Review of Linux Gaming Using WineX 2.0

Ceyx writes "Toms Hardware ist running an Interesting review of DirectX Gaming under Linux using WineX. An interesting point is that the native Quake3 Arena runs faster with Linux then with windows." I had the good luck to play Jedi Knight Outcast and Return To Castle Wolfenstein at my friend's house, and it was really pretty good. The numbers show just how good the Linux drivers from nVidia are, so mad props to Mark V and his co-workers ...

Comments

Not Exactly A Win For Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

This is part of a continuing pattern that I've noticed. The major corporate entites which are embracing Linux aren't normally leaving some variant of Windows behind but instead are dropping Unix. The stranglehold Microsoft has on Office and the problems introduced by switching from Windows to Linux (in terms of a possible inability to access old files) is really hurting Linux in the War against Windows. But what these companies need to realize is that they can convert their old files into plain text files, using the very version of Office which is trying to tie them into an ugprade cycle of doom, using some simple batch scripts. This would be quite a chore, obviously - but in the long run companies would save. I don't know why this solution isn't being offered to companies. From what I understand, many companies are hesitant to drop Windows for this very reason: loss of access to old files. But again, Bill Gates doesn't really lose on this one. Linux gains some but not in the area where I'd like to see it.

Re:Not Exactly A Win For Linux

[Znork]

This is exactly why real documentation is, has been, and will continue to be, written in SGML. Maintaining documents written by hundreds of people containing hundreds of thousands of information elements in dozens of languages isnt done in Word or Office. I've yet to see any 'real' documents in Word; nothing that is even remotely related to actual products that are to be sold can be kept in formats so prone to time-degradation.

The switch isnt that hard. Junk the info and learn the lesson; people didnt write documents they wanted to last in lipstick on toilet paper before computers, and Word (or other word processing formats) are the computerized equivalent of lipstick on toilet paper.

You might lose a lot of formatting info, but that's the price you've got to pay. In education the old phrase 'do it again, and do it right this time' should carry some weight.

Re:Not Exactly A Win For Linux

[EastCoastSurfer]

Your post shows so little knowledge of the business world. "Real documentation" is the notes, memos, etc... that flowed between key people while a project was executed on. Frequently these data elements are brought together in some sort master file at the end of a project though.

Junk the info and learn the lesson;
LOL, yea let me throw away all the knowledge my business has accumulated because it was written in word. I don't think anything more needs to be said here.

I am all for getting people to switch to linux, but telling businesses to
-dump all their old info
-convert word docs to text
-convert .xls to csv files
-etc...
is laughable at best.

Re:Not Exactly A Win For Linux

[afidel]

The reason is the same that the proprietary solutions offer better presentation. No matter what geeks think presentation is often as if not more important than simply giving someone the information. Pie charts are often a much more impacting and lasting way of presenting a table of data. The arrays of numbers from a fluid dynamics simulation don't mean squat, but the visualization of those numbers will reveal lots. Simply exporting the text of a complex word document does not mean that you have preserved the data! Heck, if that were true I could easily convince people to use star office as it does a hell of a lot better job than simply importing text. The problem is that even star office doesn't do 100% of the edge cases correctly and enough of them pop up in our corporate template files that it isn't yet possible.

Re:Not Exactly A Win For Linux

[Znork]

You dont get it, do you. The info _will_ be junked _anyway_. Even if you dont want to do it, planned obscelecense will do it for you. You do not have a choice. If you wrote it in a wordprocessor it's _biodegradable_. All that info _will_ be thrown away if you dont keep it in a more persistent format.

I am in the middle of the buisness world. The notes and memos we send arent documentation, and they last about as long as it takes someone to hit delete in outlook. The .xls documents last until the guy maintaining them quits. These are extreme short-term storage formats. They're not documentation, and they dont last. And anyone trying to say the documentation is in that word document I sent around will get to do it again.

Real data is stored in big databases, real documentation is stored in SGML. Because we need to keep it for more than an upgrade cycle of Office.

If your buisness knowledge is stored in Word format you have a problem. And I bet those buisnesses wont be laughing when Microsoft tells them they have to 'convert their old documents to text' because the format's changed and the new format 'will render the document somewhat like the old one'.

It's not going to be the guys trying to convince you to run Linux that will ask you to junk your data. It will be the vendor of whatever wordprocessor you use, because their profit isnt helped by you wanting to keep your old software version.

Re:Not Exactly A Win For Linux

[fferreres]

They are not willing to switch (in part) because some people are telling them to turn their .doc files into .txt.

It would be best to tell them to turn the files into .pdf or .rtf. A nice windows program or script to massively turn all files into a Linux friendly format (compress+backup of originals files) would be just great:

nice$ linoffice ~/documents/* -rf -t +excel +word +pp

Finally. . . an excuse.

