OS X How to run Starcraft Broodwar on OSX 10.8 or later

I had an itch about a month ago to play the original Starcraft, but I didn’t feel like setting up the G4 all over again. For those of you who have tried to play this on a modern mac, you probably understand that OSX no longer runs PPC code, and boot camp wont help us because Starcraft/Broodwar do not run properly under Windows 7. So what’s the casual gamer to do?

I couldn’t get the porting team stuff to work properly, and virtualizing an entire OS for one old game is ridiculously ineffecient. Remembering how well things went with my ePSXe howto (and how much fun that puzzle was to figure out) I decided to get Starcraft running on OSX Mountain Lion. After a great deal of trial and error, I’ve done it. It’s been one month and I’m almost done with the original campaigns with no significant problems.

A few caveats:
I will not help you pirate Starcraft. Don’t ask me to. Do not post links for torrents either, as linking to pirated software is a no-no here. I want the thread to stay open and help you guys, but if we keep getting flooded with “just download a copy here” links, it will get closed down. (TLDR: Don’t be an ass and post links to torrents here.)
Battle.net will not work in this wrapper. Network play, however, works just fine.
There is a glitch with audio where the first second will be repeated at the end when I character speaks (excluding units). (Note: This glitch does not seem to plague all configurations. I am not sure what causes this.)
The old method creates a stupid shortcut on your mac desktop called "My Mac Desktop." I have no idea why the Crossover engine does this as I cannot imagine it being terribly useful. The new method does not do this.
The OSX cursor sits on top of Starcraft's custom cursor. If you use the old method, it will stay that way. The new method gets rid of the OSX cursor after you click.
If you attempt to switch tasks (cmd+tab), the game will shrink to its native resolution on your mac's normal resolution. While the game will still work, you will not be able to fullscreen it again until you relaunch it.

Adding a new method to this guide resulted in some fragmentation, but I wanted to keep the old method in here just in case some machines dislike the new one. Please read the full instructions before starting so that you can decide which method is for you.

I recommend the new method as it will receive active development from the community and should be most likely to work with new versions of OSX.

It is possible to use the downloaded version of Starcraft Anthology from Blizzard's website, but I haven't purchased this since I already have the games on CD. I will cover the CD method. If anyone wants to give us a walkthrough on using the download instead, please post it. I can merge it and clean this guide up then.

So, lets get started! You will need the following to run starcraft/broodwar on your mac.
a mac (duh)
Starcraft/broodwar CDs and valid keys
a machine with a CD-ROM. This doesn’t have to be in your mac. We just need a way to get the files off the CD. (Note: I’m not explaining how to pull files with OSX because I can’t figure it out.)
a flash drive, hard drive, anything to put the files on for transferring the files to the machine.
Wineskin Winery (available at http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tiki-index.php)
an internet connection so Wineskin Winery can fetch the files it needs
at least 1.7 GB of free space for the game. (Who has less than this?)

Step 1: Get the files off those CDs.

The lovely people at Blizzard put the PPC version and the Windows version of the game on separate sessions of the same disc. When used as intended, you just throw the disc into the machine, and the files needed to run on that platform are the only ones you will see.

We aren’t using this the way Blizzard intended. If you insert the CD into a mac, you will see PPC files, which are useless to us. I want the Windows files. If you can boot into Windows or have a Linux machine laying around, just throw the CDs into that and copy the files off that way. If you only have an OSX machine, this is still possible, but you will need to use the terminal to force the mac to ignore the mac side of the disc and show us the windows side.

I cheated here and just pulled the files with an old Linux machine. If someone here can figure out how to do this within OSX, PLEASE post it in the comments. I can’t make it work.

Step 2: Create a wrapper.

Wrappers allow us to run a windows app inside of OSX. A wrapper is a basic, simulated windows environment tailored to whatever app we drop inside.

