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New Transgaming WineX Release
Thunderbird writes "Transgaming released a new version of WineX. Winex allows you to run x86 windows games and programs on x86 Linux. It includes allmost full directx support (up to 7 including direct3d). " I'm still skeptical of their business model, but I subscribed anyway in the hopes that The Sims and its expansion packs will work soon. They look legit, although I only own 2 windows program (The Sims, Diablo 2, and their expansion packs)
so I don't have much to test it on.
Judging by the page linked to in the article, it looks like the Sims is already working using WineX.
"MandrakeSoft and TransGaming Bring Gaming to the Linux Desktop"
no
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Did someone else noticed that transgamin has licensed macrovision safedisc copy protection ?
At least linux programmers will be able to protect their work from piracy and stop the widespread copying of cd containing GPL software.
That's a big hope for the hole FSF foundation which will be able to maintain its value and retribute its shareholders.
#include "coucou.h"
Why would one use Wine to run games on linux when the linux port for Return to castle Wolfenstein has just been released?
...but will it run Civilisations 3?
This is about the only game that I want a windows box for at the moment.
Over at LinuxGames, a multi-day flamewar is starting to cool down a bit after a biting discussion of whether WINEX is good or bad for Linux gaming (or Linux as a whole). We should be discussing those same issues here.
In a nutshell: WINEX potentially gets more Windows people into Linux where they can use WINEX as a crutch to play the games they need while using a "better" operating system. (good) However, WINEX also promotes the use of Windows software and insulates programmers from cross-platform considerations. (bad)
I mean seriously...the single player game sucked ass.
A friend of mine who runs windows has this game, and it seems pretty cool, if not occasionally buggy. Looking throught their list of supported games, it doesn't look like it works at all though. Too bad. I would probably pay for this if they could get that particular one to work.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Games like the Sims (remember the Mandrake bundle a while back?), Half-Life, Starcraft, Alice, Baldur's Gate II, and others already work and are supported. Games (in order of usability) can be found at http://www.transgaming.com/dosearch.php?order=work ing
Disclaimer:
(from http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=9 - The Sims)
TransGaming's fully optimized Linux version of Maxis' hit title works perfectly. Packaged Windows version will *not* work well with standard WineX due to lack of optimizations
It seems like they still have to optimize, but it's encouraging that these things are working in the first place.
Personally, I'm not all that interested in winex. I use wine to run Diablo II and LOD, but that's the only windows game I need. I have several games that run native to linux, and barely have enough time to play them. I'll support the good people who support linux directly. Sure, I have plenty of other windows games, but it was my choice to not run a windows box, and I'm sticking to it...and it really isn't that hard. :-)
If you use these linux binaries, you're essentially choosing or have chosen to put your dollar votes towards the Win32 Boxed version of RTCW. If anyone really wants to show Id software that there is a significant minority willing to pay for Boxed Linux Games, then one should wait for the actual Linux Boxed version of RTCW. Please, put your money where your interest lies.
I can only speculate on how large such a minority is.
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
If the first 11 posts are any indication, gamers are a bunch of idiots.
I've fussed with WINE for a couple of years now, occasionally getting some useful work out of it. I think WineX is a great idea. Games should give WINE a pretty good workout. And if it crashes, hey, it was only a game. This should benefit all WINE users.
er, there won't be a boxed version
Sorry, but Civ3 needs DirectX 8a, and since wine only emulates up to version 7, I don't think it will work.
God is real unless declared integer.
It isn't just The Sims. Transgaming and the Wine developers have done an incredible job. If you haven't looked at the game compatibility list recently, do so. Anything with a 5 (officially supported by Transgaming) or 4 (runs nicely) should be fine. It's up to an incredible number of good games now.
Nonrandom Link
I'm still skeptical of their business model
You're not alone. I have a friend working (in a gaming company) on a quite powerfull 3D engine. It's been already used for a deer huting game or what was it. The whole code runs under Linux/mesa(opengl) on full optimalization without any problems. They use even openal for audio effects.
The game which runs on this engine uses some (very redundant MS Windows dependent sw (activeX or such)) so the result won't run anything else but MS windows.
However, it'd take a week or so to port to Linux but noone is willing to do it.
while this is really good for the short term, it may backfire when companies ignore linux as a platform and just concentrate on windows. As everyone knows, Direct X is not the greatest thing and we ought to be steering people away from that rather than embracing it. We run the risk of having linux games compatability and capabilities dictated by MS, and that is probably the last thing we want
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
in the internet era noone cares about single player anymore save a few freaks
you lose ~user/.config but thats not very important for me or most of the gamers. You also get a speed decrease which is not good but Transgaming seem to be working very well on the issues. Wolfenstein (altough OpenGL) shows 30% decrease from win version, not to shabby. DiabloII is also very playable in D3D.
Transgaming has also stated that when they got 20000 subscribers they will bring back the code to the main wine tree. Don't think that counts for SecoRom and SafeDisc though.
The best thing is that I can go out to any computer or toy store and buy a game that works with Linux, the native ports are quite hard to find in sweden.
I applied for a VISA today just for this service. They are well worth the money.
