Dune City

DuneCity

A Dune II RTS engine fork with the Tornie Mod integrated — a 16-phase Micropolis-style city simulation, 8th house (HOUSE_REBELS) faction, custom campaign bundle, custom units, and a per-house color tint system.

Status: Active development. Latest release v1.0.426 on main / tornie-beta. Tornie Mod loads via mods/Tornie/data/ and ships its own PAK (Tornie.PAK, 260+ entries).

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Quick Start

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/moonbear-dev/dunecity.git
cd dunecity

# Configure + build (Linux)
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

# Run
./build/bin/dunecity

The Tornie Mod is enabled by default at mods/Tornie/. To switch mods (vanilla / dunecity / Tornie), use the in-game Mods menu.

Tornie-family campaigns and co-op

Tornie, Jericho and ArcaKev offer twelve playable factions; their Lite editions use the six-house roster declared by the mod. Derived Workshop copies retain their base edition's roster. Full-family custom games support twelve house slots (humans plus AI); Internet rooms retain the existing eight-human-peer limit. Natives remain a non-player faction.

In the campaign house screen, Online co-op keeps DuneCity's existing shared-house campaign. Online faction co-op is an additional Tornie-family mode with two or four allied bases. Archon mode adds a second controller to each of four bases, for up to eight players over direct peer-to-peer connections. Allies can choose the same faction or a campaign's authored support-enemy faction without replacing that enemy.

Faction co-op uses the mod's campaign/coop mission variants, shared harvest objectives and allied reinforcements. Its setup offers +5 and +10 units for each active enemy, optional allied control/building, Chaos Mode, and Easy Mode (starts at mission two and benefits every active ally). Progress and resumable checkpoints are stored under the profile's coop directory, separately from solo campaign progression.

Extras → Achievements shows the 73 offline awards. The local profile and run statistics are observational only: achievements do not change simulation state, randomness, multiplayer commands or game rules. The new faction, campaign and achievement behavior is restricted to Tornie-family content; other mods keep their existing selection and lobby limits.

For native release QA, tests/ai/tornie-gameplay-matrix.py --results <directory> schedules every edition's data-defined houses at missions 001, 011, 020, 021 and 022, plus 25-minute Hard/Brutal custom games. Submit this batch through dunecity-queue on managed hosts. Its CSV evidence includes mission/region identities, actual production and combat damage, coloured-spice coverage and deterministic checkpoints. Tornie/Tornie Lite use the revised 546 opponent counts; Jericho/ArcaKev retain their authored 545 campaigns. Quota introductions may finish before ten minutes, and enemies without an authored factory are not expected to manufacture units. --categories isolation runs fixed seeds in Vanilla, Dune City and Dune2R; --baseline-root <main-checkout> --build-dir <main-build> compares an existing read-only main build without modifying that checkout.

The tornie_object_state_roundtrip CTest also destroys a fully occupied Doublefinery after save/load, checking that both bay occupants are removed and all ten tiles of its five-by-two footprint receive the correct rubble without blocking the map.

In Tornie-family content, an explicit human attack order for either Ornithopter hull keeps its selected target, including an enemy harvester, until that target is released or destroyed; the aircraft then resumes Hunt. tornie_gameplay_state covers this command behavior together with manufacturing, combat, sales, research and deterministic continuation of live family state.

The matrix retains actual production counts and natural victory/defeat times rather than treating a ten-minute cap as ten minutes played. Factory-use assertions require a powered, funded, legal unit-production option; original campaigns that require a manual opening are explicitly annotated, not converted into new campaign recipes. These functional checks are not a campaign-balance certification.

Two-process direct-play QA uses tests/network/run-late-join-probe.py --build-dir <native-build> --output-dir <fresh-results> --tornie-case custom (or --tornie-case campaign). Both native players must agree on settings, executed human commands and every 300-cycle digest through cycle 3600; the campaign uses distinct Atreides and Mercenary bases with the authored enemy roles retained. These fixtures use direct WebRTC with no TURN or gameplay relay. A settled match's signaling-service loss timeout includes its intentional idle polling interval plus the normal failure grace, so a healthy poll is not reported as an outage.

