VOGONS


Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - Macintosh Version

Topic actions

  • This topic is locked. You cannot reply or edit posts.

First post, by Xermald'Oh

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I have the 1996 Macintosh version of 'Warcraft: Orcs & Humans'. The game was released on a so-called hybrid disc which contains the Macintosh version of the game along with its MS-DOS counterpart. The hybrid CD can be read by both a PC and a Mac – when the CD is inserted into a PC, you'll see all the MS-DOS-compatible files whereas a Macintosh would only show the files that are understood by Mac-specific filesystems.

Since there are rumors floating around about the Macintosh verion being slightly revamped from its MS-DOS counterpart, I would like to try out the Mac version of the game. Allegedly, the Mac release has VGA graphics at 640x480 pixels (or it could be fake 640x480 which looks similar to 320x240 as the pixels can be doubled – I wish I knew) and actual audio CD tracks instead of MIDI music.

The problem is that I do not have any old Macintoshes at my disposal at the moment so I would have to resort to using emulators, virtual machines or compatibility layers. Besides, I'm a complete neophyte with Macs – they're not particularly widely used here in northern Europe when compared to the most Mac-friendly countries.

I tried to configure a couple of emulators with the help of the instructions that can be found at http://www.emaculation.com but the results were poor, and to be honest, I found the emulators rather lacking in functionality as I was repeatedly greeted by a delightful black screen of death after launching the emulators despite experimenting with a myriad of configurations. Moreover, since all of my host computers are PCs equipped with 64-bit flavors of Windows 7 and 8, I cannot access any CDs within the emulated Macintosh as the necessary file, cdenable.sys, is a 32-bit driver. This means that I would have to find an optical disc authoring program that is supported by the old Macintosh operating systems that the emulators can run.

In addition to playing the Mac version of the game, I would like to make a 1:1 digital copy of the hybrid CD for preservation purposes. Since hybrid discs are somewhat special, I wonder if programs such as CloneCD could make completely identical disk images of the CD. At least the image that I created with my trial version of CloneCD seems to contain both 'partitions' or filesystems (Mac & PC) along with all the audio CD tracks but I would have to actually test/play the Mac version to be totally sure.

*breathes*

To quote the manual, the Mac version of the game has the following system requirements:

*Warcraft has a minimum requirement of System 7.0 or greater. It requires a Macintosh or Power Macintosh (or compatible); for best results, a 68040 or PowerPC processor is strongly recommended. Warcraft is completely native on the Power Macintosh.

*Warcraft requires a color display with a minimum of 256 colors and 640x480 resolution.

*Your system should have at least eight megabytes of total memory.

-Which emulator, virtual machine or compatibility layer would you recommend for playing the game? And how would you configure the emulator? Notice that a configuration that appears ideal on the surface may not work flawlessly on the emulator because of all the possible bugs in the code...

-Would anyone of you be interested in trying out the Mac version of the game? If I can create a 1:1 disk image of the CD with all the audio tracks, I could perhaps upload it to some file hosting service and then post the download link here in this thread unless, of course, VOGONS has something against this kind of file sharing. The fact that the game can be freely downloaded on many abandonware websites seems to suggest that the game is either abandonware or that Blizzard Entertainment no longer cares whether people distribute the game across the Internet... But I'm not entirely sure!

By the way, thanks to MacDrive, I was able to create checksums for the contents of the 'Mac partition' of the CD so if you want to verify them against files on your own WC1 hybrid CD (if you happen to own one) to ensure data integrity, take a look at the attachment. The hash method that I used is MD5. If you get any error messages, my CD (or yours) might be damaged...

Attachments

  • Filename
    Checksum (MD5).md5
    File size
    5.47 KiB
    Downloads
    448 downloads
    File comment
    MD5 checksums for the Macintosh version of 'Warcraft: Orcs & Humans'
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 1 of 23, by ratfink

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Sounds familiar. I had a go with basilisk and sheepshaver a while back and ran into those cd/32bit issues. I got a version of sheepshaver running under xp using os8 and maybe os7 and os9, but the sound support is flakey and caused a lot of games to crash the emulator [no crashes with sound disabled]. Some games don't work at all. I don't recall whether I got warcraft running - will check, I may have the demo version on there [the cd is packed away if i even have it still].

btw there is an anti-abandonware policy on this site.

