WarCraft: Refurbished (unofficial MS-DOS patch)

Warcraft I & II General Discussion
1

Hello!

I recently tested the remastered version of WarCraft: Orcs & Humans and was pleased to learn that it contained several Quality of Life (QoL) improvements. Most notably, units can be selected through simplified drag select and commands can be issued through right clicks. If only the original game contained these features…

Since I have absolute no respect for my own time, I decided to implement the QoL improvements in the original MS-DOS release, which I purchased on CD-ROM back in the 90’s and still own.

I’ve named this project WarCraft: Refurbished. So far it features simplified drag select, contextual command dispatch and a bunch of other things making its interaction model similar to the one in the remastered version. I intend to add more features such as unit grouping within shortly.

The work is published through the GitHub platform through which the MS-DOS patch can be downloaded. It currently only works with the original v1.21 release but that might change in the future.

Please note that the patch contains no copyrighted material and that you need to provide your own copy of the original MS-DOS release in order to test it.

Hope that you find this interesting!

2

It would be interesting if you could use the superior Mac version assets to make them work in a DOS version, but this seems to be too complicated :sweat_smile:

3

The Mac version ran in a higher resolution and used some higher resolution assets if I remember correctly. To make full use of them, the MS-DOS version would have to be modified to run in a higher resolution. It’s certainly possible to modify the resolution and subsequently the assets used but the scope of such a change would be enormous!

Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to say that such a feature will not be implemented. Thank you for your suggestion though! :slight_smile:

4

Yes, Mac version is 640x480 resolution.

DOSBox can run War2 in 640x480 so it should run a 640x480 War1.

But indeed it’s probably not same original MS-DOS version.

Today, this superior Mac version is still not runnable on a PC (officially) as far as I know, I think a port should be a dedicated project, and it’s indeed a too big project to be a “side” feature of another remaster project.

5

the dos version is easy to get. just buy it through battle.net. though it is included in the battle chest that containes the remasters.

6

@genomelak I have you heard of War1Gus?