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Loki's Draeker On WineX, Transgaming And More

Posted by Hemos on from the i-just-wanna-play-my-games dept.

pseen wrote to us with a conversation with Scott Draeker (of Loki Games concerning the recent Transgaming and Wine announcements, as well as the Mandrake Linux Gamer announcements.

2 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Here's the thing, though... by friedmud · · Score: 5, Informative

    WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator

    Why can't people get this through their heads??

    This is not the same thing as VMWARE or VirtualPC for the Mac. This is an implementation of the Windows API for linux. What does that mean? It means games run just about the same in linux as in windows because there is no overhead of an emulator.

    With the case of Direct3d the WINE implementation actually converts the calls on the fly to OpenGL - it does not emulate a Direct3d card - it just does a conversion, there is a difference because when a Direct3d card is emulated (as in VirtualPC) the software that is run has no real knowledge of what is underneath - this is not so with WINE.

    You can even run things such as 3dmark 2000 because of this. I get about 2500 3dmarks on a 1.2GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and a Geforce2 MX - not quite as good as what I do in Windows, but it is damn smooth.

    So don't bash it unless you try it because it really does work.

    Derek

  2. Re:Here's the thing, though... by friedmud · · Score: 3, Informative

    Besides what I have already said - I would also like to comment on the fact that if you can get a game to run usning Transgaming it usually looks just fine.

    The directx7 implementation is great - it is there. Mostly it is some of the other parts of the system that have problems (ie loading the program, or installing the program - but here again Transgaming did an entire implementation of MS's DCOM - that in itself was a huge feat).

    So call it what you want - but I don't think it is an emulator because it doesn't create software instances of hardware (like running an NES emulator creates a "virtual" NES in software so the games like it).

    The point is just go try it! The first month is free anyway - and after that it is only $5. I don't know about the rest of you, but being able to play all the games I already own in linux is like a wet-dream come true, and if $5 a month will help that out then I am there.

    Derek