Dune: Spice Wars | Hacker News Reader

Dune: Spice Wars

dunegames.com

158 pointstosh143 comments

This looks pretty cool but I've always thought if Dune got a 4X treatment it should get a full galactic setting, not just Arrakis. After all, only a fraction of the first book is really set on Arrakis* (spoilers) and so much of the politics that makes the series interesting happens off-world.

Nonetheless, I'm excited about the prospect of a new Dune strategy game.

* the collapse of House Atreides, Paul's exodus and the Fremen uprising

Dune did get the 4X treatment (well 1992 4x)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(video_game)

I've been waiting for this remake. This was one of my favorites back in the day.

I recently saw a retro (PICO-8) demake of the 1992 game: https://liquidream.itch.io/undune2

It's a brilliant game. The Amiga soundtrack is still one of the best out there.

The Dune-themed RTS games from Westwood were cool too.

Technically it didn't, it was more of an RTS game while 4X tends to be more complex and last longer, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X#Complexity

Although it was indeed a great game and am also looking forward to see how this turns out.

> it was more of an RTS game

I think you mean the other classic Dune game, which was an RTS. This Dune game the parent comment refers to was a mix between realtime simulation, RPG and point-and-click adventure. You had to converse with family members, travel to Fremen Sietches, etc.

I agree neither game was 4X, though.

Indeed, I stand corrected. Also, TIL that Dune and Dune II were both released in the same year (1992) by two different studios with different genres, with the latter eclipsing the former, despite the former apparently being quite good for what it aimed to be.

Both studios were operating under different parts of Virgin.

Virgin Interactive owned Cryo, commissioned Dune, then later cancelled it. Virgin Entertainment kept funding the project, and Cryo kept working on it. Virgin Games engaged Westwood in the states, and the two projects continued in parallel. Don't adjust your set, there really is three different Virgins in the picture.

When they figured out they'd paid for & delivered on the game they though they cancelled, they just went ahead and released both. It's a good part of why Westwood's very next step was to get off the Dune IP (the other part being the cost).

Hey, it's a big fraction of the first book :p

But yeah, space operas deserve the whole space in 4X games. Maybe a mix of king of the hill and 4X, with arakis in the center would also be cool to explore (no idea if it would work). Or a 4X with both planetary (arakis) and interplanetary layers (other planets). With different units, tech trees, unique resources to both layers... Who knows what could work.

There's actually an awful lot of conversations going on in the background of the first book - loads between House Harkonnen, conversations between Lady Jessica and the Reverend Mother, and with Leto and his entourage. There's also a ton of in-Sietch conversations between the members of Sietch Tabr. The warfare on Arrakis doesn't feature all that much compared to culture and politics!

I do think there's a lot of space to explore (pun not intended) with 4X games - "conquer everything with guns" is pretty overdone by this point. I'm really interested in what games can do outside of violence where the options haven't been explored as much.

Only a handful of other worlds are described beyond a very rudimentary amount of detail though, no? So there would have to be an extreme amount of extrapolating.

That's basically the opposite of a problem. Star Wars was able to grew into the ultimate franchise starting with just a desert, a forest, a swamp, a cloud city, and a space station.

Whoever [0] has the rights to Dune should be a good shepherd, announce a contest for new stories set in the Dune universe.

[0] Brian Herbert. Maybe finally he can let go of his ambition to finish Dune. Or maybe he meant it in the mortal kombat sense?

Didn't he "complete" the original series? Isn't that what Sandworms of Dune was? (Though he seems to keep mining side stories out the wazoo)

They did. Dune 7 come out as Hunters of Dune in 2006.

It's ... ok. (No, it's really not, but no point in dwelling on it. It's just not the same Dune. Frank wrote each book because he had very specific ideas, experiences, concepts, thoughts, problems in his mind. Brian wrote it to "finish" the saga. I very much recommend this amazing talk about the context of the original books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWDCgKdmly4 ... and I think there's simply no point in "finishing" Dune, because it's like StarWars or StarTrek, there's no end to it. Just as there's always a new/old/forgotten/prodigal Skywalker, there's always an Atreides somewhere :))

I thought the majority of old school fans hated the BH/KJA sequels?

