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

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.

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Hi mentaluproar,

thank you very much for your method, it looks very good. Unfortunately I'm not able to install Stacraft properly. I have the Starcraft CD, but I can't find the exe file on the CD.

I have only 1 file, Installer Tome.mpq. If I activate hidden file on the Terminal, then I have only 7 files/folder:
.DS_Store
.Trashes (folder)
.Volumelcon.icns
Desktop DB
Desktop DF
Images (Folder)
Installer Tome.mpq

So I have created a wrapper correctly according to your step 2, but on step 3, the wrapper refuses to use the mpq file, and I can't use the exe because it doesn't exist.

Please help me on this

Thank you

Ok, I have use a mpq extractor to extract all files, but there is still no file setup.exe

All the exe files are:
InstCC.exe
Lot of different StarCraft.exe but none of them is working with the wrapper
StarEdit.exe
Uninstall.exe

Please help me

Works but display issues

Hi all,
I've installed everything and the game works perfectly as far as I can tell. The only problem I am having is that the top 1/2 inch of the screen is pixelated and jumpy and I cant see information like minerals and gas quantities, not a huge deal but annoying. Anyone know how to fix this? I was able to change it from pixels to solid white and black in display options but I cant get rid of it. any suggestions? I tried a few diffrent engines with no luck.


UPDATE: Issue fixed with engine WS9Wine1.7.15NoFlicker , or it's because mono finally installed properly. Either way i'm happy!

A good solution is to install snow leopard in a different partition, and run the game natively there.

Got it to work.

Problem i am having is when i am in channels i cannot see it properly. Can only see black background and the names in white.

Can't make it work!! Sobbing. Can someone just send me a wineskin that works?

Nvm.

I GOT IT TO WORK! YESSSS!!!!

Registered just to say thanks for this tutorial - I love StarCraft and get a hankering to play it every couple of years, but was dismayed that I might never get a chance again after classic emulation was removed from OSX.

I'm up and running - but wanted to post what I found helpful for retrieving the Windows session files off the SC and BW discs - using this as a guide, I did the following:

First, put the StarCraft disc in the drive, opened Terminal and typed


It listed all volumes including the StarCraft CD. Then I typed


to get the path to the volumes. This displayed


Since the volume name contains spaces, it can be confusing to umount it so I just used the path instead:


It may or may not prompt you to enter your password.

Now, create a new volume for the Windows session of the disc:


and mount the Windows session into that volume:


note the "s2" is missing from the end, it was giving me a "no such file or directory" error when trying to mount it with the path it had provided before (disk1s1s2).

You should now be able to access the Windows version of the files from the CD on Mac. I copied the entire thing to a folder on my desktop because I wanted to perform the same operation on the Brood War CD before performing the installations. You should be able to do the same thing again with the Brood War CD.

After that, I followed the directions in the first post using the latest engine and it works like a charm! Now, I'm about to drop the hammer and dispense some indiscriminate justice!

Now to try to do something similar for Homeworld and Homeworld 2...

battlenet and shortcut

hey, i don’t know if you”re still looking at this but i just have a few questions to anyone who may listen.

first of all, thank you so much for this post, I was feeling the desire to hop on starcraft and BW’s campaign recently too and went to battlenet to buy the digital copy of the anthology. Obviously I’m on a mac (mavericks). I got my CD key and everything, but with a PPC version unavailable with my software I had to use wineskin to be able just to download the installer, and after a few trials and errors I was able to be able to move onto installing the actual game (because you can’t open the initial .exe installer with unarchiver) thanks to you.

After installing all the fonts, and a few other things like making these changes:
“DirectDrawRenderer” and set the value to “gdi”.
“OffScreenRendering” and set the value to “fbo”.
“RenderTargetLockMode” and set the value to “readtex”.
“VideoMemorySize” and set the value to “256”
my game was running smoothly without lag.

I have two questions for you, however.
1. I currently know of only this way to open the game to play:

i click on my “Starcraft 1″ wrapper–>install software–>choose setup executable–>StarCraft.exe and from here it launches the game.

Is there a faster route to opening the game? if it’s in the directions I don’t quite understand, do you mind expounding upon this?

2. When i go to battle.net for multiplayer, i can see all the texts, click them, create an account and all that, but the only issue I seem to be facing is there is no interface. All i see is a colorless interface; everything is on a black background. Any suggestion on how to fix this? Because of this , idk if it's because there aren't any, but I can't enter any match because I (don't know if I can or cannot) see them.

Thank you!!

Hey all ive been trying to get this to work for a few hours now but am having a fair amount of trouble. I am using the starcraft anthology download from battle.net. But when i try to install starcraft it asks me for a 26 digit code found on the cd? I also have the original CD and the code on that is only 13 digits, which I actually used that code to get the anthology download from battle.net in the first place. Any help would be much appreciated, desperately trying to relive the glory days of SC1. thanks

domnap said:

Hey all ive been trying to get this to work for a few hours now but am having a fair amount of trouble. I am using the starcraft anthology download from battle.net. But when i try to install starcraft it asks me for a 26 digit code found on the cd? I also have the original CD and the code on that is only 13 digits, which I actually used that code to get the anthology download from battle.net in the first place. Any help would be much appreciated, desperately trying to relive the glory days of SC1. thanks

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That's correct, cd-key on game box is much shorter. I have original first release of Starcraft and I believe it is much shorter than 13 characters.

