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Heroes of Might and Magic 1 & 2 Guide

Discussion in 'Guides' started by Daerandin, Nov 9, 2013.

  • by Daerandin, Nov 9, 2013 at 9:21 PM
  • Daerandin

    Daerandin Well-Known Member

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    The Heroes of Might and Magic series began as a spinoff from the already existing Might and Magic series. Drawing inspiration from the same game world, the Heroes series would eventually tell more of the history than the original rpg series. For many, the HoMM series is the standard that all other turn based strategy games must measure up to.

    homm_1.png

    This guide will explain how to play the first two games in the series, using the digital editions available on gog.com, simply follow these steps and you can enjoy these games on Linux without any issue.

    Setting up games for DosBox is quite similar for most games, so this guide only details the few specifics for Heroes 1 and 2.

    First Steps in: DosBox Generic Guide

    For the rest of this guide, I assume that the contents of the app folder from extracting the Heroes 1 installer has been moved to:
    /home/username/games/homm1

    The contents of the app folder from extracting the Heroes 2 installer has been moved to:
    /home/username/games/homm2

    'username' is your user name

    Config file Setup

    By now, you should have one config file for each game, both located in:
    /home/username/dosbox_shortcuts/config

    The rest of this guide assumes you named them: homm1.conf for Heroes 1 and homm2.conf for Heroes 2.

    The config file for each game can be edited with a simple text editor. There are some changes you must make from the default you copied.

    These are changes you have to make for both games:

    fullscreen=true
    This will make sure you run the game in fullscreen

    fullresolution=desktop
    This will make sure the game run fullscreen at your desktop resolution

    output=overlay
    This setting will allow the fullscreen window to be at your desktop resolution, although requires a bit more resources than the default 'surface' setting

    Scroll a bit further down to the [cpu] section

    cycles=max
    These game requires this setting to run well

    Then find the [joystick] section

    joystick=none
    This has no real bearing on the game, except that you gain a little performance increase by completely disabling joystick emulation

    Specific Heroes of Might and Magic 1 settings

    In the homm1.conf file, scroll down to the end of the config file to the [autoexec] section, here you will add the lines that automatically start the game. Type in the following lines, replacing "username" with the name of your user:

    mount c /home/username/games/homm1
    c:
    imgmount d /home/username/games/homm1/homm1.gog -t iso -fs iso
    heroes.exe

    Specific Heroes of Might and Magic 2 settings

    In the homm2.conf file, scroll down to the end of the config file to the [autoexec] section, here you will add the lines that automatically start the game. Type in the following lines, replacing "username" with the name of your user:

    mount c /home/username/games/homm2
    c:
    imgmount d /home/username/games/homm2/homm2.inst -t iso -fs iso
    heroes2.exe

    Now you have a dosbox config file for each game. The last part is just to create a very simple script to start dosbox with the specified config file for each game. So open a terminal and type these commands:

    Heroes 1 startup shortcut

    echo -e "#! /bin/bash\ndosbox -conf ~/dosbox_shortcuts/config/homm1.conf" > ~/dosbox_shortcuts/Heroes1

    chmod +x ~/dosbox_shortcuts/Heroes1

    Heroes 2 startup shortcut

    echo -e "#! /bin/bash\ndosbox -conf ~/dosbox_shortcuts/config/homm2.conf" > ~/dosbox_shortcuts/Heroes2

    chmod +x ~/dosbox_shortcuts/Heroes2

    This creates a shortcut which you can simply double click to start the game. The shortcuts created can be moved anywhere you wish, and will still work without problem, as long as the config file remains where it is with the same folder names.

    Now you are ready to play the games!

    homm_7.png

    homm_8.png
    homm_9.png
    homm_10.png
    homm_11.png
    homm_12.png
    homm_13.png
    homm_14.png
    booman likes this.

Comments

Discussion in 'Guides' started by Daerandin, Nov 9, 2013.

  1. booman
    Wow, I didn't realize it would require so much Terminal interaction.
    In my DosBox guide, I just installed DosBox through the software manager, then extracted the GOG game to my dosgames folder.
    Made a conf for the game and a shortcut to launch.
  2. Daerandin
    There are of course other methods to perform such tasks, but this really is cleanest way to get a GOG game for DosBox set up, at least in my opinion. Of course, any other method that works is just as valid.

    I decided to just explain how to create a shortcut file independent of any desktop environment. I expect most DosBox guides I write will be of this sort as it is for the most part very distro agnostic.
  3. booman
    Ah, you make a good point.
    Maybe you should write a DosBox guide they way you do it and then add a link to all of your Game Guides.