>announce a contest

Oh great! I've been looking for the opportunity to name a planet/city in a new world Boaty McBoatface!

There's the Dune Encyclopedia you could reference, that collates a lot of the worldbuilding notes that Frank Herbert created.

found here https://archive.org/details/dune-encyclopedia-the-complete-a...

The Dune Encyclopedia was not based on any inside information from Frank Herbert. It was essentially an officially licensed fanwork -- much of the information in the Encyclopedia was wild speculation on the part of the authors.

Oh, I did not know this - thanks for the correction. I remember being told that it was compiled from his notes but I guess that was mistaken.

> I remember being told that it was compiled from his notes but I guess that was mistaken.

You may be confusing the Dune Encyclopedia with Brian Herbert's novels, which he claims are based on his father's notes (but probably aren't).

Frank Herbert actually wrote a foreword to the Dune Encyclopedia, in which he noted that:

"I must confess that I found it fascinating to re-enter here some of the sources on which the Chronicles are built. As the first 'Dune fan,' I give this encyclopedia my delighted approval, although I hold my own counsel on some of the issues still to be explored as the Chronicles unfold."

It's very possible - in fact that Brian Herbert "fact" does ring a bell. Very unlikely to be true, given his books go off on a totally different, more Warhammer 40K-like direction.

A galactic scaled version of Crusader Kings would probably do the best job of simulating the focus of the books. It would need a pretty deep new negotiation/trade discussion mechanic though.

Between Stellaris and Endless Space, I'm not sure how much creativity would be available to a new space-based 4X game. Spice Wars is interesting to me because the setting and mechanics look pretty novel for a genre that can admittedly get samey.

Well I don't know about Endless Space but Stellaris is very focused on exploration and economic growth. I think that a good thematic Dune treatment would be well served by focusing on politics and plotting - after all, the book is much more about courtly intrigue than space warfare.

Indeed. Similarly to how a game like Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis is great partly because of the lack of exploration.

I loved both the original dune games - Dune the Video game with its mix of story and adventure and light strategy; and of course the seminal Dune II.

But it's 2022 and I'm not 14 years old anymore and time is a precious resource. I'm not sure I'm up for a game where all the levels are monotone barren orange desert. I think that's partially what killed homeworld deserts of kharak for me, and this game looks like its doubling or even trippling in on it.

In 1992, background of orange and gray was just fine; we focused on the tactical layer of units and obstacles. In that sense, the low graphics of Dune II were an advantage. Here, the desert is clearly quite lovingly made and vies for attention... but that attention is really not rewarded - even in a 2 minute trailer, I got bored and started forwarding, which may be an ominous sign. I guess we'll see if gameplay mechanics sufficiently compensate.

That being said... I love the story, world, atmosphere of Dune franchise in general - so here's hoping! :-)

Good point

Video games are not worth your time

I still enjoy playing Dune II single player campaign. It's one of those games I return to.

http://dunedynasty.sourceforge.net works great and has some modern controls added to it and you can integer scale it to look great on todays screens.

I compiled it for macOS, works great.

How does it compare to Dune Legacy (http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/website/)?

I have tried both. Dune Legacy is not faithful to the original and feels kind of broken gameplay wise. Dynasty is very close to original gameplay with better controls.

I'm assuming this is a movie tie-in, so it's odd that the depiction of the worms is closer to the three-lobed mouth of the original novel cover art and 1984 movie than the round mouth of the new movie.

Anyway, I do think that 4X RTS is a bit of a tired genre for Dune, and probably won't live up to the original.

I also think it's a waste. Why just another story of exploiting a land's natural resources, mining, subjugating villages, and sending spice off to a distant empire. Sure, it fits so well into the 4X genre it's an easy, thoughtless adaptation. But what about a game told from the Freman's perspective? How about a game of repelling the imperialist invaders? Or a naturalist tale of trying to turn the desert green?

This doesn't seem to be a movie tie in. The character and vehicle design look different. It's likely a "well-timed" adaptation of the novel, similar to the recent graphic novel that was released in 2020, which emphasized completely different parts from the movie and had very different visions for things like the ornithopters and even the race of the cast.

