Dune Legacy 0.98.7.1 is now available! This release doubles the map editor's design canvas, overhauls the pathfinding pipeline, restores the classic Campaign AI as the default opponent, and adds stability fixes for both single-player and multiplayer queue stress situations.

🗺️ Map Editor Enhancements

• Expanded Map Sizes: Map editor now supports creating maps up to 512x512 tiles (doubled from previous 256x256 limit)
• Improved Size Selection: Map size dropdowns now increment by 64 tiles for better granularity (64, 128, 192, 256, 320, 384, 448, 512)
• Enhanced Radar/Minimap: Automatic scaling and centering for all map sizes on the radar viewport

⚙️ Performance & Pathfinding

• New Path Cache: Unit path requests are cached with destination and map revision tracking so idle squads no longer flush and recompute identical paths every tick
• Map Revision System: Terrain updates (like structures being placed/destroyed) now increment a pathing revision counter. Cached paths are invalidated only when the topology truly changes, keeping 90% of previously computed paths reusable
• A* Buffer Pool: The A* searcher reuses a pool of preallocated tile buffers, removing thousands of malloc/free cycles during late-game battles and cutting frame spikes
• Stuck Detection & Rescue: Units track progress toward their destination, automatically request a carryall if they fail to make progress
• Queue-Stress Protection: Military squads stop repathing when the queue depth exceeds 300. Multiplayer FPS drops (12 FPS → 50+ FPS) are eliminated
• Uncapped Rendering: VSync is now disabled by default so PCs with fast monitors can run at 120+ FPS

🧠 AI & Unit Behavior

• Default AI: CampaignAIPlayer replaces qBot as the default opponent - authentic Dune II behavior out of the box
• Ground-Contact Activation: Original AI activation now only triggers after ground-unit contact, matching the classic campaign flow
• Builder Defaults: AI-produced harvesters automatically start in HARVEST mode
• Immediate Defense: Campaign AI now scrambles defenders (including Deviators and Launchers) whenever structures or harvesters are hit

🧩 Compatibility & Build System

• Savegame Back-Compat: Save files as old as version 0.97.05 load cleanly
• MSVC Builds Restored: Campaign AI data tables rewritten to avoid GCC-only designated initializers. CMake toolchain back to C++17
• Windows Polish: The Windows executable icon embedding was fixed. All PAK files now included in installer!

Download

• Windows: DuneLegacy-0.98.7.1-Windows-x64.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.7.1-macOS.dmg

Gameplay Impact: Large-scale skirmishes with 600+ active units hold steady frame times thanks to cached paths and smarter queue budgeting. Multiplayer clients no longer crater to sub-15 FPS when squads are ordered to regroup. Create epic 512x512 maps for longer strategic battles!

For full details, see the release notes.

Dune Legacy 0.98.6.6 is now available! This release focuses on multiplayer stability and performance improvements.

What's New in 0.98.6.6

• Fixed Multiplayer Synchronization: Restored network pacing and command synchronization - games no longer hang with "Waiting for other players" overlay
• Deterministic Pathfinding: Replaced time-sliced pathfinding with token-based budget system for consistent performance across all machines in multiplayer
• Multiplayer Pause Support: Players can now pause/resume during multiplayer sessions with synchronized notifications
• Network Improvements: Command buffering continues during wait states, ensuring peers stay synchronized
• Ornithopter Targeting: Changed to match original Dune II behavior for authentic gameplay
• Ornithopter Select Button: Added dedicated button for quick selection of all ornithopters

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.6.6 Setup.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.6.6-macOS.dmg

Technical Details: The deterministic pathfinding system uses node-count budgets instead of wall-clock timing, ensuring all clients process the same number of path calculations per game cycle regardless of CPU speed differences. This eliminates a major source of multiplayer desyncs.

For full details, see the release notes.

Dune Legacy 0.98.6.4 is now available! This critical bugfix release addresses rocket launcher targeting issues and includes comprehensive multiplayer config verification improvements.

