Controlling the Spice, Part 3: Westwood’s Dune | Hacker News Reader

Controlling the Spice, Part 3: Westwood’s Dune

filfre.net

103 pointsdoppp19 comments

I can't help being reminded of Astral Projection:

  The spice extends life, the spice expands consciousness. 
  The spice is vital to space travel. 
  Travel without moving.

Dune & the Spice surely made their impact on pop culture.

"Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm" -- possibly the only Dune reference in a Top 40 hit (Fatboy Slim)

Although that was part of the general SF atmosphere in the mid 1960s when the book came out. It was quite common for characters to have weird mental powers and magical abilities that seem more in place in fantasy than SF, in part because of the influential SF editor John W Campbell who was into the occult and various new religions.

Oh yeah, that movie has been extensively sampled, and not just once, and not just by Astral Projection. Goatrance and psytrance in general are quite fond of it [1].

Juno Reactor - Rotorblade, Quietman - The Sleeper (Man With No Name remix), Astral Projection - Dancing Galaxy, Astral Projection - No One Ever Dreams, Astral Projection - Dancing Galaxy, and Astral Projection - Ambient Galaxy (the latter two likely being the track you meant).

Or the happy hardcore band Dune (see Discogs [2])

[1] https://www.psydb.net/samples?q=dune

[2] https://www.discogs.com/artist/16821-Dune-3

Dune I has one the best soundtrack for the adlib card

https://youtu.be/FjHon6yg-r8

This is a wonderful story, assuming you've played Dune II. Please take the time to play Cryo’s Dune also, it deserves nothing less than a VR remake!

If you pop the hood of Dune II or Command & Conquer you will find out they are driven by the same INI configuration file based scripting system.

It would be nice to get some historical insight what led to the development of this system.

That INI system persisted until Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2, it was only gone when Westwood switched to the SAGE engine.

I don’t have the historical context, but its easy to fall into a trap like this even these days. Start with a config file, eventually it grows a need for conditionals, maybe some event handing, ....

Do you know of any write ups or forum threads talking about this? I would love to read more.

Played so many of these titles, in particular Dune 2, and Eye of the Beholder 2 (vastly preferred this to the original) but also recall Hillsfar and of course later C&C. Hillsfar was sort of like Witcher 3 for 286.

I vividly remember renting Herzog Zwei on the Sega Genesis as a child and not understanding _anything_ about it, but years later clicked instantly with Dune II. I could have sworn it was titled 'The Battle for Arrakis'[0] and it turns out that was a similar but different game made on the Megadrive!

[0] https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/genesis/586152-dune-the-battle...

My copy of Dune II also had a different subtitle than "The building of a dynasty", and I never owned a Megadrive. "Battle for Arrakis" is probably what it said, but I'm not 100% sure.

I bought my copy in France, at bargain bin, so maybe the international version had a different subtitle?

Both games were among my favourites growing up, for very different reasons. I always wondered why a “sequel” was so different from the original - fascinating to learn the reason 25+ years later!

I might have to fire up Dune I again. Unlike Dune II, I suspect it is still quite playable today, even if much less known.

Exactely! I still occasionally play Dune I (say, once in two years) and set some new goals for each game: top the spice production record, win the game in shortest period of in-game days, find previously unknown caves...

I loved Dune II as a kid, but I have a tough time getting back into the game ever since Warcraft 2. Because I was spoiled by the ability to select multiple units and direct them.

Go look at the Dune Legacy engine. It takes the original Dune II PAKs and adds a bunch of modern features to the game like multiple selection and unit grouping. My sole gripe is the inability to turn those features off.

There was also Dune 2000, a remake made with the C&C engine.

I don't know how many hundreds of hours I spent playing dragon strike. It may be too this day the only dragon back flight simulator.

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