In order for Wine not to get into problems with M$ they are not allowed to distribute a copy of Windowz anyway... (unless things have changed). So my question is, if you have to have a copy of Win98 kicking around to do updates (damn those Install Shield freaks... wish they used Ghost Installer's installations instead), why do you need to run it in Linux? When I actually get spare time to play games I just boot into Win98 and play... when I am done I just boot back into Linux. The only things I use Wine for is Windows applications that I need to run to get my more productive things done.
How many other people feel the same way? (Anonymity is great... flame away)
You're too late; there won't be a boxed Linux version of RTCW, because not enough people bought the boxed Linux version of Q3:A.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Not to start another flame war, but this is something that Linux needs. WineX is an excellent piece of software and achievement!
Many people complain that there should be a Linux port and not to use emulation software. Wine is not an emulator and provides a set of APIs for cross platform conformity. This makes it possible for those companies that want a Linux port but do not have the resources to create a Linux port to program for these APIs in their Windows version making the software Linux/Mac/BeOS/etc compatible. This also allows for a single executable to be maintained instead of several versions.
It also allows those of use that dual boot to have one less application to switch to Windows for. Once we no longer dual boot and Windows leaves our hard drives, then the Linux ports will come as Linux will be more of a mainstream OS.
No, this is not better then a native Linux port, but it IS the next best thing!
Yes, it will be nice playing Half Life TFC in Linux. If WineX can handle something as intensive as a 3D FPS video game, how is it at handling something relatively boring and mundane, such as Excel 97? If I can get Excel 97, which I use at work, running at home on my Mandrake box, I'll be very happy. Currently, Gnumeric is servicing my "home spreadsheet" needs like household budgeting. But I need the features of Excel for a lot of the complex financial modelling I do at work.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I noticed that apps like Agent ran better under winex than under plain wine. Has anyone tried something like IE using winex?
Does Internet Explorer actually works with WineX ?
AFAIK, it is pretty integrated 'into' windows so maybe it cannot run with WineX, since Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Anyone has tried is?
-J
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
This has got me thinking about the whole WineX thing. I think it's a good idea and brings off the shelf software to Linux users. However isn't Transgaming breaking this with their package and special versions of games? Transgaming has their own, apparently optimized version, of The Sims that they bundle with this package that runs under WineX. Apparantely the commerical Windows version doesn't. So it means that if you want to run The Sims under Linux you have to buy their version (and perhaps their future versions of other Windows games). I'm not sure what optimizations they make or how they make them or what involvement Maxis had in all this. The concept of WineX was to allow you to run Windows programs under Linux so it would open up more software (including games) to people wanting to run that operating system. So if you go down this route, you're stuck buying your "Windows" games from them (since they're somewhat changed from the off the shelf Windows versions) and thus if you decide to go back to Windows as an operating system, you have a game that might not work with it right? A little odd if you ask me. Anyways, one step closer to removing that multi-boot that I have to do everytime I want to run Linux.
liB
According to the Transgaming website, The Sims works the best, receiving the only "5."
The Sims
Working Rating: 5
Popularity: 119
Forum Posts: 27
Too bad they don't work on games based on popularity. There's only one reason I still use Windows:
EverQuest
Working Rating: 0
Popularity: 122
Forum Posts: 11
Of course EQ is changing to a new engine for DX8, so that will probably bump them even further down the list.
Actually, there's another reason I still run windows, and that's so I can play the latest games as soon as they're released. Not weeks, months, or years later. As long as there's a delay between playability on Windows and Linux (which will always be the case unless developers start writing/releasing titles for Linux), I see no incentive to go through the headache of trying to get Windows games working outside of their native OS.
--
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"Why should I be content to simply live in this world, when I, as a human being, can CREATE it?" - Oertel
Does anyone think there is a correlation between WineX working games and the fact that most don't have copy protection? Is that why they needed to license SafeDisc from Macrovision?
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
Something to try...for people who don't want to run winme/wmware.
It lets you connect to your windows box or mac from inside linux and see
and control the remote desktop. So you can have AOL client running on a
windows box inside a window under linux.
Cruise TT
"I've tried to compile wine many times over the years, and sometimes it does compile. When it doesn't instantly segfault, sometimes I can get the title screen of my favorite game to come up. Once I heard that someone got a game to run under it, but it crashed a lot. Anyways, isn't WINE great?"
Showing off how good linux is.... er, hem, er, by emulating windows games!
Rock on.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This will only encourage game developers who have previously been thinking about Linux ports to not bother.
It will kill native gaming on Linux, and it won't wean people off of Windows.
The only benefit is that if you only use Windows for games and Linux for everything else, then you might be able to get rid of Windows and run everything slower in Linux. However, with the $200 you saved on buying Windows you can buy a 50% faster CPU and 50% faster graphics card to make up for the slowdown. All games sales will still show as being for Windows though - be sure to return the card saying that you are running it on Linux via Transgamings WineX...
If you follow the Wine Developers/Users mailing lists, you'd know that Gavriel and others in his company are very active in helping users and developers solve problems as well as giving quite a bit of their code back to Wine. So yes, I'd say they are legit. Whether Wine is a good thing is a different question, but I think Transgaming has already shown their commitment to the Wine project as a whole.