What's New in 0.98.6.4

• Fixed Rocket Launcher Targeting (CRITICAL): Rockets no longer explode a square before reaching their target - regression from 0.98.6.3 proximity fuse changes. Rocket launchers now properly use 4-pixel explosion distance for all targets.
• Proximity Fuse Clarification: Rocket turrets use 16-pixel proximity fuse ONLY when targeting flying units. Ground targets use standard 4-pixel explosion for both launchers and turrets.
• Multiplayer Config Verification (6 Bugs Fixed!): Game version, QuantBot Config, and ObjectData validation ensures all players have matching configurations
  • Fixed non-deterministic hash algorithm causing false negatives
  • Added client-side validation - both host and clients verify configs
  • Fixed race conditions preventing game start after mismatch detected
  • Added game version checking to handshake protocol
  • Clear error messages showing exactly which configs differ
• Required for Multiplayer: All players must use version 0.98.6.4 to prevent desyncs from config mismatches

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.6.4 Setup.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.6.4-macOS.dmg

Technical Details: The rocket launcher regression was caused by the proximity fuse check in 0.98.6.3 applying to all units (isAUnit()) instead of just flying units (isAFlyingUnit()). This caused rockets to detonate 16 pixels before ground targets instead of the correct 4-pixel explosion distance.

For full details, see the release notes.

Dune Legacy 0.98.6.3 is now available! This hotfix release addresses a critical rocket turret damage bug and improves overall game performance.

What's New in 0.98.6.3

• Fixed Rocket Turret Damage (CRITICAL): Turrets now properly damage air units - hit rate improved from 3.5% to 66-100%! The damage formula was incorrectly scaling to zero at explosion radius.
• 60+ FPS Support: Game now runs smoothly at higher framerates with optimized pathfinding
• New Menu Option: "Limit to 31 FPS" checkbox for multiplayer stability or low-end systems
• Ornithopter Balance: Speed adjusted to 17 (from 15) after fixing targeting - still 23% slower than original
• Fixed QuantBot: AI correctly respects ornithopter attack settings on Easy/Medium difficulties
• Enhanced Logging: Added detailed performance metrics and combat statistics to Dune Legacy.log

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.6.3 Setup.zip
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.6.3-macOS.dmg

Note: This release may have slightly over-nerfed ornithopters - feedback welcome! The rocket turret fix was critical: damage was rounding to zero despite proximity detonations, making turrets completely ineffective against air units.

For full details, see the release notes.

Dune Legacy 0.98.6.2 is now available! This release focuses on game balance and adds user-editable configuration files for units, structures, and AI behavior.

What's New in 0.98.6.2

• User-Editable Config Files: Customize ObjectData.ini (unit/structure stats) and QuantBot Config.ini (AI difficulty and behavior) without recompiling
• Ornithopter Balance: Speed reduced from 22 to 15 (32% slower), smaller attack waves (Hard: 1, Brutal: 3 ornis)
• Rocket Turret Buffs: 15x faster scanning (0.2s vs 3s), fixed close-range air targeting, doubled rocket lifespan
• Smarter AI Defense: Builds 4 insurance turrets proactively, better counter logic, prerequisite checking

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.6.2 Setup.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.6.2-macOS.dmg
• Linux: DuneLegacy-0.98.6.2-Linux.tar.gz

Config files location: Windows: %APPDATA%\dunelegacy\config\, Linux: ~/.config/dunelegacy/config/, macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/dunelegacy/config/

Read more »

I am thrilled to announce the release of Dune Legacy version 0.98.6 for Windows and macOS! This is a major update bringing significant improvements to AI, multiplayer gameplay, and performance for large-scale battles.

