Dune Dynasty

About

(This fork is a continuation of the abandoned sourceforge project - see development history for details.)

Dune Dynasty is an enhancement of the classic real-time strategy game Dune II by Westwood Studios. It's goal is to make Dune II playable on modern systems with additional features, bugfixes and QoL-improvements. It is not a remake. It builds upon the original game engine as reverse-engineered by the OpenDUNE project.

Dune Dynasty features these modern enhancements for Dune II:

• Runs natively on modern machines (OpenGL or Direct3D):
  • Windows (both 32bit and 64bit)
  • macOS (both Intel x86_64 and Apple Silicon M1 ARM64)
  • Linux
• Graphics Enhancements:
  • High-resolution widescreen graphics
  • Separate customizable scaling of menubar, sidebar and map/viewport for HiDPI displays
  • Smoother unit animation (optional)
  • High-res overlay (optional)
• Control Enhancements (Command & Conquer style):
  • Build/order units and structures in scrollable sidepanel
  • Queue building of multiple items
  • Select and command multiple units by drawing a rectangle
  • Select all units of same type in viewport via double-click (or CTRL-LMB)
  • Save/load unit control groups via keyboard hotkeys
  • Set rally points for buildings
  • Pan viewport by keeping RMB pressed
  • Zoom in/out viewport via mousewheel
  • Windows Touchscreen Support
• Skirmish and Multiplayer:
  • With 3 additional factions: Fremen, Sardaukar and Mercenaries
  • For up to 6 human or AI players
  • Fully custom alliances with up to 6 teams
  • Random generated maps (or enter fixed map seed)
  • Settings for starting credits, amount of spice fields, worm count and lose condition (structures/units)
• Sound and Music Enhancements:
  • Emulated AdLib sound and music playback
  • General MIDI playback via FluidSynth (supporting SoundFonts)
  • Support for external music sets:
    • Recorded AdLib, MT-32 and SC-55 packs
    • Sega Mega Drive soundtrack (mostly different songs, but also very good!)
    • Dune 2000 game soundtrack
    • Dune (1992) game by Cryo (an excellent, award winning, much more chill soundtrack of Dune II's predecessor in three different flavours)
    • Dune (1984) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
    • Dune: Part One (2021) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack and "The Dune Sketchbook" soundtrack
    • ...with many options for randomly combining them during gameplay
    • ...all playable in in-game jukebox
  • Multiple sound channels
• Gameplay Enhancements (optional):
  • Health bars
  • Fog of war
  • Brutal AI mode
  • Infantry squad corpses
  • Raise structure and unit limits
  • Start level selection
  • Consistent directional damage
• Support for Custom campaigns:
  • Dune 2 eXtended
  • MrFlibble's Alternate Scenarios
  • Stefan Henriks' Atreides campaign
  • Super Dune II
• Various bug fixes

Development History

Dune Dynasty was initially developed by David Wang, with the source code hosted on SourceForge. Its last official version was v1.5.7 from 2013. After that David Wang added lots of new features (mainly multiplayer) up until 2015, but never released a new version. Later some github-repos emerged with additional fixes and improvements (by 1oom-fork and neg3ntropy), but again no new release. This fork is intended to merge these improvements, fix further bugs, add minor features, and provide new releases (v1.6.0+) with binary download-packages for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Screenshots

Alternatives

Here are some alternatives for enjoying Dune II on modern systems:

• OpenDUNE: Reverse-engineered source port of Dune II, upon which Dune Dynasty is based on. It's goal is to keep it as close to the original as possible and thus has significantly less features and modernizations than Dune Dynasty. OpenDUNE and Dune Dynasty can both read original file formats (e.g. save games).
• Dune Legacy: A Dune II clone / engine recreation / remake with a similar feature-set as Dune Dynasty, but deviating more from the original's look and feel. Has multiplayer support and map editor.
• Dune II - The Maker: Another Dune II remake with modern features and upscaled graphics. Also deviates quite a bit from the original's look and feel.
• There is also a Dune II mod for OpenRA, an open source engine for the early Command & Conquer games.
• Dune II is also perfectly playable using DOSBox.

Dune Dynasty's unique selling points are probably it's faithfulness to the look and feel of the original (due to it basing on an engine re-creation of the original) combined with many control modernizations, it's support for fan-generated campaigns, various music soundtracks and multiplayer.

Changes

You can find the list of changes between versions in the file CHANGES.txt.

