The Making of Dune II: the strategy game #Dune #Gaming
Despite its name suggesting otherwise, Dune II was a first – a real-time strategy game that sprang out of the box with almost every gameplay attribute and control system seen in every RTS since. In direct lineage, it was the father of the globally successful Command & Conquer franchise.
Yet Dune II actually invented very little and its key elements had already been seen across a handful of existing titles. The genius of the development team at Westwood Studios was to stand on the shoulders of giants to perfectly balance the tactics of wargaming against the time-critical awareness of arcade games.
Dune II’s journey began in 1988 with Mastertronic founder Martin Alper looking to secure the rights to develop Dune games. Whether he liked Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novels or not is irrelevant. He’d figured that anything that had been in print for so long and translated so widely would give any game an instant fan base.
This sound reasoning had no doubt prompted movie producer Dino De Laurentis to bankroll a lavish $40 million movie adaptation in 1984, the same time that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom had been made for $28 million. Despite the cost, fans of the books had stayed at home in droves, the David Lynch-directed movie had tanked at the box office and, eventually, the production company had gone bankrupt. Hollywood’s loss became videogaming’s gain in 1990, when Mastertronic (now renamed Virgin Games due to mergers) was finally able to buy Dune’s adaption rights from Universal Pictures.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: New Python Releases, an ESP32+MicroPython IDE and Much More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
