Syndicate Wars is considered a classic game. Unfortunately though, the game was not compatible with modern-day operating systems until it got re-released on GOG. Still, this did not stop a team of programmers who have released Syndicate Wars Port; a port of the 1996 DOS game Syndicate Wars to modern operating systems.
In its current-state, this port supports Windows, GNU and OS X. The developers claimed that the game should also work on any system supported by the SDL library on the i386 architecture.
As the developers claimed:
“The project was in many ways challenging, it took us two attempts and a considerable amount of effort to understand the LE executable format, write a disassembler that would produce re-compilable code, understand the old DOS interfaces, Watcom register calling conventions and recognise its statically-compiled C library functions; we had to analyse the disassembled source code, interface the assembler code with C code by using automatically-generated function wrappers and fight with Apple compiler bugs; all this before we could provide our own C replacements for the DOS-specific assembler parts and finally make it all work (after endless hours of debugging the assembler code with gdb, of course); months of tediousness and uncertainty before we could even see the mission screen pop up (and crash). Lots of pain, lots of work, but in the end, lots of fun and lots of satisfaction!”
It is said that the port is not fully complete. While it is possible to finish the single player campaigns, support for networking is missing and there is no support for joystick control.
All you have to do in order to install Syndicate Wars Port is download its Windows Installer (in case you’re using Windows). OS X and GNU users will have to follow the installation guide from Syndicate Wars Port’s official website.
Do note that you will need the original Syndicate Wars CD in order to install Syndicate Wars Port. The installer requires the original Syndicate Wars CD to be present in the CD-ROM driver as it will copy the files from the original Syndicate Wars CD and optionally encode the game music from the CD to OGG files used by this port. The Syndicate Wars CD is not required to play the game.
Have fun everyone!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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