Duniverse / Games / Emperor : Battle for Dune

1.) What is the average knowledge of Dune for those working on the game?
The core team are die-hard Dune fans and know the universe intimately and worked on Dune2000 previously. The rest of the team have various different levels of Dune knowledge, but all are very passionate about the Dune universe and are very excited to be working on Emperor. Adapting to a new medium from an existing creative work, is a huge challenge, and our design team had to understand the universe inside & out first.

2.) Out-Of-Sync problems seemed to be all too common for a number of people while playing Dune 2000. Can we expect more stable connections with Emperor for both net and LAN games?
For Emperor, we wrote a brand new networking layer from the ground up! Dune2000 was built upon a whole different technology, which we no longer use. Emperor's new multiplayer layer is very robust, and allows us to spot Out of Sync (OOS) errors quickly. OOS issues usually occur when one machine's view of the world subtly changes from the other's. We trap these with the infamous 'out of sync' error msg, and then go about fixing the code that generated the discrepency between worlds. We started OOS testing very early in our test cycle and have eliminated all the known OOS in the game. Its been a while since we've seen an OOS in test, so we feel very good about releasing Emperor at this time.

3.) We noticed that there is a wider variety of Infantry units then in past Dune games, how big of a role do they play this time?
Emperor does have lots of fun infantry units. They have some distinct advantages (and disadvantages) over heavier armored units. They are fast, cheap, quick to build, etc. While prone to being squished by large vehicles, Infantry Rock is a soldier's best friend. Various pieces of terrain can be used by infantry only (i.e. tanks cannot run them over here) for extra cover (armor bonus) and better accuracy (damage bonus). Also, because of the extra focus on infantry, there are more anti-infantry units than before. For House Atreides, Infantry have the special bonus of returning Elite (3rd level veterans) soldiers to the Barracks to be Drill Instructors for new recruits. This generates like infantry at one veteran level higher.

4.) Will a complete unit listing, of the main Houses at least, be posted on the official site soon? The previews at other gaming sites don't seem to be that accurate and are missing some units.
Presently IGN, Game Spot, and the FiringSquad.com each have previews with units from a specific sides. As we get closer to launch we will be incorporating this into our website for fans and easy access. =)

5.) What is the latest on the pre-order units? And will these units only be "locked" in multiplayer or singleplayer as well?
We wanted to give fans a reason to pre-order the game early and we thought special units would be a great incentive. The 3 units are very fun and unique. While they don't guarantee winning, they do offer a unqiue strategy or two, that many players will be unfamiliar with. Hence, you'll have an advantage. Its always been our desire to release these units to everyone eventually, but if you want to be the first kid on your block to float a fleet of Harkonnen ADPs over your enemy's spice field.. you'll need to preorder Emperor. Note: This retail promotion is available to just about any retailer who wants to participate, in any country of the world. If your favorite retailer is not offering it, you should ask them for it. If they get a high demand, they will be more likely to participate.