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WineX 2.0
ZaMoose writes "Looks like Transgaming has released version 2.0 of WineX (with full support for Jedi Knight II and initial 3D sound support. Joy!) Prepackaged .debs and .rpms are available only to subscribers, but you can always just download and compile it yourself (you just won't get the nifty SafeDisk workarounds/InstallShield proprietary stuff)."
But still...
It'd be really nice if games were ported/developed for linux. Then people will start switching operating systems. Nobody cares if you can run certain programs on linux with a bit of hacking except for those of us who already run linux. Recompile these games for linux, use standards such as opengl, etc...
That being said, I really like seeing these things coming to linux. I love playing certain computer games, and really hate that they are only written for windows (I miss you loki). But hey, I'm off to play some JK II now
Hear, hear. Also, buy games for Linux from people who go out on a limb to develop them. I haven't heard of any of them threatening lawsuits under the DMCA, and you know they appreciate your business because we can all use something to eat from time to time.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
SDL seems like it makes it pretty easy to support Linux and Windows
Not only SDL, but also ClanLib and the very widely used Allegro library. Apparently, ClanLib and Allegro have a richer set of features than SDL (such as graphics primitives), but all three SDKs can talk to the various platforms' OpenGL implementations. With tools like these, publisher-developers have little excuse not to write cross-platform code (other than bribes from Microsoft).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Support people that porth the games!! I mean Wine is nice for trying to get people to use linux, but in the long run we need ported games! - - Happy Peguin - Hyperion - - Tux Games - Introversion . .. plus hunt for more!
JKII works mostly fine with latest vanilla wine (I have radeon7k something) provided that:
- you install it in windows, then you can copy it whereever
- some non-3d cutscenes don't appear in single player
- you don't set texture quality too high, with many players/big maps I see lot's of weirdness in the textures
- the brightness setting does not work, you have to use xgamma youself, the result is the same
- the cdrom must be mounted before starting the game
However the wine+linux combo seems noticably faster than on w2k with same settings. I'm not drawing any conclusions though, it might be just shitty drivers on windows or some tuning stuff I missed.
You can run 3dmark 2000 (not 2001... yet) in winex.
I already have 2.0 installed and will do this in WinXP and Winex tonight and post back here. Last time I did it with 1.0 there was a serious drop in FPS - but it was still well above playable (on my 1.2GHz Tbird with a Geforce3 TI500)
Derek
If you get the CVS version you have to use No-CD cracks for games that have SafeDisk or SecuRom.
You can find most No-CD cracks (legally!) from your local www.gamecopyworld.com mirror
I highly suggest paying the $5 a month though. I have been doing it since the first day Transgaming set it up - and I will continue to do so. It is a great community and a great project - and its benefits are direct (no more rebooting!).
Derek
just telling you, if you want info about over 150+ games and how they work with linux, check out:
Code Weaver's wine
just look on the left for "app database" and your set.
Only dead fish swim with the stream...
They provide a truly useful service for Linux gamers at a very reasonable price (far cheaper than most games) where purchasers actually get control over the direction of the project with their subscriptions. They also make their source code avaliable to anyone, sans the copy protection needed to play a lot of protected games. Install WineX from their source, test the non-copy protected demo version of your game, and if it works, buy WineX.
/sbin/ldconfig
/sbin/ldconfig
_ libdir}/*
That said, they're two ways to install software on Linux. One is RPM, the other has non standard install, uninstall, auditing and verification, leaves crap all over your system, makes it a nigthmare to build applications upon, and generally sucks. Here's a spec file you can use to create source and binary packages of Winex.
