Don’t Stress It

Installing Warcraft II in Ubuntu 8.10 22 December 2008

Warcraft II does not install in Wine. Rather, it causes Wine to hang up and keep giving you the same error message ad infinitum. The reason for this is that Warcraft II is a purely MS-DOS application. It wasn’t until the 1999 release of the Battle.net edition that Warcraft became a true Windows application.

This article discusses how to install the 1995 version of Warcraft II — that is, not the Battle.net edition. The Battle.net edition installs perfectly nicely using Wine. For more information about installing the Battle.net edition, please refer to WineHQ.

Since Wine is out of the question, we’ll have to turn to a DOS emulator to run Warcraft. The most popular and best supported is DOSBox.

1. Installing DOSBox

There are three ways to install DOSBox: via the add/remove programs dialog, through the Synaptics package manager, and via the Terminal. I’ll go over all three options so you can pick the one you are most comfortable with.

1.1 The Add/Remove Programs Dialog

To get to the dialog, go to the main menu and click Applications > Add/Remove… . In the searchbox type “DOSBox”. One of the results should be “DOSBox Emulator.” Click the checkbox so that it is selected, and click “Apply Changes”.

The program should subsequently install. If you get any sort of error, try another of the methods mentioned below.

1.2 The Synaptic Package Manager

Open the package manager by navigating to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Enter your password when prompted. In the Quicksearch box type “dosbox”. There will be one result. Click on the little square to the left of the dosbox program and select “Mark for Installation” from the drop-down menu. Then click “Apply.” You will be told that you’ll need to install a number of additional packages. Agree.

The program will subsequently install. Alternatively, you can use the Terminal to install manually.

1.3 The Terminal

Open the terminal by accessing Applications > Accessories > Terminal. Type sudo apt-get install dosbox. When prompted, type “Y” (or “y”). It installs. Viola.

1.4 Alternatives

If you so choose, you can download the .rpm package here and then convert it to a .deb package using Alien or a similar utility. Why you’d want to do this is beyond me when considering your three alternatives, but if you really care to do so….

2. Configuring DOSBox

Running DOSBox straight out of the box (no pun intended) works. But it won’t successfully run Warcraft II. (Feel free to try, though.) We need to tweak the configuration files a bit.

First we need to make a folder where we’re going to stick all of our old DOS games. I put mine in a new directory I called dosbox in /home/username/dosbox/, but you can put it wherever you want to. (I’ll just assume you used the same directory that I did in these instructions. Just be sure to replace it with the path to the directory you actually used.)

Next open up DOSBox. It can be found in Applications > Games > DOSBox Emulator. Yes, it’s a silly place for it, but that’s where it installs. Now we’re going to mount the directory we just created as the C: drive. Type the following command: mount c /home/username/dosbox

Next we’re going to have DOSBox generate an automatic configuration file for us to manipulate. By generating a configuration file we won’t have to reset the proper configuration every time we run DOSBox. To generate the configuration file type: config -writeconf /home/username/dosbox/dosbox.conf.  Change the directory if necessary, and the filename if you want to.

Close DOSBox by typing exit. Navigate to the /home/username/dosbox/ directory (or wherever you saved the configuration file) and open the file in a text editor. We’ll be changing a number of variables. Set the following variables to these values:

• memsize=16
• priority=normal
• core=dynamic
• windowresolution=800x600
• output=opengl
• scaler=none

If you set memsize higher than 16mb, some of the older DOS games will have heart attacks and die premature deaths because they were created back in a time when computers only really had 16 mb to work with and they have no idea what to do with a glut of memory. Priority=normal keeps DOSBox from being a resource hog like it is in its default configuration. Feel free to set windowresolution to something higher (or lower) than 800×600; that’s just what I prefer.

Additionally you’ll need to figure out what your midi device is in order to get sound. To do this I used a program called pmidi, which you can install in the Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) using sudo apt-get install pmidi. Once that’s installed, type the command pmidi -l to find out your midi device. In the dosbox.config file, in the [midi] section, set device= to your midi device. For Warcraft II you’ll want to set cycles=20000.

If you want to play more with the configuration files, the DOSBox wiki does a fairly good job explaining how to modify the configuration file without royally screwing yourself over.

At the very end of the configuration file, you have the ability to enter commands to automatically be executed so you don’t have to remember exactly what to write and when. You’ll want to write the following:

mount c /home/username/dosbox/
C:
cls

This will automatically mount your /home/username/dosbox/ directory and navigate you to that drive.

3. Running DOSBox From the Configuration File

To run DOSBox from the configuration file, you’ll need to modify the text used to launch. To run DOSBox from the Terminal, type: dosbox -conf /home/username/dosbox/dosbox.conf.  This will launch DOSBox and immediately execute the configuration file at dosbox.conf.

To modify the link in the main menu, right click on the Applications menu and select “Edit Menus”. Navigate to the “Games” submenu, click on the DOSBox Emulator link, and click the “Properties” button. Modify the Command field to read dosbox -conf /home/username/dosbox/dosbox.conf.

4. Installing Warcraft II Using DOSBox

Now we’re ready to install Warcraft II. (Yes, this seems like a lot of work, but once you’re done, starting up Warcraft II will be a snap.) Start DOSBox from the configuration file. You should see a black screen with a prompt that looks like C:\>.