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What's in the box

Component	Status	Notes
Dune Legacy engine (combat, units, structures)	✅ Stable	Upstream v0.96 base + 576+ Tornie commits
16-phase Micropolis city simulation	✅ Integrated	Runs every tick alongside combat
8th house HOUSE_REBELS	✅ Stable	Dark grey tint from Custom_IBM.PAL
Tornie-family content	Integrated	Twelve-house full editions, six-house Lite editions, solo and separate-faction co-op campaigns
Per-house color tint (units/structures)	✅ v1.0.426	Vanilla v1.0.305 path + Custom_IBM.PAL for REBELS
Custom units (FlameTank, EliteSiegeTank, RocketTrike, etc.)	✅ Loaded	8-direction palette-indexed strips
Discord Rich Presence	✅ Optional	Auto-shows current mod + version
Multiplayer (network + savegame)	✅	v1.0.367 multiplayer CustomGamePlayers
Save/load (v9820+ format)	✅	Backward-compat with v9818 saves
Map editor + advanced windtrap	✅	Per-house brush icons + pen size preview
Mentor portraits (Paul Atreides, Baron, etc.)	✅	Custom_IBM.PAL tint for REBELS + Neutral
Performance log	✅	FPS budget auto-tuning (15000→16000 tokens/cycle)

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Development Workflow

Trunk-based development on main:

• main = trunk, always deployable
• tornie-beta = pre-release branch for Tornie Mod builds (parallel CI pipeline)
• Single source of truth (rebase, no long-lived branches)

# Make a change + test
git checkout main
# ... edit, cmake --build build, etc ...

# Commit with a descriptive message
git add -A
git commit -m "fix(color): Custom_IBM.PAL dark grey for HOUSE_REBELS"

# Bump version + tag
sed -i 's/DuneCity VERSION 1.0.426/DuneCity VERSION 1.0.427/' CMakeLists.txt
sed -i 's/"version": "1.0.426"/"version": "1.0.427"/' vcpkg.json
sed -i 's/#define VERSION "1.0.426"/#define VERSION "1.0.427"/' include/config.h
bash scripts/bump-version.sh --check   # verify all 3 files agree

# Push
git push origin main --force
git tag -a v1.0.427 -m "v1.0.427 - ..."
git push origin v1.0.427 --force
git push origin tornie-beta --force    # mirror to Tornie beta branch

The CI workflow (.github/workflows/build.yml) builds Windows ZIPs on every push to main or tornie-beta and uploads to https://dunelegacy.com/.

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Architecture

DuneCity is a fork of Dune Legacy (C++17/SDL2) with the Micropolis city-building simulation ported into the same game loop. The Tornie Mod is layered on top with custom campaigns, units, palettes, and a 8th faction (HOUSE_REBELS).

Game Loop

Game::updateGameState()  [runs every tick at ~62.5 Hz]
  ├── cmdManager.executeCommands()
  ├── house[i]->update()              // AI city-building
  ├── processObjects()                // WindTrap registers power sources
  └── citySimulation_->advancePhase() // one of 16 city phases per tick

City Simulation Phases (16 per cycle)

Phase	What Happens
0	Increment city time, clear census, reset power flags
1-8	Map scan — process 1/8 of zones per phase
9	Census, tax collection, growth valve calculation
10	Decay rate-of-growth, decay traffic density
11	Power flood-fill from WindTrap seeds
12	Pollution, terrain, land value analysis
13	Crime scan
14	Population density scan
15	Fire analysis, Arrakis disasters