[Legendary][1] is listed on the game's site footer. Since it's the production company behind Denis Villeneuve's Dune adaptation, it's at least blessed if not co-produced, albeit not seemingly with any canonical story relationships or obvious

The same game publisher, Funcom, is working on an open world game per Polygon: https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/27/18243384/dune-funcom-video...

[1]: https://www.legendary.com

This doesn't necessarily mean it's a tie-in. Just that who-ever current owns the adaptation rights wants bang for their buck. Typically that does mean a tie-in, but I think the Dune universe doesn't really need it to sell it, any more than Lego Batman need be canon.

It seems at least inspired by the movie in certain ways. For example, Baron Harkonnen is hairless as seen in the movie, not red-haired as described in the books.

There hasn't been any 4X RTS games in Dune setting? Dune 2/Dune 2000/Emperor Battle for Dune weren't 4X. 4X means more games like Master of Orion and Civilization rather than Starcraft.

When I said "the original" I simply meant the original RTS game from '92.

“the original” isn’t even an RTS, you’re thinking of Dune 2

I always disagree with opinions that 10+ year old games shouldn't be remade or have a successor because they're "tired" or have "been done".

It's just a viewpoint that's incredibly out of touch with the actual game playing audience. The vast, vast majority of players don't know about and will not touch something that old. A game like Dune II that's nearly 30 years old might as well be buried in an ancient tomb, from a standpoint of its accessibility and likelihood to be discovered.

As to the other criticism, against "rally local villages or force them into submission"... this just sounds like you could play as either an Atreides (woke good guys, joining up with locals to fight imperials) or Harkonnen (evil colonialist) archetype. You know, choosing sides and having agency, the thing games exist for. You could shift the theme more, but this is presumably trying to somewhat follow the story of Dune.

The Dune PS2 game was first-person and played from Paul Atreides' perspective, if that's the style you're after.

Oof what a mess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMlQCOQDCrQ

Oh yeah it's definitely a game of its time haha

It was something of a catastrophe in the gameplay/technicals but captures the spirit fairly well.

The original Dune was also played from Paul's perspective.

> Or a naturalist tale of trying to turn the desert green?

That's an interesting premise, and a nice third way between the obvious and tired approaches of Imperialist Exploiter 2000 and Mujahideen Simulator.

>> Or a naturalist tale of trying to turn the desert green?

What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans? I recently read Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey (highly recommended), and I'm reminded of the start of the ninth chapter:

  "This would be good country," a tourist says to me, "if only you had some water."
  He's from Cleveland, Ohio.
  "If we had water here," I reply, "this country wound not be what it is. It would be like Ohio, wet and humid and hydrological, all covered with cabbage farms and golf courses. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. You see what I mean?"
  "If you had more water more people could live here."
  "Yes sir. And where then would people go when they wanted to see something besides people?"
  "I see what you mean. Still, I wouldn't want to live here. So dry and desolate. Nice for pictures but my God I'm glad I don't have to live here."
  "I'm glad too, sir. We're in perfect agreement. You wouldn't want to live here, I wouldn't want to live in Cleveland. We're both satisfied with the arrangement as it is. Why change it?"
  "Agreed."
  We shake hands and the tourist from Ohio goes away pleased, as I am pleased, each of us thinking he has taught the other something new.

What about a naturalist tale about restricting the spread of development and conserving nature as it is?

What about a naturalist tale that doesn't indulge in either sort of fetishism, the sort of fetishism that observes an artificial distinction drawn between "nature" and "development" and assumes uncritically that must be all there is? You've just inverted the sign, without noticing that the figures don't add up in the first place.

Like all life, we modify our environment in accord with our needs, and by itself there's no more harm in that than when beavers or wasps or crows or spiders or any other animals do it. The problem isn't that we're so good at improving our environment for ourselves, but that we suck so bad at avoiding damage to the ecologies we so modify. We can improve upon the latter without forswearing the former, which is good, because we might as well try to forswear breathing.

My point was not so much about the distinction between nature and development, although I think the distinction is far from artifictial (depending perhaps on what one means by "nature" and "development"). Rather, I was reacting to the seemingly common view that deserts are somehow worse than e.g. forests and that a naturalist would want to turn a desert green.

