Dune II
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This article is partially complete. This means that all known information is here, but there is still more information that needs to be discovered and/or reverse engineered. If you know some of the missing information, you can help the ModdingWiki by adding this info yourself. |
| Levels? |  Editable |
|---|---|
| Tiles? | Editable |
| Sprites? | Editable |
| Fullscreen? | Editable |
| Sound? | Editable |
| Music? |  Not editable |
| Text? | Editable |
| Story/cutscenes? | Editable |
| UI/menus? | Not editable |
| Demos? | Unknown |
Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (alternate title: Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis) is one of the earliest real-time strategy games; in fact, it was the game for which the genre name was invented. It was developed by Westwood Studios. The game is loosely based on the world of Frank Herbert's Dune book. The player takes command of the armies of one of the three great Houses that vie for control of the desert planet Arrakis.
The basic premise of the game is to build a base, harvest the spice available on the sandy areas of the playing field as in-game currency, and use that currency to expand the base and build armies to defend against enemies, and finally destroy their base. Each House features its own weaknesses, strengths, and special units.
Tools
The following tools are able to work with this game.
| Name | Platform | Group/archives | Levels | Graphics | Music | Sounds | Text | Saves | .exe patch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dune II Editor | Windows | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Edit | Edits properties of units, structures, terrain, houses, etc. Open source text UI application written in FreePascal. |
| XCC Mixer | Windows | Read | No | Read | No | No | Read | No | No | Can view Dune II archives and files, but has no support for writing any of them. |
| Librarian | Windows | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Supports all known types of .PAK archive. |
| Engie File Converter | Windows | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Can view and convert the game's CPS, SHP, WSA, font and colour palette formats. |
| Westwood Font Editor | Windows | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Can edit the game's font files. |
| d2shpset | Windows (command line) | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | A small Dune II SHP writing utility written by OmniBlade of the Chronoshift (formerly RedAlert++) team to help Dune II mod makers. It supports generating the remap tables the game needs for applying house colours. |
| Red Horizon Utilities | Java (command line) | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Support for Dune II SHP in it is experimental, and apparently it works better in certain older versions than in the newest ones. Original site is defunct. Backups of the tools can be found here. |
File formats
The following file formats are used by this game.
| Filename | Format | Details |
|---|---|---|
| *.pak | PAK Format (Westwood) | File archives |
| *.pal | 6-bit RGB 256-colour palette | Palettes |
| *.cps | Westwood CPS Format | Full-screen images |
| *.wsa | Westwood WSA Format | Animated images and cutscenes |
| *.shp | Westwood SHP Format (Dune II) | Sprites |
| icon.icn / icon.map | Dune II Tileset Format | Terrain / structure tiles. Information on it is available here and here. |
| *.fnt | Westwood Font Format v3 | Fonts |
| *.voc | VOC Format | Sound effects and voices |
| *.adl | ADL Format | Music |
| *.eng, *.fre, *.ger, *.dip | Westwood Strings File | Ingame text |
| *.ecm | Dune II ECM Script | Behaviour and AI scripting. Information on it is available here. |