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

Because the real reason we all have multiple boxes at home is because one computer setup or another will be inheriently more efficient at a given game than another. Thus a reasonable (to my mind) excuse for why my house is littered with redhat, tinylinux, w2k, and 98 boxes. I suppose it would work even better if most of them were running at the same time. . . .

um

[prockcore]

Someone please explain why you would play Return to Castle Wolfenstein with WineX when there is a native linux version? (Not to mention the fact that the linux version is ahead of the Windows version in terms of patches and bug fixes)

Re:um

[cscx]

For the same reason a friend of mine ran Windows through VMWare under Linux... "cause it runs faster and more reliably through a virtual machine!"

Wasn't Michael Robertson trying to pull a fast one with that LindowsOS thing that seemed to come and go? Yeah, you're uh... Windows programs will run, uh, better under emulation. Or was it more about "now you have choice in what OS you use!" Hmm. Well, if you own any Windows programs to run, most likely you own Windows itself. If you're looking to install Linux, I don't think Lindows is what you are looking for. But I digress.

I'd just like to remind the Linux users out there to download the Windows ports of OpenOffice and the GIMP, and run them under WINE.

Re:um

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple, Tom wanted to benchmark it both natively and running in WineX.

Re:um

[DeathPenguin]

That's exactly it. He wanted to compare the native Linux version with the WineX emulated Windows version and the native Windows version. As you can see from the benchmarks, the native Linux version was quite a bit faster.

Re:um

[Daengbo]

Probably, if fact, it's the drivers, not hardware. I used to run a Via socket 7 chipset that wouldn't boot windows with an AGP card. Hardware problem? Maybe in part, but the same hardware setup would run under Linux with no problem, and VMWare without a hitch. Ultimately, the problem for that setup was the driver-Windows interaction. Which do you blame?

Re:um

[Tony-A]

So what you're telling me is that the reliability problems that some people have reported with Windows is actually the hardware and NOT the software.
Nope. If it was hardware, it would still be as flaky under VMWare.

If the software was dodgy it'd have the same reliability problems under a virtual machine as it does on the actual hardware.
There's one born every day. Ever heard of asynchronous processes? Timing problems, Race conditions. They are mean to debug.
VMWare presents to Windows a machine where things happen nice and orderly.
Microsoft does have trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Re:um

[deaddeng]

thanks for the dramatic improvements in Linux Detonator drivers over the past year. Now every partition on this PC is ext3.

Now, if only Transgaming (which I support with $) could actually get some MS games working under Linux. The "Sims" version they tout is a port, not the native Win32 game. Every other game I've tried has failed to run. I'm really missing Loki.

but WineX vs. Windows

[Frizzled]

unfortunately, wineX doesn't see the same performance boost (windows2000 beats it):

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/02q2/020531/wind ows_gaming-05.html

funny how the frame rate is capped at 50 for all resolutions though. it seems more like something is artificially keeping it there.

_f

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[jred]

Yeah. I wondered why Tom seemed to kind of barely skim that subject. I thought that was the most interesting thing in the article. Well, at least it was once I determined that the performance hit using wineX sucks :(

I was thinking about subscribing, but decided not to. I already have to dual-boot to watch DVDs (I must be an idiot, because deCSS makes it sooo easy to pirate DVDs, and I can't even get the SOB to play them).

Oh, well. I've found that I play bzflag most of the time, anyway. It's even cross-platform :)

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[brsmith4]

I already have to dual-boot to watch DVDs (I must be an idiot, because deCSS makes it sooo easy to pirate DVDs, and I can't even get the SOB to play them).

Haven't you heard of XINE with the d5d plugin??? I play my DVDs perfectly with it. Its even faster than Windozes' players. I would hate to dual boot just to watch some movies. Just a thought.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The reviewer didn't investigated it because he doesn't understand it. Like most of these hobbiest turned pro review sites, they just have a surface knowledge of the way things work. It seems like 99% of articles on websites like TomsHardware and Anandtech are just a bunch of benchmarks and the occasional quote from somebody, usually a PR droid, at the company. Anytime they do try to explain the inner workings of something, you have to take it with a grain of salt as they are more likely to screw it up, like a bad game of telephone, then they are to get it right. These guys often don't even have a degree in CS, much less any pertinent real world experience.

Of course, the majority of their audience doesn't either, which is why they are so popular. If they had real meat to their articles, like the way Byte Magazine was in 80s for example, 90% of their readership would have their eyes glaze over and wouldn't finish the article - thus plenty of ads would never be displayed...

