# September 2026 - News archive
{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-27T19:43:51Z |title=PudForge and RuneFoundry |author=Ojan |categories=WarCraft II, tools |summary=New WarCraft II map making program and modding tool in the making}}

Recently, {{highlight |text=milestone}} started working on some tools for Warcraft II: {{highlight |text=PudForge}} and {{highlight |text=RuneFoundry}}.

{{highlight |text=PudForge}} is a very competent map editor. The map format is the same in the original DOS versions of Warcraft II as well as the Battle.net Edition and the more recent Remastered version. {{highlight |text=PudForge}} thus works for all of them. The author, {{highlight |text=milestone}}, has made [a video showing the features](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTLuCuUqlOg), and it has some really nice capabilities. I was especially impressed with the terrain editing, as the editor supports copying and pasting terrain, replacing a given terrain type with other types, generating maps, drawing symmetrical shapes and much more. 

{{highlight |text=RuneFoundry}} is a set of mod tools for Warcraft II Remastered only {{dash}} not the DOS originals or Battle.net Edition. It has two programs, a mod launcher and an editor. A [video showing its features is available here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CbPMADp0ao) along with [a video of an example campaign](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKroUVWjOF0) which plays through a campaign made with {{highlight |text=RuneFoundry}}. It can edit things like the campaign, AI-scripts, sprites and unit and weapon properties.

It is fantastic to see such feature rich and capable tools still being put out! Hats off to {{highlight |text=milestone}} for the efforts! 

Find [PudForge here](https://github.com/pudforge/PUDForge) and [RuneFoundry here](https://github.com/pudforge/RuneFoundry).
{{end-newsitem}}



{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-26T09:35:32Z |title=mpqcli 0.11.0 released |author=Ojan |categories=StarCraft I, WarCraft II, modding, tools |summary=mpqcli 0.11.0 released with many new features}}

I just saw that {{highlight |text=Thomas Laurenson}} made a new release of [mpqcli](https://github.com/thegraydot/mpqcli) earlier this week. Many of the changes are things I contributed a while back, that has now made it into release 0.11.0. {{highlight |text=mpqcli}} is a command-line tool to create, add and remove files from MPQ archives. MPQ archives were used for many years by Blizzard games such as StarCraft I and Warcraft II, and contain the game assets that game modifications change.

I'd like to highlight a few of the changes that I contributed to this release:

- A rename subcommand has been added, which allows you to rename a file inside an archive without having to remove and re-add it.

- The logic for updating files in an archive has been improved. When working on archives containing the `(attributes)` file, {{highlight |text=mpqcli}} will now {{dash}} if the `--update` flag is given {{dash}} compare timestamps and checksums in addition to just file size when deciding whether to update a file. This means that it will much more quickly decide whether a file needs to be updated or not, and will avoid unnecessary writes to the archive. This was quite an extensive change, that also involved me making some contributions to [StormLib](https://github.com/ladislav-zezula/StormLib), the MPQ library that {{highlight |text=mpqcli}} uses to read and write MPQ archives.

## Changes in {{highlight |text=mpqcli}} 0.11.0:

**Added**
- Add `rename` subcommand to rename a file inside an archive

**Changed**
- Compare timestamps and checksums when updating files, not size alone
- Accept the `--update` flag for single files as well as directories
- Reject the `--update` and `--overwrite` flags on add when both are given

**Fixed**
- Report filesystem errors instead of aborting when a path cannot be resolved
- Add to and create archives on volumes that cannot report real paths
- Block path traversal in extract before anything is written to disk

**Updated**
- Update {{highlight |text=StormLib}} for a variety of fixes
- Add hash-library as a submodule dependency
- Build with {{highlight |text=StormLib}}'s bundled compression libraries instead of system packages
- Require CMake 3.25 or later

## Download:

Find version 0.11.0 of {{highlight |text=mpqcli}} [here](https://github.com/thegraydot/mpqcli/releases/tag/v0.11.0).
{{end-newsitem}}



{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-26T08:00:13Z |title=Chkdraft 2.15 released |author=Ojan |categories=StarCraft I, tools |summary=Chkdraft 2.15 is out with three changes}}

Yesterday, {{highlight |text=TheNitesWhoSay}} released version 2.15 of the StarCraft I map editor {{highlight |text=Chkdraft}}.

