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- doherty, on 10/12/2007, -4/+26You two are quite dumb. If someone is a fan of a particular game and a fan of a particular computing platform for which said game is unavailable, why wouldn't they want to port the game themselves (if they possess the skill to do so)?
Some of us who aren't 15-year old kids are still fans of old games... If someone wants to put forth the effort to make an old game run on a new or different OS than it did originally, I commend them. I wish I had the skill to do it. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Can he expect a nastygram from Blizzard for his efforts? It would be nice to be able to play Starcraft in Linux.
- Buckets, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18Not much money? How many other 8 year old games do you see on the shelf?
- geomon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18@shaun944
"dude before you go calling people dumb maybe you should learn the difference between an operating system and a computing platform."
You're right. A computing platform includes the operating system.
"Last time I checked most Linux boxes were running the same hardware as most windows machines."
Mostly right. Linux runs on systems that Windows will never run on. Have you run XP on a Sparc?
"And the game is available on Linux via wine."
That is true and has been for years.
"The point is that if all you want to do is play starcraft, then go buy a Pentium 2, install windows, install starcraft and play on your dedicated starcraft box. It'll cost you a couple bucks and about twenty minutes to install the software. Somehow I don't think his "port" is going to be done in 20 minutes."
No, the point is the hack. If something is effortless then it isn't worth doing the hack. The web abounds with examples of hacks - some done well, some done poorly. But all of them are done because there was the challenge of doing something that had never been attempted before.
Consider this a learning experience for the person attempting the port. Sure, he could have, as you said, just plopped down a PII and loaded Windows and Starcraft and been playing a game in 20 minutes. But what would he have learned from the experience that he didn't already know? By attempting the port he will have pushed himself beyond his current capabilities and, even if he fails, he will have learned something about Linux, Starcraft, and himself.
Life is too short to miss an opportunity to learn *something* valuable. Whether you or I consider the venture valuable is inconsequential, really. We can comment on his attempt, but the learning experience itself is deeply personal and only the hacker will know whether the experience was valuable or not.
Let the dude follow his bliss. - evilgod69, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15their was a previous effort to do this in 1998, but blizzard quickly ended it with a legal threat.
how far this project suceeds is all up to blizzard, they could either contribute which would really help.
they could do nothing, which means the community will be doing alot of reverse enginnering
or they might just send another legal threat, only time will tell. - jpyun, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15StarCraft is NO WHERE NEAR dead.
- EdHaber, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13I'd like to see blizzard update starcraft to the warcraft 3 engine.
- timf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12I believe it's a rewrite from scratch.
- gschoots, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Learn to code or create artwork and join an existing open source game project, www.sourceforge.net has a lot of them listed, and please ignore my link spamming while asking any interested person to visit www.openfrag.org for a friendly project creating an OS FPS.
- adolfojp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"The Starcraft brand is still valuable"
Precisely, and letting people port an 8 year old game can only make it even more valuable. The game will have more fans and a sequel will be more successful. - po6ot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8http://www.wc3campaigns.net/revolution/forums/index.php
Project Revolution are making Starcraft with the Warcraft III engine. - Solol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Dont be delusional, no way they're gonna let this happen. The Starcraft brand is still valuable, and they're not through with it.
- Corsix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6He won't be distributing any of the SC media (I think), so you'll need the SC/BW CD to play.
I assume he is doing the same thing for campaign files, unit stats, etc.
If that is the case then how can blizzard C&D him? - en3r0, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7We need more games for linux, good project!
- euphoria, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6To those worried about Blizzard CNDing this, this guy is no stranger to legal brushes with gaming companies:
http://squeedlyspooch.com/blog/archives/000072.html
Apparently he was accused (wrongly) of the HL2 leak, and went through quite an ordeal with the FBI. - geomon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@ahhell
"The damn game came out in 97. It's time to move on."
If age of the game is the primary reason to abandon playing it, then I respectfully submit the following:
"The game of chess is thought to have originated in what is now northern India or Afganistan[sic] sometime before 6OO AD (http://math.uww.edu/~mcfarlat/177hist.htm)"
"Mahjong, also spelled mah-jong or mah-jongg is a game of Chinese origin. Dating to over two thousand years ago, Mahjong is said to have originated in the court of the King of Wu. This was roughly the time that Confucius existed, which was some five hundred years before the Christian era. (http://www.otal.umd.edu/~vg/amst205.F96/vj07/project3a.html)"
"The origins of Go are shrouded in the mists of ancient Asian history, but the game is thought to have originated, at least 4000 - 5000 years ago. (http://www.usgo.org/resources/gohistory.asp)"
Sounds like these games have long overstayed their welcome based on your standards. - joolz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6yes but you still need the orignial to play this one.
- Flankk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Video games are not a "waste of life." Everyone has the freedom to enjoy their lives to the fullest. If that means solely reading books and installing Linux for you, then knock yourself out. Just please don't push your warped doctrines on all of us.
StarCraft continues to be an excellent game but I can't push myself to play it since I bought a 360. If Blizzard released a sequel to StarCraft with better graphics and an updated player stats system, I'd be all over it. - puzzud, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6A potential red flag for this project is the fact I stilll see Starcraft sold in some stores.
- cohortq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Christ...let it go.
The damn game came out in 97. It's time to move on. "
Tell that to the entire country of South Korea. - Drood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Yeah, and posting on Digg is SO much less of a waste...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10I'd much rather play Total Annihilation on linux....oh wait... I do :)
- borbzz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It's probably just making a native wrapper around the game's code/resources. This is similar to how they got the original Unreal Tournament to run on Linux natively ( http://openut.sourceforge.net/ ). I love StarCraft (always been hoping they'd make a great sequel), and being able to play it in Gentoo/Ubuntu would be wonderful!
