Utah Open Source Planet

Yesterday I outlined how to install and play StarCraft and the BroodWar expansion on Ubuntu 8.04.  Today I’ll build on that by outlining how to install the 1.15.2 “no CD” patch available from Blizzard Entertainment.

Installing the 1.15.2 “no CD” patch

One thing we quickly realized after installing was that it was a bit annoying to require the CD to play. After some quick searching we found that Blizzard had released a patch that would allow the game to play minus the CD. To install that patch you’ll need to follow a few more steps.

You’ll need to copy some of the CD contents into your StarCraft installation directory. Each CD (StarCraft original and / or the BroodWar expansion) has a file called “install.exe”. This file needs to be copied into your StarCraft installation directory. The file also needs to be renamed according to which it is. This means if you are copying the contents from the StarCraft original game CD the resulting file needs to be renamed “StarCraft.mpq”.  If you are copying the install.exe from the BroodWar expansion disk you’ll need to rename that file “BroodWar.mpq”.

The following two commands will properly copy and rename the files on both CDs. If you only have the original and not the BroodWar expansion you only need the first command.

Copy the install.exe file from the StarCraft original installation CD:

cp /media/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/StarCraft.mpq

Copy the install.exe file from the StarCraft BroodWar expansion CD:

cp /media/cdrom/install.exe ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/BroodWar.mpq

One last step is to install the patch itself available from Blizzard. Download the appropriate .exe file for your Starcraft installation (ie; original or BroodWar), run it via wine and you’re done. You can now enjoy playing StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04 without requiring the CD.

Other Points of Interest

• Install StarCraft and the BroodWar expansion on Ubuntu 8.04 in Wine
• OpenSSL & OpenSSH Vulnerabilities : Confirm & Fix Instructions

Over this last weekend I went to spend some time with my parents and little brothers that still live at home.  My youngest brother, Dan, was playing that old-school strategy game StarCraft.  After watching him play for a bit and remembering the good ‘ol times I had playing StarCraft back in the day I thought I’d give it a try in Wine.  Just as I expected it worked perfectly and before we knew it we had a three player deathmatch going on!

Yes, StarCraft is non-free software in both senses of the phrase, but if you’ve got an old copy lying around you’ll be able to play it just fine on your Ubuntu 8.04 installation.

Install StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04

To install StarCraft (and, yes, this also applies to the BroodWar expansion), you’ll first need Wine.  Wine can be installed using this command:

sudo aptitude install wine

Once you have wine installed you’re ready to get going.  I did not have to tweak anything in my wine configuration to get StarCraft working.  If, however, you find any wine tweaks that make game play more enjoyable please comment.

At this point simply pop in your StarCraft CD and nautilus should open the CD folder contents for you.  Get the installation started by opening the “install.exe” file with wine.  If your “right-click > Open With” does not offer or suggest wine you can do it manually with this command:

wine /media/cdrom/install.exe

If you have the BroodWar expansion repeat the above step for that CD as well.

Tomorrow I’ll outline how to install a patch that will allow playback without requiring the game CD.  With or without the patch you should now have StarCraft available in your menu in:

Applications > Wine > Programs > StarCraft

Enjoy some old-school gaming fun with StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04!

Other Points of Interest

• Install the 1.15.2 “no CD” Patch for StarCraft on Ubuntu 8.04

Its been ages since I played with SecondLife but I was reminded about it this evening and thought I would put something together regarding how to install it.  There are not any packages for it in the Ubuntu repositories, but it is pretty simple to get running.

For those that currently use SecondLife maybe you can comment on places to hang out and things to go see for anyone just joining in.

Requirements for SecondLife 1.19.1.4

The first requirement is that your machine passes the minimum system requirements.  On Linux this generally means 3D rendering ability.  Here are the official requirements, for your information:

• Internet Connection: Cable or DSL
• 800MHz Pentium III or Athlon or better (recommended: 1.5GHz or more)
• 512MB (recommended: 768MB or more)
• nVidia GeForce 2, GeForce 4mx, or better (recommend one of the following: 6700, 6800, 7600, 7800, 7900, 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800, Go 7400, Go 7600, Go 7800, Go 7900)
• ATI Radeon 8500, 9250, or better

I should note that SecondLife seems to run just fine on my onboard intel 915 video card.  As long as you can run Compiz effects you should probably be OK.

The following commands will walk you through installing SecondLife system-wide.  This will make it available for any user on the machine, and may be different than other methods you may have seen.