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Permission Denied]

I must be an idiot, because deCSS makes it sooo easy to pirate DVDs, and I can't even get the SOB to play them

By no means are you an idiot. DVD playing under Linux isn't quite there yet. I recently ranted about this elsewhere. Do a search for "linux DVD playing" on google, and you end up with the so-called "Linux DVD Playing Howto" which tells you to use livid/oms. Oms is dead. The "Linux DVD Playing Howto" is completely misleading, but you won't realize this until you've invested at least three or four hours getting the latest oms CVS and then figuring which decss plugin to use (as there are at least three but only one actually works). If you manage to finally get something that can read DVDs and output to your monitor, you'll find that oms doesn't do sound sync, so you still won't be able to watch movies.

So your next step is to complain on a forum like slashdot (this is what I did). You will then get replies telling you something to the order of "you are a fucking idiot, oms is dead, you should use xine/mplayer, it works better than in windows for me." So then you try xine or mplayer. But first, you must update your kernel, then update to XFree86 4.2, then update your SDL and maybe even update your gcc and binutils as mplayer won't even compile (well, actually it fails at the assembly step) with older versions of binutils. If you choose xine, you then have to figure out which decss plugin to use as there are quite a few to choose from, and only one or two that work (I understood dvdnav was the one to use, but an anonymous comrade just pointed out a different one in this thread). If you choose mplayer, you're in for a treat: here are the installation instructions. It took me about an hour and a half to go through those instructions before I was finally able to run mplayer's configure script. And if you think you can download some pre-built binary, you're wrong: all the mplayer asm optimizations are determed by your CPU type, which is determined by the configure script, not through run-time detection. Fortunately, mplayer does not require a separate decss plugin, so you don't have to go hunting through mailing lists and online forums to figure out which decss plugin works and which decss plugins are crap.

So, once you've compiled mplayer or xine and you've sufficiently frobbed your /proc to turn on DMA on your CD drive and get your MTRRs set up, you can actually run these programs and see if you get DVD output. Unfortunately, this is the point where you find out that the XFree86 4.2 ATI Rage 3D driver claims to support the XV extension, but, in fact, does not work correctly, causing xine and mplayer to fail on startup. So, now you have to use some "output plugin" that does not require the XV extension. The only output plugin capable enough to play DVDs would be the SDL output plugin, so you try to use that (you did remeber to enable SDL support at ./configure, didn't you?).

My suggestion: forget it. Your time is expensive and you have better things to do. There is a very vocal minority of Linux users who claim that DVD playing under Linux works beautifully: I can't argue with them. Linux DVD playback works well for them, but not for the rest of us. Look at it this way: you can spend one or two days figuring out if DVD playback will even work with your hardware, or you could go to a temp agency and get some crap job for a weekend, make $150 and buy a dedicated DVD player to hook up to your TV. Now, cut out the crap temp job which was only meant to demonstrate the value of your time, go buy the damned player, and be absolutely 100% certain that you'll be watching DVDs by the end of the weekend.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Tom]

your lengthy rant can be disproven with one line:

http://www.videolan.org

doesn't that make you feel a little stupid? :-)

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[AndyS]

Well, I kinda agree. I'm too lazy to hunt down my DVD player for my newly "cleaned" Windows partition, so I've been watching Buffy season 3 with a combination of xine (to marvel at the menus) and vlc to actually watch the damn things.

Yesterday, being pissed off with my inability to watch the Prisoner I went bleeding edge.

CVS copy of
xine-lib
xine-ui
xine-dvdnav
libdvdnav

I then got libdvdread 0.9.3 and libdvdcss 1.2.0 - both of which can be found off freshmeat. I had libdvdread 0.9.2 (which is what is in Debian unstable), but it doesn't like the far less buggy version of libdvdcss - so it's well worth "rolling your own" - I didn't have any compilation problems. If you do though, I'd recommend using stow - it rocks.

I didn't have time to test all my DVDs, but it plays a fair number of them.
Buffy Season 1 Disc 2 (American release)
Buffy Season 3 Disc 2 (British release)
Simpsons Season 1 Disc 3 (British release)
South Park (Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls et al - American release)

It's not perfect - I can crash xine now, but it's a lot closer than it ever has been.

It really is nice getting menus and everything on an opensource Linux player when I have the source code to everything from the css system to dvdread in my home directory ;>

Xine isn't ready for prime time - if you try hard enough you can still break it - it doesn't have the error recovery it needs and it's still too flakey, but it's closer than it's been in the last 2 years or so.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Homburg]

I wouldn't recommend mplayer to anyone who wasn't 3l33t - any software you have to compile from scratch to get working is inevitably going to be a hastle.

But you don't have to update your kernel (DVD support has been in the kernel since 2.2.16) and you don't need to upgrade to XFree86 4.2 (although using version 4 may give you better performance). And just because you had difficulties with one particular driver, doesn't mean that 'DVD on linux isn't there yet'.