- paleck, on 10/12/2007, -2/+68 years later. I dont think Starcraft is making them much money. So I think that they wouldnt help with the project, but would let it continue.
- geomon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@blanski
"And fourth, I have no problems with him getting old games to play on Linux if he has the talent to. What I would suggest is for him to use his talents elsewhere. Don't waste all your time coding for ONE game. Why use your time and talents creating something that can be applied to every 10 year old game."
I guess I don't see the "waste" of time in this exercise. By attempting to code one game, he will have learned a lot about how to code an entire class of games made around the same time as Starcraft. Wouldn't that experience provide him with precisely the talents you suggest would be needed to code every 10-year-old game?
I can't see how his learning from this exercise is a waste of his time. He may find out that the whole exercise could have been done better with a better coding environment. That will have saved someone else the trouble of making the same investment of time, wouldn't it?
I think this guy's experience benefits everyone, himself most of all. - Ratty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There's typos in the URLs to the screen casts, so here's the working links:
http://squeedlyspooch.com.nyud.net:8080/scsharp/sc.swf
http://squeedlyspooch.com.nyud.net:8080/scsharp/sc2.swf - asteron, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4A port is not the same thing as a rewrite. Porting is modifying source code so that it will run on a different platform than intended. This is more like reengineering the program.
- Charlotte_Web, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5This isn't about how much money an 8 year old game is or is not making them.
For Blizzard, this is going to be about protecting the Starcraft brand, which they are still using and intending to use.
If Blizzard lets this guy get away with making an exact copy of Starcraft, the Starcraft brand is then in danger of slipping into the public domain. Part of the obligation of the copyright holder to to show that they are willing to defend their copyright. - Arramol, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6You actually already can. It runs under vanilla WINE, no Cedega needed. You have to play around with winecfg a small amount (mainly just hit "auto detect" on everything), but it works quite well. I've been able to run it on both SuSE and Ubuntu.
- slackerbox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Those were ported to Linux by the developers before the release.
- TheTankengine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@Arromol: Did you not even read the summary?
"This guy wants to play StarCraft on his Linux box without wine... "
Its right there in front of you. WINE doesn't work perfectly, I have it on my FC5 laptop and neither battle.net or the sound work.
Its an awesome game, but even better with multiplayer. - Drood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Note to those saying about 8 year old game: I still see the Starcraft Battle Chest for sale in pretty much every games store.
Cease and desist in 3... 2... - eklitzke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It depends on what pieces in the Windows API you need to use. Depending on whether or not the required pieces are implemented, they usually work very well (around native speed) or not at all.
BTW, there aren't any Windows emulators (that I'm aware of), only attempts to reimplement the Windows API. - JEB101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"Christ...let it go.
The damn game came out in 97. It's time to move on. "
I play starcraft once in a while... Ive been playing since 97... Starcraft is a good game and im gonna play it for another 10 years! :P - JohntB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3That didn't stop Blizzard from C&Ding the last people to do this.
- Drood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3You say that as if it's a bad thing.
What, you expect subtley from a game titled "Total Annihilation"? Cavedog put out a fantastic game, and more importantly, unlike closed Blizzard titles, it was TOTALLY moddable, and still have a very active fan community now. Same goes for Myth II. - doherty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Soemtimes well, sometimes not well. It depends on about a million different things, but most notably, the piece of software you're trying to run via emulation...
- loup, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Corsix is right, according to the site you still need your starcraft CD in order to play his ported version
- jrooks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I agree, Blizzard needs to release updated version of Starcraft. It still has a huge fan base. Its just one of those games that you pull once a year to replay.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yes, but you also see UT2K4 and Doom III sold in stores. Postal 2 also... err.. in select places. A few more as well. And these all run native on linux.
- theratdotus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2how well do windows emulators work?
- Keiser, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4total annihlation is just a gang ***** of units. Its based off such a simple damage system unlike Starcraft.
- freeman755, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Same here, SC works fine in linux using wine in Mepis, but its nice to see effort to make more popular games run on linux natively. If this sort of thing happen more often, big companies like Valve and Rockstar might start to see another market they could sell to, Linux Gamers.
- nargilamonster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2ah..Starcraft and Total Annihilation..the highlights of teenage years.. :)
This is an awesome endeavor, and I fully endorse this effort, and I hope that Blizzard sees that this only makes the Stracraft brand look even better (after all, isn't imitation the greatest form of flattery?) plus they weren't going to make any more money on the original RTS any anyway.
An awesome coincidence would be if the OLPC project starts distribution after this Starcraft port is completed...and millions of kids everywhere can play the great game over their mesh networks... - pro547, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2How do you play TA on linux.... I have it for mac a long time ago and loved it but runs slow emulating it on my mini... please I need to play TA....
- DangerStevens, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There WAS an attempt to create an open source StarCraft and Blizzard tried to can it. All they managed to do was have FreeCraft renamed to the non-copyright-infringing 'Stratagus'. It's available on GNU systems and it's quite fun. They built a solid engine and lots of ROMS have been developed to work on top of it. Battle of Survival is the name of one that tries to mimic StarCraft and it's fun to play, though they only have the Terran graphics done.
- geomon, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@kolop1
"Linux is 10 years behind."
10 years behind what? Behind Solaris? In some respects you are right.
Ten years behind Windows? Hardly.
As for Starcraft, it has been 'playable' on Linux for years. - Lung-Dart, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I have starcraft working grate under wine. But native would be nice.
- bstock, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2While I applaud the efforts of the author, Starcraft runs great under wine, along with most other Blizzard games. The last time I tried running an app that used mono (beagle), it didn't go so well. Although that was my only experience with mono, I've shied away since. Hopefully this will run better.
- ssam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1TAspring
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