Download

The most current Windows, macOS and Linux binaries and source code can be downloaded from the Github release page:

Installation

You will need the \*.PAK data files from the EU v1.07 release of Dune II. See the file data/FILELIST.TXT for a complete list of needed files.

Place them into one of the following places:

1. In a directory named data next to the dunedynasty executable. This is the simplest option.

2. In your personal data directory. The location depends on your operating system:

   • Windows 64bit:
     C:\users\<your user>\AppData\Roaming\Dune Dynasty\data

   • Windows 32bit:
     C:\users\<your user>\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\data

   • macOS:
     $HOME/Library/Application Support/dunedynasty/data

   • Unix:
     ~/.local/share/dunedynasty/data

Once the data files are in place, you may start the game by running dunedynasty.exe or dunedynasty.

Special installation instructions for macOS

Due to the executable and included dylibs not being build with an Apple Developer ID, the Gatekeeper service will put them in a quarantine. a setup script is included to lift quarantine from all files. You will have to open the script with the right- or control-click menu, then choose Open in the warning dialog. After the script has run, you should be able to start dunedynasty without problems. If you get a disallowed by system policy error, your system policy does not allow to load the included libraries (mainly to happen with company macs).

Special installation instructions for Linux

On Linux you will also have to install the libraries Dune Dynasty depends on:

sudo apt install liballegro5.2 liballegro-acodec5.2 liballegro-image5.2 libenet7 libfluidsynth3 libmad0 libgl1

If libfluidsynth3 is not available on your distribution, try libfluidsynth2 instead.

Configuration

Just as the data-files, the configuration file dunedynasty.cfg will be read from one of two places:

1. In the same directory as the dunedynasty executable.

2. In a personal data directory. This is the default behaviour - meaning dunedynasty.cfg will be created here on initial launch. The location depends on your operating system:

   • Windows 64bit:
     C:\users\<your user>\AppData\Roaming\Dune Dynasty\dunedynasty.cfg

   • Windows 32bit:
     C:\users\<your user>\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\dunedynasty.cfg

   • macOS:
     $HOME/Library/Application Support/dunedynasty/dunedynasty.cfg

   • Unix:
     ~/.config/dunedynasty/dunedynasty.cfg

See the sample file dunedynasty.cfg-sample for a list of configuration options. You can modify the existing dunedynasty.cfg file or replace it with dunedynasty.cfg-sample.

Portable mode

If you place dunedynasty.cfg in the same directory as the dunedynasty executable, Dune Dynasty will operate in portable mode - keeping everything (e.g. savegames) inside the install directory.

Video Settings

Display mode and resolution can be changed in the game's "Options and Extras" menu. The game initially launches in Fullscreen Window mode (using your Desktop-resolution).

You might want to increase or decrease the scaling factors of the menubar, sidebar and viewport. You can do this in-game in the Game Control menu.

Controls

The controls should be similar to most real-time strategy games.

You can finally select multiple units by dragging a rectangle, or shift clicking. You can also select all units of the same type in the current viewport via a double click or via Ctrl + LMB.

Right click issues commands to units, and sets the rally point on buildings. You can also change this to Left Click (which is very useful for touchscreen input).

You can pan the viewport by keeping your right mouse-button pressed, and zoom in/out via the mouse-wheel.

Keyboard shortcuts are mostly just the first letter of the action.

A           Attack or Harvest
H           Harvest
M           Move
G, S        Guard (Stop)
P           Place constructed structure

Ctrl-1      Assign control group 1
Ctrl-2      Assign control group 2, etc.
1-0         Select control group 1-0 (press 2 times to center in viewport)

Ctrl + LMB  Select all units of the same type in current viewport
Double LMB  Select all units of the same type in current viewport
Ctrl + RMB  Set rally points for all similar buildings
Space       Focus viewport on selected structure
Tab         Select next building of the same type
Esc         Pause/Cancel factory task


-, +        Zoom in or out
[, ]        Toggle size of menu and side bars
Alt-Enter   Toggle windowed mode

F1          Mentat
F2          Options
F3          Click structure icon
F4          Select construction yard (press 2 times to center in viewport)
F5          Show current song
F6          Decrease music volume
F7          Increase music volume
F11         Toggle windowed mode
F12         Save screenshot into data directory

There are also keyboard shortcuts for constructing buildings with the construction yard. They are displayed in the build-panel.

Touchscreen Support

Dune Dynasty works very well with touchscreens (e.g. like Microsoft Surface Pro), since most actions are performed using the left mouse button. You can perform a right button click via a long (ca. 1 sec.) press. Commands are issued via the right button by default, but you can change this by setting Control Style to Left Click in the Game Control options. Then you can quickly select and command your units via short taps with your finger. To deselect units or structures perform a long press or simply draw an empty rectangle into the sand. You can even zoom the viewport with a pinch finger-movement.

Gameplay Enhancements

Dune Dynasty (and it's parent project OpenDUNE) feature several optional as well as always active enhancements and fixes over the original Dune II. A detailed list of can be found in the file enhancement.txt.

Here is an explanation of all optional enhancements, that can be enabled in-game in the main menu or game control options. They are disabled by default (except otherwise noted).

Gameplay options (main menu)

• Skip introduction video:
  Should be self explanatory.

• Brutal AI:
  Various AI changes to make the game tougher. Includes double production rate, half cost, flanking attacks, etc.

• Fog of war:
  Regrowing (Warcraft-style) shroud.

• Insatiable sandworms:
  In the original game, sandworms disappear after eating a set number of units. This makes them insatiable.

• Raise unit cap:
  Dune II has 3 types of unit caps:

  • A unit cap defined per house by the scenario (usually 25 for the player, and 20 for the CPU)
  • A hard-coded overall cap of 102
  • And a hard-coded cap per unit/group of units:
    • Caryalls and Ornithopters: 11
    • Saboteurs: 3
    • All others (ground units): 80

  This enhancement sets the scenario unit cap for all houses to 50, raises the overall cap to 322 and allows a total of 300 ground units (incl. saboteurs). This enhancement is always enabled in multiplayer/skirmish.

• Raise structure cap:
  Dune II limits total structures on a map to about 70. This enhancement raises that limit by 100. This enhancement is always enabled in multiplayer/skirmish.

  Note: Games saved with this option enabled will throw an error, when loaded without this option enabled!

• Show unit control info in outpost:
  Shows info about active/standby/max units to outpost text. Standby units are either:

  • in production
  • ordered in factory
  • outstanding reinforcements
  • usually 1 backup-harvester

  This will always be enabled in multiplayer/skirmish.

• True game speed adjustment:
  Dune II's game speed implementation doesn't affect scripts and other things. This enhancement takes care of that. It also fixes a bug with the range of the sonic tank.
  (Enabled by default.)

• Consistent directional damage:
  In Dune II, attack damage is heavily dependent on the direction. Horizontal attacks make only half damage, while attacks from top or bottom make full damage. This enhancement makes attack damage consistent from all directions. It is always enabled in multiplayer.

Game control options (in-game)

• Health bars:
  Show health bars either for selected or all units.
  (Enabled for selected units by default.)

• Hi-res overlays:
  Displays hi-res instead of pixelated overlays (e.g. selected unit overlay).
  (Enabled by default.)

• Smooth unit animation: Smoother unit animations by rendering units (and bullets) as if they move every frame, and rotating top-down units to arbitrary angles.
  (Enabled by default.)

• Infantry squad corpses: Display decaying infantry corpses.
  (Enabled by default.)

Saved games

Saved games are located in the save directory next to dunedynasty.cfg. If no configuration file exists in the same directory as the executable, they will be in placed in a personal data directory.

The location depends on your operating system:

• Windows 64bit:
  C:\users\<your user>\AppData\Roaming\Dune Dynasty\save

• Windows 32bit:
  C:\users\<your user>\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\save

• macOS:
  $HOME/Library/Application Support/dunedynasty/save

• Unix:
  ~/.config/dunedynasty/save

Saved games from Dune II should work if placed there.

Music

Dune Dynasty supports the following music sources:

• Midi (using your machine's default Midi device)
• AdLib (built-in emulation)
• FluidSynth (General Midi via SoundFonts)
• Various External music sets (see below)

By default, Dune Dynasty will randomly mix music from all the available sources. You can disable any sources in the game's "Options and Extras"-menu (changes require a restart).

There you will also find a Jukebox to listen to all available songs from all available sources.

Midi

Dune Dynasty can play music via the system MIDI output on Windows and Linux (ALSA). If you use [Timidity++] as an ALSA sequencer client on Linux you should start it with smaller buffer sizes to avoid the "drunk drummer" problem:

timidity -iA -B 4,8

FluidSynth

FluidSynth allows playing music via a specified SoundFont. You will need to set the sound_font path in the configuration file to an appropriate sound font (.sf2) file, e.g.