For me, getting DVD playback to work was as simple installing the xine-dvdnav package. You've given no evidence to support your claim that those for whom playing DVDs on linux works are in the minority.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[spunkykuma]

I watch DVD movies under Linux with absolutely no problems at all, even audio syncs just fine. I use mainly Ogle, but there's Videolan, MPlayer and Xine, among several others. I don't know what kind of hardware you have or such, if you have an older Celeron or Pentium 2- you will definately need a decoder card to help DVD playback. But what does this topic really have to do with WineX anyhow?
Speaking of WineX, I even poked at PowerDVD under Wine, and it sure doesn't like to run properly, I have had less luck with WineX than Wine.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[jred]

Xine w/ d5d is what I was trying to use. (well, up until Thurs when my HD bit the dust). I've heard that VideoLAN is supposed to be much easier to get working, but haven't yet had a chance to try it.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[0x0d0a]

My roommate uses ogle, and it has no problems. It's also the most fully-featured Linux DVD player.

I love mplayer, but light on setup effort it's not.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Afrosheen]

Yeah I agree. Compiling Mplayer on Mandrake 8.1/8.2 was as easy as:

download and install win32codecs
download and install skins
./configure --disable-gcc-checking --enable-gui
./make
./make install

It really isn't that hard. PLF at plf.zarb.org has lots of rpms for mplayer as well so it's even easier if you're lazy or inexperienced.

Trying to do something cutting-edge (watching dvds) on some super old distro will always give you headaches. Upgrade binutils just for a software build? Jesus man. Join this century and get a recent distro.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Tom]

There are ready-to-go packages for Debian, Redhat and Mandrake (as well as for Beos and Windos) on the download page.

Maybe I'm too ignorant of the ignorant, but what exactly is the problem with "(dpkg|rpm) -i vlc*" ?

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[fferreres]

The 2 days setup (to have it at the "beautifull level") is correct (unless you are lucky and with a fast CPU (+600mhz)). Anyway, i prefer having it working at my PC than a standalone player. This is a laptop so i like to carry it's multiregion DVD player arround with me...and the S-Video connector :)

Regarding the ATI rage card, is that the mach32 or mach64 card? If it's ATI mach64 based, you have vidix and xv working beautifully. I have a mach64 mobility and it's pretty decent for what the CPU's worth.

Anyway, there's a long road to go. The DeCSS stuff is not nice, and Mplayer gui lacks...and they won come bundled and precompiled anytime soon.

Tips for slow CPU owners

Here's what I've done to actually have decent playback on an Celeron 433 machine + ATI card. Hope it saves some people time.

1: hdparm -c 1 -d 1 -a 32 -q /dev/hdd
2: mplayer -vo xvidix -double -cache 15000 -framedrop -osdlevel 0 -fs -dvd 1
3: relax and enjoy

Remember you need to have setuid root in mplayer to use vidix in X (as non-root). Setting up a group with only your user allowed is better still.

Re:but WineX vs. Windows

[Permission Denied]

It wasn't really meant as a pro-Windows rant, but you can take it that way if you wish. I actually don't use Windows at all - I'm certain this particular computer could play DVDs if I installed Windows, but I'm not going to do that (I have good reasons for making that choice and anti-MS politics don't figure into those reasons). Same thing goes for games, which would probably be a bit more on-topic: if you want to play games, you can use use Windows, or you could explore Dante's unwritten tenth level by trying it with Linux. I would rather avoid both: if I want to play DVDs, I'll buy a set-top box DVD player and if I want to play video games, I'll buy a Playstation, an N64 or an Xbox.

I'm certain that at some point I'll be able to simply put a DVD into a Linux box and it will "just work" but right now the situation is far from "just working." My point is to cut down on the advocacy: telling people that they can easily play DVDs on Linux encourages them to try it, and at this point, the experience will leave a sour taste and turn people away. It certainly left me quite frustrated, and I do unix programming and administration for a living - I'm not some newbie, as a number of people assummed. Linux is great at a number of things - I can't think of any situation where I wouldn't use Linux (or, more likely, FreeBSD) for fileserving and webserving - but it's OK to admit that some things are currently more difficult with Linux. I just don't like the frivolous advocacy and the holier-than-thou attitudes which seem so prevalent.

Ultima Online

[jsse]

I once ran the Linux version of Ultima Online(for some reason one of EA's developer port it to Linux, dunno why). It actually run faster and smoother than Windows' version, except for a mouse responsive problem, which i solved it.

I didn't make it up to attack Microsoft, but back in those days UO has some memory leak problems and when it crashed I usually found my online character death when I finished reboot my windows and log back in. When UO crashed in Linux I can always restarted immediately and save my character in time.

