Battle for Wesnoth is a free turn-based strategy game, set in a Tolkienesque world of elves, orcs, trolls and dwarves.
The core idea is a familiar one. You'll start with a single leader and just a little gold, but then gradually create an army, turning raw recruits into battle-hardened veterans capable of dealing with any opponent.
The program comes with more than enough campaigns to hold your interest, though, each with their own storyline. As a beginner you might start off with something short, perhaps where you just have to find a person, maybe fight a small battle; more complex campaigns might give you the responsibility to protect your homeland against a defending army; and the longest will lead you through 20 or more scenarios, covering every aspect of the game and seriously testing your strategic skills.
If that's still not enough, there are plenty of user-created campaigns that you can download and try, or you can go to work with its map editor and programming language and build new scenarios of their own. And of course there's always the multi-player option, which allows you to challenge up to 8 friends for battlefield supremacy.
I would like to suggest the following improvements to the game development. First, make it MAC OS compatible. Many games now are both Window and Mac compatible. PC1 was made Mac compatible so that code could possible be used for PC2 version. Bought all old Windows versions but was barred from playing game when switched to all MAC OS household and business. Could only get back to, IMHO. Panzer Combat II is a multi-player voice and webcam enabled computer-assisted distributed miniature wargame of World War II tank combat. Firing is done by placing a webcam behind the aiming unit. Distance to target is computed using computer vision. It was later released for Mac OS X on December 9, 2010. Rampage is a first-person shooter video game released for personal computers with.
The graphics are a little old-fashioned, but the gameplay is excellent - if you like turn-based games then Battle for Wesnoth should keep you engrossed for months
New to abandonware? Start with this guide to play DOS games on Windows 7, 8 or 10, or on your Mac. Most games work fine without any tinkering, but some are hard to run properly.
A large majority of our games catalog are DOS games, if you need to play Windows or Mac games, go to the bottom of the page or use the following table of contents. We have several other platforms now, specific pages are available for running these games. Also, don't miss our list of useful links for abandonware and this quick buying guide.
Most abandonware games on PC were created for the MS-DOS operating system. Today's computers no longer offer the same environment for the programs. Hopefully, some people were unhappy with this and created software to mimic the old computers operating system!
Depending on your operating system, you have different possibilities.
DOSBox is the master DOS emulator, it works with almost every computer, and will be enough for a quick play of most games. Check the DOSBox website for more information. DOSBox works in Windows 10.
DOSBox Enhanced Community Edition, aka DOSBox ECE, is a good replacement of vanilla DOSBox. Many new features are added by the author YesterPlay, check the project website for a list of enhancements. Available for Windows and Linux.
You may use another program for many point and click games, ScummVM. You should check their compatibility page and search for the game you wish to play.
DOSBox has many frontend programs (complete list here) that give you a more appealing interface. DGBL is one of them, and it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. For quick way to play DOS games, you may also use IA Launcher, which launch games directly from the Internet Archive. Available for Windows (easy installer), Mac and Linux.
Most people are using Microsoft's Windows and an easy solution is available: D-fend Reloaded. It has a nice graphical interface, and a lot of things are done for you behind the scenes. The project has not been updated for years though, so you may prefer DGBL.
A possible alternative is LaunchBox, which supports DOS games but now tons of other platforms, including Windows and Steam games.
Boxer is clearly the best DOSBox frontend on Mac, but it has not been updated since 2016. If you have updated to Catalina or above, the app won't work anymore. It has been partially ported to 64 bits, you can get it here or check the newest updates on this GitHub thread.
On Linux, you should use one of the cross-platform frontends like DGBL. Check the complete list on the DOSBox wiki
Please note we do not provide support for running abandonware games. We strongly suggest you to ask for help on dedicated forums, like Abandonia or Vogons. You may also use the DosBox subreddit.
You should carefully read the DOSBox Wiki for a good walkthrough. Mac OS X users should pay attention to those instructions, although I recommend using Boxer.
Many of the standard DOS games can be played immediately with a drag and drop, after a standard DOSBox setup:
If you don't have the DOSBox shortcut on your desktop, the drag and drop works on the DOSBox executable file located in C:Program FilesDOSBox-0.xx
As a start, download the latest setup of D-Fend.
Once installed, follow the following steps (click on the pictures for full size). Screenshots taken in Windows 10 October 2016.
Starting with a fresh D-Fend install, you should see this screen after launching the program. You can already launch DOSDox DOS to bring an operational MS-DOS system. Guess you want to play a GAME, so not much to do here.
First, unzip the downloaded game somewhere. Then click on Extras > Open game folder... This is where you will put the game files.
The game folder is the virtual drive used by the default D-Fend setup. For this tutorial, I unzipped the Mario Teaches Typing on the desktop, then moved the game folder to the Game Folder of D-Fend. The name of the folder itself is not important, but you should avoid spaces or special characters.
Now that the game files are on the virtual drive, we must add the game to D-Fend. Click on Add > Add manually... > Add DOSBox Profile. A new window will appear, as shown in the video, the 'Profile editor'. We must set the program file by clicking on the folder icon at the right end of 'Program file'.
The explorer will show you the contents of the virtual drive. Navigate through the game folder until you see program files. Some game only has one file listed here, Mario Teaches Typing has two, usually, the right file to select is named after the game. This time, it's 'MARIO', select the file and click Open. You may also select a setup program the same way, as shown in the video. Useful for sound configuration most of the time.
