Osprey's patches
 

If, like what Nilex said is correct, I would have a suggestion for you, Osprey. :idea: If you have more extras like this of existing games in the Abandonia games collection, you could offer them in Forum Offers.

Thanks. I've been on this kick since Summer, going through some of my favorite old games and setting them up how I like them once and for all. In doing so, I've found some things that I could improve and have shared some of them. It's nice that people find them useful.

If you want to see everything that I've uploaded so far (including a very similar mouse helper utility for Dune II), visit the following page:
https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/i...loads&mid=3342

Thanks for the suggestion. I'd rather keep them hosted elsewhere, but thanks, anyways.

Ha, I've been on the very same kick too! Thank you for the link, I like your taste of games :smile2:
Dune2, Jedi Knights, Strike Commander and Warcraft patches are amazing. Took em all. Your D2/WC patches in particular effectively make the vanilla mechanic obsolete, all while keeping-in with original spirit of the games. Remarkable :OK:

Thanks. If you didn't know, there are two good fan recreations of Dune II: one called Dune Dynasty and one called Dune Legacy. They're Windows programs that allow high resolutions, add features like right-clicking and selecting multiple units at once (something that I can't simply add via utility), fix bugs and make gameplay tweaks. They're pretty nice and sort of make my mouse helper obsolete, but I put it together, anyways, in case there are others like me who prefer playing the original DOS version of the game. I can tolerate and appreciate a few modern improvements to games, especially to things like control schemes, but I don't like to deviate too much from how the game looked and felt way back when or else it doesn't feel quite so nostalgic anymore.

In same boat as you, my red line are changes to AI. An unfortunate but necessary compromise in absence of original source code. Thanks for the plugs I'll defo take a look at both. When I did my D1+2 package I got neck deep side tracked by Super Dune II and its set of patches that all I wanted was to wrap it up ASAP. My glass would spill over had I discovered them right there and then :)

Your mouse helpers are a Godsend for us purist who only want minimalistic quality of life improvements. No substitute, defo not obsolete :OK:

Thanks Osprey, love to see this kind of stuff

Apparently, a moderator split these replies from the Warcraft thread into their own thread here. I don't think that my "patches" are really deserving of a thread, but maybe he just wanted to clean up the Warcraft thread, since this discussion was getting off topic and he didn't want to just delete it. Anyways, I just wanted to clarify that.

Minor issue with D2 mouse helper:
Selecting and middle clicking construction yard for repairs automatically starts production as well. May affect all production buildings but haven't tested.

If you allow for two hopefully small feature requests:
1) To make spacebar emulate vanilla RBM screen centering without interfering with regular typing like savegame naming.
It's used only to skip Intro/Briefing text and select Mentant topics. Would fit perfect in tandem with my custom e/s/d/f
mapper for map scrolling. In any case feels like a good key choice because of proximity of all other command keys.
2) To make it compatible with Super Dune II.
But if it requires more than it recognizing SUPER.EXE (mod executable) in addition to DUNE2.EXE then I wouldn't bother.
Hoping it's just down to that little detail. It might work since the two are essentially the same game with different colors.
Tried renaming the EXE myself but mod wouldn't start then, simply gotta be named SUPER.

Patch proved extremely useful in my short test. Unit movements and slab building/placement... saves a lot of finger/wrist acrobatics :OK:

Yeah, I wondered if I should leave that and ultimately did. I reasoned that, if you were building something, anyways, it would automatically repair the building, which could be seen as convenient. Obviously, it's not good, though, if you want to repair without building anything. I could solve it by removing the 'R' binding from the middle mouse button, but then you'd have to manually repair buildings with the 'R' key or clicking on the Repair button. Do you think that that would be better than how it is?

Hmm. I had forgotten that the right mouse button centered the screen or else I might've redirected the functionality to something else.

Ok, I've tested giving the spacebar that functionality and it works, but with the drawback that using it during briefing/mentat text dismisses two screens of text instead of one (since the right mouse button uses a left button click, and the left button dismisses text, as well). You can still use the left button to dismiss single screens of text at a time, just not ideally with the spacebar anymore.

Another option that I've just tested is making the right mouse button center the screen, like it originally did. The drawback to that is that the screen centers on the destination that you send units to move to or attack. For example, if you send a soldier to attack an enemy harvester, the screen will center on that enemy harvester.

Do either of those sound better than simply not having the screen centering functionality available at all?

Ah, I didn't even think to consider Super Dune II.

Hmm... that's strange. It doesn't fully work with the original Super Dune II (not Super Dune II Classic, which is SUPER.EXE).

Oh, I see. The original Super Dune II is based on Dune II v1.0 (not v1.07) and the mouse helper doesn't fully work in v1.0.

Oh nice, I'm pleasantly surprised you gave it so much detailed thought :OK:

After hearing the possible regressions I think it's best to leave everything as-is for now. For production buildings I'll simply press R. It's more than workable, no worries.

Sorry for the Super Dune II confusion - my bad. I indeed use Classic v1.5g (fixes many ridiculous original mod bugs) with SUPER.EXE. It has been a while so I've forgotten.
Downloaded it from this site of all places: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/36/. Has nice readme inside with install instructions.
This isn't part of proposed leave as-is, I'd still VERY much love MouseHelper with SD2 - Classic :smile2:. But not at the expense of making you lose too much time on it.