It is a smaller release with three changes:

- The submenu tools/scripts now has a script to downgrade maps from remastered
- Support for new cosmonarchy weapon limits
- Better logging/debugging/browsing when dat file loading has issues

Version 2.15 is available [here](https://github.com/TheNitesWhoSay/Chkdraft/releases/tag/2.15).
{{end-newsitem}}



{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-20T12:48:30Z |title=BlizzCon 2026 |author=Ojan |resources=sc-trailer-holt.png |categories=StarCraft, WarCraft III |summary=BlizzCon 2026 announcements}}

I am probably the last person interested in Blizzard games to hear this, but BlizzCon 2026 wrapped up a week ago. It was last held in 2023, so it's been a while.

There are some announcements for the Warcraft and StarCraft franchises:

- Warcraft III gets its first new campaign in over 20 years: "Return to the Last Days of Lordaeron to experience the fall of one great city and play a part in the founding of another". Blizzard released a [Launch Trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1kXClUCyuA), which seems pretty close to the original intro of Warcraft III from back in the days: two armies clash in futile strife, as the real threat appears from above. A gameplay trailer can be seen [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-C20pyrvjk). It is already available from [Blizzard](https://blizzard.com).

- Blizzard is working on a new StarCraft game! It is an open world, first person shooter that is apparently single player and character focused. The [Announce Cinematic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eQUtOQXYgQ) is pretty gorgeous, but there seems to be no gameplay footage available, and the game is set to be released in 2030; offering "plenty of time for delays". For a deeper dive into what the game might be like, I enjoyed [GameDad VII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0i6hBYgHmc)'s analysis.

{{img |file=sc-trailer-holt.png |title=Still from the StarCraft trailer}}

For me, it certainly sparks excitement to experience the StarCraft universe from this angle. Of course, Warcraft III from 2002 and the new upcomming StarCraft game of 2030 are both much to new for this site; {{highlight |text=Jorvik Systems}} is dedicated to Warcraft I, Warcraft II and StarCraft from the good ole nineties so don't expect much coverage on this site {{dash}} but it's not every day that 23 year old games get a new campaign and the StarCraft universe expand into new types of games.
{{end-newsitem}}



{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-14T19:55:33Z |title=MpqDraft 2026-09-13 released |author=Ojan |categories=StarCraft I, WarCraft II, tools, modding |summary=MPQDraft 2026-09-13 released - Updates to how translations are managed, and added Chinese translations.}}

I released a new version of [MPQDraft](../common/software/mpqdraft.html) yesterday. {{highlight |text=MPQDraft}} is a modding tool that allows in-memory patching of game data files, added features through plugins, and creation of self-executing mods.

This summer, {{highlight |text=jzy-chitong56}} made some Chinese (Simplified) translations for the program and suggested ways in which to make the user experience nicer for those using the translations. While it took me a while to sit down and look at it, I was happy to merge the translations, and {{highlight |text=jzy-chitong56}}'s idea of a dynamic language switcher was much nicer than the convoluted and technical way it was handled before. I thus developed a little menu button on the Main GUI to change languages. Hopefully {{highlight |text=Joel Steudler}}, the graphical artist who made the interface back in the day, won't be too mad at me for slightly deviating from his 2002 work :)

Apart from the new translations and the translations menu, I made it easier to build the application under Arch Linux, and there were improvements to the CI pipeline.

For those who are happy with English and don't intend to build the software yourself, this version unfortunately doesn't bring much excitement. But perhaps that is also a testament to the fact that the original author, {{highlight |text=Quantam}} (Justin Olbrantz), made a pretty solid piece of software back in the day.