The problem with Everquest is the way they coded the DirectX 6 API. It uses a mode that WineX does not support and according to what I read, is very hard to support. This feature no longer exists in DirectX 8 and it should actually make Everquest easier to support, according to Transgaming.
yes, and the reason is quite simple, most people don't want to buy a game twice, also the linux version came out much later
it was half-assed attempt at something no one really cared about
I think it's much better to buy a game once and be able to play it both platforms
Here are the games that have a working rating of four or five (out of five possible). Altough the sims shouldn't really be there since it isn't the windows version. Quite a good list and it's growing really fast too.
:)
Yes, this is karma whoring but the site felt kinda slow and I thought we needed to know what we are talking about
The Sims
Total Annihilation
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2
Total Annihilation : Kingdoms
Raiden II
Atomic Bomberman
Redline
Ultima Online Renaissance
American McGee's Alice
Mortal Kombat IV
I-War
Starcraft
Freddi Fish 2 Haunted House
Sudden Strike Forever
Allods 2
Rehash
Warhammer 40k: Final Liberation
Fallout 2
Panzer General 2
Manx TT SuperBike
NHL 98
1nsane
Elasto Mania
Darius Gaiden
In the hunt
Return To Castle Wolfenstein
Funkflitzer
WarCraft II
Half-Life and Counter-Strike
Carmageddon
Diablo 2
Commandos 2
Sacrifice
Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
Baldur's Gate 2
Air Offensive: The Art of Flying
7th Legion
Grim Fandango
Dune 2000
Myth The Fallen Lords
Championship Manager 2001/2002
Caesar III
Hitman CodeName 47
Shattered Galaxy
Jedi Knight
Red Baron 3D
Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Tigershark
Baldur's Gate
Russa-German War
the good news is if you pop over to linuxgames.com they have a link to the linux binary that will run the windows CD. Also look for tuxgames to sell the binary and windows cd soon. They report to ID as 'linux sales' so try your hardest not to buy the windows version.
how much is a copy of win98 going for these days?
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
Hmmm...
I've been following the WINE project for quite some time now, and I've been cheering for them from the sidelines the whole time. They've picked exactly the right way to go about their project (provide a Linux version of the Win APIs, not emulate Windows) and once complete, they will have contributed a signifigant service to the community.
But I wonder about their choice of licence.
The nature of WINE is that it is very modular; it's not so much a great big tool, as a toolbox full of little tools, where each "tool" is another successfully ported Windows API call. Wine will be "complete" when every possible Windows API is duplicated in Linux-native code.
As such, it's a program that is very responsive to massive development parallelism - once you have a certain core functionality established, you can hand off large chunks of the API-space to other developers, and they can hack away at it at their leisure. Once they have a given API call working, it can be folded back into the main tree.
It's analogous to the SETI@Home or Distributed.net efforts, where an "API call" is a "work unit" Once the entire API "search space" has been completed, the project is done.
(Of course, this is an over-simplification. Windows itself is not so nicely modularized, with APIs calling APIs and lots of undocumented side-effects. But at a course level, WINE does suit parallel development pretty well)
But WINE is licenced BSD. As such, there is no compelling mechanism that requires that any "work units" be re-submitted back into the main project. It is entirely possible for aome entity to port a core series of Windows APIs, and then withold the source from the WINE community. Entirely legal, but very, very bad form.
And yet, that appears to be what TransGaming is doing. They are working on (from what I can tell from their website) porting the DirectX APIs - absolutely essential for getting games (probably the most compelling reason for using WINE in the first place) to function. They have staked out a key, core component of the WINE project "search space".
And they have licenced their portion of the work in such a way that it taints the entire project. In a nutshell, you are prohibited from _selling_ any product that uses WINE and their source. So if you want to write a DirectX Linux app, and sell it, you're FUBARed.
Furthermore, you can't use any of their source as examples or help in porting other APIs that may be related, because of the tainting effect.
The end result is very much like Microsoft's "Shared Source" where you can see the source code, but you can't actually _use_ it in any meaningful way.
It's worth retelling the story that lead to the creation of the GPL - Stallman was having problems getting a printer to work. He knew that if he had access to the source, he could get the printer to work, and that he could pass out copies so that everyone with a similar printer could get it to work too. The manufacturer refused to provide source, on the grounds that they made their money selling the drivers.
Which is more important, a company making money, or people getting their stuff working?
There are 3 essential aspects of software freedom: Universal availibility of source, Freedom to modify that source, and Freedom to redistribute modified source any way you want (as long as these freedoms are not denied to those further down the chain) TransGaming is providing the first two, but steps on the third - and by doing so, sabotages a worthy community effort.
If only WINE had been been released under the GPL, then this situation could not have occurred!
And a big, HUGE thumbs down to TransGaming, for taking this step in the first place! Yes, they are simply trying to protect their business model, and I understand that. But I offer than any business model that requires poisoning a community effort in this way in order to ensure its success is a business model that should not have been attempted in the first place.
I will not be making use of TransGaming's code, and I encourage others to do the same.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
This is totally redundant with the point the other post makes, but...
Excuse me, have you ever used VNC? Can you imagine pushing 1024x768x32 at 60FPS over a VNC connection?
I use vnc quite a bit, and it's OK if you're running an XTerm... under twm. Anything else gets slow.