Major Features in 0.98.6

• QuantBot AI Overhaul: The AI is now significantly more challenging and strategic
  • Difficulty-scaled ornithopter attack strategies (Easy: 1, Medium: 2, Hard: 3, Brutal: 4+ ornithopters before attacking)
  • Intelligent rocket turret defense (builds 2 turrets per enemy ornithopter)
  • Smarter ornithopter targeting - prioritizes rocket turrets and adjusts tactics based on enemy defenses
  • Improved build order logic with dynamic harvester limits and progressive tech requirements
• Multiplayer LAN Fixes: Enjoy stable multiplayer gameplay
  • Fixed freeze when players pause/unpause the game
  • Added pause state notifications - see which players are paused
  • Optimized network synchronization for smoother gameplay
  • Frame time set to 32ms (~31 FPS) for optimal multiplayer stability
• Major Performance Improvements: Massive battles run smoothly
  • Performance logging system to track AI, pathfinding, and rendering
  • Optimized pathfinding budget (12ms per frame with intelligent queue system)
  • Fixed pathfinding death spiral that caused frame drops
  • Efficient spatial grid for unit targeting
• Crash Reporting System: Automatic crash logs with stack traces help diagnose issues
• Critical Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed 4 null pointer crashes in QuantBot AI
  • Fixed tile squash iterator invalidation crash
  • Fixed carryall repair yard crash
  • Fixed unit targeting and range calculation issues

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.6 Setup.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.6-macOS.dmg
• Linux: DuneLegacy-0.98.6-Linux.deb

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Brett Ryland (docnappers) for Linux contributions: Ubuntu 25.04 build fixes, Linux packaging documentation, and fixing unit position jumping bugs!

Read more »

I am excited to announce the release of Dune Legacy version 0.98.4 for Windows and macOS! This update brings further performance improvements, enhanced stability, and various bug fixes.

Key Improvements in 0.98.4

• Enhanced graphics performance and rendering optimizations
• Improved AI behavior and decision making
• Better memory management and reduced memory usage
• Fixed various crashes and stability issues
• Updated SDL2 libraries for better compatibility
• Improved network play stability
• Enhanced user interface responsiveness
• Better support for high-resolution displays
• Various gameplay tweaks and balance improvements

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.4 Setup.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.4-macOS.dmg

As always, you'll need the original Dune 2 PAK files to play. Thank you to all contributors and testers who helped make this release possible!

We are excited to announce the release of Dune Legacy version 0.98.1 for Windows and macOS! This update brings major performance improvements and important bug fixes.

Key Improvements

• Major performance improvements: much less laggy graphics and much less slow down with large numbers of units!
• Fix manual carryall drop bug (especially with repair yards)
• Some AI tweaks
• Additional fixes by Henric Jungheim

Download

• Windows: Dune Legacy 0.98.1-vs-win64 Setup.exe
• macOS: DuneLegacy-0.98.1-macOS.dmg

I am pleased to announce that Dune Legacy version 0.97.04 is now available for Windows and macOS! This release brings significant performance optimizations and gameplay improvements.

Key Improvements in 0.97.04

• Fixed sandworm aggression to prevent excessive hunting across the map
• Some improvements in CPU efficiency during large-scale battles with QuantBot
• More performance improvements to come in future releases..

Community Updates

Our community continues to grow! You can provide feedback and engage with other players in two ways:

• Join our Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/6sAcZr6y3B
• Visit our SourceForge forum for traditional forum discussions

Cheers,
Stefan

I am pleased to announce that Dune Legacy version 0.97.03 is now available for Windows! This release brings various improvements and fixes to enhance your gaming experience.

Additionally, I'm excited to announce that work will begin on version 0.97.04 alpha. Stay tuned for future updates and new features!

Community Updates - New Discord Server!!

We've expanded our community presence! You can now provide feedback and engage with other players in two ways:

• Join our new Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/6sAcZr6y3B
• Visit our SourceForge forum for traditional forum discussions

I look forward to your feedback and hope you enjoy this new release!

Cheers,
Stefan

After 6 years, 0.97.0 is being released with some minor changes & campaign AI difficulty reduction. So far only for Windows: download.