As far as your second point, that it is possible to improve our environment in ways that are reasonably ecologically-friendly, I generally agree. What constitutes environmental improvement vs damage will vary considerably from person to person however, and some things we may collectively view as improvements are much easier to implement than to reverse, so in fragile ecosystems (e.g. much of the desert in southwest US) we should think very carefully about whether our improvements are really a good idea.

In the context of the source material (the books by Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson), the 'greening' of Dune/Arrakis is a very broad plot theme. So, the comment is not one of 'green washing' but in keeping with themes of the series.

Full disclosure: Haven't read all the books, nor am I looking to after reading a bunch during the pandemic.

I've only read the first of the Dune books, and I do (somehat vaugely) recall the Freemen project to green Arrakis. My comment was intended less as a comment on the greening project in the context of Dune and more as a challenge to the idea that turning a desert green is a 'naturalist tale'. To me it sounds more like the tale of a property developer or industrial agriculturalist.

For this particular topic you should definitely read more of the books before commenting on the theme of the series. The GP is more thematically correct.

While true, it's also of course true that much of the desert in the world right now is man-made, a result of desertification due to human activity. The Sahara has virtually wiped out the Sahel. Some of this is natural (though, of course, it's debatable whether we want to simply allow "natural" processes) but a lot of it human driven. The Gobi is even worse. Even processes that take place at a breakneck pace are still barely noticeable in a human life, so most people are the prototypical boiled frogs.

And indeed, we learn that Herbert's inspiration for Dune was encroaching desertification in Oregon (largely caused by humans) and the geoengineering efforts to create a green belt to stem the tide.

Good point! I was mainly thinking of the desert of southern Utah and neighboring states, the subject of the book I quoted, and with which I have personal experience. That region is not free from its own human-caused environmental issues of course, but my understanding is that they are mainly different from the particular problems resulting in desertification in Oregon.

I guess a general point that may be worth making is that it's often useful to think in terms of protecting fragile ecosystems, be they desert or the victim of desertification.

The literal origin of Dune was managing the ecologically destructive propagative nature of desertification.

> What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans

This is a huge plot point of a bunch of the later dune books. Based on the comments here, almost no one has actually read them.

I must admit that I have only read the first book in the Dune series. I've heard that the first is by far the best of the series, and my reading list is long enough as it is, but I shall consider reading more of the series.

Anyway, my point was more about ecological conservation in general, and not much about Dune in particular.

I don't think the first book is notably better than the sequels. They're all quite interesting if you're into the wide-ranging categories of thought Herbert pursued (and was generally ahead of his time on).

> What about a naturalist tale of keeping the desert as it is, and resisting the urge to destroy it for the supposed benefit of the humans?

Well, in the Dune source material it was terraformed into desert from a green planet. So, you know, returning it to green is perfectly fine.

Sure! And how great if a game could explore those kinds of tensions. We could have moral, social, and political questions as well. But in terms of novel adaptation, at least in the first book, turning parts of Arrakis green was one of the Freman dreams.

They licensed the IP from Herbert Properties LLC, it would have been a waste to not use it in games, Duke Leto and Paul action figures, Dune Lego series etc. At least from a business perspective.

on your second point, love this! story/mission would be so much more fulfilling and have a positive impact on younger minds

that was the original dune 3 game. Or 1?

I recall planting green plants all over the planet, in one of the original games.

Your sentiment put words to my feelings as I watched the gameplay trailer. As soon as the narrator shifted to the theme of exploitation and politics, with no reference to the indigenous population, I recoiled from the whole idea of it. The sorts of motivations these games ask you to align yourself with feel foreign and unwelcome compared to how I felt about them 25 years ago.

The Fremen were also human colonists, not indigenous.

I consider them indigenous, though you’re correct that they weren’t always there. They were, to the best of my knowledge, the first people to inhabit that place. Much as, where I’m from, Native Americans weren’t always here, but are accepted as the first people.

The Dune wiki, for what it’s worth, describes them as a Native people:

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Fremen/DE

I had the same uneasy reation when the trailer showed how you can "rally local villages or force them into submission." Hopefully roleplaying colonialism will eventually feel as gross as roleplaying something like racism.

Why?