This is not really a Wine related issue but in my opinion is that running online games under Linux is very desirable. I'm going to give WineX a shot if it could run my online games like in Windows.

Learn from this.....

[reaper20]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Wine and its a derivatives are a neat hack - but using this stuff is like having sex with 4 condoms on. We want good performance for Linux games - BUY THE LINUX VERSION.

Neverwinter Nights is a perfect example of how a game should be (er, will be) published - cross-platform, same box. I've prebought it already.

We should be supporting the game companies that port to Linux instead of trying to get games working at 50% of the performance of Windows.

Re:Learn from this.....

[josh crawley]

Your user number may be way under mine, but that doesn't mean you're any smarter than I. Anyways, we'll have producers, that make multiplatform games (ID for example). However Most producers will stay away from Linux. Why? They are in bed with MS.

Do you think whining to these producers will do anything, other than churning out MS games? Nope. Now take a look at Warcraft 3. After the spectacle of BnetD they put on, do you think they'll touch Linux? Hell no. Vivendi Universal is already scared shitless about linux. Fully functional DeCss vid apps, ASF and WMV decoders (look at mplayer)....

The best, and only way, for more Linux games be made is not to buy Windows games. Treat Windows games (only from non-Linux game developers) as free software. However, you MUST fully support Linux 3d games. What I'm advocating is Illegal. But in order for Linux games be made, we must hurt these devolopers in thier pocketbooks while boosting Linux purchases. This will give incentive for "I-dont-know-if-we-should-support-linux" developers more ammo. However, MS game shops will continue to make more games. (* read below)

Truly what I'd like to see is dual-install games (Win/Lin). Older developers did the same with Mac/Win. All you'd need is the standard autorun for Windows and /linux/install.sh for linux.

* This is the exact reason why there needs to be an API emulator for Windows games.(And if it's good enough to play games, why not simpler programs?) Who wants to reboot or move to another machine that can run Windows and is sooped up enough to play 'it'? I sure as hell dont. Wine/Winex/Derivative is a conveinance library. It also covers windows-only apps for ones that no such compatible program that exists in linux.

Re:Learn from this.....

[The_Dougster]

Yeah, but a lot of my favorite (Windows) games have been abandoned and don't work on faster computers or have some other problem. A case in point is Privateer2, just try playing it on a 450MHz machine and you will find it is impossibly fast. Barring some hack like "MoSlo" or such it is effectively dead as a Windows game. However, if I could get the damn thing to run in Linux it might be sluggish enough to be playable.

There are a lot of really cool old games out there that we love to play but they just aren't supported anymore. The only real hope is either a complete rewrite for Linux / X11 or else run it using Wine or DosEmu. Since Wine abstracts your sound hardware, it appears to be an old Soundblaster which works with most anything.

Re:Learn from this.....

[jsse]

having sex with 4 condoms on

Having more than 1 condoms is always worse than one due to fictions.

Re:Learn from this.....

[VasilyPupkin]

just try playing it on a 450MHz machine and you will find it is impossibly fast.

Just try disabling L2 cache. You won't believe it's a 450Mhz box.

Re:Learn from this.....

[josh crawley]

Yeah. Loki was doomed from the start.
1: They had to compete with the WIndows market. That was anywhere 6 months to 2 years of delay. Nobody pays 50$ for a "old" game. Even after 3 months, you expect for games to drop to 30$.
2: The squandered thier money away.
3: They gave away patch files so you could use games (that you bought with WIndows) on Linux. They made NO money doing this.

Essentially, the group Loki just used "Linux Gaming" as a nice money grab. It worked. Look the the former Top part of the staff....

Screwball setups like this dont work. The developers need to make it. Perferabally, have an installer on the "Game cd". Then you'd be able to slap on a label "Works with Windows and Linux! (insert windows logo and penguin)".

Re:Learn from this.....

[quantaman]

But what if there isn't a Linux version as is the case with the mass majority of games. The fact is few companies don't make Linux games because there isn't enough of a market share to be profitable because the majority of Linux users still have Windows for the purpose of games. Now if you use something like WineX they now no longer need their windows partition and thus are only running linux, thus the number of linux only desktops start to rise. Of course the games run slower in linux with wineX so game companies will look for a way to run faster to get a competitive advantage in this new market. Soon they will decide, there is enough of a market so that if they make a true linux version they can get a better chunk of that market. And now you have your linux version. Buying the linux version is great, but until they are more widly available so other companies can see what they're missing we need programs like wineX to get the ball rolling.

Re:Learn from this.....

[frankie]

Neverwinter Nights is a perfect example of how a game should be published - cross-platform, same box.

Except that the most important part of the game is Windows-only. I currently own only Macs, but if the Wine group gets Aurora running, I'll snag a spare PC and install Linux.