Tornie Mod Architecture

dunecity/
├── src/                           # Dune Legacy + Tornie mod engine code
│   ├── FileClasses/
│   │   └── GFXManager.cpp         # Per-house remap, Custom_IBM.PAL, palette write
│   ├── Menu/
│   │   ├── CustomGamePlayers.cpp  # Color swap dropdown (Original/Teal/Custom 7)
│   │   └── SinglePlayerSkirmishMenu.cpp  # 8-house carousel
│   ├── players/
│   │   └── SpectatorPlayer.cpp    # 9th house type
│   ├── structures/
│   │   ├── ConstructionYard.cpp   # 8th house build logic
│   │   └── AdvancedWindTrap.cpp   # Custom super power plant
│   └── Game.cpp                   # Per-house color swap init, 8th house loading
├── include/
│   ├── globals.h                  # getHouseSDLColor(house) - REBELS reads Custom_IBM
│   ├── DataTypes.h                # NUM_HOUSES=8, PALCOLOR_REBELS=192
│   └── Tile.h                     # lastAccess[NUM_HOUSES=8] (was NUM_TEAMS=7)
├── data/
│   ├── Custom_IBM.PAL             # REBELS dark grey ramp at indices 192-199
│   ├── RREBELS.voc                # House-name voice for 8th faction
│   ├── REGION*.INI + scen*.ini    # 8 Tornie campaigns + 2 vanilla (mirrored in PAK)
│   ├── HeraldRebels.png           # 8th house herald (dark grey)
│   ├── EliteSiegeTank.png         # Custom unit (8-dir paletted)
│   ├── FlameTank.png              # Custom unit (8-dir paletted)
│   ├── Tornie_AdvancedWindtrap_gfx.png      # 2-frame animated in-world sprite
│   └── Tornie_AdvancedWindtrap_gfx_editor.png  # 48x48 static editor icon
├── mods/Tornie/                   # Active mod (mirrors data/ + custom config)
│   ├── data/                      # 38 files mirrored from data/
│   └── campaign/                  # REGION*.INI + scen*.ini per house
└── scripts/
    └── make-tornie-pak.py         # Builds data/Tornie.PAK (260 entries)

Per-House Color Tint System

The engine reads from runtime palette[] (set at GFX init from Custom_IBM.PAL for indices 192-199). For each non-HARKONNEN house, sprites are remapped at render time via mapSurfaceColorRange(src, PALCOLOR_HARKONNEN, houseToPaletteIndex[house]):

• PALCOLOR_HARKONNEN = 144 (Harkonnen)
• PALCOLOR_ATREIDES = 160 (Atreides)
• PALCOLOR_ORDOS = 176 (Ordos)
• PALCOLOR_FREMEN = 192 (Fremen, shared with REBELS)
• PALCOLOR_SARDAUKAR = 208 (Sardaukar)
• PALCOLOR_MERCENARY = 224 (Mercenary)
• PALCOLOR_NEUTRAL = 128 (Neutral)

For HOUSE_REBELS, the surface palette at 192-199 is overwritten with customColorRamp[192..199] (the dark grey from Custom_IBM.PAL) so the engine reads the dark grey instead of vanilla Fremen orange.

Versioning

The canonical app version lives in three source-controlled files, kept in sync by scripts/bump-version.sh:

scripts/bump-version.sh 1.0.427   # set version
scripts/bump-version.sh --check   # verify all files agree

Tag releases use vX.Y.Z (e.g. v1.0.426). CI verifies that source metadata already matches the tag before building.

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Building

Prerequisites

• CMake 4.0+
• C++17 compiler (GCC 9+ on Linux, Clang on macOS, MSVC 2019+ on Windows)
• SDL2 + SDL2_mixer + SDL2_ttf + SDL2_gfx (vcpkg handles this)
• Original Dune II PAK files (ATRE.PAK, DUNE.PAK, HARK.PAK, MENTAT.PAK, MERC.PAK, ORDOS.PAK, SCENARIO.PAK, VOC.PAK, INTRO.PAK, FINALE.PAK, ENGLISH.PAK, SOUND.PAK, LEGACY.PAK, GFXHD.PAK, OPENSD2.PAK, INTROVOC.PAK) in data/

Linux (tested)

# Install deps (Ubuntu)
sudo apt install cmake g++ libsdl2-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev \
                libsdl2-gfx-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

# Configure + build
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)

macOS

brew install cmake sdl2 sdl2_mixer sdl2_ttf sdl2_gfx
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j$(sysctl -n hw.ncpu)
open build/bin/dunecity.app

Release DMGs are built on the self-hosted Apple Silicon GitHub Actions runner. See docs/macos-release-runner.md for runner setup, artifact verification, and the release sequence.

