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!
If you connect to bnet, it will install the latest patch which remove CD checking. The same applies to Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2.
The only trouble I’ve found, is no Broodwar.net 🙁
Apart from that, Starcraft == YAY!
actually you dont have to install it if you already install it in windows (for dual booter user)
just execute wine /path/to/starcraft.exe
btw, i wonderfing if the new starcraft 2 will be able to play on wine =_=”
This is relevant to my interests.
You may want to upgrade (http://www.winehq.org/site/download-deb) to the latest wine, since wine version 0.9.59, which ships with Ubuntu 8.04 has a bug (http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12343) that makes the use of shift and ctrl keys sub-optimal.
The bug might not be a deal-breaker for Starcraft, but for other games it really is.
Note that any time you install a Windows application with Wine, you should write to the developer and let them know that there is demand for their application under Linux. If we don’t let the developers know that we want their products, we will forever be chasing our tails (and the Windows API) with Wine.
Taken directly from the wiki on Ubuntu’s website :
“This is a simple registry edit for Wine that will dramatically increase the framerate in game. It is gathered from this thread on Ubuntuforums.org: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=303509
Open a terminal window, type regedit and press enter. This will start the Wine equivalent of the windows registry editor. If you are familiar with using the registry editor under windows then this is pretty much the same.
1.
Find this key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\
2. Highlight the wine folder in the left hand pane by clicking left on it. The icon should change to an open folder
3.
Right-click on the wine folder and select [NEW] then [KEY]
4.
Replace the text New Key #1 with OpenGL
5.
Right-click in the right hand pane and select [NEW] then [String Value]
6.
Replace New Value #1 with DisabledExtensions (Notice it’s case sensitive!)
7. Then double click anywhere on the line, a dialog box will open.
8.
In the value field type GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object
Note: If you are unable to rename the newly created key “New Key #1” to “OpenGL” then expand the left hand pane of the regedit window using the vertical divider bar. You should now be able to change it. A known bug in Wine is causing this unwanted behavior.”
I did exactly as the tutorial instructed, and I can’t find starcraft in my virtual C drive, or in my start-menu-like-thing. I’m running kubuntu hardy heron (Directly from the CD, except for updates, firefox, and hopefully starcraft.). I’m not yet a linux expert ether (I was fed up with Broken windows.)
Correction:
Apparently, it actually will work on the third interation of the exact same commands. Go figure. I’m now running it. Thanks!
Is there any solution to host games with ubuntu starcraft? I have forwarded the requied ports (6112-6120) to my machine on my router, it works with windows, but the ubuntu not let anyone to join to my games. Also, I have fixed ip, to the port forwarding have effect.
starcraft is COOL!!!!
Everything works up until i try to install it, my ‘right-click > Open With’ works, but then nothing comes up, i tried the command ‘wine /media/cdrom/install.exe’ and it didnt pop up with anything.
PLEASE HELP!
so install starcraft and broodwar using wine and everything seems to be fine but when i try to play it, it says i didnt insert the cd… but clearly i have the CD in there or i wouldnt of been able to install it…
any ideas???