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StarCraft

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Revision as of 23:21, 14 April 2021 by 89.64.47.162 (talk)
StarCraft
StarCraft cover
Developers
Blizzard Entertainment
Publishers
Blizzard Entertainment
Europe Sierra Entertainment
Release dates
Windows March 31, 1998
Mac OS (Classic) March 12, 1999
macOS (OS X) November 20, 2001
Reception
Metacritic 88
Taxonomy
Monetization Freeware
Microtransactions Cosmetic
Series StarCraft
StarCraft on IGDB
StarCraft guide on StrategyWiki
StarCraft on MobyGames
StarCraft on Wikipedia
StarCraft
StarCraft 1998
StarCraft II 2010

Key points

Both StarCraft and its expansion, Brood War, were made free on April 18, 2017 on the Blizzard launcher, along with a new patch that improves compatibility with modern OS, windowed and windowed-fullscreen modes, network, and more.
StarCraft: Remastered is DLC for the above version of the game, which adds enhanced dialogue, audio, and 4K-quality graphics. It is not required for multiplayer.[1]

General information

StarCraft Compendium
Battle.net Forums

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
CD key
Installers for both Windows and Mac OS are on the CD.
Later copies (post-2003) also include an OS X installer.
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Mac OS
macOS (OS X)
Battle.net
Icon overlay.png
Free; includes both StarCraft and its expansion, Brood War. Can be launched without logging in to battle.net by using the -launch command line argument.[2] You still need to log in to install.
Windows
Mac OS
macOS (OS X)

DLC and expansion packs

Name Notes
StarCraft: Brood War Included with the StarCraft Anthology and StarCraft Battle Chest. Now freely available with any version of the game registered to the Blizzard launcher.
Windows
Mac OS
macOS (OS X)
StarCraft: Remastered Adds enhanced dialogue, audio, and 4K-quality widescreen graphics.
Windows
Mac OS
StarCraft: Cartooned A texture pack that gives the game a cartoon look. Requires StarCraft: Remastered.
Windows
Mac OS

Version differences

StarCraft Anthology (Battle.net Digital Download)

The classic game that is free as of version 1.18, released on April 18, 2017.[3] Includes both the base game StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion.
Download from here.

StarCraft Battle Chest

A physical release which contains both StarCraft and Brood War, along with the official strategy guides for both games.

Essential improvements

Retail Patches

The most up-to-date standalone installer version for the retail release is 1.17.0.

Install the Stacraft patch only if Brood War is not installed.

Operating System Starcraft Brood War
Windows Blizzard FTP Server Blizzard FTP Server
Mac Blizzard FTP Server Blizzard FTP Server

Mods

ChaosLauncher

The ChaosLauncher allows older versions of StarCraft to be run in a Windowed Mode along with some other features.
This is obsoleted by the free-to-play and Remastered versions.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Starcraft\CSettings.json
macOS (OS X) ~/Library/Application Support/Blizzard/StarCraft/CSettings.json

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Starcraft\Characters\<user-id>
macOS (OS X) ~/Library/Application Support/Blizzard/StarCraft/Characters/<user-id>

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Hor+. Requires Remastered DLC. An option is available in Remastered to pillarbox the game to its original 4:3 resolution.
Multi-monitor
See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Requires Remastered DLC; the resolution is fixed at 640x480 otherwise.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Added in patch 1.18; activated with Alt+ Enter.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Added in patch 1.18; activated with Alt+ Enter.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Bilinear filtering only.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
FPS cap available up to 300 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Widescreen resolution

