam will just remove the cup/magnet before retrieving the book (and make a comment like "First I'll take the magnet off the retriever.").

This is exactly what happened to me during my playthrough, so I can confirm this is not a game breaking issue. ;)

I was sure I tried that... evidently I didn't !

Ancient DOS Games Episode 165 - Dune II is online!

Although it's only been more recently that I've played this game again, one of my friends had it many years ago so I already had some experience with it prior. However, as bad as I am at RTS games now, I was even WORSE at them when I was a kid, so... I don't think I even managed to get past the third mission back then. XD

Also, 60 FPS is nice and all but it takes twice as long to render everything in my video editing software. Not that that's gonna stop me, I'm just ranting because I feel like it. :B

i never knew about that websites, so i add it to my bookmarks immediately.
Theres other fan re-make of Dune II, which add all important feature since original C&C: group selects and its hotkey.

Gemini000 wrote:

Ancient DOS Games Episode 165 - Dune II is online!

Although it's only been more recently that I've played this game again, one of my friends had it many years ago so I already had some experience with it prior. However, as bad as I am at RTS games now, I was even WORSE at them when I was a kid, so... I don't think I even managed to get past the third mission back then. 🤣

Also, 60 FPS is nice and all but it takes twice as long to render everything in my video editing software. Not that that's gonna stop me, I'm just ranting because I feel like it. :B

Whoa, it's freeware now?!? Guess I don't need my sketchy abandonwarez copy anymore. 😁 I was going to guess it at first, but I figured there was no way it would be released as freeware due to rights issues.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Whoa, it's freeware now?!? Guess I don't need my sketchy abandonwarez copy anymore. 😁 I was going to guess it at first, but I figured there was no way it would be released as freeware due to rights issues.

That was the thing I was most surprised about too, but I have a legit version anyway, but for RiscOS!
Gemini00, do you have any details about how it became freeware?
Also, if you enjoyed your Dune II session, give a try to SuperDune2 available at http://forum.dune2k.com/topic/20065-super-dune-ii-classic/

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Whoa, it's freeware now?!?

It shouldn't be. The "freeware version" has timestamps from 1999 and.... June 2015 with a modified Atreides pak file.

HMM

I would think the rights would be stuck in the EA vault somewhere given their acquisition of Westwood and the publishing of Dune 2000 and Emperor. If EA made it freeware you would have heard it from them first and it would have been an Origin onthehouse thing or their site, and not some fishy "free game free download we totaly legit" website.

Also Dune II never had its source released either. The engines you find out there are from-scratch implementations.

leileilol wrote:

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

Whoa, it's freeware now?!?

It shouldn't be. The "freeware version" has timestamps from 1999 and.... June 2015 with a modified Atreides pak file.

HMM

That's my fault, actually. In the process of testing the download I discovered that specific file was completely missing from the archive... may've been the entire time it was up. That file simply provides voice cues while playing as House Atreides so I sourced it from elsewhere and sent a copy his way to add to the archive.

AFAIK, the download for the game has been up for years. Looking through the Way Back Machine though, it seems as though the website used to be membership-based, which may explain a few things. :P

Good to know about the source code thing too... given the LARGE number of remakes out there I figured the source code must've been available; there couldn't've been THAT many people rewriting the engine from scratch! That would just be silly! 8D

...oh wait... o_o;

There's also Dune Dynasty, which is more recent than that Indie Retro News (snicker) page and isn't mentioned there. "Classic Dune, Modern Controls" (it sez 'ere).

You know, I would've liked to see more Dune game based on the other books in the series (the original series - not the awful literary diarrhea that's being spewed these days by the author's son and that hack who wrote those X-Files and StarCraft novels). Although I guess they'd have to be more like Cryo's Dune game to actually work, i.e. with some kind of adventure element.

Then again, there is some RTS potential there too... I bet some fun could be had with Tleilaxu Face Dancer units. Or Honoured Matres, anyone?

VileRancour wrote:

You know, I would've liked to see more Dune game based on the other books in the series (the original series - not the awful literary diarrhea that's being spewed these days by the author's son and that hack who wrote those X-Files and StarCraft novels). Although I guess they'd have to be more like Cryo's Dune game to actually work, i.e. with some kind of adventure element.