Reply 2 of 23, by Dominus

User metadata
Rank DOSBox Moderator
Rank
DOSBox Moderator

Yes, please no game pirating here. Abandonware is not legal.

I guess CloneCD should be able to make a good copy, I'd try 100% Alcohol or what's it called. Their bin/cue images are quite good and recommended for faithful images.

Windows 3.1x guide for DOSBox
60 seconds guide to DOSBox
DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 3 of 23, by ratfink

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I'm using sheepshaver under xp, warcraft [full version] is installed and works.

I haven't dug out my cd so have to use the manual for the copy protection check.

Sound works in the game. Music on intro has a lot of hiss. No music on the levels but I imagine that's because I haven't bothered with the cd.

I've got clonecd etc but haven't cloned that one. From the emulated Mac environment I can access my Windows system, and an image mounted under xp using alcohol120 is accessible on the emulated mac.

Reply 4 of 23, by Jorpho

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Xermald'Oh wrote:

I tried to configure a couple of emulators with the help of the instructions that can be found at http://www.emaculation.com

...Why exactly don't you post in the forums there instead of coming here?

You will find, for instance, that the "black screen" in Basilisk II used to be a very common problem but was finally fixed in recent builds.

In addition to playing the Mac version of the game, I would like to make a 1:1 digital copy of the hybrid CD for preservation purposes. Since hybrid discs are somewhat special, I wonder if programs such as CloneCD could make completely identical disk images of the CD. At least the image that I created with my trial version of CloneCD seems to contain both 'partitions' or filesystems (Mac & PC) along with all the audio CD tracks but I would have to actually test/play the Mac version to be totally sure.

Yes, it is entirely possible to make images of such hybrid disks. I would use ImgBurn or IsoBuster, myself.

Reply 5 of 23, by Xermald'Oh

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

Thanks for the prompt replies!

I had to use VirtualBox to configure a 32-bit Windows XP in order to avoid the aforementioned incompatibility problems with the 32-bit CD-ROM driver file (cdenable.sys) while running SheepShaver. After some tinkering, I got the Macintosh version of Warcraft working on SheepShaver, which is an achievement in and of itself. However, I ran into problems that resemble the ones that this guy encountered when trying to get the game working on Basilisk II.

I used the following configuration which I tried to modify to get the game to work better, but it was all to no avail:

ROM: Old World ROM OS: System 7.5.5 RAM Size: 1024 Video Type: Window Window Refresh Rate: 60Hz Width: 1024 Height: 768 QuickDra […]
Show full quote

ROM: Old World ROM
OS: System 7.5.5
RAM Size: 1024
Video Type: Window
Window Refresh Rate: 60Hz
Width: 1024
Height: 768
QuickDraw Acceleration: Enabled
JIT Compiler: Enabled
Other: Both 'QuickDraw 3D' 1.5.4 and 'QuickTime 4' installed

I followed these instructions faithfully but I was not able to set the 'Preferred Size' in the 'Memory Requirements' box to '128000' for QuickTime. Luckily, however, I succeeded in adjusting the preferred memory size for 'Picture Viewer' as well as the Warcraft game itself.

ratfink wrote:

I'm using sheepshaver under xp, warcraft [full version] is installed and works.

When you used SheepShaver to run the game, was the game running exceptionally slowly, as if it was in ultra slow motion? I'm asking because I thought I had accidentally enabled some sort of 'granny mode' in the settings – the game was running so incredibly slowly. Setting the game speed to 'fastest' did not remedy the problem either as the game was still running way too slowly to be playable and enjoyable. The sound seemed to work normally with the exception of the same hissing background noise that you mentioned. (At first, I thought the consistent background hiss was due to the low audio bit depth but as far as I know, Warcraft is supposed to have 8-bit audio effects which should not sound so 'gritty' and 'crispy' as they did in the emulated game.) Also, even when enabled in the settings, the audio CD soundtrack would not play.

ratfink wrote:

No music on the levels but I imagine that's because I haven't bothered with the cd.

If you are able to get the audio CD soundtrack working properly, would you please kindly inform me because, as I mentioned above, the game would not play the audio CD soundtrack when I ran it on SheepShaver, and every time I tried to play audio CDs with the pre-installed AppleCD Audio Player (which can be found under the Apple menu), SheepShaver became unresponsive and crashed.