This hack may not be compatible with the latest versions of StarCraft and Brood War, and is also unnecessary as of the latest patch --Sagacity159 (talk) 23:36, 22 January 2018 (UTC).
DO NOT play on Battle.Net while using this hack. You might get banned.
The single-player portion of the game has been reported to have some bugs when running this solution: Sometimes in the campaign the camera gets stuck and won't scroll anymore. The problem is fixable in this updated version of the Resolution Expander by shifting to 640x480 and then back to the resolution you were in. Some users have reported that the crash that occurs as you complete a level in the campaign is still there. This crash can be fixed by moving the StarCraft folder out of C:/ drive.
Widescreen[4]
  1. Download Resolution Expander 6 and extract anywhere you want.
  2. Edit ResSettings.ini.
  3. Change these lines to the desired resolution.
    • ScreenWidth0=640
    • ScreenHight0=480
  4. After setting your resolution, run InsectLoader.exe as administrator to play StarCraft with the hack.
  5. If you get an error message that StarCraft isn't installed properly, do the following.
  6. Go to where StarCraft.exe is located.
  7. Create a file called scfix.vbs and paste the following text into it.
  8. Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    set svc=GetObject("winmgmts:root\default:StdRegProv")
    Wscript.Quit(svc.setStringValue(&H80000002, "SOFTWARE\Blizzard Entertainment\Starcraft", "Program", WshShell.currentDirectory & "\Starcraft.exe"))
    
  9. Double-click it. InsectLoader should agree the game is installed properly.
  10. If you are using a 64-bit OS and the fix doesn't work, try using this instead:
  11. Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
    set svc=GetObject("winmgmts:root\default:StdRegProv")
    Wscript.Quit(svc.setStringValue(&H80000002, "SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Blizzard Entertainment\Starcraft", "Program", WshShell.currentDirectory & "\Starcraft.exe"))
    

Input

In-game speed settings.
In-game speed settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Slow to Fast scroll speed, with 7 steps.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Sound Settings.
Sound Settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Changing the language through the Blizzard App. The download is approximately 250 MB to 325 MB for each language.
Changing the language through the Blizzard App. The download is approximately 250 MB to 325 MB for each language.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
All cinematic scenes are in English and subtitled to their respective language. Subtitles in cinematic scenes can be turned on/off.
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
French
German
Hungarian
Fan-made localization, supports 1.17, http://huncraft.hu/starcraft
Italian
Ukrainian
Fan translation and full dubbing by TSF, download.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
8 Also supports 4 observers.
Online play
8 Also supports 4 observers.

Connection types

Type Native Notes
Matchmaking
Patches 1.18 and above have matchmaking.
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
For non-ladder matches
Direct IP

Ports

Protocol Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP 6112
UDP 6112
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support status is unknown.

Issues fixed

Corrupt graphics on Windows 7

See Palette Issue.
Fixed with version 1.18.

Crash in Zerg mission 8 during in-game dialogue

You will have to disable audio temporarily.

No sounds on Windows 10

Fixed with patch 1.18.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9 Windows platforms only.
DirectDraw 2 In Windows version prior to version 1.18
OpenGL 2.1 1.18 and above OpenGL is used.[5]
Metal support
Since 2 July 2020 with patch 1.23.5
ExecutablePPC16-bit 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
The 64-bit version is available through the Blizzard launcher.
macOS (OS X)
An OS X patch arrived in November 2001, but only for PowerPC processors.
They continued until 2007 for both OSes, gaining a universal binary at 1.16.
Support for PowerPC processors and Mac OS was dropped shortly after.

64-bit Intel required a source port until 1.23, which did add 64-bit Intel support but jumped to 10.10 as the minimum OS.
Linux
Requires a source port.
Mac OS (Classic)

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Cutscenes Smacker
Multiplayer Battle.net

Source ports

Name Description
Stargus
Alternative open-source engine.
Aims to improve stability and availability on other platforms such as OS X and Linux.
StarCraft support is in beta, can be unstable.
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux

System requirements

Base game

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95 (Only inclusive until patch 1.16.1. Patch 1.17+ Needs XP and greater.)
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 90 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 80 MB
Video card (GPU) SVGA video card that supports DirectDraw at 640x480 resolution, 256 colors
DirectX 2.0 compatible
Mac OS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 7.6
Processor (CPU) PowerPC 120 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 80 MB
Video card (GPU) 640x480 display in 256 colors

For Remastered DLC

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 7, 8
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium D
AMD Athlon 64 X2
System memory (RAM) 2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 8 GB
Video card (GPU) NVIDIA GeForce 6800
ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
256 MB of VRAM
Other 1024 x 768 minimum display resolution
Mac OS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 10.10
Processor (CPU) Intel Core 2 Duo
System memory (RAM) 2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 8 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro
Other 1024 x 768 minimum display resolution

References