VOGONS


First post, by Nasman X

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Greetings, everyone. This will be my first post, so i hope i'm doing it at the rigth spot....however, as you will notice, i belive its hard to decide where to actually put this question.

Getting into the issue, the problem regards the Warcraft 2 - Tides of Darkness/Beyond the Dark Portal. The game is running fine, the sound works fine, ten missions cleared (the first five of each race, in the Tides of Darkness) and no glich nor bug, nor crash found. Everything is beautyfull.

Now, the problem is when you choose "single player" and "custom scenario". As you may know, the game gives you the option to select "Built-in scenarios" or "Custom Scenarios" (being this ones, the ones you can create or edit using the War2Edit.exe).

Here is the issue: when I select "Custom Scenarios", the list is empty, and i cant click on the "Go one folder up" button. The built-in ones work fine.
The question would be, half game related, half dosbox related.

¿Did i do somenthing wrong with the stalation/emulation?
¿Does DosBox have issues loading external files, while emulating?
¿Anybody had the same issue?

(hope this is in the rigth place, if not, my apologies. Tell me and i'll move to the acurate forum)

Thanks a lot !

Reply 1 of 37, by eL_PuSHeR

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[Moved]

Are you using DOSBox? Anyway it doesn't seem to me that your problem isn't related to emulation.

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Reply 2 of 37, by Nasman X

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Yes, i'm using DosBox, version 0.72.
The emulation works 100%, in fact i'm very pleased to see that i've managed to avoid some really commun issues that other players have with this particullar game (constant crashs, no sound, insert cd prompt, etc)

However i didnt find anyone talking about playing custom maps.
The maps i cant seem to "find" are the ones that the program (warcraft II) loads from files that are outside of the game. Each of this maps is a diferent file, on a diferent folder.

However, the game seems to have issues not only finding, but also browsing through the sistem (as i said before, the "one folder up" button is "gray shadded", and cant be clicked).

Just in case, the files that the game have to load are inside a folder mounted into the dosbox emulation.

¿Any ideas?

[Thanks for reading!]

Reply 3 of 37, by MiniMax

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[Moved] (again)

Please tell us how you mount the folders in DOSBox (and where your maps files are).

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Reply 4 of 37, by Nasman X

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Sorry for all the thread moving. To be honest i dont understand how do you organize this forum...

Let see, step by step this is what i do:

mount d c:\juegos\warcraftii -t cdrom [All CD Rom files are there]
mount c c:\juegos\warcraftii\war2 [The installed game is there]
c:
war2 [changed folder and start game]

The game PUDs are in the following locations:

C:\Juegos\WarcraftII\WAR2\PUDS [This are the most important, inside puds there are three other folders (Multi/single/strange) with the files in them]

C:\Juegos\WarcraftII [The ones that come with the CD]

Thanks a lot for your help. I've been forum moderator and i know how annoying can it be when a guy keep posting in the wrong forum, or not given enough information.

I though that this could also help, this is the screen of what i get when i try to load the "Custom Scenarios"
war2000cf6.png

Once again, thanks a lot for the help ^^

Reply 5 of 37, by MiniMax

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Do the game have some kind of config file that tells it the path to some top-level directory where these maps and this PUDS directory is located? Or can the maps be in any random directory structure?

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Reply 6 of 37, by ADDiCT

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I didn't try to play custom maps yet, but this looks like a mounting error. You're mounting "c:\juegos\warcraftii\war2" as c:\, which means the directory the game is installed to becomes c:\. But the game probably expects to be installed in a subdirectory of c:\, so you could try to mount "c:\juegos\warcraftii\" as c:\. This is just a guess, but trying the alternate mount may be worth a shot.

EDIT: just launched my copy of WC2, and it works as expected (i see all scenarios). I've installed the game to "c:\games\war2", where my virtual c:\ root is a folder on my hd i'm using like a hd. Damn, this is hard to explain in english (; - what i mean is that all my games are in a folder like "c:\dosgames", and i'm mounting that folder as c:\ in DOSBox. Beneath that folder there is the "games" directory with all games installed in separate folders (like "war2" in this case). In the WC2 config file, there are no references to the directory structure on the hd, there's only a reference to the CD drive letter, which is not relevant here, as the PUD's are supposed to be on the hd.