After you install Wineskin Winery, we need to fetch the appropriate engine. Click + next to “New Engine(s) Available!” and download “WS8WineCXG10.3.0” (old method) or the latest wine engine (new method) which is, at this time, "WS9Wine1.7.10"

Once installed, select that engine you wish to use from the list (likely the only entry at this point) and click “Create New Blank Wrapper.” While you can name the wrapper whatever you want, let’s just name it “Starcraft.” When finished, click “view wrapper in finder.”

Step 3: Install the game.

Launch the wrapper we just created. A Wineskin dialog will appear. Click “Install Software” followed by “Choose Setup Executable.” Choose “setup.exe” from wherever you put the game files copied off the CD. Install Starcraft as you normally would.

When the Choose Executable dialog appears, tell it to use “/Program Files/Starcraft/StarCraft.exe”

If you want to install Broodwar, hit the install software button again and run through before we move on. Wineskin will complain that no new executables were found. Hit ok. It’s fine. Back out of the installer dialog by clicking cancel, then Quit.

Step 4: Updates and tweaks

We now have a wrapper, but it's running an out-of-date version of the game and needs a few tweaks before we are ready to play. Before we continue, we need to fetch an update from Blizzard.

click here: https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/starcraft-patch-information

Pay attention to what the site is telling you! If you have Broodwar installed, fetch the Broodwar patch. If you only have the original game installed, get the patch for that. You do not need both. Remember, we want the PC patches, not the mac patches, because we are actually running the PC version of the game.

We need to tinker with the wrapper, so let’s open it up. Right-click on your wrapper and hit “Show Package Contents.” Launch the Wineskin app contained within.

When the Wineskin dialog appears, hit "Install Software" again. Choose setup executable, and hit the patch we just downloaded. The updater will complain about not finding the CD when it finishes, but we aren’t ready to launch the app yet anyway, so we don’t care. Click exit. Again, Wineskin will complain that it doesn’t notice any significant changes. Hit ok. Cancel out of the installer dialog.

When you return to the first Wineskin dialog, click on advanced. (Change the program version if you want. It doesn’t really matter what is in there. It just tells the Finder what version to report.) Click the tools button, then in the Wine Tools column, click “Registry Editor (regedit).” Windows geeks will recognize this instantly.

These changes tell the wrapper exactly how we want it to draw to the screen. Browse to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D.

If you are using the WS8WineCXG10.3.0 engine (old Crossover method), make this registry change:
In the right pane, right click in a blank area and hit New->String Value. Name it “DirectDrawRenderer” and set the value to “mac”

If you are using the WS9Wine1.7.10 or newer engine (new method), make these registry changes:
In the right pane, right click in the blank area and hit New->String Value. Name it “DirectDrawRenderer” and set the value to “gdi”.
Right click in the blank area again and hit New->String Value. Name this one “OffScreenRendering” and set the value to “fbo”.
Right click in the blank area again and hit New->String Value. Name this one “RenderTargetLockMode” and set the value to “readtex”.
Right click in the blank area again and hit New->String Value. Name this one “VideoMemorySize” and set the value to “256”.

Both engines follow the rest of these instructions
Click the “Registry” menu and exit. Get out of all those dialogs, right-clicking in the dock and exiting from there if that pesky Busy dialog is telling us to wait.

Finally, we need to copy over game files so that we can play without CDs. Toward the end of Starcraft’s life, Blizzard included diskless gameplay in one of its patches for the game. We do not need to hack anything!

Each game has an Install.exe file on the disc. For Starcraft, copy install.exe into the wrapper (remember show package contents?) in /drive_c/Program Files/Starcraft/ and rename it to “StarCraft.mpq”. Do the same thing with Broodwar, if you have it, but rename it’s install file to “BroodWar.mpq”

Close out of the wrapper.

Step 5: ....FOR THE SWARM!

Launch the wrapper as you would any application and start gaming like it’s 1999! If you want to play multiplayer and your firewall is on, OSX will ask to create an exception for this game, but it will be hidden behind Starcraft's fullscreen app. Exit the game normally and tell OSX to allow this. The game will then netplay properly the next time you launch it.

Special thanks to grmela for the registry entries that allows the new method to work. MUCH BETTER!