I guess Solitare would work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My roommate is a Linux geek, who's also addicted to flight simulators. To run those, she must fire up Whine-doze :( I hear her gritching and whining all the time, especially when it crashes the machine and has to check the disk, again and again :(
:(
Does anybody know how well WineX will work with these? Things like rudder pedals, a flight yoke and programmable throttles are required, and the last time she looked into Wine, they had no real support for any of these accessories. They're really non-optional - somehow, flying a C-130 using only the keyboard and a joystick is rather unfulfilling
Someone said it a few days ago in a discussion on Slashdot regarding console gaming, but I think it's worth saying here again:
It is a good thing that almost all games are written for Windows.
The reason is that we don't want a moving target for developers who are writing commercial titles. In the console gaming market, you can buy a PS2, XBOX, SNES or whatever, and only play games for those platforms on those boxes. Any developer who wants to capture the whole market must port to each platform. This is slow, frustrating and helps neither the game house nor the consumer.
In the PC market on the other hand, you can write only for Windows and not worry b/c you know you'll hit the vast majority of consumers. John Carmack is fond of saying that all Linux game sales ever don't add up to one medium selling Windows title. So people aren't about to write games for Linux unless they want the techincal challenge/fun.
WINEX is great. We need to accept the fact that people will continue to write games exclusively for Windows (and that they should!). And we need to find ways to make those games work on other platforms if we want to use other platforms to play them.
I really don't think this should be a pro/anti Microsoft discussion, just an evaluation of the reality of the situation.
(BTW: since I'm on the subject of corrections, the hole your thinking of is 'whole' as in everything, not hole as in an empty space. Hehe.)
You're not thinking of your contractions vs. possessive pronouns, are you?
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I would like to use this to play my favorite game on Linux, Doom. Does anyone know if this Wine thing will run on a beowulf cluster? I imagine it will!
I admit this story challenged me a bit, and this post is not up to my usual standards. It lacks the usual wit, style, and intellectual aplomb of some of my other posts. Still, you have to admit, I did manage to weave the beowulf theme in with a certain amount of flair and, I think, panache.
If TransGaming have said that once they reach a certain level of subscriptions, they will remove the restrictions on their code (I didn't see that on their site, but I'll take your word for it) then they have re-invented Patronage - and that's a good thing.
Patronage - "pay us money so that we can continue to work on this code and release it to the community where you can benefit" - is an entirely appropriate and decent business model for this kind of activity.
Hard to enforce? Absolutely. Patonage by definition relies upon the goodwill of others. And sad as it is, there are lots of people who will choose to reap the reward without contibuting.
But TransGaming have it backwards. As it sits, their current methods are closer to extortion "If you ever want to see the code released without strings, pay us money" than true patronage "If you want to see us continue to contribute quality code, pay us money".
Patronage I support. If they were to release their code under the WINE licence today, I'd cut them a cheque immediately.
Extortion I do not support. Do the right thing FIRST, get paid LATER. Do not expect my support at the point of a sword.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
They look legit, although I only own 2 windows program (The Sims, Diablo 2, and their expansion packs) so I don't have much to test it on.
Can you explain me why you can't test wine with demo versions ??? It's free...
A lot of people are complaining they have to pay cash for WineX, not quite true. Only pre-packaged versions. The source is available under the terms of the Aladdin license. If this codebase is not complete, would someone please correct me. I personally maintain two different installs of Wine, the main branch of winehqs wine, checked out of CVS every so often, and the WineX branch, again from CVS ever so often. Why both? The WineX branch provides DirectX support, but other advances in the Wine project are slow to get into WineX, for example I can get the QuickTime player to install under standard Wine CVS builds, but not WineX. :)
So if you don't feel like paying, build the source if you can. Takes a long while, and if it fails, oh well, shell out a bit of cash for your software for once
Transgaming is a decent company, even if they don't bend over backwards to give away all their work for free. This is a bad expectation for Linux users to have, and when commercial Linux projects receive such criticism, it makes commercial vendors more and more hesitant about releasing linux products.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
When it comes to boxed version, you sell all the platform ports in the same box.
Remember BeOS 4.5, if you purchased that you got both the X86 & PPC versions in the box.
Same again flr Claris Works, if you purchased that you got both the Win16 & Mac Classic versions in the same box.
Gobe's now doing it to, they are porting their BeOS office suite to Windows & Linux. If you buy the boxed version you will get all 3 versions in the box.
That's what Id should have done.
Stores hat having to stock multiple versions of the same application. By using cross-platform bundles stores don't have that problem
it was my desire to rid my life of that heinous win partition that finally pushed me to toss $15 at transgaming. i have been VERY pleased with the results.
my rationalizations: first, gaming companies are not going to give up writing games for windows. most of them won't even produce for the mac, so how can i expect them to pick up linux anytime soon? loki, loki, loki...save it. i have loki games all over the place, but last time i checked, loki doesn't do diablo. and that is basically ALL i do.
so i use winex, which gets me diablo. call me a pragmatist, but i like to use my computer for whatever i choose. the workaround that is wine exists and i don't mind using it.
i know this all sounds rather flamish, but i am trying to point out that pragmatism certainly won't kill anyone in this arena. i buy linux games whenever they are available rather than their windows siblings. but these are games we're talking about. free as in speech doesn't really apply (in my mind) and they certainly aren't critical to my (or anyone else's) existence. that's why they are called games.
will my use of winex change the balance of gaming? nope. if i only buy games made for linux, will THAT tip things? nope. it would take more gamers than linux has users to do that. is winex good or bad for linux? i don't know. if we suddenly had more games for linux, would it necessarily draw more people to it? i don't know. what i do know is that until the games i play come in linux flavors, winex it is.
disclaimer: all i use at home is debian and the only non-free software i ever run is game related...preaching to the converted and all that...
hmmm...
