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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.
...but will it run Civilisations 3?
This is about the only game that I want a windows box for at the moment.
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.
WINEX also promotes the use of Windows software and insulates programmers from cross-platform considerations. (bad)
Just what cross platform considerations are you refering to--in regards to games? The buying public has spoken and it has said that Linux games do not sell at retail. Even id, the last holdout for retail Linux titles decided after Quake3:TA that retail Linux games sales were not a viable proposition.
Game developers are not being insulated from cross platform considerations. They don't really have any to be insulated from. For good or bad MS has provided the necessary tools to make Windows a viable gaming platform. Linux isn't at the same level. Buying a Windows game and playing it on WineX is not casting a vote against retail Linux games, nor is it paying the enemy in some OS holy war. It's the only way people will be able to play 1st run titles on Linux. That will not change in the foreseable future. Whether or not the developer gets money from a Windows game sale or a Linux game sale doesn't matter. The developer still gets money and the customer gets a product they want. That should be all that matters.
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
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.
So which is better, a hard reboot of the machine in Windows, or a process restart on a still running, and stable OS in Linux? I'm pretty sure restarting a process is a lot nicer on the expensive hardware you've purchased to run that nifty new 3d game, than killing power to that hardware unexpectedly because one process killed the entire OS.
You are correct, to a degree. Transgaming has said that once it reaches a specific level of subscriptions, it will release the code under the general wine license. From their web site:
We will not release that code under a less restrictive license (such as the Wine license) unless and until we have a paying subscriber base of at least 20,000 users.
Now that's a big if, you are correct. What if they go out of business at 11,000 subscribers? They are under no obligation to do anything with their code.
However, they seem to be pretty nice, and I suspect that if they do go under, and I hope they don't, they will release the code anyway, no matter the number of subscribers.
"Poisoning a community" is a gross over-reaction to their system though. Maybe you should think about the fact that Wine specifically chose BSD not GPL. The initial Wine developers had a choice and they made it. You have to respect their choice, even if you disagree with it.
It does promote development of software for the MS Windows platform, but commercial games development for Linux is in a bad way anyway, and we can hardly blame Transgaming for that.
However, as a user, if I can take a game off of the shelf and run it on a Linux system, what do I care if it was developed for another OS? "Oh, Microsoft Windows, is that thing still going?". What Transgaming should be ( and I think are) doing is persuading Windows developers to test their stuff on WineX. If they can convince them that for a few days work, they could get even a 1% hike in sales, they might succeed, and a few days work by fifty games companies will save Transgaming a hell of a lot of work in trying to make the platform fit the game.
As an ex-commercial games developer, I'll stick my oar in and say that most games projects don't consider cross platform issues until well into development. If it's a choice between getting a version to market for one platform, or waiting six months or a year to add multiple platforms, most publishers will press for option 1 on economic grounds (which is why it will be great if Transgaming can persuade even a few of them to tweak for WineX on the basis that it's a cheap way to break into a new platform). In other words: there's never time to do it right, but always time to do it twice. ;-)
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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
well it's true, there is no reason that Linux can't be a superior game platform, it certainly has nothing to do with hardware limitation. the problem is this that Microsoft aggressivly went out and courted game developers, then they started the whole active/direct X program, while it was full of fits and starts ultimately it ensured that PC games led driving force behind PC sales and upgrades.
meaning it's wicked easier for developers to make stunning games on a Windows platform, and then it's stunningly more lucrative.
three years ago Steve jobs tried to start the same initiative and john carmack (who you should damn well know) was brought in to consult/lend legitimacy. still, three years later the state of Mac gaming is "much better" then it was but still "shitty" compared to what is released exclusively on Windows.
now the point i am making is this (and this refers to gaming so don't read too much into it), MS spends billions, and won. Apple Spends millions and stays alive, linux does not spend.
there are native linux games that kick so much ass, we should all be assless. and dammit, i will buy them, i will buy them all just because of the penguin on the freaking box.
but i like games. A lot. so I have to have a 2k box running. that's all there is to it. yes i have a PS2 and a Dreamcast and a game cube on the way. but that is for the tony hawks and the grand turismo's and the sports games. the stuff i prefer to play is not available on consoles (and would suck if they were) not available on Linux, and might be available for the Mac next Christmas (maybe).
So I hope WineX kicks all the ass left after all the native linux games got tired and stopped kicking so much ass. that way I won't have to duel boot my wee 12Gig laptop HD. and i can play Arcanum and Tux Racer on the same platform when i am out of town. (or hiding in my office)
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
From the Transgaming sources page:
Either you didn't know that, or you think they're liars and chose not to give them even the benefit of the doubt by bringing it to our attention. Of course, that still leaves the "problem" that WINE is BSD rather than GPL.
Here's the thing. If you, or another GPL evanglist wants to replicate Transgaming's work (or the whole of WINE) under a GPL license, there's nothing stopping you. They've even given you their source code to look at to help you clean room it. That fact that you choose not to do that does not reflect on Transgaming or WINE, it reflects on you.
Perhaps you think that it's better to have nobody doing this than to have a "poisoner" like Trangaming doing it? If you really think that, I'd be delighted to hear you explain why. Is it GPL or nothing for you, and if so, why not spend your time being part of the solution rather than casting slings and arrows at Transgaming?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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
If you choose the BSD licence, then you effectively tell the world that what TransGaming is doing is OK with you. Thus it is not a matter of respect if TransGaming keep their code to themselves. It would be a matter of disrespect if someone persistently demanded (and for no good reason maybe?) of the WINE project that they changed their licence.
> 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.
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?
This is ridiculous. For each IF-THEN statement I write, I am not forced to go to the Temple of Logic to pray my thanks to Lord Aristotle for doing research on the precursor to first order logic.
If you need to stand on the shoulders of giants to make your livelyhood, then that's ok. Science and civilisation both depend on that ability. It is really only religious people who demand that "the spirit in which Plato did this or that" should be "respected" by all living beings for several hundred years to come.
>But the road that TranGaming has chosen I find distasteful and borderline extortive. How do you justify this behaviour?
I suppose they would simply deny that your personal view on their work is screwed and leave it at that?
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.)
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