Warcraft II is one of my all time favorite games along with Diablo (I, II & III). Warcraft II was released on December 9, 1995 and I first played it in 1997/98. Even though I am not a gamer I spent way too many all-nighters playing the game. Warcraft III was released a few years later but for some reason I never really got into it much, even now I have the game installed on my machine though its been a while since I last played it. But maybe this is a good excuse to try it out again. 🙂
If you have not played it, you should definitely check it out. I bought both Warcraft I & Warcraft II along with a whole bunch of other Blizzard games from GoG where they were part of the GOG Preservation Program but unfortunately because of various reasons they were delisted from the GoG store a year ago. Thankfully because of their effort the installer works offline without any issues. The game is still available for sale directly from Blizzard but that requires an account with them.
In Warcraft II, as in many RTS games, players collect resources to produce buildings and units to defeat an opponent in combat. Players gain access to more advanced units upon construction of tech buildings and research. The majority of the display screen shows the part of the territory on which the player is currently operating, and, using the small mini-map, the player can select another location to view and operate on. The fog of war completely hides all territory (appears black) which the player has not explored: terrain that has been explored is always visible in gray tones, but enemy units remain visible only so long as they stay within a friendly unit’s visual radius. Buildings remain displayed as the player last saw them, and do not register unobserved changes such as being built, damaged, or repaired, etc.
Interestingly, this is one of the few games that I am able to run on my Linux machine without any issues. I know Stream allows you to play games on Linux, but I am not enough of a gamer to spend the minimal effort to install and configure it. Thanks to Crossover by Codeweavers, the game works out of the box on my Debian system.
On a side note, Crossover is a fantastic piece of software which allows you to run most Windows software on Linux seamlessly. (The team keeps adding support for the ones that are not yet supported fully). All the Windows software that I need is installed on my Linux machine using Crossover and the best part is that I don’t need to have a separate Windows install in a VM or anything for this to work. Check out the Software Compatibility list published by Codeweavers to see if the software you use is supported or not. It is a paid software but one that I am happy to pay for (If you don’t renew your subscription you lose access to the dedicated support and new releases but your existing installs continue to work fine.)
Source: HackerNews: 30 Year Anniversary of WarCraft II: Tides of Darkness
– Suramya