A new release of D2TM! This is an between version. We deemed it had so many changes worth sharing that we did.
Things worth mentioning
- You can now send selected units to a destination by clicking the minimap, complete with a move cursor and an acknowledgement sound
- The camera can track and follow your selected units automatically
- Multi-select boxes and drag lines are more visible
- Harvesters remember where they last mined spice and head back there after dropping off credits
- Construction can be paused mid-build
- Key bindings are fully configurable
- Skirmish got a “Surprise me” button for a random game, keyboard navigation on the map selection screen, and the option to start with 0 units
- The map editor picked up grid and axis display, undo/redo, copy/paste, and diagonal and symmetry tools
- A proper unit testing setup (Catch2) landed in the codebase
- Improved pathfinding
- Migrated from SDL2 to SDL3
- Sardaukar becomes a playable faction (still in the works)
On top of that, a long list of bugs got fixed, including the windtrap glow effect, the Sardaukar emblem, black lines appearing on the battlefield, a crash when using a Saboteur to destroy a rocket turret, and the AI building an excessive number of carry-alls.
When testing this version we noticed something odd with the audio, that has been there since a long time. Some sound effects used to have a pop or ‘click’ sound. This was due some old conversions. We fixed those and they sound crisp and clear again. Mainly noticable for “enemy unit approaching” or “placing a structure” sound.
As mentioned, we’re working on the Sardaukar as playable faction. It is not really ready yet at the moment, so use with caution.
The full changelog can be found here.
Using AI in this project
If you look through the commit history, you’ll notice a good chunk of this release, including the SDL3 migration, was built with help from Claude Code. Currently I am experimenting how I can use AI effectively. Atm my approach is: let AI do a first pass, then I review and refine the diff myself. It speeds things up a lot, but it’s not without downsides, some of which I’m still working through. I wrote more about how that feels on my own blog, if you’re curious. For D2TM specifically, it means more of the backlog actually gets produced, but we still need to go over by hand and validate. All in all I see it as a big help (like an extra contributor). I have some ideas to further automate this, but I treat this with caution.
Download
You can grab version 0.8.5 from here. There are 3 binaries you can download: Windows, Linux and macOS. Simply unpack the zip file, and execute!
Be sure to read the wikipage so you know some of the hotkeys.
Special thanks
Mira, thank you for another release carrying so much of your work, from pathfinding to the map editor to seeing that whole game-global migration through to the end. I always enjoy our discussions about where to take this next.
Ripps, thanks for your continued playtesting and feedback, especially around the Sardaukar tech tree and infantry balance, and for patiently going back and forth on several test builds while we tracked down the audio issues this release. It matters a lot.
Matt, welcome to the credits, and thanks for jumping in with bug fixes already.
Feedback
If you want to provide feedback use our Discord or post at the forums.
Another way is creating a Github ticket (if you’re able).
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