Re:Learn from this.....

[IamTheRealMike]

We should be supporting the game companies that port to Linux instead of trying to get games working at 50% of the performance of Windows.

You're right, but unfortunately techniques for writing cross platform games are currently immature. SDL is about as good as it gets, and it isn't yet up to the standard of DirectX. Also, until OpenGL gets significantly ahead of Direct3D, games companies will continue to write to D3D, and therefore card manufacturers will write better Direct3D drivers (or no opengl drivers) as that's where the money is.

Steps to helping developers write cross platform games:

• Improve SDL, bringing it up to the level of DirectX - this includes improved documentation. It might need professional support in the form of a company too.
• Create copy protection systems that work on Linux, or convince existing companies to port theirs. Yes yes, I know that will upset a lot of people, but tough. The games companies charge for their products and want them protected, if that requires kernel patches then so be it.
• Evangelism and support! Buy only nVidia cards, as they a) produce excellent cards and b) write good OpenGL drivers unlike say (cough) Matrox. My current card is a G400 - my next will be an nVidia card. Then I'll send them a polite email thanking them for their efforts and support. It can only help.
• Ditto for games companies. Evangelism - write to SDL, it's easier, faster AND it'll make cross platform code.

Just think of it this way

[cscx]

Windows 98 Full Version : $100

20 Month subscripton to Transgaming: $100

New nVidia video card (cause you have to throw out your ATI Radeon et cetera): $150

Somehow this just doesn't add up. This makes as much sense to me as buying a copy of Windows 2000 Advanced Server so you can "run Apache on it." Just use the right tool for the right job!

Would you rather play Nintendo games through an emulator, or that NES attached to the TV in the corner?

Re:Just think of it this way

[cscx]

Actually no, I've got an nVidia card... I was just making a point. But I'm pretty sure all the ATI owners are pretty pissed.

Re:Just think of it this way

[joshua_doesnt_know]

Those games barely scratch the surface of openGL features needed to play most commercial games. When I was working at Loki we had a bit of a time with FAKK2 and the radeon cards doing some very annoying graphic glitches which made the game unplayable. It was hard to poke the developers and get them to actually look into the problem or even fix it. Also, if you have ever seen a game like Tribes2 on both an Nvidia card and a Radeon you will really see the difference. The radeon may get decent framerates but it renders certain surfaces wrong and occasionally creates odd artifacts. Besides, the only part of the Nvidia drivers which are closed source is the openGL library which is why it does look so good. This is because DRI cards use mesa as an openGL implementation which works but just doesnt produce the same results as the real thing. This brings us back to the topic! Running the games in wine or winex may work, but it is not as good as the real thing. It is like going to McDonalds; It will fill you up, and it does the job of satisfying your hunger but if you want a real meal you go to a real resturaunt.

Re:Just think of it this way

[NanoGator]

"Would you rather play Nintendo games through an emulator, or that NES attached to the TV in the corner?"

In that case, I'd rather play the emulator. Every time I turn on my NES, it just sits there blinking at me.

Re:Just think of it this way

[swankypimp]

Would you rather play Nintendo games through an emulator, or that NES attached to the TV in the corner?

The nice thing about the emulator is that you don't have to blow air on it for twenty minutes before your game works correctly.

Re:Just think of it this way

[phaze3000]

Why the hell would us ATI owners be pissed?

We have proper support for our video-card, not these shitty broken binary-only drivers that nVidia puts out, plus we get decent 3D performance and superior 2D quality too. I can get a constant 125 fps in Quake 3 at 800x600x32, what more can you want?

Re:Just think of it this way

[kenthorvath]

Actually, I here there is a NESticle plugin for that!

Re:Just think of it this way

[NanoGator]

Okay, in all seriousness, that's how you destroy your Nintendo. What you do is *clean the cartridge*

What happens is when you rub copper on copper (i.e. when you insert a cartridge, ya get copper friction...) little black crap shows up and blocks the contacts. When ya clean it with a good cleaning kit (Recoton is a good brand...) then it'll work again.

*sadly, knows more about this than he should* Heh

Re:Just think of it this way

[Afrosheen]

Um, don't forget to mention one important fact:

The radeon 8500 still has absolutely NO 3d support in Linux. As usual, 'someone is working on it', but don't hold your breath.

And be reasonable. Nobody plays games in 800x600 unless they have a tiny monitor or get bad framerates at 1024x768.

Re:Just think of it this way

[phaze3000]

Hardcore Quake heads do (we need 125 fps for the additional 'physics' benefits). Everyone else who can make do with a steady 60fps can use much higher resolutions.. :)

Re:Just think of it this way

[NanoGator]

"blowing on them is significant for the dust they collect"

That's a myth. It'd have to be a very thick layer of dust to prevent contacts from touching. Think about how much dust would have to get inside your machine (that normally has the door closed...) to successfully block contact with only one pin. The reason why blowing on it works is that your hot breath is getting cooled on the contacts, causing condensation to form. Condensation conducts electricity, and that's why it works.