Part of the appeal of games is harmlessly doing things that shouldn't/can't be done in real life. I think the millions of 'people' I've 'killed' across various bloodsport-themed FPSes over the last couple decades is a greater evil if we're talking about shoehorning IRL morals into consequence-free virtual spaces. And if you disagree, why? Is mass murder not worse?

Maybe I'm just oversensitive to moralizing in video games, but this line of argument was no less tired over a decade ago.

https://i.imgur.com/3e1obaF.jpeg

Let me ask you the converse: would you be comfortable playing a game that roleplays racism? If not, why?

I think it’s because we all know murder is wrong and the FPS genre wouldn’t exist as we know it without that factor. In contrast, colonialism and racism, unfortunately, still garners support.

There is no support for video games glorifying rape. There shouldn’t be support for video games glorifying colonialism or racism.

It's a strategy game. Do you really find this more offensive than say GTA?

And how far do you stretch this notion, can we still play games about ancient Rome for example?

Another interesting thing to look at is the Haxe ecosystem which this game is using. It is a fantastic language for those who have not used it.

The likely framework being used is the heaps.io framework (since the devs previously used it in their other commercial games). It's a pretty full featured framework.

It is Heaps, yes. Both Heaps and Haxe were created by the same creator (who also owns Shiro Games). Although, I would advise against Heaps for people who are new to game development as it is relatively undocumented.

Anyone ever play Outpost 2? I loved the story and world of that game! Something about this game’s slow unit speed, inhospitable environment, emphasis on survival and infrastructure, and the narrator’s voice in the demo video remind me of Outpost 2.

I do! It was such an odd game to me at the time I played it because it didn't center around destroying things, at least not initially.

It's available at GoG btw though some things are best kept in your memory IMO, or there's just no time for games anymore.

https://www.gog.com/game/outpost_2_divided_destiny

Nope but this game is very reminiscent of the original Dune RTS games [1][2] for Nintendo many many years ago.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=dune+nintendo+game

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II

I adored the original Outpost, I had no idea there was a semi-related sequel!

Between that and Alpha Centauri, I was spoiled by "last ditch effort by humanity to survive by colonizing another star system" games. I wish I could play something similar from modern times.

Surviving Mars, and Ad Aspera were both fun to play, but unfortunately neither held my attention for long.

I did. It was buggy as hell. Nice SVGA graphics for the day, though.

4X means Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate for those wondering at the acronyms.

I found that the Wikipedia page explains it quite well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4X

Is the Dune MMO from Funcom https://massivelyop.com/2020/04/24/funcom-dune-still-a-few-y... ("more ambitious and robust version of Conan Exiles") still going ahead?

The original submission is also from Funcom (it's mentioned in the legalese when signing up in for the newsletter), so perhaps they scaled things down?

This is the first I've heard of it. Hearing it described as both an MMO and Conan Exiles Plus feels weird to me, though, as they're very different genres.

This could never beat Dune 1 from 1992.

What I really loved about this game was the shifting gameplay from strong story-driven 1st person adventure to map-based RTS.

Obviously, this is my personal recollection from 30 years ago.

Both Dune and Dune II were released in 1992, Dune was interactive adventure from Cryo, Dune II was RTS from Westwood. Dune II was also re-released as Dune 2000 for Windows.

Dune was not bad, but personally I love Dune II a lot. It was the first RTS I played, and it had such a huge influence on this genre for the years to come.

Annoyingly, neither Dune (1) nor Dune 2 seems likely to get a legal rerelease. I can't find the details atm, but apparently GOG made quite a serious try to get the rights, only to hit a brick wall with the Herbert estate which claimed to be uninterested in rereleasing old licensed games. Then it approved the rerelease of the 1979 Dune boardgame from Avalon Hill https://www.polygon.com/2019/8/9/20797781/dune-board-game-ga... . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I think the social media team for this game is likely to be fielding a lot of questions about where the Westwood Dune II rerelease is.

Dune 2000 was really Command & Conquer reskinned more than a successor to Dune II, at least in how it played.

I didn't like the RTS part all that much. There's very little challenge there apart from making sure to send many Fremen and equipping them with the best weapons you can capture.

I recall deliberately trying to lose in the RTS section section and not managing to. You can either fall behind on Spice shipments and get annihilated by the Emperor (until you somehow could beat him) or lose Paul directly, but AFAIK there's no way to lose in the RTS itself.

