Dune: Ornithopter Assault

Dune: Ornithopter Assault is a canceled flying / shooting game developed by Soft Brigade and set to be released on the Gameboy Advance by Cryo Interactive. The game’s development began in 2001, but owing to Cryo’s financial issues, the project was halted in the summer of 2002, even though it was nearly finished (all missions are completeable). Gurney Alleck, the most effective and esteemed officer of the House of Atreides, will train you to become an expert in flying and combating ornithopters. You must outperform all of your flying skills to survive the collapse of the House of Atreides and aid Paul and the Fremen in their struggle for Arrakis. Spectacular 3D Universe on the Advanced Game Boy, viewed from the ornithopter’s cockpit. Over 20 missions with varying tasks such as basic recounting, escort responsibilities, protecting, attacking soldiers and structures, seizing vehicles, gathering spice and water, etc. – 5 single and multiple-player modes with varying levels of complexity (using two cable-linked Advanced Game Boy): solo mission, campaign, joint campaign, and deathmatch. – The first hand-held console rendition of Dune, the most famous science fiction universes. A developer quote (discovered in the YouTube comment section): “Hello! I never expected to see this game on YouTube:) I just wanted to display some pictures from the internet and came into this gem! I’ll tell you a little anecdote regarding this project. Soft Brigade, a tiny studio from Hungary/Budapest, produced the game in 2002. We had a very bright programmer named VZ (Zoltan) who built his voxel engine with a lot of assembly code hidden under C code. (He worked on Nexus, the Jupiter incident, and other projects but ultimately left the gaming business to concentrate on medical CT systems). At the time, Nintendo did not disclose every function with third-party developers to give them an equal edge. He began reverse engineering the DS and was successful:D Another interesting story is that the official Nintendo compiler produced slower and larger code than the ARM compiler (DS had an ARM chip architecture), but Nintendo did not allow any other compiler to be used for game release…(perhaps for safety reasons – they checked every third party code before release). Because Cryo, the publisher, desired the lowest solution for the release, we only had a 4MB cartridge capacity for the whole game (code, music, sound, menu, game, graphics, etc.). We used every trick in the book to squeeze in (palettes, 4-bit instead of 8-bit, etc….. and the intro took up most of the space:D) We all like the X-Wing series and Freespace, and we hoped for a variety of missions in this game as well. Transport the spice collector/hunt for spice in the desert – red spot / protect the collectors from worms and enemies – fight or transport/rescue people/patrol area / follow convoy/assault enemy base enemy convoy, and so on. We had another coder. He was a young Bulgarian. Peter M, who began assisting VZ in the last four months, created the gameplay/missions code and assisted with the menu system. However, the majority of the code was written by VZ. We had an agile project manager, Peter W, who also created the game’s music, sound effects, and mission briefings, and a buddy who was a fluent English translator who assisted us in translating everything. Rack, who came from a Magic 12 demo team, was the official art director, although he left the creative work to me:) He worked on the typography, HUD components, and the code menu screen. I worked on the visuals, including the voxel landscape, sprites, animation effects, figures, worms, and menu backdrops, as well as the entrance and briefing person. I read the novels as a youngster and wanted the film to look different – less baroque/fragile and more “blocky” sci-fi. The ship and building sprites were created in 3D – 360 degrees with three distinct angles – a bit above, full side, and a bit below – to simulate altitude movement. (I’m the only one left in the gaming industry:/) Every animation was programmed. We just had 6 months to start from scratch and accomplished everything on time! We were all set for the release… Cryo paid us in monthly installments. However, we did not get the last two payments since Cryo went bankrupt. They became silent, and we had no idea what had happened. A few weeks later, Peter discovered the truth on the internet! That was back in October. Due to the lengthy bankruptcy processes, the American publisher eventually backed out of the deal since it would not have been able to publish the game that year. That year, the Dune license expired and should have been renewed for the next year. It would have been too expensive for such a little game. We attempted to find another publisher and began work on another demo with this engine – a military chopper game similar to Comanche, a speedboat game with reflected water! With a voxel environment, plus a car game… time was tight, and luck ran out… and our modest firm folded.” -KugleeKuglee