Changes:

• Significantly reduced default quantbot medium in campaign, it now only attacks with 3 units at a time
• Fixed ornithopters to fly properly again, there's still a few bugs to make them work properly
• Fixed buy where sand worms immediately attack at game start
• New reworked campaign scenario maps by Dimitri, provide feedback to dmitrif AT bk.ru
• Other tweaks to quantbot, such as considering max units
• A new campaign AI by Richard
• Cleanup of SDL2 libraries and library references
• in keeping with original game, units only return to original repair locaiton if 'manual carryall drop' is enabled. This is similar to original and also - returning to battle zone is a bit imbalanced - allows for snowballing

After quite a longish development cycle and many new, interesting features being implemented the next version of Dune Legacy is ready for download.

Main changes:

• New AI Smart Bot and Quant Bot
• Port to SDL 2
• Use hardware acceleration for drawing
• HD graphics: Use mask overlays to generate high-res graphics out of the low-res ones of the original game
• Maximum number of units per house (either map dependent or as a new game option "override maximum number of units")
• Use a smaller logical resolution for high resolution displays, e.g. 960x540 for 1920x1080

Further changes:

• Move to fix-point math for game logic as floating-point operations may differ between platforms and compilers
• Units entering refineries or repair yards are now moving onto the structure tile before disappearing
• ADL music playback replaced: Now combines ScummVM AdlibDriver with Woody OPL chip emulation code from adplug
• Tutorial hints are shown in the campaign to guide the user
• New key bindings: Cycle through construction yards with 'H' and factories with 'F'; capture buildings with 'C'
• Improve performance of Fog of War
• Units can now be instructed to find the next repair yard on their own
• Save game speed, scroll speed and sound volume as game settings
• In campaign mode, the map choice screen remembers the region of a failed mission (the user has to select a different region)
• New game option "Manual Carryall Drops"
• Mentat's eyes are following the cursor
• Clicking on mentat's eyes makes him blink and clicking on mentat's mouth makes him open it
• Modding: Make it possible to disable a unit or structure
• Save screenshots as PNG
• 64-bit builds for Windows
• Store complete map in save games (and replays) of single player custom games
• 18 new maps by heinrich arkonnen
• 4 new maps by Kuffar
• Bugfix (Bug #32): Repaired units getting removed from control group (Reported by Chan Kun Wa)
• Bugfix (Bug #36): AI non-hostile and inactive (Reported by Chan Kun Wa)
• Bugfix (Bug #40): Bullets from gun turrets hit own building, e.g. other turrets (Reported by Dream Worker)
• Bugfix (Bug #50): Changing the player's name while playing a mission makes starting the next mission or restarting the current mission crash
• Bugfix (Bug #53): SFX mismatch when playing Harkonnen
• Bugfix (Bug #62): Worms spawn under rock (Reported by heinrich arkonnen)
• Bugfix (Bug #67): Saving a game under Windows with (for filenames) illegal characters results in no save at all (Reported by vangrunz)
• Bugfix (Bug #70): Changing the player name makes replays crash
• Bugfix (Bug #71): Ornithopter animation is too fast (Thanks to Kartones for the patch)
• Bugfix (Bug #72): Texture sizes were too big for older hardware; now textures are smaller than 2048x2048 (Reported by gdm85)
• Bugfix (Bug #73): Shift the level of the voc files so that the last sample is 128 (Reported by Vortaka)
• Bugfix (Bug 3610246): Mentat help used wrong houses (Reported by kuffar)

Dune 2 has, due to its age, graphics with very low resolution, e.g. a map tile in the DOS version is only 16x16 pixels. For those of you who like this pixelated look&feel of the original game, Dune Legacy offers the option to use the original graphics. But Dune Legacy also allows to use the pixel-art scaler Scale2x that tries to reduce the pixelated appearance of the original graphics. Sometimes this leads to corners being rounded off, resulting in a cartoonish look. Two years ago sourceforge user Assembler Bot contacted me with a solution to this problem: "I have almost all bitmaps from old Dune2 up-scaled 3x and carefully pixel-by-pixel smoothed to resemble original bitmaps as close as possible." Some graphics were still missing which I created in the course of the last months. Arranging those high-res graphics to be useful for Dune Legacy also took some time. Due to copyright issue it wasn't possible to include the graphics directly, but a masking technique was developed: The mask is applied to the original low-res image to create an high-res version. The next version of Dune Legacy will contain (the option) to use those graphics. Screenshots bellow allow you to compare both versions for yourself via the sliders:

