Thousands Play Starcraft 2 on Linux

I play Starcraft 2 on Linux and apparently I'm not the only one. At the end of last month I wrote a brief guide for getting Starcraft 2 working under Linux using Wine. In the last ten days that guide has gotten nearly nine thousand views and currently has ninety comments.

Now I've talked before about why I think there is a market for creating games for Linux and I think my above statistics only reinforce this idea. Don't believe me? Think about it this way - lets assume half of the people (4,500) who have checked out my guide have purchased the game and would prefer to play it on Linux. The game currently retails for 60$ USD.

4,500*60$ = 270,000$

That would be over a quarter of a million dollars from Linux gamers (in just over a week of the game's release). Are you telling me it would cost more than a quarter of a million dollars to bring a game, that can already run 100% using OpenGL, to the Linux operating system?

I doubt it.

I know more than a few Windows users who would drop the OS in a heart beat if they could play their Blizzard games under Linux and I know there are plenty of Linux users who would start buying Blizzard games if and only if they started creating native Linux installers.

So what do you say Blizzard? Comon - give us a native version of Starcraft 2 on Linux! It is 2010, people are using more than just Windows and OSX on their personal computers!

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Perfect Terran Proxy Build Order - Starcraft 2

Today we take a short break from our normal broadcasting to talk about a bit of gaming strategy.




In Starcraft 2 a "proxy" means you fore-go building in your own base and instead build your unit producing structures nearly on top of the opposing player. Timing is everything when using a proxy, so it is best used in maps where you know the starting location of your opponent(s). The following proxy build order is something I have been perfecting since the game was in beta and with the right amount of micromanagement I have found it rarely looses.

If you have never read a Starcraft build order before, the number before each listing is the number of SVCs you should have before building each object. In this particular build order the item listed in bold should be constructed in your starting base.

8 - Barracks
10 - Supply Depot
10 - Marine
10 - Barracks
10 - Marine
10 - Marine
12 - Bunker

The two key elements to any successful proxy are speed and micromanagement. As soon as the game starts, select five of your six starting SCVs and have them get to mining - the sixth SCV (your builder) should begin making his way to just outside the enemy's base. At the same time while all this is going on, get your first two additional SVCs building at the command center.

Most maps are large enough that by the time your builder SCV is outside the enemy's base you should have 150 minerals to get your first barracks building (if not wait a few moments). While that is building you should have time to build two more SCVs, followed up by a supply depot back in your home base.

As soon as your barracks finishes it should start producing marines - all of your barracks should be constantly producing marines until the match is over (which in a perfect world will be just a few more minutes). Now you have to wait around a few moments to gather resources, your first marine should finish and you should get your second training. Sometime between your first and second marine you should now have enough minerals to get your builder started on a second barracks. While he works on that make sure your first barracks continues to pump out marines and to ensure a steady cash flow once you get into combat you will want to produce two more SCVs as soon as you have the funds.

With 12 miners going you should have enough minerals to get a flow of marines building at your second barracks and throw down a bunker just outside their ramp. Right about the time you get your fifth marine your bunker should be finishing up - this is where the micromanagement begins. Take your group of five marines and attack forward into their base. If you meet heavy resistance, attack and then fall back to your bunker - if your opponent is a poor player (or not paying attention) you can bunker your marines and easily kill off their units.

That is the core of the build and typically enough to throw most people off their game. The key in winning the game from this point forward is to keep almost constant pressure on the other player by attacking with your continuous flow of marines. In terms of expanding more, you should have more money than just two barracks can drain, I typically construct a second supply depot at my starting base, a few extra SCVs, and then a third (and possibly a fourth) barracks at my proxy.

If you are having an issue with pushing all the way into the opponent's base right away, I've found constructing a second bunker at the top of their ramp you can retreat to does wonders. Also important to remember is that if you kill off all of a player's offensive units gun it for their mining line before destroying their buildings. A decent player will most times order their miners to attack what is left of your marines - do not let them surround your squad. Micro back and forth (lure them all the way back to your bunker if you can) dealing what damage you can to their miners in the mean time.

That is the jist of it - pour your stream of marines into their base until they quit or are wiped out. Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you - if you find something that works slightly better, let me know! I am always looking to improve my game :)

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Starcraft 2 on Linux with Wine

Okie dokie - so I've mentioned before that I play Starcraft 2 under my Linux install with no issues. Since the game's official release a few days ago I have been getting a good bit of traffic on those two pages - so I figured I would put together a quick HOWTO for getting Starcraft 2 working on your Linux distro of choice. The game runs under Wine 1.2 and/or Crossover Games 9.1 with a small bit of work (the latter is easier to make work).

