W.R. Hutsell’s Wargames were designed in a simpler day – long before Microsoft Windows. In those days many people ran DOS – and it was on this program that Hutsell’s games were designed to run. Thankfully, it is very easy to make Hutsell’s games run on a contemporary computer – whether you are using Microsoft Windows (most common), Mac OS X (second), or any of the various distributions of Linux.
This is all possible utilizing an emulator. An emulator is a software application that runs on your computer and makes the computer appear to old DOS programs (including Hutsell’s games) as if it is a DOS computer.
DOSBox is free. You can download it from http://www.dosbox.com/. We’ll look at how to get Hutsell’s Games up and running on Windows using DOSBox. If you have another system please read the DOSBox documentation available at http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Main_Page to learn the specifics of how to configure Hutsell’s Games to run on your computer.
- Download the Hutsell Game you want to play and run the executable. This will install the game on your Windows computer. By default it will install the game at c:\nameofgame.
- Download DOSBox and run the installer.
- Once DOSBox has been installed, launch the DOSBox application. At the prompt type: mount c c:\nameofgame and hit enter.
- Type c:\ at the prompt and hit enter.
- Type the name of the game file (e.g. for Civil War Strategy it is cws, for Civil War Battleset it is cw25) and the game will launch.
- That is all there is to it!
Thanks for the info for using DOSBox to run Civil War Battleset.
It runs fine in DOXBox except there is no sound. I recall the early version I played many years ago had PC speaker sounds, and I see the newer version available for download here now has WAV files
Any idea how to get the sound to work in DOSBox?
Craig – I’ll have to look into it. It has been a while since I’ve run Battleset. I’ve run Civil War Strategy recently and the sound works fine in DOSBox, so I’m surprised that you are having difficulties with Battleset.
Don’t worry about it. I just tried it again and the sound worked fine.
I have no idea what changed, but it must have been something to do with the DOSBox handled the game sound, I guess.
Thanks.
Glad you got it up and running. I have created a Windows native version of Civil War Strategy – and would like to do so with the other games – including Battleset – unfortunately, QB64, the compiler I used, currently has some restrictively licensed components, so I am waiting for a different license to be released before making the CWS game available or beginning upon Battleset. :-/
WOW … I would love to play those games again .. can you walk me thru the process to have them run on Vista .. thanks ! .. tj
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Tom – The steps above should work for Vista as well as other versions of Windows. Let me know if there is a specific problem you run into while running through this process.
,,
Hello ..
and thanks for getting back to me !
? Can the DOSBox program and the games be put on a CD so when the CD is install in the E drive the games would be available as menu selections.
I would be willing to test and purchase the CD .. I think it would be a marketable CD to other gamers..
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I’m hopefully (someday) releasing an updated version that will run natively on Windows. At this point I am just waiting for some code changes in the compiler I am using and then I should be able to publish it…so, cross your fingers. 🙂
I am playing the game but its in a terribly small window on windows 10 anyway to make it screen size?
Try pressing Alt+Enter while in the game. This should (on Windows) cause the screen to resize to full screen.