A revival project for the classic Rage Software game Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'

The game is usually installed to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'" but you may install it elsewhere if you prefer, for example, into a dedicated folder for modding, preservation, or portable use.

IMPORTANT : Do NOT use the installer, just follow the instructions below.

• 1 : Copy the Human disc contents to your installation folder.
• 2 : Rename the file "Human.cd" to "Human.cd.bak"
• 3 : Rename the folder "FMV" to "FMV-Human"
• 4 : Copy the contents of the Martian disc to your installation folder ( when prompted, choose not to replace files, or do, it doesn't matter anymore, but fewer writes are better for SSD longevity )
• 5 : Download the latest version from the Releases page, extract the contents and place the files in your install folder.
• 6 : Right-click "WoWLauncher.exe" and choose Send to > Desktop (create shortcut), then launch it and enjoy the game!

LANGUAGES : Language packs are now stand-alone releases.

ADDITIONAL : The launcher will automatically request administrator permissions to ensure registry settings are correctly applied.

NOTE : If you choose to make a language patch using the text editor, feel free to send the "TEXT.ojd" file my way and I will add it to the releases.

WANTED : Regional Manuals : We are looking for high-quality scans of the original physical German (DE) and Spanish (ES) manuals. If you own a physical copy and can provide a scan, please join the Discord or open an Issue!

The road map for this project.

