I feel I'm about to open a big can of worms with this one...

So I decided to finally sit down and try to restore what the Warcraft II MIDI music sounded like if you were playing the game back in the day on your old sound card that had an OPL3 FM chip (aka YMF262). Common sound cards that had could contain a true OPL3 chip would be certain models of the Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster Pro 2.0, Sound Blaster AWE32, or the Adlib Gold.

Here is the link to the music replacement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mp9tNRDYgQB-Qqp1vaOGl85kSj95VuMT/view?usp=sharing

To use this, first make a backup copy of your Install.MPQ file located in the root of your Warcraft 2 BNE directory, which is located here by default: here: C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Warcraft II BNE. Now copy this new Install.mpq file in to that location.

This modification also works with War2 Combat or if you had cracked your original copy of Warcraft II BNE. Just rename this file to Install.exe and move to your War 2 BNE directory.

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So here's the process I went through to get this done, just so I'm completely transparent.

I myself don't have an original Sound Blaster 16 that had the true OPL3 chip, so my next best attempt to make this faithful was a tool called PGEMusPlay by a talented developer named Wohlstand, so credits to him. You can find this tool and other awesome tools here: http://wohlsoft.ru/docs/_laboratory/

Now this tool has two important pieces to make this as faithful as I could through emulation. It uses the cycle-accurate OPL3 emulator called Nuked OPL3 emulator by the developer Nukeykt (his page here: https://nukeykt.retrohost.net/) and the tool also includes the Warcraft II Miles Audio sound bank as well, which, as far as I can tell, was ripped straight from the game itself.

I then use Wardraft to extract the original XMI files from the original Warcraft II. I discovered there are three sets of XMI files that contain the music, but through deduction I found that the most advanced and largest set of XMI files are the ones used by the game when playing with the Sound Blaster 16 card. So I ripped those and ran them through the PGE MusPlayer app to convert it straight to WAV.

I then use another tool to modify the existing MPQ file that contains the existing Warcraft II Music with this music I just created.

Some things to know about my edit is that there wasn't ever a MIDI version of some of the game's Redbook audio music, like Human 1 and 6 and Orc 1 and 6, so you won't be hearing their MIDI counterpart. I left the secret Disco track intact as it was on the Redbook audio version.

Now I know that some will say this doesn't sound EXACTLY like how it did with whatever OPL3-esque sound card they had back in the day, partly due to it being emulated, (although it should sound very close), but there are other factors besides emulation.

Sound cards that had the true OPL3 chip would have sounded differently from each other due to the quality of the audio components on the card, which is something the original Sound Blaster 16 is notorious for. Some sound cards didn't even have a true OPL3 but a close relative like the Yamaha YMF289, or they instead had a software compatible replacement like Creative's CQM synthesis that appeared on later models of the Sound Blaster 16. You can read more about it on these wiki pages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Blaster_16 or here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF262 or on many well written VOGONS posts like this one: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=32411

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and I sure hope I got this information correct.

Hi, can I use this file on an older cd-rom version of the game (2.02)? In my folder there is no install.mpq: only War2dat.mpq and War2patch.mpq as well.
Thank you kindly and special thanks for your effort.

It can be used on the older CD-ROM version of Warcraft 2: Battle.net Edition but with a little extra work. Firstly, you will need to rename the file I provide to Install.exe.

Here's where it gets a little tricky. If your copy of warcraft 2 BNE is cracked, just copy the Install.exe file in the directory where Warcraft 2 got installed.

Otherwise, you will need to find a way to burn a new CD of Warcraft 2 but with the Install.exe file provided in place of the one on the root of the Warcraft 2 BNE CD.

As someone who always loved the Sound Blaster 16 version of WarCraft II soundtrack, I'm very thankful for this. It would be amazing if GOG would actually add the option to play the original DOS version of Tides of Darkness.

thank you so much for this, took me back in time!