Since free is good I'll talk about the Wine HOWTO first. First off, download and install Wine 1.2 on your system. Next, run the following commands in terminal:

cd ~/Downloads

wget http://winezeug.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/winetricks

chmod +x winetricks

./winetricks droid fontfix fontsmooth-rgb gdiplus gecko
./winetricks vcrun2008 vcrun2005 allfonts d3dx9 win7

winecfg

In the configuration Window it opens go to the libraries tab and enter mmdevapi in the new override for library box and click add. Now scroll through the existing over rides list for mmdevapi click edit and set it to disabled. Finally click on the audio tab and set it to alsa.

If you still have audio issues after doing this and your distro uses Pulse Audio (Ubuntu does) install Wine 1.2 that has been built with pulse audio support with the following commands in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:c-korn/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

As of Crossover 9.1 Starcraft 2 is listed as "officially support" and as such you will find that it has an entry in the automated games installer. The only issue is that after the game has actually finished installing the StarCraft 2 process hangs around - meaning Crossover never actually knows that the game has finished installing and thusly never creates menu entries for it. Thank fully there is a simple fix for this - after Starcraft 2 has finished installing, open up your system monitor and look for any rogue Starcraft 2 processes and kill them off. After you have done this the CXGames installer will know that it has finished installing and will create the menu entries as it should.

If you have audio issues under Crossover you can open your Starcraft 2 bottle's WineCFG, select the audio tab, and set hardware acceleration from full to emulated.

Also - if you are trying to install from the retail CD (with Wine or Crossover) you might need need to manually mount the disc due to an issue with its split PC/Mac auto mounter. To do this run the following two commands in terminal:

sudo umount /media/SC2*

sudo mount -t udf -o ro,unhide,uid=$(id -u) /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

Note some drives may use /dev/sr0 (or other mount points) instead if /dev/cdrom. If you are having issues getting it working scroll through the comments for some good tips - if you are still unable to get it working after that, make a comment of your own :)

Also - if you are attempting to get the game running with an ATI card, it was suggested in the comments that making it run under a virtual desktop allows it to run on some systems it otherwise fails to work on.

I tested the above methods on Ubuntu 10.04, Linux Mint Debian, and Chakra - but they should be applicable to any modern Linux distribution. Have any issues feel free to drop a comment below and I will do my best to lend a hand debugging. Happy gaming!

~Jeff Hoogland

Starcraft 2 and a bit of Wine - Linux Performance

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

I mentioned earlier this month that I was enjoying the Starcraft 2 beta on Ubuntu 10.04 thanks to Wine software. In my previous posting I had simply stated that SC2 was "playable" under Wine. I have a fairly powerful gaming laptop that sports an nVidia 260m GTX and a 1680x1050 resolution panel. SC2 defaulted itself under Wine to "ultra" settings on my system - after playing one game at these settings (well it was really more like playing a slide-show). I promptly lowered the details and textures to low (while leaving the resolution the same).

With these settings I average around 40 FPS at the main menu and in game. At the high end I see just over 50 FPS while playing and at the low end it bottoms out around 20 FPS in combat. (For those wondering how I obtained these numbers press control+alt+f to put an FPS counter in the upper left hand corner of the screen while in SC2). These numbers come from the latest SC2 patch as of today (05/25/10).

Now for a bit of an ironic story regarding SC2. Late last night I dual booted my system with Windows 7 Ultimate again due to the need for an embedded youtube video to work in an Office 2007 power point presentation (it failed to work under Crossover and youtube plays poorly in VMs, thus native install was my only option left). Back on topic - since I had Windows installed anyways I figured I would copy over my SC2 files (god bless Blizzard and their portable installs) and see how comparable the performance was on the native operating system.

Needless to say it performs better, in fact the FPS I see under low settings on Wine is about equal to the same FPS I was seeing under high settings on Windows. That is about where the things that worked better under Windows ended for SC2 on my computer.

I would like to prefix my following statement with the fact that my network drivers are installed, working, and I had used several other applications online just fine.

When I joined my first SC2 game on Windows I had just selected my workers to start mining when the lag started, around two minutes later I was dropped from the game and it counted as a loss in my ladder league. I figured it was just something funky with my internet line, even though I had not had any issues in SC2 under Wine in the last three weeks, as such I promptly selected "find match" to start another game. Two minutes later I had "lost" another ladder game due to "connection" issues.

Fan-flipping-tastic.

Just out of curiosity I decided to boot in Linux to see if the issue existed there as well (I'm hoping the irony of rebooting into Linux to play a game isn't lost on anyone). Needless to say the problem was not present there, after sweeping two ladder games without any connection issues on Ubuntu I can indeed confirm that it was a "connection" issue with the SC2 was only happening under Windows.

Yes: I know this game is still in beta.
Yes: I know odds are this issue is limited to my system.

Is it still annoying? Yep. It is ridiculously ironic? You bet.

Anyone else have fun story they would like to share about an application working better under Wine than it does on Windows itself?

~Jeff Hoogland

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