The Birth of the First Real-Time Strategy Game

I happened to look at the trivia section for Dune II on Moby Games. I found the following entry:

This game is commonly called "the first real-time strategy game", but that designation is incorrect. Dune 2 borrowed many elements from a previous Westwood release, Battletech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge. And thatgame borrowed elements from what is probably the first true game in the typical "RTS" genre, The Ancient Art of War.

This is all false. I was an artist and designer on Battletech: The Cresent Hawk's Revenge and its predecessor Battletech: The Cresent Hawk's Inception. I must, somewhat embarrassingly, admit that I never played The Ancient Art of War though I heard it was a very good game. I could also point out that some of Westwood's earliest projects were converting SSI's games to the Amiga and Atari ST. But the point that this guy doesn't seem to understand, and made funny by this comment of "typical RTS" was that those were all "turn-based" strategy (TBS) games. Dune II was the first "real-time" strategy (RTS) game. Maybe he just never knew what R.T.S stood for.

I don't have the text of my update and it is pending approval on Moby Games. When they approve or reject it I'll get an email where I'll have access to the text of it again. I'll post it here when they do.

I figured since I was at it I would also share some other information on the game's history.

French developer Cryo Interactive was developing a Dune game for Virgin Interactive, but it wasn't going anywhere. Not wanting to waste the Dune license, Virgin gave the game to Westwood, who they had just acquired. This is circa 1992 and when Westwood change from Westwood Associates to Westwood Studios. Virgin was planning on canceling the Cryo game, but instead one of their producers flew out to France and got things going again and did. Virgin soon found they had two Dune games, though they were quite different. Cryo’s Dune is more of an adventure game that basically followed the story of the first book/movie. Westwood’s Dune was the first Real-Time Strategy game. Cryo finished their game first and it was released first, hence this game being Dune II.

Westwood wanted to just call the game, Dune: The Battle for Arrakis, but Virgin’s American marketing department insisted on calling it “Dune II” and they didn’t like the sub-title, “Battle for Arrakis” because they thought it made the game sound too much like one of those slow and boring, turn-based, strategy games that were dying out at the time. It should also be noted that some of Westwood’s first products were porting SSI’s turn-based strategy games onto the Atari ST and Amiga. Virgin wanted to emphasize the building and development aspect of the Dune II, so it would appeal to people who liked games such as the then popular: Populous and Civilization, two of the three games that inspired the gameplay in Dune II by the way. The third game that inspired Dune II was the Sega Genesis game, Herzog Zwei.

Later when Virgin’s European office was given the game to market in their territories, without knowing anything of the previous argument, renamed it, “Dune: The Battle for Arrakis.”

Half a Day and A Cramped Hand Later...

Okay, the new left hand sidebar background graphic is done, uploaded and appears to be working. If you are viewing the blog in a resolution thinner than 1024 you are just out of luck, sorry. It sure took longer than I expected. But what else do I have to do while sitting here in this hotel room? Let me just say that using Photoshop on a laptop, without a mouse, is a royal pain in the ass... or more exactly, the hand.

One of the things that made it take so long was that I just couldn't take the cover of Dune II looking so bad. It wasn't the first Real Time Strategy game, but it was the one that created and defined the RTS genre as we know it. Such an esteemed title deserves a little respect, and all the box scans that I found online were horrible. The reason being that the title text and frame around the picture on the front of the box were done in raised gold foil which doesn't scan in very well.

After a little searching I found a copy online that was uploaded pretty large. Unfortunately, it was scanned and saved in 256 colors even though it was a jpeg. Somebody needs to do their file format compression homework. It was still pretty good for what I needed. I spent about an hour cleaning it up and bringing out the title text. Once shrunken down, you can't even tell. Here is the old box cover I had and the new cleaned up one. I also left the new one a little larger.
You can also see this problem with "Mines of Titan" box cover. Notice how the giant title text doesn't stand out very well against the background. It was also done with foil text, silver this time. Looks great on the store shelf, but doesn't scan in very well. I probably should have cleaned it up a bit too, even just a little brightness & contrast adjustment to bring out the red background. Though I know how I am, if I don't make a stand and stop now at 11:00, I'll be up all night touching up every single box cover. Even now I just had to go back into Photoshop and add the drop shadow. But those drop shadow settings where the ones I used for the boxes on the top layer of the side bar montage. It doesn't quite look right, by itself, on the white background... No no no! I'm not doing any more work on it! It's just my stupid blog that is only read by half a dozen people! I'll save my anal attention to detail for work that people will actually see.

As another famous Westwood saying goes, this one from Brett Sperry directly to me over something I was working on, "It's done, quit pixel fucking it!" It is a quote that has served me well over the years.