Monday, May 3, 2010

Some WINE with your Starcraft 2?

EDIT: If you stumbled upon this page looking for a HOWTO for getting Starcraft 2 working under Wine check here.

It finally happened. I have a Starcraft2 closed beta key! What feels like decades ago now I had applied for a Starcraft2 beta key on Battle.net and had all but given up hope after many months of waiting when a friend was kind enough to give me one of his invite passes. I entered the key into my account and was thoroughly excited when I saw the beta appear in my downloads. I was clicking through the website as quick as I could so I could get the game downloading, when reality came crashing down on top of me as I hit the downloads page and was asked to choose between a Windows and an OSX client.

What is a Linux user to do? With the recent release of Ubuntu 10.04 I had removed Windows 7 from my hardrive as it had not been booted into in over a month and was simply taking up storage space. My first thought was to simply reinstall Windows 7, giving it just enough space to boot and install Starcraft. Then I thought about the fact that I almost never reboot my system and that having to restart just to play Starcraft would be a real kill joy (and a time waster).

I run all of my source engine games on Linux via CXGames however upon looking at their entry for Starcraft II I had little faith that it would work under Crossover. Not quite ready to give up hope yet I headed over to the WINE AppDB entry for SC2, lo-and-behold it had a gold rating! Browsing through the page you will find a wonderful HOWTO for recompiling WINE from git with a custom patch for SC2. Always one to jump in with both feet first I promptly uninstalled my current WINE version from my system and began downloading/compiling a patch version of 1.1.43 Twenty minutes later (I have a fairly good processor) I had the patched version of WINE built and installed. I then proceeded to download the beta client and get it installing under WINE (I also followed the directions here that contains some extra tweaks for running the beta under WINE, it also installs SC2 to it's own WINE prefix).

I have been happily playing Starcraft 2 under Ubuntu 10.04 for the last three days now. All I have to say is that it is a true testament to how much progress the WINE project has made in recent years when it can be counted upon to run a new title that hasn't even been fully released yet! Performance under WINE is not perfect, but on lower settings it is more than playable (which is what really counts). There seems to be a processor bottle neck on higher detail settings (also present in L4D2 under WINE actually) that hinders performance.
~Jeff Hoogland

21 comments:

  1. As a fellow Linux user, I am thrilled that WINE is usable for something other than ies4linux .

    I am deeply impressed, as I have had trouble running older titles under WINE before. Thanks for being the guinea pig on this one.

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  2. I play WoW on native Wine for some time now. No bugs, no problems.

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  3. Right on Jeff, awesome post! I think I might pre-purchase this game... hopefully it will stay working in Wine.

    Aside from using OpenGL instead of DirectX, It would be nice if gaming companies would help to make sure their games run really well on Wine. "Certified to Run in Linux with Wine" - This would be something they could sell to Linux users. Google is working on WebGL, hopefully this will change the direction of gaming, as in moving it away from being platform-specific.

    Here's a guy on youtube (Jakejw93) that has 70 windows games running Linux. Many of the games are popular games too! amazing
    http://www.youtube.com/user/Jakejw93#p/c/3EF5F3D0EBADD7BF

    I have a few of my own videos of windows games in Wine as well:
    http://www.youtube.com/user/thecoolguy4linux#p/u/10/gJJBt4ElT3g

    Looking forward to hearing how you like SII.. oh and if you ever have any beta invites to get rid of... I'm at shannonvanwagner.com lol

    BTW - I'm still working on cwtv.com (and now nbc.com) to get the full episodes working for Linux. I was thrilled to see a story about it on linuxjournal.com - http://digg.com/linux_unix/Stupid_Television_Executives_WTF_R_U_BLOCKING_LINUX
    Is your G/F still liking Mint?

    Cheers!

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  4. Games were the only reason I held onto Windows through 2008. I finally decided games weren't important enough to keep a version of Windows on one of my hard drives. I'm thrilled to hear that SC2 is works with WINE. I'm enough of a Diablo fan to have considered using Windows again when D3 comes out. You've given me great hope I won't have ANY reason to ever use Windows again.

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  5. Yes she is! We actually removed Vista from here system about a month ago... No looking back :)

    As for SC2... I love it! I just need to get my new build order do for the new unit sets.

    ~Jeff

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  6. I feel like I am the only one who cannot manage to get sc2 running under wine. I tried patching it so it did not crash when I tried to log in but now it crashes after the load screen.

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  7. What graphics card? If it is not nVidia that is why...

    ~Jeff

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  8. Jeff you know there are other possible reasons...

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  9. I am trying to run it using an NVidia 8800 GTS with 195.36.15 drivers.

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  10. Try upgrading your driver and following the instructions found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1435314

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  11. What video card are you using? Do you recommend for Linux+Wine+3D?

    I have an oldish NVidia dual head DVI/VGA and back in the day there were 3D issues. Might be time to upgrade :D

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  12. I *highly* recommend a new nVidia card. I have a nVidia gtx260 mobile in my laptop

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  13. Using nVidia Geforce 8800.
    Btw, do you usually watch replays? http://www.sc2rep.net is my favorite replay bank =)

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  14. wow!
    to the key has been distributed?

    OMG it means i really did not get one as I am also waiting for it.

    anyways, thanks for sharing for it.

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  15. I have also got Starcraft 2 Beta Wings of Liberty working under Ubuntu Lucid Lynx (32 bits). Check my HOWTO here:

    http://slickeel.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/starcraft-2-beta-wings-of-liberty-in-ubuntu-lucid-lynx-with-wine/

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  16. Thanks for the Article and Link been waiting to play after seeing http://www.youtube.com/user/HDstarcraft#p/u/3/JtNQrjMI7l8 looking good so far

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  17. I am not accustomed to Ubuntu technology but so far i like it :), is there any "simple way" :P, to install starcraft2 using Wine ??

    please help ^_^

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  18. @Alex - The simplest way is to just follow the guide that is posted on the Wine AppDB. It is a custom compile of Wine, but really it is fairly straight forward.

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  19. I'm not into StartCraft but I did buy Left 4 Dead and one trick that really helps with performance is to use Windowed full screen vs just full screen. I'm don't really know why but I'm interested to see if this helps with performance.

    :D

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  20. It brings us wonderful experience.

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  21. I run openSUSE on my laptop but I like to try ubuntu. Do you think kubuntu+wine will run as smoothly as ubuntu+wine? I sorta like the looks of kubuntu more...

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