Today I'm releasing 1.56 of what will now be called Dune 2: The Golden Path. There was too much confusion going around from the original project I did years ago and all the extra names (Dune 2: The Sleeper Has Awakened Universal Version 1.44cabc3 Single Player Edition Super Mega Hyper etc...), so I'm rechristening this project to coincide with the first (and seriously alpha-level) release of network play. It only supports two players at the moment and I would not even think of trying it across the internet as it will be unplayable. It may work halfway well across a cabled LAN though. The network support for this release is a proof-of-concept for the network library I finally decided to use. The optimization of that code will take many more weeks or months of work.
Notes on Network games:
- You need TCP port 10191 open through any firewalls on the server side if you are trying to connect over the internet (which is not recommended in this release anyway)
- Do NOT try to connect more than one player to a server
- There will be losses of sync occasionally as well as hangs or other inexplicable behavior, and games may fail to start altogether
- In-game chat is not available, but you can chat in the network chatroom
- Please restrict to LAN games if you want any chance for performance (that means using local IP addresses, not your external IP)
- My online database that tracks all the running servers has performance problems. It will be upgraded in October. Not that it really matters yet since you won't be playing many games online.
So here's the insane revision history since 1.44c:
- In the main chatroom you can now select up to four AI opponents
- AI have received many, many improvements. Still not perfect yet but they will more than likely be a greater challenge now, and they have a few new tricks up their sleeves
- Fixed many bugs including all the known ones from the previous version, and many that would have crashed games if anyone had ever encountered them
- Some optimizations that may give a barely noticeable speed increase
- Cleaned up the mousewheel selection area procedures
- Only Harvesters and other non-combat personnel may cross Refinery and Starport open areas
- Ornithopters will now dogfight each other (these are fun to watch)
- Faction modifiers now apply correctly. Previously Ordos had Harkonnen bonuses and Harkonnen had no bonuses. My apologies to all those who suspected Harkonnen were not tough enough
- Infantry are not generated when a building is Demolished
- Ordos AI players will now produce WORs and Troopers
- The Concrete upgrade is now Auto-Concrete to a limited distance from each ConYard. Regular concrete production has been accelerated
- Silos now store 2000 credits of spice
- Fixed the infamous bug causing the game to crash when a player builds 10 Refineries
