Warning: This HOWTO comes with no explicit or implicit warranty whatsoever. Use at your own risk!
Table of Content
Preface
Preparations
Installation
Brood War Installation
Running the Game
Battle.net
Resources
1. Preface
Starcraft, along with its expansion pack, Starcraft: Brood War, are among the most popular RTS games in existence. Even though both games are many years old, many people still play Starcraft. This HOWTO should make it possible for almost any Linux user to run Starcraft's single-player campaign flawlessly. Playing on Battle.net is also functional, although there is a known Wine bug that causes the Battle.net menus to not display properly. However, Battle.net is still usable, and once you join/start a game, it works perfectly. The Wine developers hope to fix this problem so Starcraft can make it to the Wine "Gold List".
2. Preparations
2.1. Downloading Wine binaries
Download the latest version of Wine from:
http://www.winehq.org/site/download
2.2 Adding your CD-ROM drive
To bring up Winecfg, run the command
wine winecfg
Click on the Drives tab, click Add, and then click "browse". Choose your CDROM drive and press OK. Then press "Apply".
2.3 Sound Configuration
If neccessary, bring up Winecfg, click on the Audio tab, and change "Hardware Acceleration" to "Emulation". Press "OK" to exit Winecfg.
3. Installation
Installation is pretty straightforward. Insert the Starcraft CD, (not the Brood War CD), and in a terminal, go to your CD drive
cd [location of your CD drive]
Then, type this command into the terminal to start the installer
wine setup.exe
Enter your CD key and follow the steps to finish the installation. At the end, do not click "Play Starcraft". Exit the installer. To run the game, see section 5.
4. Brood War Installation
This section is for the Starcraft: Brood War expansion pack. If you don't have Brood War, skip to section 5.
Insert the Starcraft: Brood War CD, and in a terminal, go to your CD drive
cd [location of your CD drive]
Then, type this command into the terminal to start the installer
wine setup.exe
Enter your CD key and follow the steps to finish the installation. At the end, do not click "Play Starcraft". Exit the installer. To run the game, see section 5.
5. Running the Game
Run Starcraft using this command:
wine [path to Starcraft folder]/starcraft.exe
By default, the path to the Starcraft folder is
[path to home foler]/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/
If Starcraft runs slowly, use this command:
wine [path to Starcraft folder]/starcraft.exe nice -20
While running the game, there maybe some sound issues and restarting the game usually fixes them.
6. Battle.net
6.1 Preliminary Notes
While Battle.net works on Wine, it has two major issues. The most important one is that the Battle.net menus doesn't show up properly. However, the menus is still usable (just harder to use), and once you join/start a game, everything works perfectly.This is a known bug in Wine, and you can vote for it here:
http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2467
The other issue is patching. You must have the latest patch to run Starcraft on Battle.net, and I haven't been able to successfully patch the game through Battle.net. Instead, I had to manually download the patch from the Blizzard website. Also, for some reason the sound in Starcraft messes up in the Battle.net menus, but is fine when the game begins.
6.2 Installing the patch
Download the patch from here:
http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=msc0411p
(If you are using the original Starcraft, download the patch for "Orignal". If you are using the Brood War expansion pack, download the patch for "Expansion")
Run the patch using these commands:
cd [path of folder the patch is in]
wine [name of patch].exe
Wait for the patch to install, and when it is done, and click OK. Starcraft will start. If the game is running slowly or the sound is messed up, close Starcraft and run it using the command in section 5.
After installing the patch, simply run Starcraft and Battle.net should be functional.
7. Resources
The WINE website has a support/reference page on Starcraft with helpful information here:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?versionId=149
The bug where the Battle.net menus in Starcraft don't display properly is here: