Dune Dynasty

Classic Dune. Modern Controls.

About

Dune Dynasty is a continuation of the classic real-time strategy game Dune II by Westwood Studios. 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:

Plus:

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

Screenshot

Download

Download the source code or Windows binaries from the SourceForge project page.

Read the list of changes.

Compiling from source

(Skip this if you are using precompiled Windows binaries.)

You will need CMake and Allegro 5. FluidSynth and MAD are optional dependencies.

cmake .
make

Alternatively, you can use an out-of-source build:

mkdir Build
cd Build
cmake ..
make

The binary will be placed in the dist/ directory.

Starting up

You will need the *.PAK data files from the EU v1.07 release of Dune II. 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.

    On Unix, this will be:

    ~/.local/share/dunedynasty/data

    On Windows, this will be something like:

    C:\users\nobody\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\data

    or

    C:\users\nobody\AppData\Roaming\Dune Dynasty\data

    or

    C:\Documents and Settings\nobody\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\data
  3. The system-wide directory as configured in the CMake variable $DUNE_DATA_DIR/data.

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

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. Right click issues commands on units, and sets the rally point on buildings.

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

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

Ctrl-1      Assign control group 1
Ctrl-2      Assign control group 2, etc.
1-0         Jump to control group 1-0

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

F1          Mentat
F2          Options
F3          Click structure icon
F5          Show current song
F6          Decrease music volume
F7          Increase music volume
F11         Toggle windowed mode
F12         Save screenshot into data directory

Double tap H or a control group number to centre on the construction yard or the control group.

Configuration

The configuration file will be read from one of two places:

  1. In the same directory as the dunedynasty executable.

  2. In a personal data directory. On Unix the configuration file is located at:

    ~/.config/dunedynasty/dunedynasty.cfg

    On Windows the configuration file will be located somewhere like:

    C:\users\nobody\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\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.

General MIDI music

Dune Dynasty can play MIDI music via FluidSynth. 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

Dune Dynasty can also 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

External music packs

Dune Dynasty can play various external music sets, e.g. music from Dune 2000. Each of these have their own subdirectory in the music/ directory. Instructions are provided in the respective FILELIST.TXT files.

If you want to disable any music set, edit the [music] section of the config file. If a particular track is missing, it will look for a suitable replacement in the default music pack, or use the Adlib music if that also fails. e.g. to play Sega Mega Drive music, and MT-32 rips only as required:

[music]
dune2_adlib=0
dune2_midi=0
...
dune2_smd=1
default=fed2k_mt32

In addition, individual songs can be disabled. e.g. if you want to include Dune 2000 music, but exclude "Robotix":

[music/dune2000]
ROBOTIX=0

Saved games

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

On Unix this will be:

~/.config/dunedynasty/save

On Windows this will be something like:

C:\users\nobody\Application Data\Dune Dynasty\save

Saved games from Dune II should work if placed there.

Custom campaigns

Dune Dynasty can play fan-made campaigns such as Super Dune II Classic, Stefan Hendriks' Atreides Campaign, and Dune 2 eXtended. These should be placed in the subdirectories inside the campaign/ directory. Click the "The Building of a Dynasty" subtitle 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 (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 infomation.

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 (mfas/) as a simple example of scenarios stored in a PAK file.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to:

The OpenDUNE team:

The Allegro 5 developers.

The developers of DOSBox, MAME, ScummVM, Dune Legacy, and everyone else who worked on the Adlib/OPL/MIDI player code.

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.

Westwood Studios, for an amazing game!

Author

David Wang