That did give me enough time to explore the map in an Ornihopter - best part of the game IMHO.

Here's a pretty good YouTube video about Cryo's Dune (1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20h7pfLeSaE

and another from the same author covering every Dune computer game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YISKhMNI_XQ

Also Northgard - the other game by this developer - had a pretty dull story unfortunately.

Ideally it would be someone like David Gaider doing the story.

I'd hope a modern iteration could improve on a 30 year old game, but that's not always the case.

There is something funny about all the comments saying "The best Dune game is the 1992 version" as if 30 years of improvements in computing couldn't translate to larger-scale events with more complex gameplay mechanics.

Not saying it will be good, but give it a chance, I wasn't even alive to play the game you're referencing.

While this looks fun and beautiful, what disappoints me is that it seems like almost entirely symmetrical gameplay. A large part of the universe and themes of Dune is differing cultures in a way that I don't think can be authentically expressed via a Terran/Zerg/Protoss faction system. For example, the Bene Gesserit operate as individual agents embedded into other factions.

Without even allusion to, say Fremen objectives not being to Harvest all the spice, I am skeptical

It's interesting that it now appears that the RTS genre is not dead, it just went on hiatus for a while. AOE4 came out recently, Frost Giant (a new studio from the people behind Starcraft 2 and Warcraft 3) have got a game in progress and now this.

As someone who has got back into SC2 (both playing and watching Pros) recently, this is all great news. The games industry is better with a good variety of genres and not everything being first person.

Troop movements in the trailer felt similar to Northgard. Turns out it's from the same developer!

I'm hoping this decade will be a resurgence for 4x RTS games.

I am curious about the game.

But I dislike that my autoscroll is disabled, and smooth-scrolling is forced against my wishes on my computer with an integrated GPU.

FYI There's a free OpenRA engine that supports Dune 2000 (RTS) for all systems, with an active online community.

https://www.openra.net/download/

Also supports CnC, CnC Red Alert, and (tba) Tiberian Sun.

Also waiting for an Emperor: Battle for Dune RTS remake/playable on 64bit.

ok ok, criticisms of the website aside, I'm reading the Dune novels at the moment and I'm totally enraptured by the story and the world. I completely welcome another re-imagining of the world its really great seeing how the characters are portrayed, and another RTS is very welcome in the market, in my opinion.

Ehh... I started reading the Dune novels after loving the movies, and they have honestly have been disappointing.

Some parts of the first book dealing with environmentalism are great, but the rest is kinda meh. My main problem is that the Dune Universe seems too small: almost all important events in the Universe happen to the same couple of main characters, and almost everything that happens to them is very important to the Universe.

There's a part in Dune Messiah when someone mentions a certain event happens to a very large number of people; they could have made that number 100x larger or 100x smaller and the result would be exactly the same.

I read that God Emperor is good, so I'm trying to decide whether to start the third book or just cut my losses and abandon the series.

Both Children and God Emperor completely change the ideas of the narrative, and grow far larger than the first two books. They are definitely worth reading. The last two (four if you count Brian Herbert’s extensions) are of diminishing worth, even though Miles Teg is amazing and carries the novels alone.

Hope this will turn out well. The cartoonish WoW-style graphics don't seem to fit the Dune universe in my mind.

That was my first thought, I'm worried it will not use the full potential of the source material. In the world of Dune wars were won by intrique more than with troops and this feels like a mobile game. I wish we had a cRPG placed in the Dune's universe, with visuals to match Villeneuve's Dune or Jodorowsky's wonderfull hallucinations.

The developer Shiro Games have actually made a great title called Northguard. It's somewhat of a cross between Age of Empires and Civ. From the gameplay video it looks like this new game is using that same game engine.

I've put it on my watchlist as I really liked Northguard, so looking forward to this coming out!

That looks surprisingly bad for a 2022 game. The characters are a matter of taste I guess, but rendering soldiers that are larger than buildings, poor perspectives etc. I love Dune but hope they put in a lot more work.

Their last game has 86% positive votes on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/466560/Northgard/#app_rev...