Make sure you have your legal Warcraft II CD in your CDROM drive.  On my computer, the direct path to the CDROM drive is /media/cdrom/. It may be different for your computer, so check.

In DOSBox type the following commands:

mount d /media/cdrom
d:
setup

This should start up the Warcraft II installer in a small popup window. (Don’t worry, the game will run in a much larger window.)

If you are prompted for the location to install the game, remember that “C:\” is really /home/username/dosbox. So if you install to “C:\WAR2\” you’ve actually installed to /home/username/dosbox/WAR2. For the rest of this tutorial, I will assume this is what you did.

The installation is pretty much self-explanatory. If you can’t find a sound card or midi device in the offered lists that works well, or works well enough that you wish to listen to, you should select “no sound” from the list. Though I personally find the helium-filtered orcs highly amusing, others might not appreciate it as much as I do. And a malfunctioning sound card/midi device can and will crash the game.

Anyway, click through all the instructions and return to DOSBox. When you get back, the installer will have quite kindly defaulted you to the C:\WAR2\ directory, and will inform you that all you need to do to run Warcraft is to type WAR2. Do not do this.

Before you run the program, you first need to mount the cd drive so that DOSBox recognizes that you have the Warcraft cd. This is necessary as you cannot play single-player games without the cd. In DOSBox, type mount d /media/cdrom -t cdrom. (If the path to your cdrom drive is different on your computer, substitute the correct path for /media/cdrom.)

Now type war2. The game should load successfully in a new window.

5. Custom Configuration File for Warcraft II

The dosbox.conf configuration file has default configuration settings for dosbox in general. In order to keep from having to type a number of tedious commands every time you load up dosbox when you want to play Warcraft, you could create a seperate configuration file.

Navigate to the directory where your dosbox.conf file is located. (In the examples used in this tutorial, it should be /home/username/dosbox/.) Select the dosbox.conf file, create a copy, and rename the copy to something along the lines of war2.conf. This will be your Warcraft II configuration file.

Open the file in a text editor. Edit any values to specific settings for your Warcraft II playing preferences (some people like to speed up the mouse emulation, for example.) At the end of the file, where the executable commands are listed, make sure you have the following:

mount c /home/username/dosbox/war2
C:
mount d /media/cdrom -t cdrom
war2

When you load DOSBox with this custom configuration file (that is, load using the command dosbox -config  /home/username/dosbox/war2.conf) it will automatically start Warcraft II.

6. Troubleshooting

After installing Warcraft II, I ran into the problem that no matter how I mounted the cdrom, Warcraft kept insisting that there was no cd in the drive, and wouldn’t let me play a single player campaign. After a bit of fudging around, I realized that when I inserted the cd into the computer, Ubuntu (for some reason) considered it two seperate cds: an audio cd and a software cd. It loaded one to /media/cdrom and the other to /media/cdrom0. When I was mounting cdrom drives, I only mounted one, because since I only one cd I assumed that the computer only wanted one cd.

Wrong. In order to get Warcraft II to recognize that there was a cd in the drive, I had to mount both:

mount d /media/cdrom -t cdrom
mount e /media/cdrom0 -t cdrom

Only then would it run at all.

If you are still having difficulties, it is possible (and I have successfully done it) to run Warcraft in DOSBox in Wine. Download the Windows installer for DOSBox, install it in Wine, then run DOSBox and follow the instructions as shown above. Though you won’t be able to run Warcraft directly in Wine, by following the instructions as previously stated you’ll be able to run Warcraft in DOSBox in Wine.

7. Creating a Launcher

To create a launcher, right-click on the desktop and select “Create a Launcher…” The resulting dialog should look like this:

Fill in the dialog as follows:

1. Type: Application
2. Name: Warcraft II

If you do have a special configuration file for Warcraft II, type the following in Command: dosbox -conf /home/username/dosbox/war2.conf.

If you do not have a special configuration file, type the following in Command: dosbox -conf /home/username/dosbox/dosbox.conf.

The second version of the Command line simply loads DOSBox with the default configuration file. To change the icon from the DOSBox default, click on the image and navigate to a location with an appropriate icon.

To add a laucher to the main menu, right click on the Applications menu, select “Edit menus”, navigate to the appropriate submenu (ie: “Games”) and click the “+ New Item” button. Select “Create a Launcher…” from the list, and fill out the dialog as described above.

Addendum: Installing the Expansion: Beyond the Dark Portal

Installing the expansion set is very similar to the installation of the original, though it takes much less time, especially because it uses the existing warcraft configuration file (if you have one).

1. Open DOSBox. Mount the cdrom using the command mount d /media/cdrom.
2. Type install.
3. Follow the installation instructions. It is strongly recommended that you let the game install to its default location.
4. Unmount the cdrom using the command mount -u d.
5. Remount the cdrom using the command mount d /media/cdrom -t cdrom.
6. If necessary, mount the second image of the cdrom using the command mount e /media/cdrom0 -t cdrom.
7. Make sure you’re in the war2 directory. If you’re not, use the command cd war2 to change.
8. Type war2 to run.