Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares/Installation

Installing the game

Initially, Master of Orion II was developed for MS-DOS, followed by a Windows 95 and a Mac OS version. The support for the generally bundled MS-DOS/Win95 release as well as the support for the Mac OS release is now provided by Atari.

Regarding the Mac OS version, the latest release is Patch v1.6; however, incompatibilities with Mac OS X were reported.

In theory the Windows 95 version can run under all common 32-bit Windows operating systems. However, it hardly ever runs properly under Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista without some adjustments. Regarding Windows 2000/XP, selecting "Windows 95" in either the Compatibility tab of the program's / shortcut's Properties dialog or Program Compatibility Wizard, and possibly applying specifically developed mouse patches may make MOO II run satisfactorily as a normal Windows application. Various forums suggest that similar techniques work in Windows Vista. Additionally, Vista users have to adjust the latest Direct X upgrade, which removed the dplay.dll file.

Windows 95/98/ME/XP users may also run the MS-DOS version with some adjustments, and this has the advantage that it supports the user-developed enhancements to MOO II. Finally Windows, Linux and Mac OS users may run the MS-DOS version under DOSbox, which is the preferred option for multi-player games over the Internet.

If all else fails, use the emulator DOSBox. DOSbox requires a text configuration file for each game, and instructions for configuring MOO2 are available on the Web.

Multiplayer
Master of Orion II supports multi-player contests between human players as well as single-player contests against AI opponents on the user's computer. Multi-player games are possible via hot seat, modem, serial link, and LAN. Users of the Windows version could play multi-player games via Total Entertainment Network (TEN). But TEN was discontinued in 1999 and players had found that the networking code of the Windows version had serious faults, so most online players used the MS-DOS version in combination with Kali in the following years. New operating systems (e.g. Windows 2000, XP and Vista) and improved hardware (e.g. more than 512MB RAM) made further adjustments necessary in order to use the MS-DOS version.

If all else fails, use the emulator DOSBox.

The emulator DOSBox, in combination with the #MOO2 IRC channel on Quakenet is now the most popular solution for MOO2 online games, because it supports IPX (since DOSBox version 0.65) and also allows Windows users to play against users of other operating systems (e.g. Linux, Mac OS).

Installing
It is now hard to find CDs of the game, but the PC version is still sold as a download.

Mac users simply install the game from the CD or download file.

Users of Unix or Linux must install the MS-DOS version and run it under the DOSBox emulator.

If you use Windows, you may wish to install the MS-DOS version anyway and run it under DOSBox, as this:


 * Avoids the technical issues described below.
 * Allows you to use the "version 1.4" patch and mods.
 * Is the preferred option for multi-player games (see below).

Whatever operating system you use, it's best to copy all of the game files from the CD (if you have one) before running the installer, as loading artwork and sounds from the CD makes the game a lot slower. The game files are only about 350MB, which is about 0.1% of the size of modern disk drives. After running the installer, edit file  to point to your MOO2 folder / directory rather than to the CD drive (use an absolute path, not a relative path; for example d:games\moo2 with no final \).

Windows issues
In theory the Windows 95 version can run under all common 32-bit Windows operating systems. However, it hardly ever runs properly under Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Vista without some adjustments. For Windows 2000/XP, selecting "Windows 95" in either the Compatibility tab of the program's / shortcut's Properties dialog or Program Compatibility Wizard, and possibly applying specifically developed mouse patches may make MOO II run satisfactorily as a normal Windows application. Various forums suggest that similar techniques work in Windows Vista. Additionally, Vista users have to adjust the latest Direct X upgrade, which removed the dplay.dll file.

But there is no guarantee that these techniques will work. On some systems the game may simply crash or freeze immediately. On others the results can be even more frustrating as problems appear only after you are well into a game, for example the screen colors may go wrong and restarting the game or even the operating system may not cure it.

Configuring DOSBox to run MOO II
There are two easy ways to deal with this: copy a configuration file from a Web site; or use a "front-end" such as DBGL. Many front-ends can create shortcuts to configurations for specific games - usually to the Desktop, but you can then move them to your Start Menu.

MOO II under DOSBox behaves like a normal Windows program - for example you can task-switch out of and into it.

Multiplayer
For several years most online players used the MS-DOS version in combination with Kali. New operating systems (e.g. Windows 2000, XP and Vista) and improved hardware (e.g. more than 512MB RAM) made further adjustments necessary in order to use the MS-DOS version.

DOSBox, in combination with the #MOO2 IRC channel on Quakenet, is now the most popular solution for MOO II online games, because it supports IPX (since DOSBox version 0.65) and also allows Windows users to play against users of other operating systems (e.g. Linux, Mac OS).

Technical support
The support for the generally bundled MS-DOS/Win95 release as well as the support for the Mac OS release is now provided by Atari.