It’s fair to say that Dune 2 is one of the founding fathers of the RTS gaming genre. The initially slow paced strategic action builds up over some beautifully crafted missions and was an instant hit when Westwood Studios unleashed it onto DOS based PCs and the Amiga in 1992/93. Fast forward 20 years and the OpenDUNE project is a modern day attempt to faithfully re-create the classic on today’s hardware.
But as seems to be the trend at the moment author Aleksander Guryanov has seen fit to compile the C source of OpenDUNE down to JavaScript, making the game fully playable in your browser in the process.
Aside from 1MB worth of JavaScript the game is naturally quite light weight. It’s not exactly breaking the limits of your browser, but that doesn’t stop it being incredibly good fun. Audio is replayed through OGG files and as you’d expect it’s all canvas driven. I did find myself wanting for a x2 zoom option though.
The interface may seem a little primitive if you started your RTS life with Command and Conquer. For example the thought of having to put down concrete before you can build structures, or the way you can (quite easily!) accidentally tell your troops to attack your own vehicles, make it a little harder to get in to. But this is still a timeless slice of classic gaming faithfully re-created and well worth exploring.