HOWTO: Play StarCraft and Diablo II on Lion using Wine

[DCstewieG]

I've looked around and surprisingly haven't found good info on using Wine now that Rosetta is gone. So I've done a bit of experimenting and come up with a step-by-step guide. I tried WineBottler, PlayOnMac, and Wineskin and found WineBottler to work best (or at all), even though it's using the oldest version of Wine. I'm also not using the nifty bottling feature because it duplicates all of the files (over 1GB per game).

There are lots of steps here but honestly it's not that hard. If you've been considering dual-booting or using a VM, give this a try first!

Diablo II gameplay works perfectly as far as I can tell, StarCraft not quite but very close, you'll have to see for yourself.


Wine

1. Download WineBottler:
   http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
   http://darwine-winebottler.en.softonic.com/mac
2. Drag Wine and WineBottler to the Applications folder.
3. Run Wine.app
4. Close the 3 windows it opens.

Notes

• If you are asked to Enter RandR mode, click Always Allow.
  
• If you ever get a black screen when you run a game, you should be able to hit Esc to exit the game. Quit X11 and then try again.

Games

Log in to your Battle.net account and download the Mac client for the game you want to install.
Unzip and run the Downloader app to download the installers. When it's finished, continue with the following steps.
Tip: When installing games, you are in Windows world! Use Ctrl-V to copy your CD Key.

1. Diablo II

Issues

• Cinematics don't display
• The arrow cursor shows on top of the game cursor

Steps

1. In the D2-1.12A-enUS folder, right click Installer.exe, hover over Open With and select Wine.
2. The following dialog will open. Leave "Run directly in" selected and click Go.
   
3. Click Install Diablo II.
4. Agree to the Terms and Conditions and enter your name and CD Key. Click OK.
5. Leave the default destination directory. Click OK.
6. When installation completes, click Back and then Exit Installer.

1a. Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (optional)

1. In the D2LOD-1.12A-enUS folder, right click Installer.exe, hover over Open With and select Wine.
2. Leave "Run directly in" selected and click Go.
3. Click Install Diablo II - LOD and complete the installation. Then click Back and Exit Installer.

1b. Post-Installation

1. Open the Wine Files folder in your home folder. This is the virtual Windows hard drive.
2. Navigate to drive_c/Program Files/Diablo II. (Note: If you'd like, you can copy existing save files here.)
   
3. Right click Diablo II.exe and select Make Alias. Rename the alias to
4. Diablo II, then drag it to your Applications folder.
5. To run Diablo II, double-click the alias (or select it in your Applications stack if you have that) and then click Go. Or you can use Spotlight to launch Diablo II - Lord of Destruction.lnk.
6. Cinematics don't work, you'll see a blank screen. Just keep clicking and you'll get to the main menu.
7. Connect to Battle.net to download and install the latest patch. The game will restart when finished.
8. You're done! Have fun!

2. StarCraft

Issues

• General slight choppiness, the mouse cursor looks like it moves at half framerate. It seems fine for me but you wouldn't be playing any pro games like this. I found a solution (see Cure for slowness) but it completely breaks the graphics for me.
• White screens in the Battle.net menus. Gameplay is fine.

Steps

1. In the StarCraft 1.15.2 enUS Installer folder, right click Installer.exe, hover over Open With and select Wine.
2. The following dialog will open. Leave "Run directly in" selected and click Go.
3. The StarCraft installer opens. Click Install StarCraft.
4. Agree to the Terms and Conditions and enter your name and CD Key. Click OK.
5. Leave the default destination directory. Click OK.
6. StarCraft will install.
7. When installation is complete, click Exit Installer.
8. Open the Wine menu in the menubar and click Configuration.
9. Under the Graphics tab, uncheck Allow the window manager to control the windows. Click OK. If you skip this step, you won't be able to connect to Battle.net to play or download patches.
   
10. Open the Wine Files folder in your home folder. This is the virtual Windows hard drive.
11. Navigate to drive_c/Program Files/StarCraft. (Note: If you'd like, you can copy existing save files here.)
    
12. Right click StarCraft.exe and select Make Alias. Rename the alias to StarCraft, then drag it to your Applications folder.
13. To run StarCraft, double-click the alias (or select it in your Applications stack if you have that) and then click Go. Or you can use Spotlight to launch StarCraft - Brood War.lnk.
14. Connect to Battle.net to download and install the latest patch. The game will restart when finished.
15. You're done! Have fun!

