Can the original StarCraft be played on LAN with a Raspberry Pi?

Question

Update! StarCraft has been ported to ARM:

• Reddit discussion
• Hacker News discussion
• Geek.com article
• Download: http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=package.starcraft

So, I've unaccepted the best answer, and the question stands as is.

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I often meet with friends and if not more than one computer is available, we take take turns playing games. Instead, would we be able to use a Raspberry Pi with an additional monitor/keyboard/mouse to play against each other, or play on Battle.net together? If so, how would I configure this?

Minimum System Requirements from (http://gamesystemrequirements.com/):

• CPU: Pentium 90 MHz or higher
• RAM: 16 MB RAM
• VGA: DirectX-Compatible SVGA Video Card (DirectX-compatible)
• OS: Windows 95/98/NT
• HDD: 80 MB
• Sound: DirectX-compatible sound card for audio
• Network: Multiplayer System Requirements:
• 14.4Kbps Modem or Null Modem Cable
• IPX network or Battle.net (requires low-latency connection with support for 32-bit applications)
• Recommended peripherals: Microsoft-Compatible Keyboard, Mouse

Keep in mind that the game can be installed from a USB flash drive or downloaded.

Answer 1

No, the Raspberry Pi cannot run Starcraft.

While most desktop computers (Macs and PC's) run on Intel or AMD chips, the Pi runs on ARM. The ARM architecture is not compatible with Intel chips - this means that compiled code (such as c) will not be able to run on the system due to different low-level commands. This is also why you cannot install Windows or OSX on your PI.

I hope that this answered your question.

Answer 2

If it requires Windows 95 or upwards, you will not be able to play it on the Pi.

Answer 3

Thread Ressurection!

Actually although WINE may not be the answer, here is someone running x86 debian in QEmu on the Pi, to host a Team Speak (x86) server. it runs at 70% CPU 24/7.

TeamSpeak (X86 on Pi) http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=29806 Can I emulate x86 CPU to run Teamspeak 3 server?

Now that there is RPiX86 as well for dos games and such, you may be able to get a SC1 playing on it. http://rpix86.patrickaalto.com/

Answer 4

Right now your best guess might be Stratagus

Although not perfect, it would allow you to play a version of the game:

Stratagus is a free cross-platform real-time strategy gaming engine. Besides many open source strategy games, it supports extracted datafiles from Warcraft 1, Warcraft 2, and Starcraft 1.

Answer 5

Just for the sake of completeness, StarCraft is running fine on RPi4 using Exagear Desktop + Wine. The problem is that Exagear Desktop is not available anymore, but if you got it back then, StarCraft is a good use case. It's the only way to play the Original / Brood wars campains, as Stratagus lets you play single maps only.

Theoretically, StarCraft should also run under qemu-static+winelib, but I haven't tried it personally.

Also, StarCraft has been ported to ARM, but AFAIK the source code is not available publicly, and the existing build is only for armel architecture (Raspbian is armhf), so tough luck.

Answer 6

Yes it can be done, as referenced on the pi forum.

First you will need to download and install Stratagus and Stargus

Then you need to install and unzip everything using the snippets below.

sudo apt-get install cmake autoconf gcc lua5.1-dev zlib1g-dev libpng12-dev libbz2-dev libsdl1.2-dev tolua++ devscripts doxygen sharutils libmng-dev libmikmod2-dev libogg-dev libvorbis-dev libtheora-dev libsqlite3-dev libgtk2.0-dev timidity ffmpeg2theora
mkdir stratagus
cd stratagus
tar -xvfz stratagus_2.2.7.orig.tar.gz
tar -xvfz stargus_2.2.7.orig.tar.gz
cd stratagus_2.2.7.orig
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DENABLE_DEV=ON
make
sudo make install
sudo make install
 [ 13%] Built target metaserver
 [ 37%] Built target png2stratagus
 [100%] Built target stratagus
 Install the project...
 -- Install configuration: ""
 -- Installing: /usr/local/games/stratagus
 -- Installing: /usr/local/bin/png2stratagus
 -- Installing: /usr/local/sbin/metaserver
 -- Installing: /usr/local/include/stratagus-game-installer.nsi
 -- Installing: /usr/local/include/stratagus-game-launcher.h
 -- Installing: /usr/local/include/stratagus-maemo-extract.h
cd /home/pi/stratagus/stargus_2.2.7.orig
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make
sudo make install

On Raspbian Buster (with gcc8) the compilation of Stratagus 2.2.7 will run into this problem. It can be fixed by adding spaces between the string literal and _C_.

Now copy the install.exe from your starcraft CD to /home/pi/sc/ using filezilla. If you don't have install.exe you can copy stardat.mpq and starcraft.mpq, and rename (or symlink) starcraft.mpq to install.exe.

Now run:

sudo startool /home/pi/sc /usr/share/games/stratagus/stargus
sudo ln -s /usr/local/games/stargus /usr/games/stargus

You will need to lower display settings to run faster or overclock or use a newer pi but experiment with your settings to see how they perform with each configuration.

Answer 7

I don't have the answer, but it is very likely possible. Just came here to say you have to compile both wine and starcraft from source. I don't know the specifics on those, but I'd just like to give hope to this really doubtful thread. Wine got downvoted because the game was thought to not be built on ARM, but if it is compiled on the Raspberry Pi along with Wine, it would most likely work. I don't know how the direct x dependency would work though.

Answer 8

From the plain system requirement, you can give it a try with a decently fast SD card (or probably run it from USB a hard disk. I never tried so the experience can be bad. Also you need to make sure that the program is compiled for ARMv6 instruction set.

Answer 9

if you are thinking of using the pi as a server, yes it can be done with file sharing. i used to have a zental server with a copy of minecraft. it worked just fine. you just have to file share the folder with read write permissions.

Answer 10

You should use a program called wine, it replicates the windows api, and its free!