Installing SecondLife 1.19.1.4

First off we’ll need to manually download the archive, which we’ll unpack into /opt.

wget -c http://download-secondlife-com.s3.amazonaws.com/SecondLife_i686_1_19_1_4.tar.bz2
sudo tar -C /opt/ -xf ~/Desktop/SecondLife_i686_1_19_1_4.tar.bz2
sudo ln -s /opt/SecondLife_i686_1_19_1_4/secondlife /usr/local/bin/

You’ll now be able to launch SecondLife with:

secondlife

Random Posts

• SSH Saves The Day.. 1400 Miles Away! Enable Automagic Login
• What You Ought To Know About Securing SSH
• Origami (previously folding.sh): Now In PPA!
• US Teams Project Interview on Linux.com
• How To Burn an .ISO image in 3-Clicks (CD or DVD)
• Mail Servers
• Looking For a Few Passionate Volunteers - Ubuntu Community Participation Project
• Wordpress Blog Fix
• Improve Application Startup Times With Preload
• Give One, Get One : One Laptop Per Child

Ok, I'm taking a little sidetrack from my usual line of topics. I certainly spend plenty of time programming and learning things. What do I do in the rest of the time? A range of activities including, but not limited to, playing on my DS and Wii! Well, anyone who follows any type [...]

Its coming soon, the Utah Open Source Conference 2008!

and we need some help getting our registration system off the ground!

If you are interested in working on a really cool project, want to learn Django and enjoy some good food, come on over and hack.

The Hackfest will be held at my new home in Murray, Utah! So come and enjoy the new surroundings and hopefully we’ll have the projector and screen up, which means movies and video games. I’m also working on internet access (its Qwest/XMission for now. Soon to be UTOPIA/XMission), but it should be installed by Saturday. If not, we’ll let everyone know an updated location nearby.

Here’s the details:

Date/Time: Saturday, January 26, 2008 / 7pm

Location: Herlo’s house: 5225 Gravenstein Park, Murray, Utah 84123 - Map

Please feel free to ping me on IRC if you have any question.

Cheers,

Clint

Being the responsible parent that I am, it is essential that I raise my children with the ability to think for themselves and make the right decision. This means making sure that they are raised using Linux.

To do that, we have to find an entertaining game or two for them to play that run on Linux. Perhaps even something that they can do with dear old mom or dad. I think I have found the perfect thing. My daughter wakes up every morning and asks me, “Dad, when can we play the potato game?” She is referring to the Linux app ‘Potato Guy’. Apparently, it is also known as KTuberling.

What is funny is that you may even find yourself playing with it when there aren’t even any kids around.

The basic premise is that it is kind of like Mr. Potato Head. You have a potato with arms and legs. Then, around the outside of the window, you have hats, shirts, pants, ties, glasses, shoes, hair, noses, ears, mouths, eyes, eyebrows, earrings, and other things:

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

If your child isn’t old enough to work the mouse, you may wish to help. You move the mouse and let the child tell you what to put where. It really makes for a good stress reliever, and gives you some quality bonding time with your offspring. That’s always good. If you want to go all out creative, see if you can get a better image than the one I did with Azzie, my 3-year-old:

CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE

If you have kids or the mental capacity of one (much like myself), this is a super-huge waste of time, and you may just love it.

I just read an article from The New York Times website about Eve Online. I have been a player of Eve since March, 2007.

Obligatory quote:

At the strategic level, coalitions involving tens of thousands of players struggle for months over strategic objectives or simply to wipe out their enemies. For at least a year the most powerful group in Eve has been an alliance known as Band of Brothers, a self-appointed evil empire with the stated objective of taking over the galaxy. Against them is arrayed a motley batch of self-styled freedom fighters with names like the Red Alliance (mostly Russian), Tau Ceti Federation (mostly French), GoonSwarm (mostly obnoxious) and the Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate (mostly drunk).

I’ve been playing Eve Online, a space MMO for many months now. Today, they released their Linux and MacOS X clients as part of the version 2.3 update.

Though I haven’t had a chance to try it out, yet, this is exciting news. It’s wonderful to see a game like this take the step to providing Linux, and Mac clients. Given that Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Vista is such a horrible platform and provides terrible performance for games, it would be a very good for many game makers to put more effort into both Mac and Linux support. In case you hadn’t heard, Apple (AAPL) sold 2 million iMac systems in 2007Q3 alone. There is talk that they could top that number in Q4 with ease.

Blizzard, are you listening? How about providing a LInux version of World of WarCraft and StafCraft II (whenever it lands)? That would be awesome.

Okay, okay, I didn’t get in, but it was sure fun to take a train trip down to the World Series to see the vibe. I’ve never been quite so close to a World Series game. The closest thing for me was when I got to go to watch the Utah Jazz get beaten by the Bulls in 1997 and 1998 in Salt Lake City. The World Series is much better to me since I’m a huge baseball fan.

For your entertainment, I took some interesting, pics:

I also took some pretty pictures of fall in New England. Not being from here, its amazing how beautiful the leaves can be.

Cheers,

Herlo