Newer versions of Mac OS X seem to have various things changed in a way that it broke backwards compatibility with SDL-based games. Jeffrey Carpenter looked into the issues and finally provided a patch to resolve the problem. The next release of Dune Legacy hopefully will run out of the box on current Mac OS X versions but in the meantime take a look at the install instructions provided by Jeffrey in Bug #51.

Main changes:

• Full-featured map editor with support of Dune2-compatible maps as well as the extended map format
• Integration of OpenSuperDune (a replacement to the original SuperDune)
• Unit/Structure stats and the techtree is read from a config file
• Used scaler (Nearest Neighbor or Scale2x) is configurable (default = Scale2x)
• Game completely localizable (except helping menu)
• Harvesters now have a return command
• Trying to place a structure on a tile which is already occupied by (your own) units orders them to move away
• Add support for multiple different AI implementations
• Improved AI: Base is now built up faster and more compact
• New single and multiplayer maps

Further changes:

• Determine username automatically upon first start up
• Pressing an assigned number twice centers the screen on the selected units
• Destroyed units might spawn a soldier (Probability depends on the type of unit)
• Quad, Trike and Infantry units have a bumpy moving style when moving over rocks, mountains and thick spice
• Idling units randomly turn around
• Bullets now have an explosion animation when hitting
• Spice blooms have now their own animation
• Full Harvesters move 40% slower than empty ones
• Units are defined badly damaged (smoke, only one weapon) if < 50% max. health (instead of 30%)
• Sardaukar Troopers and Fremen Troopers are no unit types on its own anymore (just normal Troopers)
• Deviation chance is now house specific
• Starport prices are now normal distributed (instead of uniform)
• Limiting number of palaces to one is now optional (default = off)
• As in Dune II killed sandworms no longer respawn; old behavior is now an option (default = off)
• New game option: Sandworms drop spice when killed (default = off)
• Changes to game speed: Globally configurable; saved to and loaded from savegame; configurable before start of a multiplayer game
• Update enet to version 1.3.6
• Code was refactored in order to have a more consistent style
• Bugfix: Sand damage was using the wrong graphics
• Bugfix: Make it possible to order any type of unit from the starport if specified in the CHOAM section
• Bugfix: Build with SDL 1.2.14 on Mac OS X for Lion compatibility
• Bugfix: Allow special units to be delivered by reinforcements
• Bugfix: Correct order of houses is Harkonnen, Atreides, Ordos, Fremen, Sardaukar, Mercenary as in the color palette
• Bugfix: Minimap was not updated correctly when playing with fog-of-war enabled
• Bugfix: Stopping a unit that was awaiting pickup could "freeze" the carryall
• Bugfix: It was possible to exceed the spice storage limit (it's still possible to circumvent the limit but it's more complex)
• Bugfix: Harvester returns after the last tile of spice on the map is cleared
• Bugfix: Playing xmi music on Windows was broken
• Bugfix: Various fixes to the correct handling of music and sfx volume changes

Known issues:

