Dune 3000 Interface + concepts

DUNE 3000 Interface and game concepts Main menu Game story Armies Interface ------------- Sidebar ------------------------------------------------ Cursors and commands ---------------------- Top buttons Tutorial Campaigns Multiplayer Map editor Veterancy

Main menu
The main menu should stay the same like in Dune 2000. The only thing to be changed are the graphics, especially the menu's background. It should have 9 buttons:
Tutorial: Click on this button to open the tutorial menu. You can either start the tutorial, go to the "testing grounds" or return to the main menu.
Campaign: Start a single player campaign. When you click on this button, you first select the difficulty level (easy, normal or hard), then you select your house, and then you type in your name.
Load game: Click on it to load a previously saved single player game.
Delete game: Click on it to delete a previously saved single player game.
Multiplayer: Access the multiplayer menu. That menu contains the multiplayer game options: practice (skirmish), LAN game, direct modem link, internet etc. And of course the "return to main menu" button.
Map editor: Start the multiplayer map editor.
View intro: View intro (what else?)
Options: The game options menu. Display, sound, resolution and so on.
Exit game: Do not click this button! It will return you to the real world.

Game story (a sequel of Dune 2000)
One year after the emperor's challenge started, a full-scale war raged on Dune. Before that, the emperor just watched and sent only a few troops here and there. But now things got out of his hand. The Imperial House (House Corrino) got officially involved and declared war to the other houses. The war on Dune was now fought between four armies. But there were also the smugglers. The war drastically reduced spice production. The smugglers became the best spice miners. This brought them enough wealth to raise a large army. After 5 years, they got involved in the war as well, but not officially. They fought the four houses to increase spice production. 3 years from then, the war became universal. Everyone in the universe was on one of the four (actually five) sides. That is, except the sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit. They decided this total war was severely interfering with their gene selection process. Using The Voice and their visions, the Bene Gesserit created themselves an army. They landed on Dune and swiped through the weaken armies fighting for so long. The Bene Gesserit crushed their enemies and made themselves supreme rulers of Dune.
25 years have passed, and the Bene Gesserit still rule Dune. However, their supreme reverend mother recently died without naming it's successor. Different factions inside the sisterhood fought for power. Large areas of Arrakis remained unguarded. This was the four houses' best chance (the smugglers were already there, hiding as always). Four large fleets landed on the desert planet. Taking the Bene Gesserit by surprise, they regained most of Dune. But they were by no means allies. They turned their attention to each other. With highly improved technology, the war once again scars the face of Arrakis. THE ULTIMATE CONFLICT HAS BEGUN.

Armies
There are 7 armies in Dune 3000. Four of them are the playable houses. The other three are non-player sides (but two of them are playable under some special circumstances). The four playable houses are:
House Atreides: The noble atreides of Caladan. Their planet is a lush green environment. The Duke Leto Atreides was killed in the first Dune war. The present leader is his son, Duke Paul Atreides, the mentat Duke. He's the only nobleman of the empire that's also a mentat. For 25 years, the Atreides had no connection with their old allies, the fremen. They hope the fremen haven't forgoten them.
House Ordos: This insidious, mysterious and extremely rich house is back looking for vengeance. For 25 years, The Cartel has been planning the assault on Arrakis. They are "friends" with many Guild navigators. They might even be planning to overthrow the emperor. We don't know who their mentat is. In the first Dune war, they seemed to use a highly ilegal technology: a cyborg. Now, it is said they have a whole group of cyborg mentats. The Cartel won't stop at nothing until Dune is theirs.
House Harkonnen: The evil harkonnen come from the dark world of Giedi Prime. Baron Vladimir Harkonnen died 5 years ago, of old age. The present leader of the house is his nephew, Baron Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. His swore on his oncle's grave that he'll take the ducal ring from Paul Atreides' dead body. He upgraded the harkonnen nuclear arsenal. Once the Bene Gesserit hold on Dune began to weaken, he ordered his troops to "Go, take Arrakis! Kill them all! But Paul Atreides is mine!" The present Harkonnen mentat is Piter de Vries, who took the place of the old mentat Hayt by... disposing of him.
Imperial House (Corrino): The old emperor Shaddam IV is the man who started all of this, 35 years ago. His challenge started the 10-year Dune war. Now the weakness of the Bene Gesserit started this second war. The emperor is old, but he still is emperor. He wants to take back what was once his: the planet Arrakis. The imperial sardaukar are ready and willing to do just that. The imperial mentat is Elizabeth of Kaitain, the only woman-mentat of the great houses.