IMO, the demo video communicates to me a bland rehash & reskin (which really means I am not their target audience). I also didn't hear the word "water" mentioned once in the video, which is the second most vital resource on Arrakis. The author went into great detail about the native's water collection and storage system, and the symbolism behind it. So, I'm left to assume this is just a cash grab, or no one at the game studio has read the books.

I had to look up what 4X means. How have I never heard this term before?

I still play Dune 2000 almost nightly now. I love it. This looks horribly complex just like every non-FPS game anymore. I feel like a dinosaur.

Guh, the scrolling is sooooo not intuitive or native

> The game will be updated and expanded during Early Access based on your feedback.

Stopped scrolling at that.

Naively I was hoping it was going to be a low-fx rogue-like. I mean, I know, right? Oh well.

I'm intrigued, what's your vision for it?

Will the Steam Deck be supported?

The Steam Deck is a PC and this is a PC game, so you don't need to explicitly support it

steamdeck runs linux

Steamdeck ships with Linux. You can install Windows if you'd like.

Clearly the question is "will this run on steamdeck with the default configuration, i.e. Linux?"

This is built with haxe / hashlink / heaps, which work perfectly fine on linux so there should be no problem getting it to steam deck.

I see no reason why it wouldn't be. Proton has a pretty good track record with 4x games, the only reason it wouldn't work is if the developers went out of their way to implement anti-cheat or intrusive DRM.

This brings back some fond memories of playing Dune and Dune II in my childhood.

Site is broken. Can't scroll through, everything just rolls past.

Oh hey, sand sifting through fingers. We get it da Vinci.

Obviously I love the tie in, obviously our shared pajama nostalgic moment is ending and we're sad. But some of us already understand thematic elements and the... pressure.. just plays different.

Don't open on your phone, nearly killed mine

Will this run on MacOS?

Looks like an NFT...

To my fellow frontend people: I promise you can code your fancy scroll effects without resorting to scrolljacking. The inertia on this JS scrolling feels just wrong when using a macOS trackpad (and the spacebar PgDown is broken).

There is no justification for it.

Indeed the custom scroll reimplementation feels sluggish. In general, it is unlikely to surpass the native browser support.

It's scrolling too fast and very jittery on mobile as well. Very bad UX. But hey at least the title animation is smooth and cool, who cares about the actual content?

It is especially unfortunate as you can get buttery smooth scroll animations without scrolljacking: schedule the events with requestAnimationFrame, throttle to 60FPS, and avoid layout thrashing[0].

[0] https://gist.github.com/paulirish/5d52fb081b3570c81e3a and https://csstriggers.com/

On Firefox for Android I can't even read half of the paragraphs. As they should been rendering, I arrive to other part of the landing page. It's a pity it has this awful promo site.

It's terrible on my Android phone too.

And there must be some code running all the time because even when I put the YouTube trailer in fullscreen it kept stuttering when playing

One my Pixel 5 it's fine(running Chrome)

I did two “scroll a page’s worth of content” and nothing changed except the title text got more faint and the words separated from one another. So I stopped reading.

It’s less effort to come to HN and complain about shit UX than it is to fight the UX to get to the content.

if any of frontend devs messes with scrolling know this: if your page does it - I'm leaving. no exceptions.

The website scrolls at 15fps.

I'm getting sick of the "animate page elements with scrolling" trend. It's not clever anymore, and more than half of the time it's done wrong and interferes with browsing.

Hopefully the game has a higher frame rate.

My guess is that the graphical designers are to blame for this – and of course whatever PM signed off on that.

What's the latest hotness to do this? IntersectionObserver?

Site loads a JS resource from localhost on port 35729. What the heck?

`livereload.js` - looks like some development stuff that got left in.

LiveReload. https://github.com/livereload/livereload-js

Looks like a developer accidentally deployed some of their development tools to production, where of course they don't work but don't hurt anything either.

Wonder if they have a grunt process still enabled...

I didn't get past a few seconds on the page because of a couple things:

1. Grotesque fingers in my face - distracting and offputting

2. Scrolljacking

I didn't even realize you could scroll till I went back to the site a second time.

Looks rather boring and the combat seems very uninspiring.

I'll better go play the best Dune game ever made, Dune (1992). [1]

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(video_game)

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