• Multiplayer games still have a rare chance of getting out of sync

• Add LAN multiplayer mode
• Internet multiplayer mode with metaserver (Beta!)
• Use scale2x for scaling
• Make game scalable ingame (Zoomlevel x1, Zoomlevel x2 and Zoomlevel x3)
• Add mentat help
• Scroll build list with mouse wheel
• Loading maps is more fault tolerant and shows only warnings in most cases
• Loading maps now checks for non-standard features (see Section "Features" in the Dune II Format Specification)
• Confirm window for game restart and game exit
• Added 13 maps by Rippsblack
• New options "Structures Degrade On Concrete", "Start with Explored Map" and "Instant Build"
• Earthquake ("Window shaking") on large explosions (e.g. death hand explosion)
• French translation (incomplete and only a machine translation)
• Bugfix: Loading SCENH008.INI of Dune II V1.0 failed
• Bugfix: Dune Legacy.log was not used on Windows
• Bugfix: Support non-ascii characters in paths and filenames on Windows
• Bugfix: Infantry units could not trigger spice blooms
• Bugfix: When playing as the Sardaukar, the announcer still says "Harkonnen", e.g. "Harkonnen harvester deployed"
• Bugfix: Sardaukar Reinforcements did not work
• Refactoring: Drop Visual Studio 6.0 support completely and start using C++0x features

Our new wiki is based upon the Hosted Apps Service provided by SourceForge.net. This eases website management as we do not have to upgrade the wiki software on our own in the future but can rely on SourceForge. While moving the wiki pages we cleaned up and removed outdated/obsolete entries. Furthermore we added some additional pages like a Manual and revamped the Development section.

Unfortunately the wiki accounts could not be transferred because the Hosted Apps on SourceForge are connected to SourceForge accounts. Thus you will need to get an SourceForge account in order to edit our new wiki.

The old wiki is still accessible at http://dunelegacy.sourceforge.net/wiki/.

• Custom maps implemented (see Dune II Format Specification for details on the map format)
• AI fixed (but still dumb)
• Play with AI in one team
• Fremen, Sardaukar and Mercenary playable (but needs better testing)
• Only one palace per house possible
• Colors of ingame GUI elements customized for each house
• New option screen
• I18N support (only English and German atm)
• Savegames are sorted by date
• Wall-Bug fixed: Walls not drawn correctly after loading a game
• Linux: Save configuration files to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dunelegacy if set; otherwise ~/.config/dunelegacy is used
• Mac OS X: Save configuration files to ~/Library/Application Support/Dune Legacy instead of ~/.config/dunelegacy
• Calculate md5sum of all PAK-Files at startup and write them to the log file (should ease debugging)
• Various smaller bugfixes

• Cutscenes are now integrated
• Score at the end of each mission
• Decoding music on the fly
• Capturing buildings is now possible again
• Fixes for gcc 4 (Thanks to David Geier)
• Structures are degrading
• Fix: Carryalls bring badly damaged units to the repair yard
• Packaging deb-files (Ubuntu/Debian)
• spec-files for packaging rpms (Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE)
• NSIS Installer Script (Windows)
• Prepared dmg (Mac OS X)
• Check for missing PAK-files
• Begin of chating system

This branch was forked from dunelegacy-0.93 IIRC. It's main goal is to restructure the game to increase it's code quality. This task is not finishd yet but there where several modifications. The biggest changes are:

• All Game Data is now loaded out of the original Dune II PAK-Files (+ one additional LEGACY.PAK File). There is no longer a need to extract the data with an external program.
• The Menu-Code has been rewritten.
• The GUI-Code has been rewritten and extended.
• The music is converted from the original Dune II *.ADL or *.XMI Files. These files are converted to WAV-Files. It is still possible to use other files as background music (Download high-quality mp3-files here)
• The configuration is loaded from "Dune Legacy.ini"
• The interface for the Structures and Units had been redesigned to seperate functionality of a Unit/Structure and it's interface
• The SFX is loaded from PAK-Files and upsampled
• The save games are now saved platform independent (endian-safe and 64-bit safe)
• Save as many savegames as you like
• The campaign works like in the original Dune II
• Changed the unit/structure data to be like in the original
• Unit/Structure data is loaded from a file
• The whole game is now based on a single random number generator and thus reproducable
• Replays are now possible
• A lot of small graphical effects (Explosions, tracks on sand, dead infantry) where added
• The game is very stable now
• Many smaller bugfixes