StarCraft 2

Environment

Packages

You need wine.

$ pacman -S wine

Other libraries:

$ pacman -S lib32-libjpeg-turbo lib32-libpng lib32-libldap

For onboard Intel graphics cards:

$ pacman -S lib32-intel-dri

If you want to use nvidia drivers:

$ pacman -S nvidia nvidia-utils lib32-nvidia-utils

If you want to use PulseAudio:

$ pacman -S lib32-alsa-plugins lib32-pulseaudio

Configure Wine

The sound in Starcraft 2 in Wine versions 1.3.25 and later works out of the box. For older versions of Wine, you must either disable the mmdevapi library, or use openal.

Warning: If you disabled mmdevapi previously, you won't get any sound on new versions of Wine until you remove the exception.

• For normal sound output (versions before 1.3.25)

$ winecfg
Go to Libraries, add "mmdevapi" and set it to "disabled".

Or you can install openal, in which case the mmdevapi setting isn't required:

# pacman -S openal
# pacman -S lib32-openal (this line is only necessary for x86_64)

• Edit the registry

$ regedit
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D
To create new entries: Right-click on Direct3D, select New -> String Value
DirectDrawRenderer      opengl
Multisampling           disabled
OffscreenRenderingMode  pbuffer
PixelShaderMode         enabled
RenderTargetLockMode    readtex
StrictDrawOrdering      disabled
UseGLSL                 disabled
VertexShaderMode        hardware
VideoMemorySize         1536 (Change this to however much memory your card has)

• For Map-Editor:
  • The latest winetricks can be found at http://winetricks.org/winetricks, download and start:

$ sh winetricks vcrun2005 vcrun2008

• To get rid of some warnings that may or may not matter, you may want to install the following on x86_64:

# pacman -S lib32-mpg123 lib32-jack

Also install lib32-audiofile and lib32-esound from AUR.

• Don't emulate a virtual desktop for the installer.
• If the installer doesn't work, backup and remove your .wine directory.
• If you are asked to install Gecko, then click install to do so.
• If the installer hangs while downloading patch 1.03, install ie6, and set the wine version to windows XP:

$ sh winetricks ie6
$ winecfg

or on x64

$ WINEPREFIX=~/win32 sh winetricks ie6
$ winecfg

Go to Applications, set Windows Version to "Windows XP"

Installing StarCraft II

Installing from DVD

• Mount DVD/DVD Image, (unhide invisible data), for example:

$ mount -o ro,unhide,uid=1000 /dev/dvd /media/dvd (for the DVD)
$ mount -o loop,ro,unhide,uid=<your_id> <starcraft.iso> /media/dvd (for an image) 

• Start the installer:

$ wine start /unix /media/dvd/Installer.exe

Blizzard Downloader

• Get the downloader from your battle.net account (you need to log in).
• You may want to go to View -> Preferences and check "Don't throttle background download".
• During the install, you will need about twice the space of the installed game, since it downloads to a temporary directory (of your choice) before installing. This directory can be deleted after install.

Starcraft 2 demo

https://us.battle.net/account/sc2-demo.html The download is 1.56 GB. You need to have a battle.net account.

The demo got replaced by StarCraft II: Starter Edition.

Playing StarCraft II

$ cd .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/StarCraft\ II/
$ wine start StarCraft\ II.exe 

(Or use the Starcraft II icon, but that'll make it more difficult to troubleshoot in case you have problems.)

Hints for Performance Tuning

• CTRL+ALT+F shows FPS
• Launching the game with the -opengl flag has been reported to increase performance. (This may be specific to the mac version.)
• Disabling Shader in wine could help, if FPS is too low. (It may also cause the game to not work at all. Again, possibly only mac.)
• Make sure that you are not using old graphics drivers. Nvidia drivers should be 256.35 or later (extra/nvidia is up to date).
• Edit the variables.txt in your My Documents/Starcraft II/ following the guide here

x86_64

If you are running a 64bit version of Arch Linux, you may have trouble getting the updating done. Since StarCraft 2 uses Internet Explorer to render all the HTML pages, you need to have Internet Explorer installed. However, by the installer of IE6 will warn you that 64bit is not supported. By default, if you have created your wine configuration directory (~/.wine), it will be set to 64 bit. To overcome this problem, you can either recreate your ~/.wine configuration, or if you wish to keep your current ~/.wine configuration see the alternative method below. If you wish to recreate your ~/.wine configuration simply remove the ~/.wine directory, add export WINEARCH="win32" to your ~/.bashrc, logout of X, login once again and launch wine. It should create a ~/.wine folder. Next install ie6 with