• ✅ 0 : Main Game Functionality ( 100% Complete )
  • Iron changed to say Steel in multiple entries in the TEXT.ojd file.
  • Leading space added to some text to improve appearance in the Critical Event Options menu.
  • Missing entry created for the Credits button in the options menu.
  • Build List screen location is now dynamically set as per the resolution setting chosen in the launcher.
  • Missing pixels have been restored for some building sprites.
  • Alt-tabbing now works as cnc-ddraw is working with the latest version of the smacker wrapper.
  • Various executable edits:
    • 1. 1 byte to skip the "NO CD INSERTED" message in the CD Player menu.
    • 2. 2 bytes to skip creation of the 8/16 bit colour toggles in the "Display Settings" menu.
      • this is because the 8 bit colour mode doesn't work on modern systems.
    • 3. 2 bytes to skip creation of the "Lights" toggle in the "Display Settings" menu.
      • this prevents a crash from occuring when using the infiltration skill in-game.
    • 4. 1 byte to skip checking for the original .smk movie files to save storage space, this patch also allows my movies to play through the wrapper.
    • 5. 9 bytes to redirect to the winmm shim to allow localised playback of the games music.
    • 6. 2 bytes to skip creation of the resolution slider which doesn't change the resolution without restarting the game.
    • 7. 12 bytes changed to adjust the drag select border size from 640x640 to 2048x2048 in the battle map.
  • Languages supported:
    • 1. English
    • 2. French
    • 3. German
    • 4. Italian
    • 5. Spanish
  • Known "bugs" which I consider non-issues for the time-being.
    • Occasional crashes on startup or during gameplay which are caused by a bug in the windows compatibility layer. ( specifically apphelp.dll )
• ✅ 1 : Custom Launcher ( 100% Complete )
  • Quick restart after alt-tab error exit of the game.
  • Advanced registry settings options, now including the ability to adjust the turret build limit.
  • Custom keyboard shortcut settings. (WIP - cancelled)
  • Automatic regeneration of base registry settings, making the installation portable.
  • Automatic cleanup of unnecessary files and Smackw32.dll moved to main directory.
  • Custom pre-set difficulty settings. (Easy, Medium[default], Hard, Extreme)
  • Dynamic asset swapping pipeline with custom assets curated for each supported resolution.
  • Automatic Windows 11 DirectPlay setup.
  • Automatic Compatibility settings applied.
  • Inner and outer, regular and ambient sound borders now updated through the launcher according to the users chosen resolution.
  • Resolution list is filtered to only show resolutions supported by the monitor.
  • New working resolutions added.
    • 1280x768    (15:9)
    • 1280x1024   (5:4)
    • 1360x768    (16:9)
    • 1366x768    (16:9)
    • 1600x900    (16:9)
    • 1600x1024   (5:4)
    • 1680x1050   (16:10)
    • 1920x1080   (16:9)
  • Overclocked resolutions added. ( These resolutions are scaled from the nearest matching aspect ratio and resolution. ) [coming in the next update]
    • Every resolution the monitor reports is supported. ( Overclocked resolutions are only available when using fullscreen mode. )
• ✅ 2 : File Extractor ( 100% Complete )
  • .WoW archives can be extracted.
  • Waveform preview, play and replace sound files from .WoW archives.
  • Decompressing files optional but enabled by default.
• ✅ 3 : Sprite Viewer ( 99% Complete )
  • Sprite viewer can extract and replace game sprites.
  • Export original palette and palette with the shader tables applied.
  • Preview with the original palette or with the shader tables applied.
  • Replace single frame and multi-frame sprites with custom ones.
  • Quantisation of imported images will reduce them to the closest equivalent colour found in the palette through the associated shader table.
  • Known "bugs" with the Sprite Viewer. ( The remaining 1% )
    • 1. Shader tables are not applied to all sprites yet, only a very small number of shader tables are left to be identified.
• ✅ 4 : Unit Viewer ( 100% Complete )
  • Unit viewer can export .WOF models and their embedded textures.
  • Ability to import custom models.
  • Preview the units texture.
• ✅ 5 : Terrain Viewer ( 95% Complete )
  • Terrain viewer can export .CLS geometry and their tile indexed texture map.
  • Ability to import custom geometry.
  • Preview the terrains tilemap.
• ✅ 6 : Building Viewer ( 90% Complete )
  • Building viewer can export .IOB BSP geometry.
  • Ability to export building sprites.
  • Import currently only allows for replacing existing pixels in a sprite due to run-length encoding.
  • Known "bugs" with the Building Viewer. ( The remaining 10% )
    • Importing has a bug that shifts some sprites.
• ✅ 7 : Font Viewer ( 100% Complete )
  • Font viewer can export .FNT files to .png images.
  • Ability to import edited fonts.
• ❌ 8 : Save Editor ( 25% Complete )
  • Save Name, Time & Date editing functionality implemented, along with Swap Sides and Delete Save buttons.
  • Override standard limit of 1753 as the minimum date and set the year manually to as low as year zero.
  • Sector & Area names loaded dynamically from TEXT.ojd to support the regional releases.
  • Building, unit group and unit parsing implemented.
• ✅ 9 : Text Editor ( 100% Complete )
  • All 1397 strings are editable. ( Default game has 1396, new string added for the missing Credits button text, original files also supported )
  • UTF-8 + ISO-8859-1 encoding supported.
  • File is recompiled from scratch based on modifications.
  • Import & Export as .txt file.
  • Undo changes to current string.
  • Edited strings highlighted.
  • Rich text editing with newline support (\n to \r\n handling when loading and the opposite when saving )
• ❌ 10 : Map Editor ( 10% Complete )
  • Basic parsing of .nsb levels.
  • .ojd files can be parsed, but there is still more decoding to do.
• ✅ 11 : No-CD Music Fix ( 99% Complete )
  • Uses a winmm shim that allows for localised audio playback.
  • Added functionality to allow music playback to continue when the window loses focus or is minimised.
  • Persistence added to the "In-Game Music Enabled/Disabled" and sound options through the winmm shim.
  • Master volume now applies to music playback.
  • Known "bugs" which I consider non-issues for the time-being. ( The remaining 1% )
    • 1. The counter increases indefinitely.
    • 2. Doesn't progress to the next track when a track finishes in the CD player menu.
• ✅ 12 : Video Playback Intercept ( 100% Complete )
  • Custom Smackw32.dll that plays upscaled videos at the games resolution.
  • Simple 1920x1080 upscales of all the original videos which get scaled to the games resolution.
  • Includes code for hijacking the credits sequence so that it doesn't crash and creating an overlay to display the credits sequence.
• ❌ 13 : Custom Extended Backgrounds ( 92% Complete )
  • Resolution agnostic custom backgrounds have been made but have yet to be finished.
  • Extended width of the war map, this allows higher resolutions to work.
  • Martian war map now shows Europe in the bottom right corner.
• ✅ 14 : Enhanced Original Assets ( 90% Complete )
  • Reworked many assets in the game to improve their appearance.
    • Martian & Human Unit Icons are now the same for both factions, which makes it easier to tell when using the infiltration skill.
    • Music Track Artwork is now brighter.
    • Reworked 129/445 .spr files in total which includes the vast majority of the user interface, building unit icons, warmap unit icons and battlemap unit icons.
      • This count doesn't include the menu backgrounds and legal screens, which is another 9 files.
      • The extended warmap background includes another 4 files.
      • Full count 142/445 .spr files.
      • Remaining sprite files include mouse cursors, visual effects and parts of menus where there is very little space to add any detail.
• ❌ 15 : Decomp/Recomp ( Started - 1% Complete )
  • Begun mapping out virtual key addresses for use in the launchers custom keyboard shortcut settings. ( "WoWRevived\WoWDecomp\ida-map.txt" )

This might not all happen but I wanted to create a more accessible guide for running the game on modern systems, while the information exists much of it is scattered across the internet.