[Aldaris]

Gracias! I'll be testing this ASAP.

[antonis]

Please accept a big THANKS for this post. I haven't found the time to experiment with Wine projects to make a diablo 2 wrapper myself yet, but with your guide I think I can make a quick effort. You saved a lot of my time with this. Thanks again, very good work.

[jgz]

what about using plugy with d2 and wine?? Someone tested it or knows a workaround?

[doh123]

Winebottler is abandon basically... hasn't been updated at all in over a year... so use it at your own risk. I happen to know both of these games work fine with Wineskin as well just fine. You can share the same engine between them both if you use WS8Wine1.2.3ICE engine.

If you want to get games running without doing much of he work... I'd suggest going to portingteam.com and getting a wrapper someone else has already gotten to work and just use that... there's hundreds of game wrappers there.

[DCstewieG]

Originally Posted by doh123

Winebottler is abandon basically... hasn't been updated at all in over a year... so use it at your own risk. I happen to know both of these games work fine with Wineskin as well just fine.

When I tried Wineskin, StarCraft had broken graphics (just static garbage all over the screen) and the Diablo II installer crashed. I realize WB is out of date but hey, if it works it works.

[doh123]

Originally Posted by DCstewieG

When I tried Wineskin, StarCraft had broken graphics (just static garbage all over the screen) and the Diablo II installer crashed. I realize WB is out of date but hey, if it works it works.

Wineskin isn't extremely limited... sometimes it can seem harder if theres an overwhelming amount of options. Did you try using the same exact Wine versions that worked with WineBottler? not all versions work the same for every game, and the newer ones are not always better, it depends on the game.

[DCstewieG]

Originally Posted by doh123

Wineskin isn't extremely limited... sometimes it can seem harder if theres an overwhelming amount of options. Did you try using the same exact Wine versions that worked with WineBottler? not all versions work the same for every game, and the newer ones are not always better, it depends on the game.

I see now you are the Wineskin developer . I'll give it a try with the ICE engine you mentioned. I tried WineBottler first because it's what I was familiar with and since it worked I didn't spend too much time with the others. It would be nice to have it working with an active project.

[antonis]

Well, sorry for asking something that maybe well known to wineskin veterans, but I'm just starting with this (used crossover sometimes but I find it too limited). There are some basic steps that confuse me in this process, I'd appreciate if you could verify/fill the gaps here.

I'm using Wineskin Winery and I'm trying to figure out the basic steps:

1. Download the Diablo 2 Mac Downloader from battle.net account

2. Run the Diablo 2 Downloader, but this would download only the Mac version of the game

3. Run the windows installer in order to install the game in the wineskin bottle. But where should I find the windows installer ?

If, alternatively, try to download the Windows Downloader, it won't run from within Wineskin. So, which versions should I download/run after all ?

Or, in other words, how can you download the Mac version of the downloader but end up running Windows installer ?

Thanks in advance.

[DCstewieG]

Originally Posted by antonis

2. Run the Diablo 2 Downloader, but this would download only the Mac version of the game

It downloads both.

[antonis]

Originally Posted by DCstewieG

It downloads both.

Oh I see, didn't think of that. Thanks very much for the quick response.

[tinktank]

yeah i really want to play diablo..

[doh123]

Originally Posted by DCstewieG

I see now you are the Wineskin developer . I'll give it a try with the ICE engine you mentioned. I tried WineBottler first because it's what I was familiar with and since it worked I didn't spend too much time with the others. It would be nice to have it working with an active project.

yeah.. I might be a bit biased.... but I try to make it a versatile tool so you have many options. I think the Diablo 2 Wineskin wrapper post on portingteam.com use CXG10.1.1 build... which are engines I make using the Wine source from Crossover... so you could try WS8WineCXG10.1.1 ... but only ICE engines actually share an installed engine, so you'll waste an extra 100mb or so on two games using their own built in engine... of course you could always download the working wrapper there and just use that and not have to worry about doing all the hard stuff yourself, since I think there were several tweaks needed to get all parts of the game functioning correctly (but those would have to be in any install using Wine).

WineBottler is fine if it works for you. Its just limited a lot for things I like to do... is the main reason I started Wineskin, plus I really hate running things under a X11.app, so I want them all under their own Icon, with a built in good and tested X11 version much like Crossover did. Plus I have a feeling the WineBottler creator has no intentions of working on it anymore...