Summary: Runs Windows programs (especially multimedia ones) under Linux
Name: winex
Version: 20020407
Release: 1mm
Source0: %{name}-%{version}.tar.bz2
License: APSL
Group: Applications/Emulators
BuildRoot: %{_builddir}/%{name}-%{version}
Requires: kernel >= 2.4, XFree86-devel, gcc >= 2.7.2, flex >= 2.5
Requires: bison, glibc >= 2
%description
TransGaming WineX is a derivative of the Wine project. Wine is an implementation of
the Microsoft® Win32® APIs on top of UNIX and X-Windows - in essence, it is a Window
s® compatibility layer. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows to be installed, as
it provides an alternative implementation of Windows written from scratch with no Mi
crosoft code whatever.
TransGaming WineX includes a new implementation of the Microsoft DirectX multimedia
APIs, including Direct3D - the core graphics system most Windows games use for hardw
are accelerated 3D.
%prep
%setup -q
%build
%configure
make depend
make
%install
%makeinstall
%post -p
%postun -p
%clean
rm -rf %{buildroot}
%files
%defattr(-,root,root)
%{_bindir}/*
%{
%doc README ANNOUNCE BUGS DEVELOPERS-HINTS LICENSE LICENSE.winehq
%changelog
* Sun Apr 7 2002 Mike MacCana 1mm
- Created packages
I disagree with the premise that one can make a difference by not buying PC games, because I don't think Microsoft or game companies would really feel the difference. on the other hand, by supporting transgaming, codeweavers, and other contributers to the wine project (or by contributing your time to the wine project directly), then it will soon be irrelevant to open source people that some companies choose to write their software for windows. we will be able to offer compatibility at an API level, combined with a vastly superior price and support model.
Companies write software for windows because people who own windows tend to _purchase_ their software (because they don't know about the free alternatives). Windows users are used to shelling out money for software, even "free" shareware.
Linux and BSD, however, now have several good office products, excellent networking support including email, web browsers, and server software, and user-friendly distributions. when it becomes possible to play windows games and use legacy windows software, computer distributers will find competitive advantage in selling Linux or BSD pre-installed computers for $500 with hundreds of whizbang features which would cost several $1000's to provide under windows.
Linux & BSD distributions offer far better value for the money than windows already.. the only advantage windows has now is a commercial software base, and it would be a tremendous boon for open source operating system users to have access to all of that old legacy software.
Companies who develop X-Windows native software will continue to enjoy a vastly superior user interface over old, worn out windows software running under wine, so I really don't think it will be a problem to find companies willing to develop cross-platform or Linux native software using any number of convenient libraries which are already available. (Eg. Java, Qt, wx-windows, modular development best practices, etc.)
It seems that everyone missed the biggest new feature of this official release. This is the first official release of WineX with DirectX 8.0 support, meaning the newest games have a chance to work.
Holy shit!
It is perfect! I was playing in 1024x768x32 and it is flawless. Everything is there, sound, FPS, movies, everything is just as it is in Windows! In fact I think it even loaded the levels faster than it does in windows - very cool.
Seriously, on the FPS side, I couldn't tell a bit of difference from playing it in windows. This is on a 1.2Ghz Tbird with 512MB of RAM and a Geforce3TI500 using the newest nvidia drivers (2880).
It even installed perfectly and added itself to my kde desktop/menu.
Great job transgaming!
Time to try some more games!
Derek
Lost in this release is a far more important announcement. Transgaming is throwing support behind a fork of Wine: ReWind!
Seems, they take issue with the recent change of licenses for Wine. They are actively encouraging developers to contribute to there X11 fork. Understanding that a vote of the developers leaves there branch in the minority, they are touting cash incentives and the some of there 2.0 source as bait.
The war of the branches begins...
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Rebooting to windows means that I have to stop everything I was doing, just to play the game. When you have a whole bunch of editor & debugging windows open it's a big pain. (+ servers, DB connections, remote logins, etc...). Playing in Linux allows me to take 30 min to relax and play the game instead of 30 min to play + 15 min to restart everything I was working on to its original state. At work, I rarely reboot or even log out. Even at home it's still a pain.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Remember, Wine Is Not an Emulator... It will only run windows programs on x86 hardware.. The win32 binaries still run natively (sort of) under linux. Wine does not translate machine instructions from x86 to whatever you're running, it just moves them around more to linux's (or BSD, or hypothetically any other x86 native OS's) liking. So, as long as MacOS only runs on PPC (foreseeable future, which is fine...) it will never run wine in its current incarnation. There would have to be a true emulator in there somewhere to do that...