Coming back to the Profile editor, we can see the executable file in the Program file field. The last thing to do is to set the name of the game in the Profile name field. Once this is done, click on Ok. The game appears in the list, double-click to run it and have fun!
You may also use the game wizard in D-Fend Reloaded, it's simpler to add a game.
After downloading and unzipping the game files somewhere, launch D-Fend, click Add > Add with wizard... A new window appears, 'Create new profile', Emulation type should be set to DOSBox. Click on Next.
Click on the folder on the right side of the 'Program to be started'. Navigate to your folders to the game directory and find the proper executable file (see the second paragraph in Step 4 of the previous tutorial). Click on Open.
D-Fend will auto-detect the game sometimes, you may also select one in the list as shown in the screenshot. By clicking Next, you get some additional information on the game, anyway, you can click Ok, the game will be listed in the main windows and ready to be played!
Amongst different problems we have run into, here are some additional tips.
By default, DOSBox runs in windowed mode. To make DOSBox fullscreen, just press ALT and Enter. Press ALT and Enter again to get back to windowed mode. If you want DOSBox to always run fullscreen when launched, edit dosbox.conf (click on 'DOSBox 0.74 Options' in Start menu), change 'fullscreen=false' to 'fullscreen=true', save and close the text editor.
Many old games were made to run as fast as the computer could get, those may be too fast with DOSBox default CPU cycles. You have to reduce the CPU cycles with CTRL-F11 in DOSBox. Other frontend programs may use different shortcuts.
On the opposite, the default CPU cycles may be too low for 'recent' DOS games, you will have to raise the CPU cycles with CTRL-F12 in Dosbox. Other frontend programs may use different shortcuts. You can also skip frames in DOSBox to get better performances, use CTRL-F8 to increase the number of frames skipped. You can read more about performances in DOSBox on the official wiki.
You may remember running SETUP.EXE to configure sound, have better graphics or enable mouse support. You should add the setup program to the Setup section, below the Program section in D-Fend, and launch it before playing the game.
DOSBox can emulate several sound cards, check out the wiki about sound setup. Most of the time, Sound Blaster or AdLib is the right choice.
Some games require you to emulate a floppy drive and have the game content mounted in it. To add this floppy drive, edit the game profile, click on Drives and add a new drive. You may use a folder or a real floppy image (.img) for the floppy content. Same goes for CD games.
We have some PC-Booter games, theses games have to be booted to work. DOSBox can handle this fine, but these steps are not so clear.
Chuck Cartia gave us a nice walkthrough, using SpitFire Ace as an example:
1 - Create a folder to put your .img files in, for this example, on the C: drive make a folder named DriveImg.
2 - Now put the file spitfire.img in this folder. Add a line to the dosbox.conf file in the [autoexec] section:
boot c:DriveImgspitfire.img -l a
That's dash ell (for letter) and the drive letter you want to assign.
3 - Make sure you have any other references to this drive letter remmed out with the # like this:
#mount a a: -t floppy
or
#mount a s:install.
4 - That's it... Save the dosbx.conf file and when you start DOSBOX, the game should boot and start automatically just like the good old days when you shoved the disk in and turned on the (Atari) computer.
After reading this, the explanation in the DOSBOX readme.txt file should make sense and you can figure out how to add more drives for multiple disk games.
Note: You don't need to use the IMGMOUNT command when you use the BOOT command. Don't forget to rem out the boot line and unrem your other line(s) when you want to use DOSBOX normally.
Some games have memory problems at startup, like error message telling you 'Not enough memory'. You should try several combinations of options in the 'Memory' part of the profile, enabling loadfix first.
For additional help, you should ask your questions over the Vogons forums or the DosBox subreddit.
Many old games relied heavily on standard fonts present in the operating system, you can get them at the The Oldschool PC Font Resource, made by VileR. Font pack mirror available here.
Some of the games are available as a CD image, a perfect copy of the original CD. For DOS games, DOSBox will read the images if the format is ISO or BIN/CUE. Several formats are possible, though: ISO, CUE/BIN, NRG, MDS/MDF. Usually, these images come with Windows games, scroll down for help on opening these.
For DOS games, it's quite straightforward: DOSBox allows you to mount these images directly, with the IMGMOUNT command. The IMGMOUNT command will perfectly mount ISO images, but can also mount CUE/BIN images. CUE/BIN images allow you to mount a game CD which has music tracks on it - many games of the late 90s used this system, and you could play the game music on a CD player.
If you use a DOSBox frontend, you will probably find a way to mount an image through the menus. One alternative is to mount these images with a mounting software (see below for Windows) and using the mounted image as a source in DOSBox using the MOUNT command.
For Windows games, you need an additional software to read the images. Many software is available, not all of them are free:
Once installed, most of these software will allow you to mount an ISO or CUE/BIN image by simply double-clicking on it. Beware, some images contains additional data only readable by DAEMON Tools, making the disk image unmountable, or making the game unplayable without a crack / noCD. Having DAEMON Tools installed for these cases can be useful.
On a Mac computer, ISO files can be mounted without installing anything, but CUE/BIN files require DAEMON Tools Lite Mac to be mounted easily (click on the Download link next to the buy button). You can also try to rename the BIN file as an ISO file: rename 'gamefile.bin' to 'gamefile.iso' and open the file - it may work!