And now the other three armies: Smugglers: The smugglers are ilegal spice traders. They've always been on Arrakis, except in the first few years of the Bene Gesserit rule. Now they've also got an army. Since they've only got a small number of men, all their units are vehicles. They can't afford to "waste" soldiers. They don't have a well-defined leader. One person handles spice operations, another one is in charge of war tactics and so on. Their mentat is a "fake" (ilegal) one, trained on Tleilax. His name is Danian Hawnee.
Bene Gesserit: The sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit are the former rulers of Dune. They've owned this planet for 25 years. When supreme reverend mother Gaius Helen Mohiam died, two years ago, the sisterhood's power began to crumble. This allowed the four great houses to land on Arrakis and start the second Dune war. When they saw this, the Bene Gesserit stopped all internal fighting and elected a new supreme revered mother, Helena Mohiam, the daughter of Gaius Helen. The Bene Gesserit use their psychic powers in battles. In order to do this, they don't use vehicles, they use only infantry units (even for harvesting). They don't have a mentat and they don't need one. Helena Mohiam's great psychic powers are more than enough.
Mercenaries: The mercenaries are allies with the ordos. They fight for money. The ordos-mercenary alliance is different from normal alliances. It can't be controlled from the diplomacy menu. The mercenaries remain allies with the ordos regardless of what happens. Even if the ordos attack them, they remain allies (I know it's not realistic, but it was necessary to balance the game). The mercenaries have no leader or mentat. They've got a war council that takes the battle decisions. They use ordos technology and they have only 2 special buildings and 5 special units of their own.
There's also an eighth side, composed of the indigenous creatures of Arrakis: Sandworms and sandtrout. They're all controlled by the same AI, so they can work together. Their goal is to free their homeworld of the human invaders.