I had a hard enough time trying to get through Frank Herbert's pseudo-mystical prose in the first book, never mind the rest of the Dune Universe. I don't think I quite finished the original Dune. 😐

I've never actually seen the movie. I probably should at some point...

Gemini000 wrote:

Good to know about the source code thing too... given the LARGE number of remakes out there I figured the source code must've been available; there couldn't've been THAT many people rewriting the engine from scratch! That would just be silly! 8D

For whatever reason, Dune II has actually proven to be quite a popular target for engine recreation projects. A while ago I compiled a list of those. There might be others I am unaware of though. On that list, there are two independent engine recreations which were accomplished by reverse-engineering the original DOS executables: segra's OD2 and OpenDUNE. The latter is probably the most complete and cleaned up version, and Dune Dynasty is based upon OpenDUNE code. Other projects, to the best of my knowledge, are recreations written completely from scratch (although some have apparently included parts of OpenDUNE code as well, like Dune Legacy).

Gemini000 wrote:

I've never actually seen the movie. I probably should at some point...

David Lynch's film is not really a very accurate representation of the book, even though Frank Herbert was consulting him during filming. The miniseries are probably a better choice if you want to get a picture of what the book is all about.

However I really recommend you to read at least the first book.

I've noticed that you're playing v1.0 in the video. There's an official update to v1.07 which fixes a couple of bugs, including the hugely exaggerated building repair costs you mention in the video. Also there are unofficial fixes which address many issues which Westwood somehow overlooked, like an "improved" AI which uses teams of units (it was meant to do that but the the original release contained a mission syntax error that prevented the scripts from being used, and the patch did not fix that).

Regarding the unit limit in the game, there are actually two kinds of limitations. The first is a per House limit which is set in each of the scenario files. The value is in most cases 25 for any House, with the exception for the first few Atreides missions. This affects how many units the player can produce from barracks and factories. It does not distinguish between pre-placed units that you get at the start of the mission, and units built from factories or procured via the Starport. When you have 25 units, the factories will refuse to build more stuff. The Starport ignores this limit, and you can buy more units beyond your production capacity.

The other limit it a global per map limit. It is related to the internal functioning of the game, as each unit present on the map has an individual index from a pre-set array (more on that here if you're interested). There are separate indices reserved for aerial units, ground units, special units (like the Sandworm, Frigate or the Saboteur) and projectiles. This is the "hard" limit of units on the map because the game cannot place more units than it can assign indices to them.

So on later stages you may not have yet reached your 25 unit limit but because there are many opponents that have built lots of units you may not be able to build more units.

As for the AI being keyed to the predesignated start location, it is not entirely correct. The AI is indeed very easy to cheat, because it has a set of priorities for which of the player's buildings to attack first (again you can refer to Nyerguds' editor which allows to edit those priority values). Out of the structures available in the early missions, the Construction Yard and (IIRC) the Refinery have the highest priority, making the impression that the AI is programmed to attack the player's start location. However, the Heavy Factory and the Repair Yard have even higher priority and will become targeted by the AI as soon as they are built.

That's the trouble with these old games... It's sometimes extremely difficult to find accurate information on intricacies like these, thus you have to make due with what information you do find out... or sometimes you find out so many variants to how something should work that you have to either make a decision and choose to address it in the way which makes the most sense, thus people tell you you're wrong and you have to go do even more research to justify why you said what you did, or ignore it entirely and then people wonder why you didn't talk about it... thus you have to go do even more research anyways. x_x;

For instance, part of the reason I stuck with v1.0 is because supposedly, the feature allowing one unit to follow another was broken by the update to 1.07, but then I found I couldn't get this aspect working anyways. Also, I'm not very good at strategy games and there's no difficulty adjustments in the game (well, unless you count changing the speed given the changes that causes to some of the unit stats) so I figured a higher version might be harder for me to succeed and get anywhere with, thus why I didn't patch it up.

Actually, the filler video going up tonight is a major correction to something I mentioned at least once not too long ago, possibly more times but the most obvious videos for me to make the mistake in didn't have it. Still, rather than just add annotations and such (which I'm going to do once the video's up) I figured it would be good to make a whole video to discuss it. :B