$ winetricks ie6

More information can be found here

Alternative Method: Updating while keeping your 64bit ~/.wine directory

This method uses a separate wine directory installed as 32bit. So the first step is to setup this alternate wine configuratoin. The easiest way to do this is to install a wine configuration for a separate user. You do not need to logout for this, just open up your terminal of choice and:

$ login alternateuser

or if you're going to use root:

$ su

Enter password, remove any already existing wine configuration supposing you do not use wine from this user, then set wine to use 32bit architecture and generate the configuration:

$ export WINEARCH="win32"

$ winecfg

Install/update the wine configuration. No other settings need to be set after updating so you can just close the wine configuration window. Then use winetricks to install ie6:

$ winetricks ie6

When that's done, use the new configuration to run Starcraft II.exe from your user's 64bit /home/user/.wine directory where Starcraft 2 is installed:

$ wine /home/user/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/Starcraft\ II/Starcraft\ II.exe

This will run the updater/patcher installing all the patch files to your 64bit ~/.wine directory using the alternate user's 32bit .wine directory containing ie6. Close the updater when it's finished and you can then remove the new 32bit .wine configuration or keep it for later updates. Now you can go back to playing from your regular user using 64bit wine.

Patch 1.5.0

• Intel HD Graphics 3000 have increased stability and gained around 10FPS, however you have to set

$ wine regedit

Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D
VideoMemorySize         128

Otherwise it won't run and will exit with errors about too low video VRAM.

• Problems with updating

Start game and wait for updating to start.

$ wine "StarCraft II.exe"

When agent fails with:

Agent started on port #6882
Executing operation: disable_firewall applicationPath="C:\users\Public\Application Data\Battle.net\Agent\Agent.1199\Agent.exe" applicationName="Battle.net Update Agent"
AgentAsAdmin failed to add a firewall exception for 'C:\users\Public\Application Data\Battle.net\Agent\Agent.1199\Agent.exe'.
Registered Event: "shutdown event"
Registered Event: "database flush event"
PostTo succeeded status: 0 for url: http://enGB.patch.battle.net:1119/patch
Post Data:
<version program="Agnt"><record program="Bnet" component="Win" version="1" /><record program="Agnt" component="cdn" version="1" /><record program="Agnt" component="cfg" version="1" /><record program="Agnt" component="Win" version="1199" /></version>
DownloadTo failed error: 0 of article:  from:

DownloadTo failed error: 0 of article:  from:

DownloadTo failed error: 0 of article:  from:

Launch Agent.exe --nohttpauth

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/users/Public/AppData/Battle.net/Agent/Agent.exe --nohttpauth

Start StarCraft II again to re-launch updater.

wine "StarCraft II.exe"

Other Problems

• Game crashes when completing bonus objectives

If the game consistently crashes when completing bonus objectives, the reason might be that wine is missing the corefonts package (source: http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6892929829).

$ pacman -S winetricks
$ winetricks corefonts

• For some, the game crashes upon exit. (There seems to be more issues with ati cards than nvidia.)
• For some, in-gamechange of resolution does not work. Editing 'width=x' and 'height=y' in Variables.txt in My Documents/Starcraft II solves this issue. Replace x and y with the prefered resolution.
• Graphics problems (No 3D background in menu, blue non-texturized units and other glitches) launch with the command below. You can also add this option to the .desktop entry in ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs/StarCraft II

force_s3tc_enable=true wine StarCraft II.exe

• If updates don't seem to work at all try to apply them manually. You can download European version patches here: http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/starcraft-ii-patch-information. Check the bottom of that page for other regions. Then you execute the patch with wine.
• Be sure to have libjpeg6 installed. Otherwise, the updater won't work.

• Flickering lights emitted from SCV's thrusters and other light sources (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsaEd-dTAlQ) may be because of missing registry entries:

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]
"DirectDrawRenderer"="opengl"
"Multisampling"="disabled"
"OffscreenRenderingMode"="fbo"
"PixelShaderMode"="enabled"
"RenderTargetLockMode"="readtex"
"StrictDrawOrdering"="disabled"
"UseGLSL"="disabled"
"VideoMemorySize"="128"

As told here with explanation for variables: http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys

It seems to fix the problem.

References and Resources

• StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty (Retail) (WineHQ AppDB)
• StarCraft II crashes because of ACCESS_VIOLATION before the loading screen (WineHQ Bug Tracking Database)
• World of Warcraft crashes upon login after 3.3.5 patch. (WineHQ Bug Tracking Database)
• starcraft2 crashing on loading (archlinux forums)
• starcraft2 fails to update to patch 1.03 (archlinux forums)
• Known Issues (battle.net EU forums)
• Patch News (battle.net EU forums)
• There used to be a link here about hotkey customization. Instead, here is a link telling us that's not allowed. (battle.net EU forums)