"I've bought versions of Windows many times over the years, and sometimes it does recognise all my hardware. When it doesn't instantly blue screen, sometimes I can play my favourite game for ten, twenty or even thirty minutes. Once I heard that someone completed a game under Windows, but it crashed a lot. Anyways, isn't Windows great?"
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Ideally, Id should have simply released 1 package with both the Windows and LinuxX86 versions on it, and relied upon the registration process to identify who ran what.
www.eFax.com are spammers
It dosen't work yet. Once Shadows of Luclin is release and Everquest moves to DirectX 8, and Transgaming implements DX8, then maybe.
I was wondering exactly how this differs from the $89 bundle of Mandrake Linux with The Sims? Does anyone have any info on this?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
This is a CANADIAN company.
Lest we forget Rebel.com? Corel? The share price of Nortel?
High taxes and the brain drain'll kill this one dead right quick.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
sorry to break this to you, but if you want to play the sims on linux you will have to buy the Mandrake Linux gaming edition pack.
It costs $89 and comes with a special copy of the sims that has been specially re-written to work with WineX (as well as a 3 month Transgaming subscription).
The normal windows version of the sims DOES NOT work with transgaming, and it will never do so.
Transgaming say this is because "it uses a complicated mixture of 2D and 3D" and that they had to re-write the graphics engine to get it to work.
Some people think that Transgaming are lying, and that they are doing this to make people buy the mandrake Gaming edition (for which they get a cut), but Transgaming seem like nice guys, I don't think they would do anything so underhand.
--Htwo
Let me ask you this, then:
What is stopping you, now that you have your subscriber model up and running, from re-licencing all your code BSD and immediately merging it back into the WINE main tree?
The people who began the WINE project - for better or worse - chose the BSD licence for their code. Why will you not respect that decision, and do the same for your portion?
Open Source projects, irregardless of the actual licence, are community efforts towards providing free and functional software. Nowhere is it implied that there is any fundimental right to make money doing it. It is, at its very core, a philantropical operation. Code is _donated_ to serve the greater cause.
If you can find some way to do this for a living, as have many developers who work for Red Hat, hey, more power to you. There's no fundimental right to make money off your work, but neither is there a prohibition _against_ making money either.
Except where your business model, designed to generate that money, collides with the values of the community you are a part of.
Has TransGaming contributed to the WINE project? Of course they have. But without the thousands of hours of DONATED time and effort done by other people working on the core of WINE, TransGaming would have nothing to base its work on. TransGaming (from what I have seen) cannot exist without WINE, but WINE can very happily exist without TransGaming. Developmental progress might be slower, but at least portions of the project wouldn't be held hostage.
What gives TransGaming the right to demand payment for its contributions, when so many more people have contributed as much or more and expecting no payment in return?
As a potential patron of TransGaming, I am willing to contribute financially to see coders employed working on a project I have an interest in. I cannot pay a whole salary, but I can make some small contributions, expecting that others will do the same, and that the net effect is that TransGaming can continue to do effective work full-time. Not a problem. Not an issue. In fact, I wish I had MORE opportunity to do this sort of contribution on projects I want to see done, but don't have time to work on myslef.
But the road that TranGaming has chosen I find distasteful and borderline extortive. How do you justify this behaviour?
.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Id's problem was this:
...
They had to justify making the Linux port. So they released a Linux version in its own box to see how it would sell on its own.
If I recall correctly, Linux supporters were asked to buy the Linux version and download the Win32 executables from the web site - so you were essentially paying for 3 versions. Also IIRC, the Linux version was released later. That didn't help sales much (since most people who actually want to game buy it quickly), and it makes you wonder if id took that into account
I disagree with the statement "id fucked up" because it was probably pressure from their publisher (Activision?) that made them release the Win32 version ahead of the Linux version and skewing the numbers. I'd like to see a less biased (but similar) test done again in the future. Unfortunately, it probably won't happen at id, one of the more influential developing houses in the games biz.
----- rL
its nice but why 7 ?
they have been telling developers (M$) that xbox was 8 for a long time now so why go with DX7 ?
really they should aim for DX8
xbox libs are not getting updated anytime soon like a PC can so you have an unmoveing target
I know you would need a Gefource 3 but hey most people would have these anyway if they attempted it
regards
john jones
Did they fix that Starcraft lag problem?
I guess I'll find out after work
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
They are not selling a linux version by itself, but Tux Games will be selling RTCW as a Win32 Version bundled with a Linux Binary CD.
Go buy it and send a message back to ID Software...
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
Cool!
Anyone know when someone will get Black and White working for Linux?
Very glad to hear the Mandrake bundle is a pre-configure. That means I may have to do some work in the future, and thus learn stuff, but it will work from first install so I can play The Sims.
This is the way to do Linux games, if you ask me. And it was the reason for me deciding to finally ditch my last Win box.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Even MacOS ports are risky propositions.
