Dune II's Amiga Upgrade Gives the RTS Grandfather the Controls Its Children Took for Granted

Foxman upgrades Westwood's 1993 Amiga classic Dune II: Battle for Arrakis with modern multi-unit drag selection, group commands, and expanded tactical controls.

Foxman is modifying the original Amiga executable of Westwood's Dune II: Battle for Arrakis to add something modern RTS players barely notice until it disappears: proper multi-unit selection. The development build now supports dragging a rectangle around several units, shift-clicking additional units into a group and issuing shared MOVE or ATTACK orders. That sounds mundane until you return to 1993 Dune II and remember that commanding an army traditionally involves clicking soldiers individually like an increasingly irritated personnel manager.

The project preserves the original Amiga game's campaigns, graphics, spice economy, construction and combat rather than rebuilding everything in a new engine. Further ideas being investigated include numbered control groups, double-click selection, attack-move commands, rally points, production queues, improved AI, larger unit limits and a higher-resolution battlefield offering roughly twice the original viewing area.

More tantalisingly, Foxman is investigating whether the Fremen and Sardaukar — already represented inside Dune II's code — could become fully playable factions alongside Atreides, Harkonnen and Ordos. That feature remains exploratory rather than confirmed. Dune II helped establish the vocabulary of the real-time strategy genre. Three decades later, its descendants are lending some grammar back.