[audio]
sound_font=/usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

Popular SoundFonts are e.g.:

• Timbres of Heaven
• Arachno Soundfont

External music sets

Dune Dynasty can play various external music sets, e.g. recordings of the original PC or Sega Mega Drive soundtrack, music from different Dune games like Dune 2000 or Cryo's 1992 Dune, or even the motion picture soundtracks.

Each of these have their own subdirectory in the music directory. Instructions and download/purchase links are provided below and in the respective FILELIST.TXT files.

Here is a list of supported Music packs:

• Original Dune II (PC) music:

  • rcblanke's SC-55 recording
  • ShaiWa's (FED2k) MT-32 recording
  • Dune II - The Maker AdLib recording
  • Dune II - The Maker SC-55 recording
  • PC speaker recording

• Dune II Sega Mega Drive music
  Mostly different songs from PC version, but also very good!

• Dune 2000 game music
  Unfortunately, this game cannot be purchased anymore at the moment.

• Dune (1992) game (by Cryo) music by Stéphane Picq and Philippe Ulrich:
  The excellent award-winning soundtrack for Dune II's predecessor - the 1992 Dune game by Cryo. It is very atmospheric, and makes Dune II a much more relaxing and chill experience. Three versions are supported:

  • AdLib Gold recording by DOS Nostalgia
  • Spice Opera by Exxos
    A remastered CD release of the soundtrack (re-released in 2024).
  • SCDB Mix (AdLib + MT-32 + AdLib Gold)
    An amazing 3-card mix by the Sound Card database (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-Q_UO6Hp7U)

• Dune (1984) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Toto and Brian Eno
  Seems to be only available on CD. Purchase e.g. from amazon.com or amazon.de and rip files to MP3.

• Dune: Part One (2021) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer
  Purchase e.g. from amazon.com or amazon.de.

• Dune: Part One (2021) "The Dune Sketchbook" soundtrack by Hans Zimmer
  Purchase e.g. from amazon.com or amazon.de.

After installation of a music set, you can check it's availability in the "Music" section of the game's "Options and Extras" menu. There you can also enable/disable music sets for random play.

You can also disable individual songs from music sets. You have to do this by editing your config-file though.

Example: If you want to include Dune 2000 music, but exclude "Robotix":

[music/dune2000]
ROBOTIX=0

Custom campaigns

Dune Dynasty supports various fan-made campaigns:

• Dune 2 eXtended
• MrFlibble's Alternate Scenarios
• Stefan Henriks' Atreides campaign
• Super Dune II

These should be placed in the existing subdirectories inside the campaign directory.

Click the arrows next to the "The Building of a Dynasty" subtitle in the main menu to switch between campaigns.

You can also create your own campaigns. A campaign should consist of a META.INI file, a REGIONX.INI file for each playable House, where X is the first letter of the House name, and a complete set of scenarios for each House, named SCENX001.INI through SCENX022.INI. See Stefan Hendriks' Atreides Campaign (subfolder shac) as a simple example.

Each campaign can also contain custom balance tweaks, specified in PROFILE.INI and HOUSE.INI. Please refer to the sample files in the campaign directory for more information.

Finally, the scenarios can either be distributed as loose INI files or as a single PAK file. Data stored in PAK files must be listed in META.INI. See MrFlibble's Alternative Scenarios (subfolder mfas) as a simple example of scenarios stored in a PAK file.

Multiplayer

For hosting online multiplayer matches, make sure to forward the UDP port 10700 via our NAT-router to your hosting machine's local IP address. On the multiplayer menu-screen, you can leave the default 0.0.0.0 HOST IP address in most cases, as this will listen to all your network-connections. If this is not working, try setting it to the IP address of the network card connected to the internet.

For joining an online multiplayer match, use the host's public IP address.

Development

Compilation

General Info

The binary will be placed in the dist directory.

The steps below will build the release-version. You can change value of the DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE parameter to build different versions, with the possible options being: Debug, Release, RelWithDebInfo and MinSizeRel.