    As you have seen in my guides, I decided to repetitively show readers how to install wine and create shortcuts, etc.
    I did this because I hate it when I'm following a tutorial and there are links to other tutorials. So I try to put everything in one place.
    Its your call and I really like the format of your guide. Its very clear and shows the flexibility of Linux
  4. Daerandin
    I can give it some thought, I suppose it would all depend on what people would prefer. For most DosBox games all steps are the same, the only real difference will be in the config file for the specific game.
  5. booman
    Exactly, so you won't need to include all the DosBox steps in each guide since there are a lot of steps.
    But definitely include the conf setup. Those are always game specific.
  6. Daerandin
    I just created a generic DosBox guide which will be used for the basic setup steps for all my DosBox guides. This guide was shorted to avoid repeating the steps mentioned in the DosBox guide.
  7. booman
    Saaweeet!
    Gizmo is checking permissions so you can post in the Guides section
  8. Sideburns
    This guide flat-out fails for me for HoMM 2 Gold, because it tries to mount homm2.inst as an image file, and DosBox chokes on it.
  9. Sideburns
    I managed to work out what was wrong. First, as I wrote before, the image file isn't homm2.inst, it's homm2.gog. Second, my conf file didn't have [autoexec] in it. Now that I've added that, all's well. Thanx for your guide!
  10. Daerandin
    homm2.inst is supposed to be mounted as an iso file by dosbox, it is needed for the game audio.

    If you can post your entire dosbox config file for Heroes 2 then I can have a look at it.

    Since it is a very long time since I played this game, I am currently downloading the newest GOG installer for Heroes 2, and will unpack it and check if things still work as they should on my end. Just to make sure nothing has changed.

    EDIT: I just ran the game from the newest GOG installer by my own instructions here and nothing has changed. I suspect there might be some error in your config file. When you post it I will see if I can spot something that would prevent you from playing the game.
  11. Sideburns
    I have the game working, with audio, without mounting homm2.inst as an iso. My second post (still waiting on the moderators) was to tell you that I got it working, and that you need to add the line [autoexec] if it's not there.
  12. Daerandin
    Your issue with audio is the fact that you don't mount the .inst file. You need to mount the .inst file for audio to work. If you are having problems, then please post your entire config file and I can have a look at it.
  13. Sideburns
    This discussion of audio problems started when you referred to my having them, even though I never said that I did, and in fact the audio has always worked Just Fine, as is the rest of the game. Please read over all of my posts on this discussion and you'll see that.
  14. Daerandin
    Apologies, I probably should not reply so early in the morning as I apparently can't read properly.

    And yes, general audio probably work as well as midi music. But if you want the high quality stereo sound, which can be activated from settings when you are playing a map, then you need to have the .inst file mounted. That is why I kept mentioning audio, I personally can't play the game without the high quality soundtrack.

    Anyway, great that the game is working. This is an old masterpiece of a game.
  15. Sideburns
    Actually, there's one bit of audio that's off: the background music inside a town. I'll play around with the settings (Dosbox simply won't accept mounting homm2.inst as an iso, and looking at it, it's simply a flat text file.) and see what I can do.
  16. Daerandin
    It is odd that you have problems mounting it, because it works without issue for me. Do you use the latest GOG installer and did you extract the GOG installer with Innoextract, or did you use some other method?

    Just to double check: the commands for mounting and launching the game, they are copied exactly as specified in this guide? The order of the commands is important, as well as all the options passed to the imgmount command.

    I know the homm2.inst is a text file, but it is required for dosbox to be able to locate the music files since the game was originally designed to read the music track on the game disc. I'll be able to do some double checking on my own system later today just to check that there's not something off on my end.
  17. Sideburns
    I installed the version on the GOG website, and after finding that it doesn't work under Wine, used your instructions to get it working under Dosbox. (I did make two changes: first, I had to surround some of the paths with quotation marks because they have spaces, and second, once I'd run the c: command, I didn't need to use the path in the imgmount command.) Every time I tried to mount homm2.inst as an iso, I was told that it isn't an image file. And yes, I have the correct options in the right place and order. Checking, homm2.inst is 3.2 Kb and homm2.gog is 280.7 MB.
  18. Sideburns
    OK, I finally got it. The name of the file (in Dosbox) is homm2~1.ins, and trying to mount the file using that form of the name worked and got me the missing music. I'm working under Linux, so the long form of the file name probably isn't available. And, I added one more command to the bottom of the section: exit, so that Dosbox closes when I'm done.
  19. Daerandin
    That is surprising that you need to use the different form of the name in the config file. I just checked and when viewing the file from within dosbox then it is named as homm2~1.ins, but I have always named it in the config file as written in the guide. I have used the exact same config file on both Ubuntu and Arch.

    I got so curious that I decided to do some testing. If I don't specify the full path to the homm2.inst, then I need to use the form "homm2~1.ins", but if I specify full file system path (/home/username/...) then I must use "homm2.inst", perhaps this was the cause of the problems. If you were not specifying the full file system path, then the dosbox naming convention must apparently be used.

    And yes, if you have spaces in names then you should put quotation marks around the entire path.

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