That's sobering, when you consider two things:
1) MacOS users are more likely to actually pay for software than Linux users and
2) MacOS is a much larger slice of the desktop market share than Linux.
--saint
TuxGames claims that every copy bought there will count has a linux copy to id...
hope it's true I preordered mine there in favor of buying a copy in Europe (cheaper, no customs).
does it support emulators that require directX...?
for example, there are several N64 emulators which uses directX under windows....
my blog
That linux boxes sell less and thus the shops put a higer prize on them. Once I had to choose between buying Quake II for Windows (~$44) or for linux (~$60). I'm a big linux fan, but I'm not rich and...
you are also forgeting that games don't work so well in linux, because of the lack of accelerated 3D drivers, etc. Imagine I had spent those $60 just to discover that the game runs half as fast in Linux (in my machine) because of the graphic card I have or that I'm unable to configure it (!).
After the last transgaming story, I decided to head on over and see what it was about. It would really be nice to have one less thing to boot to windows for, so I was pretty hopeful. I looked at the titles that worked, downloaded a build, browsed the message boards, and decided to try it myself. After I got it compiled and installed, I tried running things.
The real test for me was Baldur's Gate, something that didn't work with just plain Wine. WineX got farther than Wine, it managed to play the movies and actually start the game. However, just like Wine, the games stutter like mad and never achieve anything close to respectable speeds. I think it's a problem with my sound card, but I'm too lazy to set up the ALSA drivers, which may solve my problem. And I'd be really upset if I went to the trouble just to have it not work due to something else.
Anyhow, I'm planning on trying it again if I replace my sound card, or if I get time to try out ALSA, but I'm not holding my breath. No one else that I've seen has had this kind of problem (everyone either doesn't work or does, no one seems to have stuttering in all games) so I don't think it'll get fixed anytime soon. I really wanted this to work, and I'd still like to subscribe if I could get this working. But this is the classic problem with Linux and I'm not ready to fork over money if I don't believe it's going to work for me.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
When they have Everquest running in Linux, then I will subscribe. I know people don't like this idea, but thats how I look at it. Becuase, its the only game I would run through it. Outside of that, I could care less.
... I haven't heard anything since.
BTW, has anyone heard about the Linux port of EQ recently ? It was in the works for a while, then, thats it
That didn't help sales much (since most people who actually want to game buy it quickly),
OK, Q3 had a lot of hype so getting early was a big deal to people. But most game sales are not in the first couple weeks after release (consider the pile of UT and Halflife boxes that you still see at software stores...)
Releasing the game a couple weeks late and a few dollars more expensive was a _perfect_ test of the "Linux market", because it weeds out the Windows-using people who want to "support" Linux by skewing the sales numbers. The real Linux workstation users would do the Mac user thing and sit on their hands until the game ships for their platform.
Unfortunately, the Linux market failed the test. Sorry, but them's the facts. You guys might not *like* to boot into Windows, but if you'll *do* it and still buy the game, there's no reason for companies to expend money on a port.
You are arguing that id/Activision/Loki should have set it up so that sympathetic people could have rigged it to make the Linux market look bigger than it actually is. That doesn't do anyone any favors.
(Someone should run this "experiment" again next year, maybe with Doom 3. Quake/Linux shipped before most distributions had good 3D support in the box.)
> Your one of those people who should really learn
Since we're on the subject of corrections, the "your" you are thinking of is "you're" as in "you are", not as in something belonging to you.
8-)
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Transgaming is Legit, I'm subscribed, If theres ever going to be an Open source economy, This is it folks.
It gives you far more freedom than buying products from a store.
First you get to vote on the features and on what the programmers do, so essentially you have the power of an investor moreso than someone who goes to a store and buys a license to run some software.
Second, after you pay, its released and YOU own the code, however it takes 20k people for this to happen so i suggest you all help this company out.
People who dont play games should still subscribe, while you may not pay games, if you want other Linux projects to be funded in this way, then you need to first prove this method works by supporting it.
So do your part and perhaps it will help the open source economy, tis only $5 a month so unless you are some kinda penny pinching greedy bastard you can afford this.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm Subscribed, I will tell you why they licensed safedisk.
Windows games use safedisk, in order to run them you need Safe Disk for Linux.
Also, about shareholders, If this style economy works, You'll be able to subcribe to KDE, to Gnome, to any project you want and essentially you'd become like a share holder.
So I suggest you do you part, Subscribe to transgaming, its only $5 a month so I know you can afford it, even if you dont play games, if you want Linux to be successful, do your part. If you cannot contribute code, stop being a greedy bastard and subscribe.
TO programmers contributing code to actual open source projects, How would you all like to get paid for this? The only way is to subscribe to transgaming, prove to the world that people can make money from open source, and in the future you may be able to make money in the same way.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Who have the Windows version and who dont want to buy the same Game TWICE!
Think about that.
Theres a market for Wolfenstien, that Market is to Linux users of today. The Transgaming Market is for Linux users of tomorrow, who have a windows game and dont have the money to pay twice.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Which means you buy Linux games AND you subscribe to transgaming.
Supporting transgaming supports alot more than games, its also supporting a new open source economy which could be used for alot of other projects.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Regardless of the gaming community, Transgaming is more than this, Transgaming is a model, a new way for open source projects and companies to make money. It is very important that we prove the successfulness of this Model by support Transgaming.