See the [MPQDraft page here](../common/software/mpqdraft.html), for a download link.
{{end-newsitem}}



{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-08T16:26:27Z |title=MpqFileLister v1.2.0 released |author=Ojan |categories=StarCraft I, WarCraft II, tools, modding |summary=The MpqFileLister plugin v1.2.0 was just released, featuring more hooked Storm.dll calls, which gives completer results.}}

In [December](../archive/december_2025.html#newsitem_2025-12-13T12:31:02Z), I wrote an {{highlight |text=MPQDraft}} plugin, {{highlight |text=MpqFileLister}} that lists all the filenames that a games accesses in its MPQ archives {{dash}} or at least that was the intention. A peculiarity of MPQs are that they don't contain the file names of the content of the archives. But when accessing them, the game will call functions in Storm.dll to open those files, and by hooking into those calls, we can intercept the file it is attempting to open, thus construct a list of all files that are accessed.

I had thought that hooking into the `SFileOpenFile` and `SFileOpenFileEx` calls would be enough, but when {{highlight |text=luauser32167}} pointed out on [GitHub](https://github.com/sjoblomj/MpqFileLister/issues/1) that the resulting list files were not containing all assets that the game loaded, I realized those two calls were not enough.

I have just made a new release of {{highlight |text=MpqFileLister}} that in addition to `SFileOpenFile` and `SFileOpenFileEx` and also hook into `SVidPlayBegin`, `SFileLoadFile`, `SFileLoadFileEx`, `SBmpLoadImage` and `SBmpAllocLoadImage`. I thus believe all Storm.dll functions that load files by their file names are covered.

In addition, this new release allows the user to freely specify the log format and timestamps, some odd bugs have been fixed and the code has been refactored.

You can find version 1.2.0 of {{highlight |text=MpqFileLister}} on [GitHub](https://github.com/sjoblomj/MpqFileLister/releases/tag/v1.2.0).

This is still rather untested on Diablo I. I tried to test, but Diablo I is just too buggy under Wine on my machine, and I don't have access to a Windows computer. I might try to see if I can contribute to Wine and fix it eventually, but I'm not going to prioritize that for a while yet.

By the way, you might be wondering what the need then is for {{highlight |text=namebreak-cuda}}, which I wrote about in the [previous entry](../archive/september_2026.html#newsitem_2026-09-01T19:59:25Z). The answer is simple: not all files are accessed, but finding and naming them is still of interest.
{{end-newsitem}}



{{begin-newsitem |time=2026-09-01T19:59:25Z |title=New MPQ file name found |author=Ojan |categories=WarCraft II, modding, tools, Namebreaking |summary=Namebreaker found a new filename in the WarCraft II MPQs.}}

For many years, Blizzard used MPQ files as their archive files for many of their games. MPQ files are basically like ZIP files; they store many other files in a compressed format. One quirk of MPQ files is that they don't contain the filenames of their own content. Some MPQ files contain a listfile consisting of the filenames of their content, but other MPQ files do not. For these, an external listfile is needed.

The `War2Dat.mpq` archive of WarCraft II: Battle.net Edition has had a 99% complete listfile for years, but there has been one single file that the community has not known the name of.

Around [a year ago](../archive/may_2025.html#newsitem_2025-05-30T19:26:18Z), I made a tool, {{highlight |text=namebreak-cuda}}, which bruteforces filenames on Nvidia GPUs. While I put the heavy lifting in place, I never quite finished it then. So now, after tweaking it for a bit, I ran it for less than two hours, and it returned the missing filename:

`ART\\CHAT_BNE_PLAIN.PCX`

The `War2Dat.mpq` now has complete listfiles after all these years. I was happily surprised that the search was so quick.

There are other archives that also don't have complete listfiles, to which I turn my attention next. I plan to make the tool more polished, create a server which can coordinate the efforts of finding more file names, and publish the code on GitHub.
{{end-newsitem}}