Oh you mean like the brain dead interface to the ATI pixel shaders that DX8 exposes versus the fully functional opengl extensions. Oh ok yeah like Carmack hasn't gone on a rant about that one. DX is just good enough that lazy ppl use it.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
For all those who believe that hybrid proprietary and free software business models might be stable, please compare:
U C: www.transgaming.com/businessmodel.php+transgaming+ subscriber+aladdin&hl=en
http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:9MjQn79wp0
with
http://www.transgaming.com/businessmodel.php
Notice how all the talk about eventually returning the semi-proprietary code to the community has been unceremoniously removed...
It saddens me that they have apparently abandoned the idea of eventually freeing their customers and letting them share freely with their friends once they have a stable subscriber base sufficient to pay the expenses.
If you patch your safedisk game with a crack, you can run without the binary version.
Alice (full version) works beautifully this way.
Ironic that the pirates would come to the rescue of legimate game owners.
Desperation is a stinky cologne
make install won't do the symlink in your user dir. Running "winex " for the first time sets up all fonts, virtual drives, etc.
Conf file for all your virtual drives, etc. is usually in ~/.transgaming/config
I installed my Jedi Knight II install to my H: drive, mapped out like this in ~/.transgaming/config
[Drive H]
"Path" = "/usr/local/games/winex"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "Games"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
And I just chowned the winex to my user account, so I can install any further games there.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
And if you'd read http://www.transgaming.com/gavstates.php you'd understand exactly what is going on.
It's a question of motivation of game writers.
Scenario A.
Goal: I want to popularize the platform XYZ, because I think it's great. I want more people to use platform XYZ.
Action: Let's implement some game for XYZ.
Scenario B.
Goal: I have a great idea for new game. I want more people to play my game.
Action: Let's choose some platform that (a) allows to write games easily and (b) delivers games to broad audience.
Rhetorical questions:
- Which scenario delivers better games?
- What is the platform of choice in scenario B?
What ever happenned with that? Did they reach the number of subscribers? Did they scrap that idea?
I personally am always doubtful, when people claim that they are going to release source under an open source license at some future date. From what I've seen they seem to change their mind over half the time.
I guess, I really don't care either way if release the source or not. I'm not subscribed and so they're under no obligation to me, but I was just curious.
This is FUD.
Transgaming plans on releasing many pieces to the X11 Wine branch for two good reasons.
1. It costs more to maintain these many code deltas from the main (Rewind) tree. If they are general bug fixes that aren't strategic like DirectX or InstallShield, they want to release it to X11 so they don't have to use resources to keep maintaining it.
2. For strategic pieces like COM for InstallShield, they plan on trading those pieces for other LGPL Wine pieces that they need. For example, if they want a certain LGPL piece, they may consider licensing their own ASPL piece if that LGPL piece is also made X11. Everyone benefits.
I personally support both Transgaming and CodeWeavers financially. I hope both succeed and continue to improve Wine for everyone.
*laugh* "..access to all of that old legacy software". I don't think I've heard of Windows stuff being "legacy" before, but if linux takes off like this, it will be...
Hmmm. I tried putting my Jedi Knight II CD in my PS2. It wouldn't load. Funny thing, that.
Serious Sam wouldn't load either. Nor Tribes 2. Return to Castle Wolfenstein wouldn't even boot up. Not even Medal of Honor would work. We're not even going to talk about the Sims, Black and White, Dungeon Siege, or Freedom Force.
Seems I do still need my PC for something...
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.