Warcraft 2 on DOSBox

Preamble

After having finished Syndicate, I decided to give Warcraft a revisit.

Getting it running

This game is a little more complex as it requires a CD image, and the mounting of which can cause issues. For the moment there is no need to open DOSBox – all of  this can be done within Windows.

Download from myabandonware.com

Download BOTH the RIP and the ISO.

Unzip both the ISO and the RIP zip files, by right clicking and selecting unzip to warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness_dos_04cu.zip/ and warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness/ respectively.

Create a folder in the root,

C:\oldgames

In there make a directory wtod (lowercase)

Rename the directory within the unzipped ISO directory from Warcraft 2 ISO to war2 (again lowercase). This directory should contain the .cue and .bin files.

Move the war2 directory into the wtod directory.

Rename the directory within the unzipped RIP directory from warcraft-ii-tides-of-darkness to wii (again lowercase).

Move the wii directory into the war2 directory, so that it sits along side the .cue and .bin files.

The directories should look like this:

Ensure that the first line of WAR2.INI, which is in the wii directory, says

cdpath=\war2\

Still in Windows, double click the WAR2CD.BAT file, in the wii directory. A console app should open briefly and then close:

Warcraft 2 CD detect

Now, ensure that the first line of WAR2.INI says

cdpath=.

Now open DOSBox, and enter

mount c c:\oldgames\wtod
c:
cd War2
wii\war2

Warcraft should now run, without asking you for the CD.

Obviously, the above lines can be put into the DOXBox configuration option file, like so:

[autoexec]
mount c c:\oldgames\wtod
c:
cd War2
wii\war2