Ever notice that pennies range from shiny to nearly black? That's because they rub around in your pocket and it creates a layer of gunk on them. That's what's happening inside the NES every time you put a game in and take it out. THat's why they need to be cleaned regularly.

Trust me when I say if you get a good cleaning kit, it'll make your NES work. I used to sell used NES's, I know a lot more about them than I'd like to admit. ;)

Re:Just think of it this way

[Afrosheen]

I agree in a roundabout way. Here's how I see it: if your card is capable of giving you 150fps in quake3, when you're playing with a ton of people in multiplayer and you get in a crowd and mix it up, your card will still be able to handle the action. That's my biggest bitch with my geforce2mx (affordable piece of crap that it is). It's fine until you get in a crowd and start blasting or if you get rushed by a few people. In urban terror, this happens because of my playing style (anyone that's played me, Gaylord_Focker, will know). My card drops frames like crazy. So that 150fps guarantee would help alot.

Two points

[Henry V .009]

Short summation: Everything runs half as fast. And you need to pay $5 dollars a month to Transgaming for it. Plus the Wine community has screwed Transgaming with the licensing. Of course, since Transgaming is a closed source company, Transgaming may have deserved it.

Re:Two points

[_Sprocket_]

And you need to pay $5 dollars a month to Transgaming for it.

Just to clarify... it costs $5/mo (min of 3 months) for membership. Membership allows you to download the latest binaries (as many times as you want). Membership also provides tech support and voting for what games should be targeted for future development.

If you cancel your membership, you still have the last binary package you downloaded.

Just don't use SCSI

[Wee]

WineX does run really well. I've been a subscriber for a while now, and it shows real promise. But be warned: if you have a SCSI CD drive, you will have problems, and almost certainly will not be able to play many newwer games. The latest version claims to support SCSCI drives better than the previous version (ie, lack of support for SCSI drives was a known problem), but I've had no better results with it than any other release.

I have a system which is purely SCSI (U2W/lvd, in fact). Both of my disc drives are made by Plextor -- hardly unknown drives -- and are over two and a half years old. They are well supported by anybody's standards. Yet neither will work with WineX. I get errors with CD protection schemes, errors trying to read the drives, errors in the games saying the disc can't be found, etc. This is with my Plextor CD-R and CD-ROM drives. I've even tried mounting ISO images of the game CDs via the loopback with no luck.

If you have IDE CD drives, then feel free to get a subscription and/or download WineX. If you have a SCSI system then you shouldn't bother with WineX -- unless you get a subscription and then vote for SCSI support. Otherwise just dual boot into Windows (or forego games). IMO, the lack of support for SCSI systems is enough to make me wish I hadn't subscribed (or had been able to find the issue mentioned somewhere on the Transgaming site last October when I signed up).

-B

Re:Just don't use SCSI

[Gaccm]

do you know if the problem is only for hardware scsi? Since i have a CDRW, i made both my ide cdroms look like scsi using the kernel ide-scsi plugin.

Re:Just don't use SCSI

[Lumpy]

first off... the games you like, step one DOWNLOAD the game cracks to remove the lame cd protection..

play it with regular open wineX and dump the subscription...

Hell I got wineX for one reason, redalert and the other C&C series... I dropped it as regular wine runs it better....

Re:Just don't use SCSI

[Wee]

do you know if the problem is only for hardware scsi?

AFAIK, it's hardware issue.

-B

Real benchmarks!111

[Time Doctor]

http://timedoctor.org/index.php?id=541

Problem with frame rate comparison.

[tshak]

There is a huge problem with frame rate comparison between multiple graphics libraries. The main issue is graphics quality. It is very difficult to prove that the test running on WineX is in fact performing the exact same operations that DirectX is (and visa versa). Especially with different drivers and hardware platforms it's even more difficult to compare (ATI "Quak3.exe" anyone?).

Quake

[DarkZero]

How is it interesting that Quake 3 Arena runs faster in Linux than in Windows? I've always been a Windows user (that's another story), but my Linux using friends and many others have always boasted that they could get Quake and Quake 2 to work on PCs with much, much lower specs than the minimum requirements for the game because they were using Linux, and thus didn't have the processor overhead of the "Windows bloat".

Less stuff running while playing the game = faster game. Why is this suddenly supposed to be interesting or surprising to any of us? Even us heathen Windows users know that much.

Re:Quake

[cuyler]

In my experience Quake 3 would run about 4% slower under Linux (native linux client) with the same settings as under Windows 98. It would run faster if I compared it to 2000 (didn't have XP at the time).