Step 4: copy over the game files and put them in the place shown, and rename them appropriately. The update enables the game to grab content from those files.

Jesvs said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, you can download the Windows installation files from http://battle.net/ if you register your game.

Click to expand...

From what I understand, not if you are running the original CDs.

Note, this still works great in Mavericks, and Doh123 seems to have fixed the bug where wineskin creates dud processes.

It seems I was wrong. That should make things much easier.

Dirtyharry50 said:

I bought the Battle Chest with the expansion on CDs a while back on Amazon and just opened it up and used the registration code to register it to my account on Battlenet. Then I was able to download the installer with the most current version. You can do this with Warcraft III as well and Diablo II.



So while I have the CDs fortunately I do not need to bother using them.

Click to expand...

How to run Starcraft Broodwar on OSX 10.8

I think starcraft is one of those games that doesn't virtualize very well. When I tried it, I had the same problem as running the windows version of simcity 2000. There was a pause inserted every so many frames. The game was unplayable.

Besides, this takes up MUCH less space on your drive.

Ckar said:

Does this guide work for Mavericks?

Click to expand...

Yes. I am running it right now. The only glitch is the custom cursor shows with the OSX cursor on top of it. Changing the engine should fix that, but break everything else. The engine I mentioned was the only one to play with the right colors at a smooth framerate.

There is also a glitch were that crossover engine creates a "My Mac Desktop" shortcut on the desktop, but I haven't figured out how to make it automatically delete that yet.

I found some other instructions on a how play this game to on here and may update these instructions after I test it out a bit. It seems to address the cursor issue (mostly, the original OSX cursor disappears after the first click), the helpful "My mac desktop" shortcut placed on your macs desktop by crossover, and the game opens MUCH faster. I'll update this guide after I confirm there are no issues. I'll be using a newer engine though.

grmela said:

Just tried to make Starcraft (+ BroodWar) work on Mavericks (MBA early 2013). Using Wine 1.6-rc5 with WineBottler (recent beta).

The trick is to ignore the "opengl" advice. When I set DirectDrawRenderer (HKCU > Software > Wine > Direct3D) to gdi and disable the "Allow the window manager to control the windows" choice in winecfg, the game launches fine and play without any lag!

Some other registry values that might have some influence (under the same Direct3D key):

Code:

OffScreenRendering: fbo
RenderTargetLockMode: readtex
VideoMemorySize: 256

Click to expand...

So far, so good here. Can anyone confirm how this works with the digital download from blizzard? I haven't tried that method and am unfamiliar with its idiosyncracies, if any.

EDIT: I played a few rounds of brood war multiplayer with my partner and this method is a definite improvement. I'm more confident it should support future versions of OSX as it allows us to use newer engines under active development. Special thanks goes to grmela for discovering this method, which folded into wineskin cleanly.

Task switching still results in a mini box at native resolution hanging out in the upper left of the screen until it is relaunched, but it is not annoying enough for me to focus on fixing just yet. I will be merging the new method into these instructions tonight.

I have merged a new method (thanks grmela) into the instructions. If you think this is too confusing, I can rewrite it later. I would also like to include the downloaded version in the instructions, but I don't have it to test this with. If anyone wants to submit an addendum, I will fold it into the guide.

christarp said:

Would this also work for Diablo 2: LOD?

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I do not own a copy of Diablo II so I cannot test this. However, it operates similarly Starcraft, so it should work. Obviously, the file names and patches will be different, and I am unsure how diskless gameplay will work.

christarp said:

Diablo 2 when fully patched allows diskless gameplay as long as you copy over the required .mpq files off the disk to the game directory, I'll give it a try later and see how far I can get, thanks for the idea! I'll probably end up putting brood war on it as well, so thanks again for this guide!

Click to expand...

You are welcome.

Start with the new method. It's cleaner and actively maintained. No more crossover annoyances.
Also, let me know how easy it was to follow the guide. I'm thinking of doing a rewrite.

You are running an updater, not the app. You need to tell it to launch Starcraft.exe