Ubuntu Tutorials

My younger brother spent this last weekend with me and planted the bug (as little brothers are apt to do) of playing video games again. It has been quite some time since I have played many games, but he’s all about Guild Wars these days, so I set off to get it running in Wine. Luckily, on a 3D accelerated video card, the whole process is very simple.

We’ll need to run this in Wine, of course, as there is not (yet?) a native release for Linux. To install Wine we can use the following command (or click the package name link below):

sudo aptitude install wine

Once you have Wine installed you can download and install Guild Wars using the network installation method. This will require you download a small executable which will download the required game peices.

wget http://www.guildwars.com/downloads/gwsetup.zip
unzip gwsetup.zip
wine GwSetup.exe

This will download the game requirements and eventually put you at a login screen. You’ll need to login with your Guild Wars username and password. This process will also create a listing in your Applications Menu and a Desktop icon to start the game.

After you’re logged in and all the files are downloaded you’ll be ready to start playing. I’ve been playing the last few days on Ubuntu 9.04 and everything is running smoothly.

Enjoy

Over this last weekend I went to spend some time with my parents and little brothers that still live at home.  My youngest brother, Dan, was playing that old-school strategy game StarCraft.  After watching him play for a bit and remembering the good ‘ol times I had playing StarCraft back in the day I thought I’d give it a try in Wine.  Just as I expected it worked perfectly and before we knew it we had a three player deathmatch going on!

Yes, StarCraft is non-free software in both senses of the phrase, but if you’ve got an old copy lying around you’ll be able to play it just fine on your Ubuntu 8.04 installation.

Install StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04

To install StarCraft (and, yes, this also applies to the BroodWar expansion), you’ll first need Wine.  Wine can be installed using this command:

sudo aptitude install wine

Once you have wine installed you’re ready to get going.  I did not have to tweak anything in my wine configuration to get StarCraft working.  If, however, you find any wine tweaks that make game play more enjoyable please comment.

At this point simply pop in your StarCraft CD and nautilus should open the CD folder contents for you.  Get the installation started by opening the “install.exe” file with wine.  If your “right-click > Open With” does not offer or suggest wine you can do it manually with this command:

wine /media/cdrom/install.exe

If you have the BroodWar expansion repeat the above step for that CD as well.

Tomorrow I’ll outline how to install a patch that will allow playback without requiring the game CD.  With or without the patch you should now have StarCraft available in your menu in:

Applications > Wine > Programs > StarCraft

Enjoy some old-school gaming fun with StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04!