Windows

1. Download and install MSYS2.

2. For a 64bit executable, launch MSYS2 UCRT64 from the startmenu. For 32bit, launch MSYS2 MINGW32.

3. Install dependencies:

   For 64bit:

   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cmake
   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc
   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gdb
   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-allegro
   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-enet
   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-fluidsynth
   pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libmad

   For 32bit:

   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-cmake
   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-gcc
   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-gdb
   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-allegro
   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-enet
   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-fluidsynth
   pacman -S mingw-w64-i686-libmad

4. Perform build:

   ./scripts/build-windows.sh

5. For packaging, you have to copy all required .dll files to the dist folder. To do this, simply call the following script:

   For 64bit:

   ./scripts/bundle-libs-ucrt64.sh

   For 32bit:

   ./scripts/bundle-libs-mingw32.sh

MacOs

1. Install Homebrew package manager.

2. Install dependencies:

   brew install cmake allegro fluid-synth mad enet

   If you are building for ARM64 on a x86-64 machine, you have to make sure, all required packages and their dependencies are the arm64 variant by reinstalling them using the --bottle-tag=arm64_monterey:

   PACKAGES=(argtable sdl2 dumb libogg flac libpng freetype libvorbis ca-certificates openssl@3 opus opusfile physfs theora giflib jpeg-turbo xz lz4 zstd libtiff webp pcre2 gettext glib lame mpg123 libsndfile portaudio readline allegro fluid-synth mad enet)
   for PACKAGE in "${PACKAGES[@]}"
   do
     brew uninstall --force --ignore-dependencies $PACKAGE
     brew fetch --force --bottle-tag=arm64_monterey $PACKAGE
     brew install $(brew --cache --bottle-tag=arm64_monterey $PACKAGE)
   done

3. Perform build:

   ./scripts/build-macos.sh

   If you are building for ARM64 on a x86-64 machine, call this script instead:

   ./scripts/build-macos-arm64.sh

4. To package all required dynlibs into the ./dist/libs folder and patch the executable, call this script:

   ./scripts/bundle-libs-macos.sh

   The script requires the brew package dylibbundler, so install it first:

   brew install dylibbundler

5. Due to the executable and included dylibs not being build with an Apple Developer ID, the Gatekeeper service will put them in a quarantine. a setup script to lift quarantine on all files is included in dist-per-os/macos.

Linux (Debian, Ubuntu)

1. Install dependencies:

   sudo apt -y install build-essential cmake liballegro5-dev libenet-dev libmad0-dev libfluidsynth-dev fluidsynth

2. Perform build:

   ./scripts/build-linux.sh

3. When packaging, there is the problem, that the fluidsynth-library is called libfluidsynth2 on some distributions, and libfluidsynth3 on others. To mitigate, call this script, which will copy the library-file to dist/libs and patch the executable to use the inlcuded library instead:

   ./scripts/bundle-libs-linux.sh

Debugging

You can display debugging info via the function GUI_DisplayText in the status bar, or via GUI_DisplayModalMessage as a modal message. E.g.:

GUI_DisplayText("my debug info:%u, my other debug info:%u", 2, my_value, my_other_value);
GUI_DisplayModalMessage("my debug info:%u, my other debug info:%u", 0xFFFF, my_value, my_other_value);

Acknowledgements

Thank you to:

• David Wang, the original author of Dune Dynasty
• The OpenDUNE team:
  • Albert Hofkamp (Alberth)
  • Loic Guilloux (glx)
  • Patric Stout (TrueBrain)
  • Steven Noorbergen (Xaroth)
• The Allegro 5 developers.
• The developers of DOSBox, MAME, ScummVM, Dune Legacy, and everyone else who worked on the AdLib/OPL/MIDI player code.
• rcblanke, ShaiWa, Nyerguds, Stefan Hendriks, the Sound Card database and DOS Nostalgia for their soundtrack recordings.
• Peter, for help on various bits of the code, the music code, and AUDlib.
• Nyerguds, for his Dune II editor.
• Bug reporters and other improvement suggestions: MrFlibble, Nyerguds, Zocom7, EagleEye, gerwin, Leolo, VileRancour, swt83, Paar, Akaine, Wesker, WillSo.
• Westwood Studios, for an amazing game!

License

Dune Dynasty is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2.0. For more information, see the LICENSE.txt file included with every release and source download of the game.

Authors

• David Wang aka wangds: Original author
• Andrea Ratto aka neg3ntropy: Compilation fixes and graphics updates
• Zbynek Vyskovsky aka kvr000: Compilation fixes and other polishing
• 1oom-fork: Various fixes and new features
• codeflorist: Various fixes, new features and maintainer of this fork