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Loki's Draeker On WineX, Transgaming And More
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.
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The division between work and play is simple: if I have a Ferrari and an '85 Volvo Wagon, I drive one when I want to do something fun and the other when I need to get from point A to point B. I'm not taking the Ferrari out of the garage anytime soon.
Why waste time attempting "transgaming" when most gaming takes place on Windows boxes that people pick up at Best Buy for $599 minus MSN rebates that they're always hawking?
I don't think Loki would want to use something like that. Sure it would speed up devel-time but it would still just be a wrapper (a huge ugly wrapper) to native linux libs which would make things slow and ugly.
Loki's philosophy has been 100% native linux software. They strip out all windows-specific code and replace it with linux-specific code. In the process they also fix and remove bugs in the windows version.
Actually, there's another reason not to use wrappers. Using wrappers means there will be large blocks of code that the developers will never know anything about. Porting 100% of the code means that the developers understand the code much better which results in more bugs (from the original code that doesn't get thrown out) getting fixed.
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Garett
Is that it's using Wine. Maybe I'm behind the times or biased, but Wine has been around for a long time now and still can't even be used to run already-installed business applications like MS Word, much less the Word installer, much less still DirectX games, much less even that that installers for DirectX games...
The one important commercial product released so far using Wine is Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux, which was such a dismal failure that many users who paid hundreds in cash for it ended up buying the windows version in addition anyway to run under VMWare or Win4Lin.
Wine simply has not proven itself a viable project. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not complaining about the Wine developers at all. I'm just wondering whether it's really possible (both legally and technically) to get a working, current implementation of the Windows and DirectX APIs on Linux.
This question is, of course, in addition to the significant question of performance, not even addressed in this post...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
They should port Arcade games that you can not play anywhere but the arcade over to linux. They should port console games to linux. I doubt Loki will do this since it actually makes sense, and as such it is an alien concept to them.
Loki had their chance.
They cannot do what needs to be done.
What we need is games in linux, They dont have to be native games.
I subcribed to transgaming, We are voting for them to mostly port old games, leaving the newer games to loki
Loki will still have a job, Loki can port directX 9 based games, while WineX works with all the old games.
The dicussions from the voting subcribers have said that most of them want old game support more than the new stuff.
Loki is just being a typical company here, trying to have all the money to themselves.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Simple, to get windows users to migrate to linux, giving linux more support with hardware such as drivers, and software.
This is a GOOD thing.
Windows users want games, they dont care if the games are native or not, they just want to play their OLD games in Linux.
The new games can be native but the old games are what transgaming should be porting.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I agree I have been waiting for this since Transgaming first got started almost a year ago.
I signed up on the very first night and have really enjoyed the games I have played so far.
Fully OpenGL accellerated Baldur's Gate II in an enlightenment window sitting right next to mozilla with LICQ over on the left is a sight to behold my friends.
If you want to play the games you already own in linux then go sign up.
The greatest thing about the Transgaming model is that you get to vote on what you want them to do next. So if there is one particular game you want (right now Black & White is on the top of the charts on Transgaming) and other people want it to - you can actually give real feedback to the development team.
This is a great strategy - and I think everyone should participate.
Happy Gaming!
Derek
Loki does not realize that they cant sell games to people who already own the windows version.
Now, given the chance to buy the windows version and the linux version, most people will choose the linux version. But if theres only a windows version and now it works in transgaming, these people most likely werent going to buy the linux version if it DID come out, they most likely have been booting into windows.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
do we want a watered down linux that everyone uses, or the linux we already have? Look... I'm not a linux elitest who says only "smart people should use linux" but I don't know how much I like the idea of running windows games on linux. I have alot of respect for what the wine people have done considering how gnarly the win32 api is (i've worked with it... ick), however thats the problem. Linux is relativly clean and well built, so why do we want to incorporate horribly written apis and code into our base? Alot of microsoft games don't even work right on microsoft computers with all the hidden hooks in win32, why would we assume that they'll work on linux? Another issue is the fact that sircam was demonstrated to run on wine, are we going to compromise security to play a few windows games? I'm on Draeker's side, if you want windows games then damnit, use windows. Of course there's always the "lets see if we can do it" argument which is a pretty good one, otherwise linux never even would of been here... but lets keep it at that. Now if they want to write some entertainement apps, why don't they write a quality dvd app (yes i know about the css licensing fees) because livid sucks or write some true linux games. As for me, if I get my hands on a windows computer game... I plan to use it in windows which is about the only thing I do in windows (except dvd). Its too much hassle to go figiting around with wine (I couldn't even imagine how random wine is right now with what works and not incorporating directx... i shudder at the thought).
ps - Also if we keep a model of copying microsoft we'll find outselves always playing catch-up. For instance I got my hands on windows xp and was playing with wine and found that wine has no problem with win 2k advanced server or win me but seg faults on notepad.exe that comes with win xp. I know xp is officially supported however xp has a compatibility layer thing that allows programs to run as if they were win95 or winnt or win2k (its actually pretty cool). But it just makes me wonder just how much did microsoft break in releasing xp?
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Ya I have seen your posts - I post as friedmud there too.
It is a tough decision between Directx8 and Directx6 - I just dunno. I think I have voted +2 for 8 and +1 for 6 - but that is because I have bought more new games recently and I want to make sure that new games get continued support.
But I can understand why we might want to leave that to Loki and focus on getting the other hundreds of games running on Directx6.
Tough decision though.
(Note to all you people who have not signed up at Transgaming, you will not understand what we're talking about because you can't vote - so if you wanna be in the know, and if you want to have a say, THEN GO SIGN UP!)
Derek
I am truely happy that there will be more competition on the linux gaming market. More Games!! However, WINE isn't the fastest program, I think win4lin would be better....
forget it.