Yesterday I outlined how to install and play StarCraft and the BroodWar expansion on Ubuntu 8.04. Today I’ll build on that by outlining how to install the 1.15.2 “no CD” patch available from Blizzard Entertainment.
Installing the 1.15.2 “no CD” patch
One thing we quickly realized after installing was that it was a bit annoying to require the CD to play. After some quick searching we found that Blizzard had released a patch that would allow the game to play minus the CD. To install that patch you’ll need to follow a few more steps.
You’ll need to copy some of the CD contents into your StarCraft installation directory. Each CD (StarCraft original and / or the BroodWar expansion) has a file called “install.exe”. This file needs to be copied into your StarCraft installation directory. The file also needs to be renamed according to which it is. This means if you are copying the contents from the StarCraft original game CD the resulting file needs to be renamed “StarCraft.mpq”. If you are copying the install.exe from the BroodWar expansion disk you’ll need to rename that file “BroodWar.mpq”.
The following two commands will properly copy and rename the files on both CDs. If you only have the original and not the BroodWar expansion you only need the first command.
Copy the install.exe file from the StarCraft original installation CD:
cp /media/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Starcraft/StarCraft.mpq
Copy the install.exe file from the StarCraft BroodWar expansion CD:
cp /media/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Starcraft/BroodWar.mpq
One last step is to install the patch itself available from Blizzard. Download the appropriate .exe file for your Starcraft installation (ie; original or BroodWar), run it via wine and you’re done. You can now enjoy playing StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04 without requiring the CD.
Very nice. Classic. Ever play Warcraft 3? There’s also a recent patch from Blizzard for “no cd” in it which was a very exciting find. It was within the past few months that Blizzard did this for these old games. Gotta love the continued support!
My question is, how is wine for you?
I haven’t played Starcraft for awhile, but Warcraft 3 cannot host a LAN game. It can connect to other games hosted on Windows or Mac, but wine users are not allowed to host a game! So, someone is forced to run a non-free operating system to be the host on a LAN.
I’m anxiously awaiting wine 1.2 so I can boast of Blizzard gaming in Ubuntu.
Derek,
Check out the following URL for how to host a LAN game under Wine.
http://klems.net/?p=30
I’ll be looking into that. If you’re desperate for music, or want other CD dependant games to play, I posted a while back on scripts to mount .iso images for WINE and DOSBox on my site: http://www.kozaru.net/2008/05/09/nautilus-scripts-to-mount-iso-images-in-ubuntu/
Don’t mean to spam, thought it might be useful.
Thanks for the fantastic guide! I’m enjoying some “light gaming” on Linux now. 🙂
hey guys i have problem with starcraft and with warcraft 3 aswell. Its strange its kinda runing really slow i dont know why. If anyone could help that would be great.
hay the web site is cool and every thing but I did not find one thing on installing it if you can e-mail me with the instructions as soon as posibel thanks
hallo im new here….im using wine 1.0 in ubuntu 8.04…but i cannot host warcraft iii… can u help me
this worked for debian.
(cdrom is mounted as -o loop, from an iso image)
cp /mnt/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/StarCraft.mpq
d/led blizzard original patch and ran: wine ~/SC-1161.exe
and everything worked 🙂