Part I: Basic Information:

Currently, the only known method for making war2bnet customs is to either directly edit your War2Dat.mpq file, or create a new, fill in MPQ, called War2Patch.mpq. When WarcraftIIBne.exe is run, it loads your War2Dat.mpq then checks for War2Patch.mpq, when the patchmpq is found, it will load the new data contained in it over the data for War2Dat.mpq. When making a War2bnet edition custom, you are basically creating your own "Patch" to load into Warcraft2.

GFX/GRP Files
GFX files are the older image file used for Warcraft2 DOS. GRP files are the new extension used in War2BNE. The two file types appear to be interchangable, and a GFX file needs only be changed to a .grp file in order to be compatible with War2BNE.

WAV Files
War2BNE uses .wav files for all audio in the game (Music, SoundFX, Intros, etc.) Although it has little compressionn to it by default, the MPQ format does support fairly good compression of WAV files when the mpq is compiled.

PCX Files
PCX files are only used for background images and button overlays. They include the title screen, chat screens, and pretty much anything else that doesn't really change.

TBL Files
TBL files generally contain the text data for mission briefings or text updates.

Others
There are alot of other miscellanous file types in the War2Dat.mpq, but not much of them are really important/easily editable

Part II: Preparing To Compile MPQ:

When first getting ready to compile your mpq, you will want to make sure that you have gotten all of the files you want to add into War2BNE properly configured, and you will need to get the path to which these files need to be entered into the War2Patch.mpq

Getting Directory Paths
Assuming you have general knowledge with MPQ viewing, simply load the War2Dat.mpq into your MPQViewer and find the file you want to modify. The file should be preceded by something like Art\Unit or Gamesfx\ or Rez\ or something similar, these paths are required in the new mpq in order for the game to load them over the default ones.

When doing unit editing, units that can gather resources will generally have two or more .grp files, each one for a seperate resource. It will generally be under L_ for lumber, G_ for gold or other _ prefixes. Just double check before you make your custom so you dont' get people complaing about your MegaDelux peon turning to normal after they gather some resources.

Naming Files
I generally recommend naming files you made to something like MYGRIPHON.grp or something along those lines, just so you can differentiate between your files and a War2BNE file.

Part III: Reading MPQ Files:

There are two main MPQ viewers available, there is one from camelot systems (www.camsys.org) and some older ones that were made primarily for Diablo/Sc (I use MPQView v1.1 included in this zip) Both viewers should be able to serve your purpose of simply locating the directory path or extracting files. MPQ2K can read an mpq file structure by issuing the below command into your command prompt.

MPQ2K L Target.mpq Listfile.txt --- will list all files in the mpq to Listfile.txt with paths

Data Files
Data files are simply .TXT files that an MPQ viewer uses to determine the files inside the MPQ it is reading. The data file from camelot systems is in this zip. MPQ2K files have Listfiles.

Extracting
There are basically two ways of extracting data from an MPQ. You can load the mpq into your MPQ viewer and save the file from there, or use mpq2k's extraction command.

Part IV: Creating MPQ Files:

Basic Rules
When entering the data for your MPQ file, make sure that you do the directories as \'s and not /'s, the mpq is sensitive to this when being read by War2BNE. A file can generally only be replaced by a file of the same type. ex. you cant replace a .pcx with a .wav.M

StarEdit Method (old)
With the use of an old stardraft addition, you could load any files you wanted into a .scm file and specify the mpq path to save them too. (SCM files are just mpq's) This method is not very handy though, and can have some hard instructions on how to do it

MPQ2k
A recently released tool. MPQ2K puts mpq creation into an easy to understand prompt/scriptable form. With simple commands, you can put all the files you want into an mpq quickly and easily. One thing that I've noticed is that the compression doesn't really seem up to par with that of StarEdit, but is only likely to improve as time goes on.

To add/create a file with MPQ2k, the following command must be giving at the command prompt

MPQ2K a War2Patch.mpq File.ext Path\Path\file.ext

(path\path is the directory path) (file.ext is the file and it's extension to put in)(see mpq2k doc)

Another useful feature for large modifications is the use of MPQ2k's scripting feature. By making a .txt file of command, you can have mpq2k go through it and issue all of the commands and get your files done much quicker. A script MUST be in this format for war2 patching:

O War2Patch.mpq 2000
a File.ext Path\Path\file.ext
a File2.ext Path\Path\file2.ext
a File3.ext Path\Path\file3.ext
a File4.ext Path\Path\file4.ext
C

Capitilization IS Important