The solution is - once you add SC to your Batte.net account, it will generate new cd-key for you. It should be visible there in SC details (I believe). Try with this cd-key.

Can you actually log in to Battle.net and play multiplayer games when you launch BW via PC simulator on 10.10?

Just got it to work on my MBP (Retina, late 2013) running 10.11, using the installer downloaded from Battle.net. First blush looks great. Created a basic skin for the installer and another skin to run the installed game, not sure that was necessary, new to Wineskin. Modded the run skin with the regedit instructions from the original post.

Still need to mess around a bit to figure out a couple minor details:

• Would like to be able to run in a window
• The system cursor appears over the game cursor, at least some of the time

I am using a MacBook Pro with Yosemite 10.10.5, can I install withoput problems Starcraft and the Expansion BroodWar ??? I bought the game back in 2012 + - and I want to play it again... I just found it on my closet LOL.

Please let mek now, and help me to do not have problems with it in my computer.

dcm5458592 said:

Just got it to work on my MBP (Retina, late 2013) running 10.11, using the installer downloaded from Battle.net. First blush looks great. Created a basic skin for the installer and another skin to run the installed game, not sure that was necessary, new to Wineskin. Modded the run skin with the regedit instructions from the original post.

Still need to mess around a bit to figure out a couple minor details:

• Would like to be able to run in a window
• The system cursor appears over the game cursor, at least some of the time

Click to expand...

I notice you were able to make the Battle.net downloader work through a skin. I'm trying that right now and having difficulties. It keeps telling me I can't install in that directory. It goes to battle.net and trys to start so I'm encouraged. Just finished the play through of Legacy of the Void and got nostalgic.

I downloaded a all in one type of thing that uses wineskin and it runs but the only problem is that there is no music and no vocals from the people, anybody knows whats wrong? im using mavericks

This is a pure wine install! No CrossOver or WineBottler.
You're safe, it's easy.
This guide worked for me!
I started from the Raynor USB stick that comes with the Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty Collector's edition. It just repackages the .mpq files from the Starcraft and BroodWar CDs into an installer. The steps I follow should work with little modification even if installing from CDs.

Note: I did not use the SUDO command for anything so you shouldn't have to unless you mistakenly used SUDO to install homebrew or some homebrew packages (I think).

Here are the steps I followed on my MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013 model:
Installing Starcraft

1. Install homebrew
2. Install xquartz with `brew install xquartz`
3. Install wine with `brew install wine` (took about 20 - 30 minutes)
4. Change directories to my USB to the location of Installer.exe
5. Run the `wine Installer.exe` command. This command should work for you even with the CD or DMG file I would think.
6. Install the game with a valid CD key and name.
7. Run the game to test it. To do this I had to change directories to .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/StarCraft and then run the `wine StarCraft.exe` command to run StarCraft.

The game ran slow and choppy so I hoped updating and setting the registry keys would help and it did. I downloaded the 1.16.1 patch from https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/starcraft-patch-information and then ran it with wine.
Installing The Patch

1. Download BW-1161.exe from the mentioned link.
2. Go to the directory the download went to. For me it was ~/Downloads. ~ means the home directory, or /User/[username].
3. Run the downloaded file with wine with the `wine BW-1161.exe` command. This should install things to the right place.

Fixing The Registry

1. Change directory to .wine/drive_c/windows and then run the `wine regedit.exe` command.
2. Go to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine. There may or may not be the key (folder) titled Direct3D. If it is not there you are safe to make it by right-clicking on Wine and doing New Key and typing in Direct3D for the key name.
3. Inside the Direct3D key make four new registry keys:
4. Quoted from the OP:
5. (Key 1): In the right pane, right click in the blank area and hit New->String Value. Name it “DirectDrawRenderer” and set the value to “gdi”.
6. (Key 2): Right click in the blank area again and hit New->String Value. Name this one “OffScreenRendering” and set the value to “fbo”.
7. (Key 3): Right click in the blank area again and hit New->String Value. Name this one “RenderTargetLockMode” and set the value to “readtex”.
8. (Key 4): Right click in the blank area again and hit New->String Value. Name this one “VideoMemorySize” and set the value to “256”.

FINISHED!

Run the updated game
Now run the game by switching to the ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/StarCraft directory and running the `wine StarCraft.exe` command.

I have followed all the steps and got Starcraft to work on my iMac. However, it seems like there is a lag with the mouse pointer and gameplay somewhat. Any ideas?

Is anyone else having weird performance issues? If I happen to have any unit or buildings selected, everything slows down until I select some kind of resource or deselect all. I've adjusted in-game settings, like turned off the character animations, but it hasn't fixed the weird latency issue.