DUNE 3000
Arrakis environment and terrain
 
 
 
Terrain concepts
Sand
Rock
Ridges
Dunes
Spice
Other terrain
Storms
Light effects
Crates
 

 Terrain concepts
    The Dune 3000 terrain should be a lot like the Tiberian Sun one: 3D deformable terrain. Of course, some desert-specific things must be implemented. Maybe the voxel engine could be used, but I'm not sure (I don't know what are the engine's limitations).

Sand
    This is the most widespread terrain on Arrakis. It slows down units and you can't build structures on it. It's much easier to deform than rock. Subterranean units can go underground and surface through it. Also, sandworms move through it.

Rock
    The rock is the only terrain you can build on. Units move faster on it and it's hard to deform. Sandworms can't move on it.

Ridges
    You know what the ridges are. They're cliffs that separate higher and lower rock, rock and sand or higher and lower sand. Some ridges are destroyable.

Dunes
    The dunes are a special type of sand. They're basically just high sand "hills" with very low "valleys" between them. Units are slowed down a lot by all the climbing and descending.

Spice
    The spice is the reason of the war. It's the most valuable resource in the universe. It comes in two formes: thick and thin spice. Thick spice is made of two layers. After it's harvested, thin spice is left. After thin spice is harvested, only sand is left. Spice can be found on dunes as well. Some spice fields are buried. They can appear if sand is removed by a storm. Storms can also bury existing spice fields.

Other terrain
    There are two types of special terrain. First of all, there's the drum sand. If a unit moves on drum sand, it will start to vibrate and all the worms on the map will do anything to eat it. If the unit moves on rock, the effect wears off. Drum sand looks just like normal sand. Once one of your units moves on a patch of drum sand, that patch is "discovered" and it automatically becomes a forbidden zone (if a part of it is covered by shroud, that part isn't "discovered").
The second type is the spice bloom. The spice blooms are just like in Dune2k, but they're created by sandtrout.

Storms
    There are two types of storms. The coriolis storm and the sand storm. The coriolis storm covers the whole map. Visibility is drastically reduced and the light towers don't work. It gets very dark and the light gets dark orange. The units move very slowly. They also lose health while they move. The best thing to do is to order them to stand ground. The radar doesn't work and air units can't take off. On the other hand, the sand storm is local, it only covers a screen. It moves across the map. Air units can't move into the storm, but the radar still works, even if it's in the storm. It has the same visual effects as the coriolis storm. Units move very slowly through it, but they don't lose health. Sand storms can also be caused by a long and very large battle, but those are temporary (the normal ones only end when they get out of the map).

Light effects
     Each map has a certain time of day, just like in Tiberian Sun. The difference is that night is much darker. You can barely see anything. During night missions, you can build light towers (regardless of your house). They act like the light posts of Tiberian Sun. Unlike the light posts in TS, the towers are built by the players, they're not pre-existent. They don't have to be build on concrete slabs and they can also be built on sand (but they only exist in night missions). The light towers can't be sold or repaired and they can be destroyed very easily (to prevent people from using them as walls on the sand). A light tower's light is the color of the player who built it.

Crates
      In multiplayer games, you can select whether you want to have crates or not. They're just like in Dune 2000 and Tiberian Sun (but they look more like crates, unlike in TS). When one of your units picks up a crate, it will have an effect that's chosen at random from these options:

10% chance: The crate explodes, heavily damaging units in a 2-cell radius
15% chance: Armor, speed, firepower, sight, range or rate of fire upgrade for
every unit in a 3-cell radius
10% chance: Every unit in a 3-cell radius gets promoted to colonel
15% chance: Every unit in a 5-cell radius is restored to full health
15% chance: Money crate, you get a large sum of money
15% chance: Unit crate, you get a random unit
10% chance: Super weapon crate, you get a random super weapon
5% chance: The whole map is revealed to you
5% chance: The whole map is re-shrouded to you (except your units' and buildings' sight range)