[antonis]

Using the wrapper provided in portingteam.com results in an odd error on the windows side (windows pop up) of the installer, stating a probable out of disk space issue, which is not true though.

[TheRat]

thank you <3

[gregnash]

Ok so I have a question for everyone. With the upcoming release of DIII I figured I would give ole' DII a run through.

Got everything installed with Winebottler but I seem to have lost some functionality. I cannot mouse to the bottom of the screen when playing (this has to be in full screen mode correct?) and when I attempt to enter my battle.net information it will not allow me to enter my full email address for my account. I am figuring most of this is just due to the age of the game and this brings back some serious nostalgia but I wanted to check first to see if anyone knew.

[DCstewieG]

Originally Posted by gregnash

I cannot mouse to the bottom of the screen when playing (this has to be in full screen mode correct?) and when I attempt to enter my battle.net information it will not allow me to enter my full email address for my account.

Not sure what you mean about mousing to the bottom.

Diablo II (and StarCraft 1 for that matter) doesn't use the same Battle.net ID as SC2/WoW. You have to create one on that screen. But you may just want to play single player anyway. If you start on B.net and don't play for a while, they might delete the account and any characters you started.

[cinolt]

You have my eternal love.

It's still quite laggy though. Any way to fix this?

I know back when I used a Linux distro on my older comp, Wine 0.9.14 experienced no lag problems whatsoever and for some reason when I run the same distro on a VM and use Wine 0.9.14 using the same procedures it crashes when connecting to b.net ><.

Yours is the only method that I could get working with battle.net. If only I could fix the lag...

[scWithdrawal]

i only had the mac version so i just got the starcraft.exe file from a friend with windows and tried to run it like you said. the dialog pops up but when i click go, nothing happens. is that the wrong file? any ideas what i'm doing wrong?

thanks

[Hastings101]

I've tried this in both wine and Wineskin, both lag terribly. Has anyone found a fix to this?

[DCstewieG]

Originally Posted by scWithdrawal

i only had the mac version so i just got the starcraft.exe file from a friend with windows and tried to run it like you said. the dialog pops up but when i click go, nothing happens. is that the wrong file? any ideas what i'm doing wrong?

You need to install it from scratch, there's more to it than just the exe file.

[I Am Religion]

In regards to the thread initiator, I attempted to utilize the regedit that is necessary in order to perform this Cure for slowness (in which I am attempting to utilize for the video game Starcraft, which operates at a slower rate than I remember on a Packard computer and the display will flash or flicker at times, which I am wishing this Cure for slowness will render these issues non-existent) and I encountered a problem I had before, where when I typed wine regedit into the Terminal application in regards to my Macintosh, Terminal responded with "-bash: wine: command not found." I attempted to research this issue of mine for some time before resorting to register upon these forums and post. On the contrary, my problem seems so specific that the Google search engine cannot identify a link to a solution immediately. My solution to not being able to install Wine (due to my Macintosh not recognizing the Xcode application I installed via App Store that was operational. I'm not sure what that issue was.) was WineBottler. In both scenarios, including the WineBottler solution, my Terminal application provides the same response to any command that I've tried that contains the word wine. I would think if my Macintosh were a human, that it would fancy a bottle of wine, after the journey me and my Macintosh have embarked upon, that I haven't concluded, as of yet. I would appreciate if anyone could assist me in regards to this issue.

[DCstewieG]

Originally Posted by I Am Religion

when I typed wine regedit into the Terminal application in regards to my Macintosh, Terminal responded with "-bash: wine: command not found."

Just find regedit.exe in Finder, then double click it to open it with WineBottler. The default location should be ~/Library/Application Support/Wine/prefixes/[yourPrefix]/drive_c/windows.

[the8thark]

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to try this one day.
At the moment I play SC1 and D2 via crossover bottles and they work just fine. I did though try wine in the bast and could not get it to work. But your method seems easy enough to get me to try it to see if I can get it to work.

[seamuskrat]

Where did you get the Crossover bottles? I have tried D2 with Crossover in Lion and had a hard time getting it to play properly.

Originally Posted by the8thark

Thanks for the advice. I'll have to try this one day.
At the moment I play SC1 and D2 via crossover bottles and they work just fine. I did though try wine in the bast and could not get it to work. But your method seems easy enough to get me to try it to see if I can get it to work.