Tag: Dune 2000 gruntmods edition

Another day another update. This time the focus was on better compatibility with cutscenes and some small optimizations to the launcher.

The English cutscene installer used to be bundled with the game installer as an option at install, with the other languages available as a download through gruntmods.com. This had a few issues, the biggest one being if someone decided after the fact that they wanted to install them they would need to visit the site and download the installer manually or reinstall the game. The second issue was that many players didn’t even know about the option to install through the web download and there was not a good way to communicate it in the launcher or installer.

An unrelated issue with changes to our hosting environment also caused the download in the previous version of the game to stop working, even though the download links were still valid.

Changes to the installer in this release:

• Cutscenes have been moved from the installer to an option in the Launcher
• The un-install sections have been cleaned up and simplified as few people choose to uninstall individual components of the game
• The calculating file size portion has been moved to the cutscene installer as without them being included in the initial installation the size is always the same
• Several install options and prompts have been cleaned up and reworded for additional clarity

Changes to the launcher in this release:

• A new button has been added that allows you to install any language of cutscenes that you want, or all of them if you so choose.
• The launcher should have focus when opened instead of staying behind other applications
• Resolved issues with the launcher not being sized correctly if the user manually resized it

The download for the full install is already available on the download page, if you have the previous version (1.6.3) installed you will be prompted to install a small update package when launching the game.

Its been a long time since the last update to the installer, and the previous version had 274922 downloads of downloads! Thats a lot for such an old game.

In order to celebrate the installers success, as well as to address the many community updates that have happened to the game, I have decided to create a new version of the installer that improves upon the previous ones in several ways. Changes include:

• Added updated Mission Launcher by Feda, allowing players to easily install mods made by the community and play them without menu changes or overwriting base game data
• Updated the main exe to support changes made by Klofkac that allow a huge amount of new mod features using his latest tool
• Added new tools from Klofkac to the D2K+ install
• Added additional installation logs to show what is happening while the installer is running
• Fixed an issue where the installer would not download the cutscenes
• Fixed incorrect music playing in Rise of the Mercenaries Mission 1 and 2
• Fixed the Mission briefings in the launcher and in game for Rise of the Mercenaries Mission 1 and 2
• Fixed issues with some of the base game missions having leftovers from previous versions of high resolution support, they are now the same as the versions included with the original cd
• Fixed the non functional updater, updates are checked before running the launcher, and a choice is given to run the update or skip it.
• Improved Launcher, it has been completly rewritten from scratch. Launcher changes include:
  -No longer requires administrator access to run the game or the launcher
  -Improved viewing of the updates page
  -Includes support for custom missions via Feda’s Mission Launcher
  -Code is more optimized and less buggy
  
• Improved the installation speed of the game
• Improved Cutscene installation, now happens without additional user interaction
• Improved the size of the installer, it is now 116mb smaller then pervious version
• Removed several files in the install directory that are no longer usedYou can head over to the download page to download the new version of the installer, in the coming weeks I will be working to try and make it even easier to install community content and expand the game’s potential. If you have any issues with the new version or ideas for how to improve it, please feel free to let me know.

Only 4 years since the last major site update! I guess that says a lot of about the site stability.

We were utlizing a CDN service to serve file downloads as the bandwidth was becoming pretty intensive for our existing file server. We had a minor issue the other month that resulted in the hosted files there becoming unavailable. Rather then risk this happening again, I have taken the liberty of upgrading the server infrastructure.

The site once again has all files on one centralized server, which will allow me to better stay on top of backups and updates. As this would increase the load on the server, I have also taken the chance to upgrade the hardware which should result in significantly improved download speeds and reduced load times.

I had to migrate all the file links manually, so if anything isn’t working please let me know.

Just because I like to show off performance increases, I will continue the tradition of posting a speedtest result after the upgrade.

Windows 11 is here! With that we have an updated version of the configuration program from FunkyFr3sh that should fix the following issues:

• “The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000022). Click OK to close the application.” Error message appearing when trying to start the game
•  Windowed view not working
• Using Alt + Tab key combinations causing freezing and crashing issues.

Download the full installer from the download page.

It’s that time again! Another small update to the installer to fix a few issues that have come up:

-Added updated Mission Launcher by Feda
-Fixed an Issue where music would not play in Rise of The Mercenaries Mission 2 when selected from the mission launcher
-Fixed an issue where the installer would not download the cutscenes

Download the full installer from the download page.

It’s been a long time since I’ve published an update for the GruntMods Edition. This time I decided to tackle three simple problems that have been an issue for awhile:

• Error messages appearing when the news feed is loaded
• The built in updater not working
• Issues with A1V1, A1V2, H1V1, H1V2, O1V1 and O1V2 having most of the events happening outside the playable area

To solve these issues with the launcher, I have updated it to a newer version. The most important change is that it no longer includes an automatic update feature. I made numerous changes to the server infrastructure that broke this feature, and since we don’t make updates to the software often this feature is largely unnecessary.

In regards to the mission specific issues, Cm_blast was kind enough to provide updated mission files to address the issue.

That’s all for this update, I haven’t forgotten about mission 3 of Rise of The Mercenaries but I will need to clear more free time for that to be completed.