Transgaming is not for the current people using Linux, its more for the Windows users who will soon be switching to Linux. Transgaming will make them switch, Once they switch, Game developers will make games which will actually sell.
You see, if a developer sees millions of gamers using Linux, the developer has an option, make a Linux version, or let these people use the Windows version with transgaming in which transgaming makes the money.
However with millions of gamers in Linux, theres also going to be more gamers who want NATIVE ports, who will buy the Native Linux port instead of the Windows port, or who will buy both.
So the Transgaming market really has nothing to do with Loki porting games. Last Loki has proven their model is not going to work, people need games quick, quantity sometimes is more important than quality.
The last thing I want to say is, right now the most important thing you can do as a Linux support is to support transgaming. By supporting them, if you arent a coder and want to contribute to Linux, now is your chance. IF you are a coder, you can help build an Economy up so you actually have a chance at making money for your Linux projects.
If Transgaming is successful, KDE, Gnome, Xfree86, and other important projects may do the same thing. This would give us more influence over the projects, it would give programmers money they deserve, and EVERYONE in the Linux communiy not just the programmers would be able to contribute.
This is GOOD for the Community, and its an issue more important than gaming.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This might sound like a flame-bate but instead of fooling around with all of this why not just buy games from......loki? I don't play games that often but the one's I do play come from the Distro or Loki!
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Duh. if you want it to work you'll have to pay. Else its not going to work.
You have to get this out of your mind, that programmers need to eat too. If you want anarchy online, then subscribe and tell all your anarchy online friends to subcribe, and vote for anarchy online.
Until then, Anarchy online is going to stay way way down at the bottom of the list because the people subscribed want Black and White, and Starcraft working perfectly along with Civ3.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
For marketing reasons, It would be bad for the company.
I support transgaming. I dont want them to show numbers that may be in the hundreds.
When they get about 10,000 then they should show numbers.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"I love reading posts like yours because they are absolutely so self-absorbed."
Really, umm, well you seem to have made up your mind eh?
"First of all, "Gamers" are a tiny fraction of the gaming market."
Hmm, perhaps your def. of "Gamer" is a little narrow & self involved? Seems to me that those who play games make up a pretty damn large chunk of the gaming market, no?
"Most games are sold to regular people who just want to blow off a bit of steam after work or whatever."
So what do _you_ call these people (myself included?)
"You guys do not carry the market, and the sales numbers show this (Railroad Tycoon and Sims outsold the "gamers" favs by 10:1 at least.)"
Oooh, Ooooh, the mysterious "You/They/Them"!!!
Not that you'd care, as it would appear you like fecal shampoo but my favourite game (& the only one I play regularily right now) is starcraft - one of the best selling games of all time.
"Second, if you are a "gamer", why would you care about the platform."
Because I currently own 3 consoles & my home box boots 4 Os's. I would _love_ to play/use everything on one set of equipement without having to reboot all the time. In other words I don't want a gaming platform - I want the all singing, all dancing platform. And that's why I care - I "just want to blow off a bit of steam after work or whatever".
"All you are doing is bootstrapping into a game, after all. Wintendo should be fine for you."
Yeah, & I just get out of bed in the am so I shouldn't care what I have to do today, or how to go about it, huh.
"Third, there's no evidence that gaming makes a platform viable."
Hmmm, a quote from the parent "...making the Windows platform a viable gaming platform..." seems to me the topic of discussion was _gaming_platforms_ - how you got from there to gaming on general platoforms is a little cloudy...
"A broad range of all sorts of applications make a platform viable. That's the reason we have Windows and Mac and not Amiga and Atari ST. Note that Mac in particular is a very profitable commercial software platform, and a fairly shitty game platform."
I'm not really sure how to reply to this - you've rally lost it.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Sounds nice, but eh. EverQuest is moving to dx8. ;) I'll be keeping my Windows partition around for awhile.
:P
..Besides, I don't want games on Linux, I'd never get anything done then.
Anyway, to summarize most of the posts...
"Waah, this is bad, it'll stifle development of cross-platform games!"
With a response from the educated public being, "Erm, hey hoser, no one wants Linux games. Maybe, just maybe, if they came out within a week or two of the Windows version, and maybe, maybe, if they were the same price as the Windows version."
The "Linux gaming" market won't exist until Microsoft falls (And it will.), but that won't happen for quite a few years yet.
Props to Transgaming.
If you dont subscribe they may not have money to continue their work.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Does anyone know if it's possible to get HL running on the MacOS X? has anyone done it?
I would really appreciate any help in this!
Some good points there (too bad you posted as AC). It's definitely hard to compare Windows to Linux when most gamers that use Linux (have to) buy Windows games ...
... of course, they have done it before when it benefits them ...... IIRC. ;)
As for weeding out the Windows-using people, it might be fair to assume that most technophile-gamers-Linux users either run two boxes or double-boot. Either way, they'd buy the Win32 version first if they are anxious. Honestly, what gamer geek would wait two weeks for the Linux version when they have Windows and their friends are already kicking some Q3 ass on the net? Granted, the test was out and they could play that, but weren't the test and the full version 'net incompatible?
Any way you slice it, reading the numbers will never quite be fair. It may just come down to pressure from the market (ie. an increase in Linux users) that dictates when the switch from proprietary to open comes - but it will come.
