Transgaming and Transitive E3 Announcement

An Anonymous Coward writes: "Breaking news today on the Transgaming website. Today they announced an alliance with the company Transitive. Here's their headline: 'Los Angeles, Ca. TransGaming Technologies, in partnership with Transitive Technologies, unveil their game-porting technology that can allow Windows-based x86 games to be simultaneously released onto multiple platforms. These include the Sony PlayStation 2, Apple Mac OS, set-top boxes, PDAs and wireless devices.'" There's more info on the Transgaming Site. Since Transgaming has ported The Sims already, it's a lot easier to believe that this isn't just vapor.

Comments

So does this use Wine or what?

[Scooby Snacks]

The press release was a little shy on details, so I'm wondering: How are they doing this? Are they using their Wine modifications, or something else? I'd be excited as the next guy if this meant more Linux games. It might not be so good, however, if they use a Windows compatibility layer instead of making it a native executable.

Here's why: Suppose they have everything in their kit that they need to support all Windows games written for Windows versions from 95-XP. Great, right? That means that with just a little bit of effort, a vendor can release a Linux version of a game, giving us more games to play with. However, here's the downside: If by writing for Windows you can target both Windows and Linux (and whichever other platforms they support), then why would anyone write any native Linux programs? Then, in XP+1, Microsoft introduces major breakage into their API, such that it's a long time to get it working correctly with Trans{gaming,itive}'s kit. That means that potentially, there won't be any new Linux releases until they can get it fixed. And if they can't... Well, consider OS/2.

Any thoughts?

Re:So does this use Wine or what?

[benzapp]

In defense of OS/2, while Windows performance was often slow this was more perception as you had to wait for the VM to start, windows to start, then your app. Once loaded, applications were sometimes faster than in native Windows 3.1...

Many DOS games ran much better than in native DOS as well. Of course, always having 640K of main memory was always killer. And being able to run good old Oblivion/2 in the background while I was playing X-Wing... Those were the days.

I do acknowledge however there is a big difference between emulating an operating system and emulating a whole other processor. I would tend to think that is not going on however, as the performance would just suck, especially on something like an ARM.

The Sims

[Wanker]

I'd just like to be able to buy The Sims for Linux for less than $70US. Mandrake (exclusively) sells it bundled with their Linux distribution, but has no standalone version.

Considering that folks can get it (on Win32) for $50US, there's little incentive to buy it except "for the good of the company". After I found out what Loki did with my money, I'm still a bit jaded about paying a premium for Linux games...

Re:The Sims

[JM]

I'll definitely pass your comment to the MandrakeSoft Sales Director.

Re:The Sims

[Mr.Ned]

Transgaming seems to not be doing any work right now to support the Windows version of The Sims. However, I believe that the topic has come up in a current poll - subscribers will decided what kind of attention that gets.

Have you tried The Sims using the new version of WineX? I don't know about that game, but the admittedly quite different Jedi Knight II works out of the box just as speedy as on Windows for me. I just need to remember to make my Windows partitions user-writeable and I'll be set!

I was very skeptical of buying anything from them, especially a monthly plan, but after I tried Jedi Knight II I think I'm going to sign up. $5/month, $15 minimum - you get precompiled binaries with copy-protection support and voting rights. Think Mandrake Club (or maybe not :)

Definitely not hype

[JM]

When TransGaming came to us (MandrakeSoft), they said they could port The Sims in less than two months. I must admit I was skeptical at first, but they delivered the merchandise, and we made the Mandrake Gaming Edition, which had great reviews.

When they said they would port Max Payne in the same amount of time, they delivered the merchandise.

Now, when they say they can port to other platforms, I would bet my last dollar they will deliver the merchandise again.

Great to see some fellow Canadians have success! ;-)

Re:no they did NO porting at all

[JM]

Maybe they didn't "port" The Sims, per se, but they
*did* port DirectX to Wine...

The main difference between Loki and TransGaming is
that Loki ported individual games, while the other ports the DirectX layer, so when they work on a game, you suddenly get more games working, eventually to the point where you have hundreds.

PS2 architecture

[Twister002]

But for 3d games, I don't think this will be at all trivial for porting... the PS2's architecture is extremely different to that of a PC, and just blindly interpreting Direct3d Immediate Mode calls ("draw this triangle here") will surely not take advantage of the PS/2 architecture at all.

I thought that too, but after looking around the Playstation2 section at CompUSA I noticed that there are a LOT of PC games (Half-life, No One Lives Forever, Baldurs Gate to name a few) that have been ported to the PS2. That makes me think that perhaps the hardware, or at least the PS2 API, is that different from a PC.

Granted, I've never DONE a porting to the PS2 but it seems like a lot of companies have.

already possible - sort of

[brondsem]

This is already possible if the developers use SDL/OpenGL or CrystalSpace. I don't think either will support PS2 (unless you use the linux kit) and handheld support is probably shaky. But they're open source and cross-platform!