Jorpho wrote:

...Why exactly don't you post in the forums there instead of coming here?

That's a good idea – I will start a similar thread on this topic on the E-Maculation forums, and post the link here for those who are interested.

Reply 7 of 23, by Xermald'Oh

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
filipetolhuizen wrote:

Do you have a newworld rom to use with sheepshaver? It works better than the oldworld rom.

Changing the ROM did not seem to have any effect on the woefully slow game speed. I did not have the persistence to try out every single ROM that I have though. Besides, SheepShaver crashed every time I chose the New World ROM that comes with SheepShaver. It took a few minutes to kill the unresponsive, lingering processes.

Anyway, a couple of updates:

*I started a thread on this topic on the E-Maculation forums: see here.

*I can now use the pre-installed AppleCD Audio Player to play audio CDs without any issues. However, see below...

*I just read the troubleshooting section of the game manual and I found out that the lack of CD audio in the game may be due to the fact that when you have System 7 installed and you go into 'Apple Logo' >> 'Control Panels' >> 'Sound' >> 'Sound In', you should see 'Built In' as one of the sources available for recording. You should also find an 'Options' button. By clicking on it, you should be able to select 'Internal CD' as your input source, and check the 'Playthrough' checkbox. See this screenshot taken from the manual:

From_Manual_-_CD_Audio.png
Filename
From_Manual_-_CD_Audio.png
File size
15.52 KiB
Views
17911 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

However, this is what I saw when I accessed the 'Sound' menu and selected 'Sound In' from the drop-down list:

No_Source_for_Recording.png
Filename
No_Source_for_Recording.png
File size
2.82 KiB
Views
17911 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

*Thanks to those who had contributed to this page and to the one here, I was able to find some hidden options that Blizzard had added to the game. The hidden options can be accessed in the preferences by clicking on 'Game Speed' while simultaneously pressing both CTRL and the Windows Logo Key. The last option in the drop-down menu, 'Lunatic', should make the game a bit more playable. However, it was still way too slow and dull for my liking. This is quite comical considering that on real hardware, the game would be insanely fast if the game speed was set to 'Lunatic'.

Hidden_Options.png
Filename
Hidden_Options.png
File size
61.12 KiB
Views
17911 views
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

By the way, the game uses the following system extensions: Quicktime 2.5, Sound Manager 3.2.1, Display Manager 2.0, and Communications Toolbox Tools. They can be installed or updated during the installation process of the game. Using these system extensions does not seem to have any effect on the problems explained above though.

(If you prefer thumbnails to those biggish attachments next time, let me know. Just wanted to make sure that the pictures are still there if/when someone stumbles upon this thread in the not-so-near future.)

Reply 9 of 23, by Xermald'Oh

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

A few updates:

*I tried to use Basilisk II and SheepShaver to run the game on Linux Mint and another Windows PC but all the aforementioned problems persisted. It seems to be so that if the host machine is a Linux or Windows box, the performance is far from optimal.

*I even went as far as trying to jury-rig a little bubble-gum-and-bailing-wire solution by running the emulators on Mac OS X Snow Leopard which was, in turn, running inside VirtualBox (a kind of virtualized Hackintosh). As you might guess, the performance was way too poor as the virtualized Mac OS X was running far too slowly. I had Intel Virtualization Technique enabled and I used iBoot for Intel's Ivy Bridge processors.

*There are many other (older) Mac games that I would like to play besides Warcraft so I believe that my best bet is to purchase an old Mac. A friend of mine still has an old PowerBook somewhere in the attic. The laptop should be compatible with some of the "Classic" Macintosh operating systems (the ones released before the Mac OS X series) but we have to make sure the CD-ROM drive and batteries are still okay after sitting for so long.

The current state of Mac emulation on Windows and Linux hosts leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps things will improve at some point in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting for that to happen.

Reply 10 of 23, by Jorpho

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

In the multitudinous legions of Warcraft fans, you can't possibly be the first person who has tried to run the Macintosh version in an emulator. A solution surely exists somewhere.