Interface
The game interface is similar to that of other Westwood games, but with some important new features.
-----The sidebar stays mostly the same as in Dune 2000. The unit and building lists are the same format (or maybe it could use the TAB system that will be first introduced in RA2). How many units or buildings can you queue (or build at the same time) depends on your army. Above the lists there can be two special buttons (instead of the starport and upgrade buttons of Dune2k). Just what those buttons are, that depends on the side you're playing with. Some armies only have one possible button. Above these there are the five classic buttons from Dune 2000: repair, sell, radar map toggle, retreat and guard (it's actually called "guard area"), plus four new buttons: stand ground (units on "stand ground" won't move, but they'll shoot any enemy in range), patrol (you'll have to select an area for the unit to patrol), deactivate structure (like in Tiberian Sun) and place waypoints (also like in TS). Above these buttons there's the good old radar map (also called minimap), which only becomes active when you have a radar-type building and enough power. When it's not active you'll see your house logo over there. Above it there's the "money counter", where you can see how much money you've got. There's also the power column in it's normal position, but next to it you've also got the "storage space" column, which shows you how much spice storage space you've got. The sidebar will have a different "texture" for each army: silver for the atreides, gold for the ordos, shining black metal for the harkonnen, shining purple metal for the emperor, rock for the smugglers and crystal for the Bene Gesserit (same as the material from which each army's buildings are built). Tip: right-clicking on the "place waypoints" button will allow you to draw a "forbidden zone". A forbidden zone is a rectangular area of the map where your units won't move unless you tell them to. You can remove a forbidden zone (or a part of it) by drawing another one on top of it. Forbidden zones will have a flashing orange border (both in the game and on the radar map).
------The cursors will be mostly the same as in Dune 2000, but they'll have a different look (maybe even a different look for each army). There will be two new commands: guard unit (select a unit, hold down ctrl+alt and click on the unit to be guarded) and select all units of the same type (shift-click on a unit to select all your units of that type).
----On the top of the screen you'll have three buttons: options, mentat and diplomacy. The options are the ones we all know and love from Dune2k. Some small modifications are needed, for example different soundtracks for in-game music. The mentat button will actually be a help button, like in Dune2. Your mentat will give you all sorts of game help (just in writing, the only voice clips will be for the names of units, buildings and other topics). The diplomacy button will allow you to set your diplomatic relations with other players. You'll have a list of player names (in single player, you'll have a list of other houses and armies). Next to each name there are three boxes: ally, neutral and enemy. Tick a box to set you relations with that player (the default is enemy). Beneath each name, you'll see that player's relation to you (ally, neutral or enemy). If you're someone's enemy, your units will get an attack cursor over his units or buildings and they'll attack any of his units or buildings within range. If you're neutral, your units will get an attack cursor, but they won't automatically attack his units or buildings. If you're his ally, your units will get a "no move" cursor over his units or buildings and they won't attack. Click on an ally's name to send him money. You'll have to type out the amount, of course (in a pop-up box). Above the player list there are also three more boxes that you can tick: "allies share view" (your ally can see everything you can see), "immediate response" (your status towards someone is always the same as his status towards you) and "allied victory" (allies win together, they don't have to fight each other after the enemies are destroyed).

Here's a "blueprint":

Tutorial
      The tutorial menu has 3 options: "tutorial mission", "testing ground" and "return to main menu".
      The tutorial mission is a special Bene Gesserit mission with lots of simple objectives that teach you how to play. You'll also get real-time help all through the mission, actually voice-clips with Helena Mohiam's voice. This is also the key to unlocking the secret Bene Gesserit mission (this one isn't for beginners). If you do something special in the tutorial mission (like attacking a certain "landmark" or building something in a certain spot), you get a high-priority transmission (a briefing movie) in which you're told Bene Gesserit intelligence just managed to get all the four houses to land their invasion troops in the same region. The smuggler HQ is also there. Because of your excellent performance, you've been chosen to lead the Bene Gesserit army to victory against them. Basically, this is a last-level-type mission with multiple enemies. You'll see a Bene Gesserit win movie if you finish it.
      The "testing ground" is a special very small map (the kind that's too small to be in the multiplayer) and you get no sidebar while playing on it. It's made so you can test all the units. Before starting to play, you select which units you want to test (up to 20 at a time). There's no enemy, you control all the units. You just play around with them, see what they can do and test their effectiveness against each other. There's no winning, you can only quit.

