Packaging Starcraft for installation on Ubuntu or other Debian Linux

Something I read about all the time is the difficulty in installing applications in Wine, or just general maintenance of non-packaged software. In this article I'll show you how to easily package Starcraft for installation on Ubuntu or any other debian derivative using a simple template which is linked from the article.

To package software on debian, you need the following packages installed:

'sudo apt-get install devscripts fakeroot dh-make'

To run the game, or to install the resulting package, install wine:

'sudo apt-get install wine'

Download my Starcraft debian package template here: (URL)

Alternately, download my Warcraft II template here: (URL), it is identical to the Starcraft template, except it is for Warcraft II. To apply; simply change anything that says Starcraft to Warcraft in this article.

Please do not take advantage of this template to redistribute Blizzards copy-written works, it is intended for your own use only and the requirement to install the software implies that you own a copy of the software we will be packaging today.

For best results, I recommend starting with a fresh wine directory. If you already have a .wine directory you would like to save, just move it then move it back later.

'mv .wine wine_ilike'

Install Starcraft and Broodwar (if available) using the normal installation media; then install the Starcraft no-cd patch from blizzard here: (URL). Do not launch the game before completing this process, or the package steps may not work properly. If you did run the game by mistake, delete ~/.wine and start over.

Note: The following assumes you are working in ~/starcraft-1.0.x

Once you have finished installing and patching Starcraft; change to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files then into the Blizzard directory.

Move the starcraft directory and all sub directories to ~/starcraft-1.0.x/usr/local/games/Starcraft, be careful not to overwrite the starcraft.reg file that is currently in usr/local/games/Starcraft.

In the starcraft-1.0.3 directory; The output of 'ls' should look like:

debian
readme.txt
usr

The output of 'ls ./usr/local/games/Starcraft' should look like:

battle.snp
bnupdate.log
Broodwar.mpq
License.html
maps
Readme.cnt
sc.ico
SEditESP.loc
SEditPTB.loc
StarCraft.exe
StarEdit.cnt
StarInst.log
bncache.dat
BrooDat.mpq
BwarInst.log
License.txt
Patch_rt.mpq
Readme.hlp
SEditDEU.loc
SEditFRA.loc
Smackw32.dll
StarCraft.mpq
StarEdit.exe
storm.dll
bnupdate.exe
BroodUnits.doc
EditLocal.dll
Local.dll
patch.txt
Riched20.dll
SEditENU.loc
SEditITA.loc
standard.snp
StarDat.mpq
StarEdit.hlp

Look in each file under the debian subdirectory and change the email address to your email address wherever necessary.

From the project root (starcraft-*/); build the package.

debuild -us -uc

If all is successful, you will now have an installable .deb in your ".." directory.

starcraft_1.0.3_i386.deb

Install this package by double clicking it in the GUI, or from the cli by running:

'dpkg -i starcraft_1.0.3_i386.deb'

You will get an icon in your games menu which you can click, or just run "starcraft" to execute the game. Save this package for later re-installation if you need to reinstall the OS.

If you saved a .wine directory, you can now put it back.

'rm -rf .wine; mv wine_ilike .wine'