Xermald'Oh wrote:

The current state of Mac emulation on Windows and Linux hosts leaves a lot to be desired. Perhaps things will improve at some point in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath while waiting for that to happen.

MESS is making slow but steady progress, I hear.

Reply 13 of 23, by 2fort5r

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Since there are rumors floating around about the Macintosh verion being slightly revamped from its MS-DOS counterpart, I would like to try out the Mac version of the game.

Haven't played either version long, but one immediately apparent difference is that the Mac version has spoken campaign introductions while the DOS version is text only.

Account retired. Now posting as Errius.

Reply 17 of 23, by Xermald'Oh

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I found a fix for the game speed issues. You can use an experimental build of QEMU to run the game. Check out this YouTube video for proof. The audio CD tracks were added post-recording. (Btw, apologies for my abysmal gaming skills.)

The Macintosh version is different from the MS-DOS release in that it runs in 640x480 resolution by default, and it has audio CD tracks. Also, it comes with some extra options, and the 'lasso' method of selecting troops works without you having to hold the CTRL key. However, the hi-res graphics are a bit disappointing, as they look like they were resized from 320x240 to 640x480 with an algorithm that blurs the image somewhat.

I'm still looking for a solution to the following problems:
-The sound going off at startup. For some inexplicable reason, the emulated OS seems to randomly pick when it wants to play sound and when it has better things to do. It's kind of a coin toss. This problem can sometimes be fixed by rebooting the OS.
-Audio CD playback. I was not able to find a way to mount any audio CDs on Mac OS 9.2.1 running on QEMU. I tried to mount various audio CD images with the following applications to no avail: Toast 5 Titanium, Toast Deluxe v4.1.3, Toast v3.5.7, ShrinkWrap v3.5.1, Disk Copy (pre-installed), Disk Copy v6.3.3, Virtual CD/DVD-ROM Utility v1.0d3, and DVDExtractor v0.9b. If you can come up with a solution to this problem, please let me know!
-Frame skipping when things get really hectic. QEMU might start skipping frames when there are too many sprites on the screen at once. This does not affect the game speed though. Since the OS I installed on QEMU should have enough oomph to run the game, the frame skipping might be due to some sort of emulation glitch.
-Strange-looking fonts. The font used in mission briefings looks weird.

In addition to Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, I tested the following games on the same experimental build with identical settings:
-System Shock (CD version). The colors are all messed up. If my memory serves me right, the game works better on SheepShaver.
-Dark Forces (CD version). The game seems to run fine on highest settings at 640x400 except for the fact that I could not get the mouse to work.

Last edited by Xermald'Oh on 2018-01-22, 09:08. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 18 of 23, by Xermald'Oh

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

You can follow the steps below to run the game using QEMU on a Windows host. Apologies for making you wade through this huge mass of words. Perhaps someone can write a TL;DR version of this "guide". 😀

01. Download Qemu64bit-Windows-Screamer-24122017.zip, which is an experimental build with speed improvements and sound support, and extract the contents of the archive to a directory of your choice.
02. Download Qemu-64Bit-15092017.zip, and unzip it to any desired directory on your hard disk.
03. Run Command Prompt, and 'cd' to the directory where Qemu-64Bit-15092017 is located, and then run the following command to create an empty disk image for your Mac OS:

qemu-img.exe create -f raw -o size=2G MacOS9.2.img

(...adjust the size as you see fit...)
04. Move the empty disk image to the directory where Qemu64bit-Windows-Screamer-24122017 resides.
05. Open the directory containing Qemu64bit-Windows-Screamer-24122017, and go to the 'pc-bios' folder and delete 'qemu_vga.ndrv'.
06. Copy 'qemu_vga_256.ndrv' from the 'vga-driver' folder into the 'pc-bios' folder and rename it to 'qemu_vga.ndrv'.
07. Get hold of a Mac OS 9.2 image (use your favorite search engine to find one), and move it to the directory where Qemu64bit-Windows-Screamer-24122017 resides.
08. Navigate to the directory where Qemu64bit-Windows-Screamer-24122017 is located, and edit the 'qemu.bat' file to make QEMU use the empty disk image and boot from the Mac OS 9.2 CD image:

qemu-system-ppc-screamer.exe -L "C:\Absolute\Path\To\QEMU\pc-bios" -bios openbios-ppc -boot d -m 256 -M mac99 -prom-env "auto-boot?=true" -prom-env "boot-args=-v" -prom-env "vga-ndrv?=true" -drive file=YOUR_MAC_OS_9.2_DISK_IMAGE,format=raw,media=cdrom -drive file=MacOS9.2.img,format=raw,media=disk -device usb-mouse -device usb-kbd -sdl -g 1024x768x8

