Release Warcraft: Orcs & Humans

[M-HT]

Hi,

I finished porting my static recompilation of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to Pandora.

Download it here:
Archive
Repo

Original DOS Warcraft version 1.21 is required for playing.

Forum topic for newer releases is here.

Edit (06.11.2011):
Warcraft was updated to version 1.1.0 with the following changes:
* MIDI playback using WildMIDI
(old MIDI playback using SDL_mixer can be set in the configuration file)
* minor bug fixes
* show the Readme in the Documentation submenu

 

[Dead1nside]

I saw this pop up on the repo, and it put another big smile on my face. I love that game. Wish WC2 would work, but I've heard mixed reports of it on DosBox. Thanks so much M-HT.

 

[mcobit]

Tested it. Works really nicely. Played through the first 3 missions. I especially love how it uses the whole screen. GREAT!

Edit: Only the shortkeys for move attack harvest and repair could be on one side of the keyboard to make them better reachable via thumb.

 

[bagmouse7]

Yes!!!
Working great, and the full screen is super nice.

Thanks M-HT!

 

[Farox]

What a great port B)

Thank you so much for this.

 

[skeezix]

Can you 'just' port it to SDL say, and release it to the public?

Presumably its all new code in there (no binary blobs survived?), so Actiblizzard wouldnt' have any legal reason to come after it. (But they might anyway, citing T&C violations or some sillyness like that.)

I presume you've not done so, for fear of that possible backlash

jeff

 

[fusion_power]

I only have Warcraft 2 so a fresh new port of this game would be also nice. I've played The Wargus port onto the GP2X (without touchscreen ) but Wargus was realy bugy and not nearly as enjoyable as the original game. So the original WC2 would be a nice Game for the Pandora too.

 

[mcobit]

Where did you get the source from anyways? Or is this a complete rewrite?

 

[M-HT]

Can you 'just' port it to SDL say, and release it to the public?

I'm using SDL, but I'm not releasing it to the public (maybe sometime in the future).

I only have Warcraft 2 so a fresh new port of this game would be also nice. I've played The Wargus port onto the GP2X (without touchscreen ) but Wargus was realy bugy and not nearly as enjoyable as the original game. So the original WC2 would be a nice Game for the Pandora too.

I'm not planning to work on Warcraft 2.

Where did you get the source from anyways? Or is this a complete rewrite?

It's a static recompilation (or static binary translation - see Wikipedia).
Basically I generated ARM assembler code from the original executable. Then I added a lot of my code to make it work.
This was done originally for GP2X and now I ported it to Pandora.

 

[Farox]

I remember Warcraft, Albion and XCOM on GP2X was great ports

I think we are very lucky to have you also on Pandora scene.

Thanks

Do you think there are other games portable with this way of compile ?

 

[mcobit]

So it is like a dynarec, just not on runtime, but precompiled into arm-asm? Thats awesome!

 

[fusion_power]

I'm not planning to work on Warcraft 2.

Hmm, ok. ^^
Is the sourcecode of C&C released actualy? Games can be freely and official downloaded.

 

[mcobit]

I'm not planning to work on Warcraft 2.

Hmm, ok. ^^
Is the sourcecode of C&C released actualy? Games can be freely and official downloaded.

No. No source for C&C else we won't be struggeling with the replicated buggy engines like freecnc and openredalert. Unfortunately, since the game is playable with dosbox on modern pcs, there is not much developement done to these...

 

[fusion_power]

I'm not planning to work on Warcraft 2.

Hmm, ok. ^^
Is the sourcecode of C&C released actualy? Games can be freely and official downloaded.

No. No source for C&C else we won't be struggeling with the replicated buggy engines like freecnc and openredalert. Unfortunately, since the game is playable with dosbox on modern pcs, there is not much developement done to these...

I guess, a native Port would be much much faster than the detour over Dosbox. ^^ Well, would be to good to be true if the Source of at least the first C&C games would be released. Could make things much more easy I guess.

 

[DoubleDash]

Absolutely incredible M-HT. This runs perfectly, far better than through DOSBOX. This is one of my all time favourites. Thanks does not even come close. Team Pandora PM this guy to do some other stuff !!

 

[lomaxx]

First of all: Thanks a lot for the port.

Some proposals: I play in the no-touchscreen-mode and noticed, that when footmen are selected, then X selects a unit or building and B does action (attacks), but when a peasant is selected, then X does action (harvest) and B selects a unit or building. This is a bit confusing. Can this be changed easily?

Also the scrolling speed when you hold left-shoulder-button and use D-pad is slightly too fast IMHO. And can the F-keys be assigned to numbers instead? Or do have numbers have a function too?

 

[M-HT]

Some proposals: I play in the no-touchscreen-mode and noticed, that when footmen are selected, then X selects a unit or building and B does action (attacks), but when a peasant is selected, then X does action (harvest) and B selects a unit or building. This is a bit confusing. Can this be changed easily?

X is mapped (by default) to 'h' followed by left mouse click.
B is mapped (by default) to 'a' followed by left mouse click.
When footman is selected and you press X, first 'h' is pressed, which does nothing and then left mouse button is clicked which selects a unit or building.
When footman is selected and you press B, first 'a' is pressed, which chooses the Attack command and then left mouse button is clicked which selects the target for attack.
When peasant is selected and you press X, first 'h' is pressed, which chooses the Harvest/mine command and then left mouse button is clicked which selects the target for harvesting/mining.
When peasant is selected and you press B, first 'a' is pressed, which does nothing and then left mouse button is clicked which selects a unit or building.

The only thing that you can change is the mapping of X and B to something different. You can do this in the config file.

Also the scrolling speed when you hold left-shoulder-button and use D-pad is slightly too fast IMHO.

You can change the scroll speed inside the game: Menu => Options => Key Scroll

And can the F-keys be assigned to numbers instead? Or do have numbers have a function too?

The numbers do not have any function except for writing numbers, but at the moment you can't remap them to F-keys.
If you want, I can add this feature to the next version.

 

[lomaxx]

First of all: Thanks for the quick reply.
Second of all: Sorry for not reading the readme on the first go. I noticed that it would have answered most of my questions.
Third of all: About the remapping of F-keys: At first I thought it would be a good idea to remap them to the numbers, because they are a bit hidden when fn-button is needed to access them. But on the other hand then the hotkey-graphic, which is displayed when you press F1, would show wrong keys. And there still might be situations where you want to or must use the number-keys. So maybe better leave it the way it is. Even if F10 currently does not work.

The only small feature that I miss at the moment is the option to turn off speech when you execute command. All this "yes","yes my lord" gets somewhat annoying. =) And I don't want to disable soundFX completely.

 

[M-HT]

The only small feature that I miss at the moment is the option to turn off speech when you execute command. All this "yes","yes my lord" gets somewhat annoying. =) And I don't want to disable soundFX completely.

Sorry, that's how Warcraft works, you either have all sounds or none. And BTW I like the speech.

 

[M-HT]

Hi,

I updated Warcraft: Orcs & Humans to version 1.1.0

Download it here:
Archive
Repo

Changes:
* MIDI playback using WildMIDI
(old MIDI playback using SDL_mixer can be set in the configuration file)
* minor bug fixes
* show the Readme in the Documentation submenu

Forum topic for newer releases is here.