Campaigns
The campaigns are very different from those of other Westwood games. The only one who's the same is the secret smuggler campaign (5 missions). You get to it from the main menu, by doing something special (like you got to the ant missions in Red Alert: Conterstrike). You still see a map of Arrakis between missions, but each time you'll only have one possible region to attack.
The other four campaigns are very non-linear. The starting movie is your arrival on Arrakis. Then you see the classic map, this time divided in 20 regions (16 owned by the Bene Gesserit and 4 owned by the smugglers). One of the regions is marked by a flag. That's where Arakeen (the capital of Arrakis) is. After a few seconds, you see the smugglers conquering one more region and each one of the other three houses getting two or three regions. Then you have to choose where to land your invasion force (you can choose between two Bene Gesserit regions). After that you see a short cut-scene of your invasion force landing and you start the first mission. Once you've accomplished it, a frigate will land giving you your first base construction vehicle and will also bring you on the planet. This introduces a new concept: you are no longer an "invulnerable god" that couldn't care less about his army. You exist in the game as a hero (you've typed in your name at the beginning of the campaign). If you die, the game is over (with a really cool screen-exploding animation). In the game, you're a "soldier" with very little health and no weapon. To prevent you from dying to easily, you can build a "residence" in which to live in. You can build as many as you want (a very good idea, since the enemy doesn't know in which one you live). If you kill an enemy leader, his army will be in total chaos for a while (until they elect a new one). After each mission, you get into "developing phase", in which you build your base in the region you just conquered. You can always switch to another region to develop that one. You can attack enemy regions whenever you fell like it. When you do that, you also see a movie. You can attack any region along your border, so the game is non-linear. Sometimes you'll conquer regions without having to fight for them (you'll fight for one region and get two of them if you win). Also, the enemies won't just sit there and take it. They'll attack your regions, and that's why you have to develop them. You also see a movie when you have to defend one of your regions. There are lots of movies (all on the CD, of course), to suit all situations. Depending on a few factors, the computer will choose which movie to show you before a mission. A special region is the one with Arakeen. Whoever owns Arakeen is the official ruler of Arrakis. But this title is worth nothing unless you have a large army to back it up with and crush the "unwelcome guests" on your planet. The Bene Gesserit start with Arakeen, but they'll soon have to fight for it because they loose regions at an incredible rate in the beginning of the game. Arakeen is a huge, non-selectable and non-destructible building. The only thing you can do is to capture it. You can't destroy it.

Multiplayer
The multiplayer should be more classic than the campaigns. The beginning selection screen will have all the "good old" options from Dune 2000, plus some new features. First of all, new game types: Capture the flag, Control points ("king of the hill"-like) and so on. This will make sure you'll have some other things to do except killing them all in a deathmatch. There should also be more options, like: fog of war, re-deployable BCV, repairable bridges, non-player sides (except the normal human players and AIs, there'll also be some smuggler and/or Bene Gesserit bases, depending on the map), quick game and so on. You can play with any one of the four houses without any restrictions. You can also play with the smugglers, but only in practice (skirmish) and only on the maps made by Westwood (not on the ones you make with the map editor). Of course, the "non-player sides" option can't be turned on if you play with the smugglers. Also, there has to be an internet-based tournament on WWO, much like "World Domination" from Firestorm. It will use the same Arrakis map like the campaigns, but there won't be any heroes (and no residences, of course).

Map editor
Dune 3000 MUST have a multiplayer map editor. Westwood made big mistakes by not giving map editors with it's recent games. They're still the best I've ever seen, but map editors would add entire years to the already long "lives" of those games. The Dune 3000 map editor should be fully capable of creating multiplayer maps with everything on them. I'm not going to talk about the editor's interface, because I don't know how would a voxel editor look like (or an editor for a whole new engine that Dune3k might use).

Veterancy
Units should have about 5 veterancy ranks. The names could be: sergeant (marked by a line), lieutenant (two lines), captain (a circle), major (a star) and colonel (a house logo, of the house which owns it). Defensive structures only have 3 ranks (they can only get to the captain rank). When it's first built, a unit or structure has no rank. To become sergeant, it needs to kill 7 enemies (enemies, not allies or brothers in arms). To become lieutenant, it needs to kill another 7, and so on. Sergeants and lieutenants get the usual: range, firepower, rate of fire, sight, speed and armor upgrades. Captains get a big weapon upgrade (for example AA capability for a non-AA weapon). Majors get a house-specific special utility (shroud generator for atreides, stealth for ordos, shield for harkonnen, all-weapons for corrino and so on). If they already have that, it gets a big upgrade. Colonels have a morale-boosting effect (your units get to the next veterancy rank while they're near one of your colonels). Of course, all these upgrades are added over the already-existing ones (for example a colonel still has the upgrade for becoming a major). Deviators, nerve gas troopers and deviation turrets score 1 kill for every unit they deviate.
Note: Units and defensive structures don't score kills for destroying (or deviating) enemy units and structures much lower in the tech tree than they are (for example a tank doesn't score a kill for killing an infantry soldier).