Totally Warcraft

Synopsis | Features | Awards | Requirements | Ports

Synopsis

Tides of Darkness

With the death of the Orcish Warchief Blackhand, his underling Orgrim Doomhammer was quick to seize control over the most powerful of the Orcish forces on Azeroth. Although each day finds other factions growing stronger within the chaotic Horde, it seems certain that all of the clans will follow Orgrim’s plans to hunt down and destroy the renegade Azerothiens wherever they choose to run…

Sir Lothar, in charge of the scattered armies of Azeroth since the death of King Llane, has led his people across the Great Sea to the shores of Lordaeron. By enlisting the armies of Lordaeron, and making new allies in the Elves and Dwarves, a mighty force known as the Alliance has been forged. Now, the last of the once great armies of Azeroth seek retribution for the loss of their homeland.

The Dark Portal

After destroying the mystic gate into Azeroth, the Humans discover that the rift which allows the Orcs passage into their world still exists. Human forces must now venture beyond the Dark Portal into Orcish lands to put an end to the threat of yet another invasion by the hordes.

At the same time, Ner’zhul- Warchief of the Shadow Moon clan- has seized control of the Orcish hordes of Draenor, and is gathering his forces in an attempt to open portals to other worlds, while bringing the nations of Azeroth to their knees.

Features

• Multi-player support for as many as 8 players via Battle.Net or IPX network
• Blizzard’s spawning technology that allows up to eight players to compete over Battle.net by installing multiple copies from the original CD-ROM.
• Automatic map passing over Battle.net
• Implementation of Top vs. Bottom multi-player template
• Shared Vision in multi-player games
• Ability to /Whisper in and out of games
• Improved game set-up, game options, dropping of players and inclusion of Battle.net chat
• Setting of game speed before the game starts that cannot be switched back and forth during game play.
• Incorporation of the 3 Pauses per player / per game rule
• Assigning and selection of Groups through # keys
• Ability to choose Random starting race, resources and tileset.
• Ability to set Latency Tolerance within games
• Attack Move command will now function correctly
• Patrol command now sends units to the selected location rather than stopping after any contact
• Set maps and game parameters for Ladder Games
• Scroll Speed fixed on faster computers
• Town Hall / Great Hall is required as the first building in your technology tree
• Ctrl+click or double-click will select closest 9 units of that type currently on the screen
• Space bar centers the map on last 8 transmissions (sequential)
• Current food displayed along with gold/oil/lumber
• Maintained compatibility with the DOS version of Warcraft II via local area network or modem
• Unit limit raised from 600 to 1200 for Enhanced games
• Added upper limit of 200 food for each player, like StarCraft
• Mining out an oil rig completely no longer returns a small amount of lumber and gold to the player.
• Flying Machines, Goblin Zeppelins, Goblin Sappers, Dwarven Demolition Teams now have a Patrol option.
• Canceling Foundries no longer uses all of the oil you spent to build it.
• Allies can see friendly invisible units now.
• Allies’ towers and flying units will now reveal enemy subs.
• Partially-built towers can no longer see submarines.
• Death Coil will no longer damage allies.
• New sounds have been added for Skeletons, Runes, Eye of Killrogg, and for completed upgrades.
• Death & Decay and Death Coil now have the proper icons
• First Town Hall / Great Hall now build at the speed of a Farm. All other Town Halls / Great Halls build at the normal rate.
• You can now take 1000 screenshots instead of just 100.
• 2 new game speeds (slowest and fastest)

Awards

• Hall of Fame Inductee – Computer Gaming World
• Game of the Year – PC Gamer
• Game of the Year finalist – Computer Games Strategy Plus
• Best Multiplayer Game of the Year – PC Gamer
• Best On-line Game – c|net Award of Internet Excellence
• Best Strategy Game – MacWorld Macintosh Hall of Fame 1997
• Best New Game – MacUser Editors’ Choice Awards
• Best Internet Game – Video Game Advisor
• Europe Software of Excellence Award – Ziff-Davis UK
• 1996 Innovations Award – Consumer Electronics Show, Winter 1996
• 1996 Eddy Award: Best Game – MacUser
• 1996 “Best of After Hours” – PC Magazine
• Real-Time Strategy Game of the Year runner-up – Computer Games Strategy Plus
• Game of the Year finalist – Computer Games Strategy Plus
• Number-one selling entertainment CD-ROM of 1996 – PC Data
• Strategy Hall of Fame award – MacWorld magazine
• #2 Reader’s Top 50 – PC Gamer
• Editors’ Choice Award – PC Gamer
• CG Choice Award – Computer Gaming World
• Golden Triad Award – Computer Game Review
• 96-percent rating – PC Gamer
• 93-percent rating – Computer Game Review
• 4.5 out of 5 rating – Computer Gaming World

System Requirements

Windows PC 98/95/NT 4.0

• Pentium 60 or equivalent
• 16 MB RAM
• 80MB Hard Drive space
• 2x CD-ROM drive for gameplay
• 4x CD-ROM drive for Cinematic
• Local bus SVGA video card (Direct X-Compatible)
• Microsoft-compatible Mouse
• DirectX-compatible sound card for Audio

Mac OS 7.6 or Higher

• Power PC
• 16MB RAM
• 80MB Hard Drive space
• 2X CD-ROM drive for gameplay
• 4X CD-ROM drive for Cinematics
• Monitor support for 256 colors at 640×480 resolution

Ports

Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal were released together for Sega Saturn and PlayStation under the title Warcraft II: The Dark Saga in 1997 by Electronic Arts.

There was also a reverse engineered free software game engine called Freecraft, which allowed users to import the actual game data from Warcraft II and play the game on different platforms and with additional features like queuing unit production, finding idle workers, an improved AI and network connectivity for up to 16 players. In addition to being compatible with Warcraft II, it could also be used with a set of artwork and scenarios made by the Freecraft Media Project (FcMP). Although the actual Freecraft program and FcMP used no art or code from Warcraft II, the project received a threatening cease-and-desist letter from Blizzard, apparently due to similarity to the Warcraft trademarks. Not willing to fight Blizzard, the maintainers canceled the whole project, later rekindling it under the name of Stratagus. By using this game engine through Wargus, the game is also playable on BSD, Linux, Mac OS X, AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS.

Refrences used, Blizzard.com, Wikipedia.com