(...modify the code as you see fit...)
09. Run 'qemu.bat' to launch QEMU. The emulator should now boot from the Mac OS 9.2 CD.
10. You should now see a bunch of folders. Open the 'Utilities' folder and start the 'Drive Setup' program. Select the entry '<not initialized>' and click on 'Initialize' and 'Initialize' again in the subsequent window. After the initialization is complete, and a hard disk icon has been created on the desktop, quit the program. (The program can be terminated by clicking on the 'File' menu at the top of the screen and choosing 'Quit'.)
11. Double-click on the Mac OS 9.2 CD icon on the desktop, and a new window will appear. Double-click on the 'Mac OS Install' icon to begin the installation process of the Mac operating system. A wizard will walk you through the process, but you can customize the installation if you want to.
12. After the installation is complete, shut down QEMU, and edit 'qemu.bat' again to make QEMU boot the installed Mac OS. Change the '-boot d' argument to '-boot c', and swap the placement of your hard disk and CD-ROM entries:

qemu-system-ppc-screamer.exe -L "C:\Absolute\Path\To\QEMU\pc-bios" -bios openbios-ppc -boot c -m 256 -M mac99 -prom-env "auto-boot?=true" -prom-env "boot-args=-v" -prom-env "vga-ndrv?=true" -drive file=MacOS9.2.img,format=raw,media=disk -drive file=MAC_OS_9.2_DISK_IMAGE,format=raw,media=cdrom -device usb-mouse -device usb-kbd -sdl -g 1024x768x8

13. You can give the installed OS a test run to see if it works correctly. The first time you start the OS, you will enter the Mac OS Setup Assistant utility. Use this utility to make some basic settings on your OS.
14. Get hold of a copy of the CD version of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans for Mac. There are some websites that host images of the original Warcraft CD for Mac. QEMU may be unable to mount CUE/BIN pairs but it should be able to mount TOAST files. The bad news, though, is that -- unless I'm very much mistaken -- TOAST files cannot contain any audio CD tracks unlike CUE/BIN combos (which are often used for audio CDs that contain a data track).
15. Shut down QEMU, and edit the 'qemu.bat' file to make QEMU automount the game image at OS startup:

'-drive file=MAC_OS_9.2.1_IMAGE_FILE,format=raw,media=cdrom' ====> '-drive file=WARCRAFT_IMAGE_FILE,format=raw,media=cdrom'

16. Launch QEMU. You should now see the game CD icon on the desktop. Double-click on it.
17. Install and run the game. Select the 'full' installation option when prompted. It will install everything onto your hard disk, but it will only take about 95 megabytes of HD space. You may want to update the system extensions as well.

Reply 19 of 23, by MrFlibble

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

So the GOG.com version of Warcraft turns out to include the ISO of the hybrid CD release, and I actually managed to kinda-sorta run the Mac version from it in Executor via DOSBox.

The game works fine (you can start it, play a campaign or custom scenario, save and load games, cheat, etc. etc.), it does have sounds and even music (but not the CD Audio tracks during the missions), but there's a huge BUT: the palettes on all screens except the main menu are garbled with wrong colours, like shown here or here. I failed to establish a reason for this behaviour.

I encountered this problem in the past when I tried to run the Mac demo of the same game. I was unable to find a workable solution for it back then.

However Executor generally seems to me a preferable way of running Mac stuff because:

  • it does not require a Macintosh BIOS ROM, or a copy of MacOS, or any other software whatsoever except the programme that you want to run
  • it is free and open source (other emulators are that too but they require the stuff above)
  • it is generally very simple to use compared to many other emulators

Additionally, the developers of Executor at some point had planned the option of creating wrappers for individual apps to make them cross-platform, but this was never realised. Perhaps it could be accomplished now from the source code?

DOS Games Archive | Free open source games | RGB Classic Games