Windows

cmake -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release -j
build\bin\Release\dunecity.exe

Running

# Linux
./build/bin/dunecity

# macOS
open build/bin/dunecity.app

# Windows
build\bin\Release\dunecity.exe

The first time you run, the game seeds mods at ~/.local/share/DuneCity/mods/ (Linux) or %APPDATA%\DuneCity\mods\ (Windows). The Tornie Mod will be detected from mods/Tornie/ in the install directory.

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Multi-Agent Workflow

This project is developed by moonbear (autonomous agent) and reviewed by syntox (principal). The Tornie Mod is steered by Tornie (Tornie Panther) for visual / asset / gameplay balance, and Quix is blocked at the gateway.

Rules:

1. Trunk-based — work on main or short-lived branches
2. One authority per change — accept instructions from any of: Tornie (mods), syntox (release/git), or ggtothemax (ops/website)
3. Small changes — prefer small compileable changes over broad refactors
4. Versioned releases — every user-visible change bumps the version and tags a release
5. Coordinate on hot files — GFXManager.cpp, Game.cpp, CustomGamePlayers.cpp are the most-edited

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Files of Interest

Path	What It Is
src/FileClasses/GFXManager.cpp	Per-house remap, Custom_IBM.PAL, palette write, sprite load
include/globals.h	getHouseSDLColor(house) — REBELS reads Custom_IBM.PAL
include/DataTypes.h	NUM_HOUSES=8, PALCOLOR_REBELS=192, houseToPaletteIndex[]
include/Tile.h	lastAccess[NUM_HOUSES] (was NUM_TEAMS=7 before v1.0.360)
src/Menu/CustomGamePlayers.cpp	12-entry color swap dropdown (Original + Teal + 4 custom + 7 vanilla)
src/Menu/SinglePlayerSkirmishMenu.cpp	8-house carousel (9 entries, scroll max 6)
src/players/SpectatorPlayer.cpp	9th house type for non-playing slots
src/Game.cpp	Per-house color swap init at game start, save/load
data/Custom_IBM.PAL	REBELS dark grey ramp at 192-199
data/Tornie.PAK	260+ entries: campaigns, units, sprites, voices
scripts/make-tornie-pak.py	Builds data/Tornie.PAK from data/ + mods/Tornie/data/

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Version History (recent)

• v1.0.426 — HOUSE_REBELS dark grey written to surface palette (fixes orange tint)
• v1.0.425 — Removed v1.0.413 structure remap (diagnostic, restored v1.0.305 lazy remap)
• v1.0.424 — Suppress "UI Graphic not loaded" log spam (log once per ID)
• v1.0.423 — Rollback to v1.0.305 vanilla remap (regression fix)
• v1.0.418 — Multi-color ghost fix on units (write source + dest slots to surface palette)
• v1.0.415 — Advanced windtrap editor icon = in-map preview, Elite Siege Tank path fix
• v1.0.414 — Reactivated 7 vanilla house color swap slots in CustomGamePlayers
• v1.0.413 — Per-house structure sprite remap restored
• v1.0.411 — Per-house remap-on-demand restored (units + buildings)
• v1.0.408 — Tearnie campaign rewrite (8 houses + 2 vanilla × 22 scenarios)
• v1.0.405 — Crash fix for GFX init recursion
• v1.0.400 — Custom_IBM.PAL no longer applied as default
• v1.0.394 — 4 new custom colors (Fushia/Apple Green/Dark Purple/Light Pink)
• v1.0.358 — scenr001-022 Mercenary→Rebels re-routing (root cause of Rebels construction)

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Credits

• Dune Legacy by the Dune Legacy team — base engine
• Micropolis (SimCity open-source port) by the SimHacker team — city simulation reference
• Tornie (Tornie Panther) — mod author, art direction, asset uploads
• moonbear — autonomous AI agent, port and integration
• syntox — principal, release coordination
• Original Westwood Studios — Dune II (1992)