Reply 7 of 37, by Nasman X

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YATAAAAAAAAAAAII !!!!!

Thanks a lot for all your help. It was, indeed, a mount error, conclusion to wich i would never arrived by myself.
When i followed the last instrucctions given it recognised both "up folder button" and pud scenarios.

Luckily this thread will be also usefull for other people with the same issue, and will prevent some hours of "computer fighting" and thread moving 😜
(honestly, sorry for posting at the wrong place 😜)

Once again, thanks!

/bow
/skill teleport: moonglade

Reply 9 of 37, by markwherrett

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Hi Nasman

Im sorry but I have got exactly the same error as yourself. However I am less computer literate than you and am struggling to understand how this error was fixed. I have been trying despearatly for the last 2 days but cant my head round it.
I mount only my c:dosgames and then click cd until I get my war 2 folder but then when the game loads it doesnt recognise the cd. To fix this I have to only mount the whole folder then it loads but doesnt load puds. Is there a way I can fix this or I am doing it incoerrectly. Please Please help I so despearatly want to use the custom maps and I am sure there is a solution.

I hope this all makes sense.

Thanks and regards

Mark

Reply 10 of 37, by MiniMax

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markwherrett wrote:

(...) and then click cd until I get my war 2 folder (...)

Click?? What? When? How?

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Reply 11 of 37, by markwherrett

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Srry I told u not vey literate with PCS!!!

I mount c c:\dosgames\ only

Then I type CD \Games

CD \War 2

and then war 2.exe. and it loads but doesnt recognise the cd,

If i mount c:\dosgames\games\war2

then and only then will the game load but I feel then the above solution will not work.

Thanks for looking

Mark

Reply 17 of 37, by mccoy901

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Hello-this makes the 2nd time I've posted to a blog so please be patient with me in case there's some protocol I'm not following well. I've got a question about a PCGame (War Craft II Tides of Darkness ((or TOD)) & Beyond the Dark Portal ((or BTDP)) Expansion Set). I downloaded the TOD first and played it but soon encountered inconsistent program shut down to the desktop, no warning or the game still playing. The same thing happened when I downloaded and got 3-4 campaigns into the BTDP expansion set. For both games, I'm to the point at each respective scenario I can't proceed b/c the game shuts down within 10 seconds to a black screen and then the desktop appears. Can anybody help me out??? Thanks if you can! I'm willing to pay money if someone has a solution. My f-in-law told me to reduce/change the graphics, which I did but to no solution. Please help!

mccoy901

Reply 18 of 37, by bloodbat

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Get a legit copy, that's probably a good start, also, you don't state if you're running it under DosBox or Windows or what, since you say it takes you to the desktop...
Warcraft 2 graphics can't be fiddled with, as far as I recall.

Reply 19 of 37, by mr_bigmouth_502

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mccoy901 wrote:

Hello-this makes the 2nd time I've posted to a blog so please be patient with me in case there's some protocol I'm not following well. I've got a question about a PCGame (War Craft II Tides of Darkness ((or TOD)) & Beyond the Dark Portal ((or BTDP)) Expansion Set). I downloaded the TOD first and played it but soon encountered inconsistent program shut down to the desktop, no warning or the game still playing. The same thing happened when I downloaded and got 3-4 campaigns into the BTDP expansion set. For both games, I'm to the point at each respective scenario I can't proceed b/c the game shuts down within 10 seconds to a black screen and then the desktop appears. Can anybody help me out??? Thanks if you can! I'm willing to pay money if someone has a solution. My f-in-law told me to reduce/change the graphics, which I did but to no solution. Please help!

Like the poster above me stated, you should seriously get a legit copy. I myself would recommend the Battle.Net edition, as it runs natively on Windows, it doesn't have any of the speed issues that the DOS version has, the multiplayer has been improved, and the expansion pack is on the same disc as the base game, so there's no disc-swapping! Also, it's quite easy to find on Ebay, and it shouldn't run you more than 25 bucks. 😎