- DOSBox - DOS emulator which we will use to compile the game inside.
- 4DOS - Command line
interpreter, which supports the
copy
command with binary inputs and output. - Watcom 10 compiler - For compiling C sources and running MAKEFILEs
- MASM (Microsoft Macro Assembler) 6.0 - For compiling ASM sources
DOSBox and 4DOS are freely available. For getting Watcom 10 and MASM 6.0, you need to search the internet. Note that we did not manage to build the game with Open Watcom. Also, for some reason the MASM version 6.11 compiler did run very slowly in the DOSBox, so it was basically unusable. We had to use the version 6.0.
All directories and files will placed in the ~/lba-hacking
directory
on the host machine. Feel free to change this path, but then adjust the
DOSBox configuration below correspondingly. This directory will be
mounted to C:
in DOSBox.
- Extract 4DOS into
4dos
. - Extract Watcom and MASM installers into
install
. These will be needed to be installed. - Clone https://github.com/2point21/lba1-classic-community into
lba
.
The dir structure at this point should like something like this:
~/lba-hacking ├── 4dos ├── install │ ├── masm │ └── watcom └── lba
Change the autoexec
section of you DOSBox configuration like below.
The configuration path of DOSBox is usually shown when you start it.
[autoexec] mount C ~/lba-hacking PATH c:\watcom\binw;c:\masm\bin;%PATH% set INCLUDE=c:\watcom\h;c:\lba\lib386 set WATCOM=c:\watcom set EDPATH=c:\watcom\eddat set WIPFC=c:\watcom\wipfc C: C:\4DOS\4DOS.COM
- Launch DOSBox (e.g. with
dosbox
). - On the first run, 4DOS will prompt some configuration values.
- Install Watcom by running
C:\INSTALL\WATCOM\SETUP.EXE
and following the instructions. Leave the default installation pathC:\WATCOM
. The step which proposes to modifyAUTOEXEC.EXE
andCONFIG.SYS
can be skipped. - Install MASM by running
C:\INSTALL\MASM\DISK1\SETUP.EXE
. Leave the default installation pathsC:\MASM\BINB
, etc...
Check the installation by typing in:
wmake
: this should show the installed Watcom make version; in my case 10.5wcc386
: this should show the help of the Watcom C compiler; in my case 10.5ml
: this should show the version of the Microsoft Macro Assembler; in my case 6.00
Now we are ready to build the game.
Run inside the DOSBox
cd C:\LBA\LIB386 cd LIB_3D wmake cd ..\LIB_MENU wmake cd ..\LIB_MIDI wmake cd ..\LIB_MIX wmake cd ..\LIB_SAMP wmake cd ..\LIB_SVGA wmake cd ..\LIB_SYS wmake cd ..\..\SOURCES wmake link
The last command will link the LBA0.exe
.
To run the game, you will need some assets of the original game.
- copy HQR files,
- copy
M_SB16.DLL
,S3.DLL
, andW_SB16.DLL
, - copy
LBA.CFG
,
into the directory containing LBA0.exe
, in our case
C:\LBA\SOURCES
.
Run
dos4gw LBA0.exe
Enjoy!