Why Microsoft is trying to deny the inevitable is beyond me
----- rL
Thanks for following up to an AC post.
/. where people say "I have 486 that doesn't even run X, but I bought every Loki game to 'support' them." That's called charity, and doesn't go very far when you need to move a few hundred thousand copies to make real money.
The thing is if MOST Linux users have a Windows install handy, then the Linux market isn't very big (from a market opportunity perspective). Quake 3 proved that. Capitalism doesn't attempt to be "fair", it attempts to remove money from your wallet as cheaply as possible.
I see posts on
Personally, I'm not sure if the switch to Linux will come, but I think the game market is a suspect place to start. When Linux users have a full range of 'productivity' applications (I hate that word but I'm trying to distingish from MP3 players and e-mail clients), and a 'captive' userbase (people using it for work), the game market will make itself obvious. But look at the mac -- very profitable commercial software market, lots of 100% users, and they still get games late to never.
Speakinsawhich, I just went over to id software's FTP site and found the RTCW Linux binary, presumably for the retail version in stores..
f mp -linux-1.0.b2.x86.run
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/wolf/linux/wol
Just was wondering - to play The Sims and some of the other games you can get with WineX (from transgaming), what do I need on my boxen?
I ask cause they're servers, and I'm pretty sure I didn't buy top-end graphics or sound cards, so my question could be phrased as:
1. what is the low end setup I'll need supported by Mandrake Linux 8.1 with WineX - minimal sound and video cards for reasonable playing of The Sims and probably WarCraft I/II and StarCraft.
2. what is the top end setup currently supported by Mandrake Linux 8.1 with WineX - basically what cards could I buy that it will support well? And for that, is there something I should get so that I can run Black and White while I'm buying.
I'd like to spend less than $200 total if possible.
Thanks!
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--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
I've bought versions of Windows many times over the years, and sometimes it does recognize all my hardware, and sometimes it doesn't. However, I'm content to let windows use any drivers it wants, and can't bother to hunt down the most stable drivers for it, or even the proper drivers for some hardware. Even if I had good drivers, I've installed and uninstalled so many things over the years that the cruft leads to blue screens of deaths frequently. I might even have a virus eating away at core system files, but I'm too lazy to check.
Linux never gave me permission to mess with core files as a non-root user. It has never locked up on me.
Isn't linux great?
I'm sorry, it just seems that 99% of the slashdot crowd assumes that a normal, healthy installation of windows crashes all the time. Sure, windows does crash, and I've seen a BSOD or two, but rarely on healthy hardware and software. A crash is the exception, not the rule.
End Rant.
I don't quite understand the concept behind Wine. Does it actually use files created by Microsoft to accomplish what it does or are they simply emulating everything by reverse engineering the function of the DLL and EXE files of Windows? Did they use the DirectX SDK to reverse engineer that portion? I'm sure they are violating quite a few licence agreements and as a result they will probably be shut down if Wine becomes too popular (which I doubt). This happned to Bleem and many of the other emulators once they went comercial.
the point of subscribing is to pay for what does not work already
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The thing is if MOST Linux users have a Windows install handy.
... and if it weren't for games, I probably wouldn't have it at all. True, there are some bleeding edge things released for Win32 first (ie. Napster) but quickly they are picked up by open source and sometimes even made better.
:)
...
I've been debating the usefulness of my Win32 install
I think having this Win32 install around just for games is pretty common among technophiles that also use Linux - if they only had to have one OS, they'd have only Linux.
We could quickly digress into a conversation about how Linux could get increased market share, but we usually get a post like that once a month so I'll save it for that topic.
... but it is true that the desperate cries for people to buy the Linux version of Q3 just because it was Linux was pretty sad and silly. It was a not-so subtle suggestion to screw with the numbers, which probably wouldn't have benefitted anyone.
... but again, I digress
----- rL
Why pay for something I can't even use at all? I just love throwing money away. I'd really rather just boot to windows than wait around to get one game working. Sorry, the subscription model doesn't work until I see product that works for me.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Say what? No Emperor: Battle for Dune?
That game is a nasty thing. In an effort to foil cheating it does a check for a debugger (which WINE seems to feel like) and if so quits with a message telling you to close your debugger.
From TransGaming's Business Model page:
We need to encourage more user participation in the development process, and give users more responsibility, both financially and otherwise, for the ultimate result.
Does this sounds like a bad thing?
And they will put the fruit of their labours (the revisions to the Wine tree) once "we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users."
All they want is to get paid for the work they are doing up front. Work that you the end user can direct by subscribing and voting.
What's not to get about their business model? Like the street performer they are providing entertainment with the hopes that if they provide a quality product that people will be willing to pay for it once.
The upside over closed source projects is that you won't have to pay for the same code in the next version of the game!
--My opinions belong only to me, until you realize I'm right
This has probably been pointed out a thousand times before, but it's important to realise that subscribing to Transgaming so that they can pay for copy protection patent licences etc can be a good thing. If people start running Windows games on Linux then the games companies will likely start writing native linux games, with the patents etc ready-licenced. This will massively increase the uptake of linux, introduce people to Free Software, convince hardware manufacturers to properly support Linux, kick-start the effort to make Linux distributions truly usable by the majority. The list is endless. Mart