About
Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos is a 2002 real-time strategy game by Blizzard Entertainment, the third game in the Warcraft series and the first rendered in 3D; it follows the Burning Legion's invasion of Azeroth via the Undead Scourge, and received a 2003 expansion, The Frozen Throne. Warsmash is an unofficial Warcraft III emulator built on the LibGDX engine in Java. It ships with no Warcraft III assets — players must own a legitimate copy of the game and point Warsmash's configuration at their own installation files. It supports a range of Frozen Throne patches from 1.22 through 1.32, but not patch 1.33 or later, since the 3D model format changed in that release. Development draws on ported code from several other open-source Warcraft III tools, including the mdx-m3-viewer model viewer and the HiveWE terrain renderer.
How it differs from the original
Warsmash doesn't fully reproduce every audio and graphics detail of official Warcraft III clients on later patches — for example, unit voices introduced with Reforged's lip-sync system don't load correctly, and its FLAC-to-WAV audio translation can make some sounds noticeably worse than the source files.
Getting started
Running Warsmash requires manually configuring its INI settings to point at the game data from your own Warcraft III installation — the specific settings needed vary by patch version, from 1.22 through 1.32 (patch 1.33 and later aren't supported). It can be built and run from IntelliJ, Eclipse, or the Linux command line via Gradle, or packaged into a standalone release build.
History
The project's maintainer previously built the Retera Model Studio tool since 2012 and reused its Warcraft III asset-loading code for Warsmash; a 2022 rumor that Warsmash had been taken down by an Activision Blizzard cease-and-desist letter was false and originated from a since-removed parody video. The project's license was also changed from MIT to AGPL after it was found that one of its dependencies was GPL-licensed.
Known limitations
- audio: From Patch 1.32 onwards, unit voices do not load correctly due to Reforged lip-sync format changes.
- audio: FLAC audio format translation to WAV may cause audio to sound tinny or degraded compared to playing files externally.
- graphics: DDS texture sRGB calculations may cause some textures to appear visually dark, particularly on Patch 1.32.
- graphics: Classic graphics mode shows blocky compression artifacts in DDS textures compared to historical BLP counterparts.
- compatibility: Patch 1.33 and beyond are not supported; only Frozen Throne Patch 1.22 through 1.32 are compatible.
Additional notes
- Credits
- The engine incorporates ported/adapted code from several other open-source Warcraft III tools and their contributors, including mdx-m3-viewer, HiveWE, and parsers originally written by DrSuperGood, PitzerMike, and OgerLord.