StarCraft
Availability And Patches
Brood War Expansion
Brood War adds an additional story line, new missions, and new units to the game. Although it improves on the game, the core of StarCraft is left intact, making for easier patching and bug fixing. In most cases, a fix for StarCraft will also fix Brood War.
StarCraft Battle Chest
Battle Chest is a box set containing StarCraft and Brood War, as well as official strategy guides for both games.
Battle.net Digital Download
By registering your CD-Key with Battle.net, you are able to download a pre-patched, combined version of StarCraft and Brood War.
Patches
The latest patches can be downloaded at Blizzard's Battle.net website. Brood War users only need to install the Brood War patch (it will update StarCraft as well). Current version is 1.161.
Free Version Of StarCraft: Brood War
A free version of StarCraft: Brood War is available from ICCUP. The ICCUP are the largest non-Korean organization with a ladder system for organized play. Technically, the version is illegal as well as the private servers that the ICCUP host. However, Blizzard has not chosen enforce their copyright for some years. [1]
The free version does have a number of restrictions:[2]
- No single player campaign.
- No multiplayer on Battle.net (a hack is used to play on privately hosted ICCUP servers.
- No music is included.
Issues and Fixes
Color Artifacts on Windows 7
Playing StarCraft or its expansion Brood War using Windows 7 causes the colors in the game to become glitched, this is due to the way the coloring works in Windows 7. To solve this, you must stop explorer.exe, however explorer.exe is a very important file that Windows uses. Using a batch file with the script of starting StarCraft and closing explorer.exe, and upon exiting the game, restoring explorer.exe.
You can find a more detailed explanation in PCGamingWiki's Color Fixes For Older Games article.
Alternatively, you can try this registry fix:
32-bit Windows
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\Starcraft116] "Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00 "Name"="Starcraft.exe" "ID"=hex:ca,89,65,49
64-bit Windows
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\DirectDraw\Compatibility\Starcraft116] "Flags"=hex:00,08,00,00 "Name"="Starcraft.exe" "ID"=hex:ca,89,65,49
Mods
ChaosLauncher - ChaosLauncher allows you to run StarCraft with all the necessary mods like Windowed-Mode.
W-Mode - Allows you to play StarCraft in windowed mode using ChaosLauncher.
System Requirements
Resources
- TeamLiquid - Great resource for keeping up with SC1 news.