OpenCol, a fan reverse-engineering project for Sid Meier’s Colonization, has reconstructed the 1995 Windows release well enough to patch the original COLONIZE.EXE. Its most visible fix finally enables animated river currents and beach surf—frames that were present in the game but never switched on in the Windows version. The water-cycling patch leaves open sea, lakes, marsh and fog still, and adds a Game Options → Water Color Cycling toggle.
The patches are available from the win-patches repository or a browser tool that modifies a player’s own executable locally; no game file is uploaded. They require the updated 3.141 Windows build, so the unpatched Windows version included with current Steam and GOG releases needs MicroProse’s official update first. Other patches separate overlapping Colonopedia colonist icons, restore a hidden Picture Viewer, and shorten the introduction screens.
OpenCol has also published documentation on the game’s mechanics and file formats, tools for unpacking and rebuilding Windows and DOS assets, and an archive of 36 recovered fan maps. A companion win31-runtime project uses otvdm and Wine to help run the 16-bit Windows release on modern systems; players still supply their own game files. CivFanatics’ Blake00 has the fuller project roundup and discussion in the OpenCol forum thread.