Discord server : https://discord.gg/bwG6Z3RK8b

Some quality of life changes have been made to the game, from incorrect text entries to the removal of unnecessary buttons and more.

Critical Event Options - Edited

This was fixed by adding two leading spaces to the TEXT.ojd file for these entries.

Critical Event Options - Unedited

Display Settings - Edited

This was fixed by patching the executable to jump past the instructions to create these buttons.

The resolution slider was also removed because this is now handled by the launcher and the original functionality required restarting the game.

Display Settings - Unedited

Unit Border Selection - Changed from 640x640 to 2048x2048

Some missing pixels have been restored for building sprites, seen in the following previews.

A custom launcher that makes it easy to access both campaigns as well as adjust settings.

Custom Keyboard Shortcuts - Work In Progress - Not Currently Enabled

Advanced Settings

A custom file extractor for extracting files from the .WoW archive format the game uses.

A work in progress sprite viewer.

A work in progress unit viewer.

A work in progress terrain viewer.

A work in progress building viewer, this uses the same window as the unit viewer.

A work in progress font viewer.

A work in progress save editor.

A text editor that makes it easy to adjust any entry in the TEXT.ojd file.

A work in progress "Map Editor" that currently just parses the .nsb level data.

A custom Smackw32.dll that intercepts the original smacker calls and replaces them with a more modern system for playing the newly upscaled videos.

Upscaled menu sprites for all supported resolutions which are swapped around when changing the resolution in the launcher.

Human Background Menu

Martian Background Menu

Original Backround Menu

All of the original menu backgrounds sat in the corner at 640x480 no matter the resolution you were using.

Martian War Map - Europe

Though this could use a little cleanup, I added the edge of Europe to the Martian view of the war map.

Similarly though I expanded the Human view of the war map, I chose not to add the edge of Europe, partially because making it look right would be difficult, but also because the style is that of a paper map of the British Isles, which in real life likely wouldn't include Europe in the games timeline and setting.

Expanded Backgrounds

These are a work in-progress, AI (Gemini) was used to generate portions of the extended backgrounds, but they have undergone extensive editing.

There is still a lot of cleanup left to do before these images are viable for use, but I have done my best to try and ensure that they are resolution agnostic and people using different resolutions won't miss out on much.

CD Player Menu - Expanded - Finished

CD Player Menu - Original

Human Briefing Menu

Human Research Menu

Martian Briefing Menu

Martian Research Menu

These are the human battle map unit icons.

These are the martian battle map unit icons.

Many more assets have been reworked, most of which is barely noticeable but in general adds a little more colour depth to the interface.

Thanks to old-games.ru and the author for the original executable patch and winmm.dll shim which I used as a reference for my own fixes : https://www.old-games.ru/forum/threads/patchi-vozvraschajuschie-cd-audio-the-patchs-to-restore-cdda-playback.51778/#post-877625

English manual sourced from : https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Jeff_Waynes_The_War_of_the_Worlds_Manual_Win_EN_OldGamesDownload.com_.pdf

Thanks to Dan Redfield for the Credits patch to the TEXT.ojd file which I then used as reference to patch the other languages versions of that file.

Thanks to RetroKet for setting up and managing the Discord server as well as encouragement and helping identify some bytes in the .WoW archive format.

Thanks to yereverluvinunclebert for creating the front of the filing cabinet drawer, which will be used in a future version for the expanded backgrounds : https://www.deviantart.com/yereverluvinuncleber/gallery

Thanks to Z-Fighter for help testing the project and providing a never-ending supply of screenshots for reference which have saved me a lot of time not needing to fire the game up to see how something should look, as well as for finding a crash in the original game that would occur when using infiltration if lights are disabled in the options.

Thanks to FunkyFr3sh for cnc-ddraw, which provides the DirectDraw translation layer for modern systems. See ddraw-license.txt for the full MIT license.

Thanks to the Discord community for supporting the project and helping out with testing.