I did this over multiple trials with an Nvidia card. Nothing terribly scientific just a real world test.

No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[AHumbleOpinion]

... we'll have producers, that make multiplatform games (ID for example). However Most producers will stay away from Linux. Why? They are in bed with MS

You are delusional. Even Id has publicly stated, Game Developer Magazine, that Linux games do not make business sense, that they support various Unix platforms because they think it is cool to do so.

The primary reason companies do not target Linux is that there is no new market, no new sales. Linux gamers are already buying the Win32 version and dual booting or emulating. Porting to Linux would not generate a new sale, it would replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale, no point in doing that.

The "Linux game market" only consists of those people who refuse to dual boot or emulate, and that population is too small to consider. There is no anti-Linux sentiment, there is no Microsoft control, there is only developers following gamers to whatever platform the gamers use. If there was money to be made from Linux gamers developers would be there.

Re:No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[josh crawley]

Then please explain to me why Mandrake is bringing their own "Linux Game installs"? These games include The Sims.

I'm sure Licensing for putting The Sim's wasn't cheap, nor was the Win2Lin translator service. Now why would Mandrake do that? They are trying to make money on Linux Gaming.

---"You are delusional. Even Id has publicly stated, Game Developer Magazine, that Linux games do not make business sense, that they support various Unix platforms because they think it is cool to do so."---

No, I'm not. Do you remember what the deveopers of UT said when they were askek if they planned to make UT2 for Linux? They were most certainly making the server for Linux, as nearly all FPS's with Linux servers made more sales (uptime of servers compared to longevity of game). They were questioning on a Linux Client (if THAT would make more money). My assumption is if companies consider making servers for Linux, could the same consideration be made for clients? My answer is yes.

Re:No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[josh crawley]

What's funny is they knew what they were doing. Look at the server window for HL. Now pull servers from the net and observer the bitmap displayed beside Linux servers.... Now, if they didn't intend to release a Linux version (EG: hacked, reverse engineered), why would there be a "affirmation" by displaying a 'hacked' server and acknologing Linux?

Re:No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[spunkykuma]

Not only is games cool to support Linux for their games, some companies USE Linux as the platform/OS to develop games in, especially Sony Playstation 2 games. I still don't think Linux is really a gaming OS, but since there are more games available for it, it is usually stabler than Windows and save you from rebooting your machine into Windows just to play a game.

Re:No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[jonabbey]

You are delusional. Even Id has publicly stated, Game Developer Magazine, that Linux games do not make business sense, that they support various Unix platforms because they think it is cool to do so.

Just to be clear, John Carmack's opinion that porting an Id game to Linux does not make business sense does not mean that it never makes business sense for anyone to produce games for Linux. Any Carmack game will sell in the bazillions on Windows, and sure, the Linux version will be in the noise on that. That doesn't mean that there aren't enough Linux users to support smaller games.

Re:No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[MsGeek]

Now the the Sims are going to be showing up on the PS2 with a PS2 specific version, why bother with the Mandrake deal?

Maybe some people don't want to pay money to Sony to buy a PS2. Maybe some people want to keep their money away from a rapacious company that belongs to both the RIAA and the MPAA.

And yes, I fully realize I'm going to be modded down for saying something bad about Sony. BFD. It's really quick and easy to bounce back to the cap from 48 or 49, and I honestly don't give a flying fsck anymore.

Re:No conspiracy, just no "Linux game market"

[AHumbleOpinion]

Then please explain to me why Mandrake is bringing their own "Linux Game installs"? These games include The Sims.
I'm sure Licensing for putting The Sim's wasn't cheap, nor was the Win2Lin translator service. Now why would Mandrake do that? They are trying to make money on Linux Gaming

You confuse a game developer with a Linux distro. Game developer see no worthwhile market so they do not port themselves, they do not put their money at risk. A Linux distro emphasizes games to stand out among all the other Linux distros, to increase their marketshare. In short, games are probably a loss leader. The games are not intended to make money themselves, they further a different goal that will make money

You need to follow the money. Profit oriented game developers will do Linux if someone else is paying the bills and taking the risk.

OpenGL games to test WineX??

[Marimus]

Does anybody else think its kinda weird that two of the games (Quake3, RTCW) are not DirectX games, but OpenGL?

For all we know, vanilla wine does just as well for those games, and you don't have to pay $5/month. Of course, you could also download
the linux binaries, and get better performance, withouth paying $5/month :)

nvidia drivers

[kraf]

Geforce 3d performance is great, but the 2d quality is just too awful for me.
I've tried many cards, and returned them all !

I'm waiting for a card that has good 3d _and_ 2d quality at the same time. The new radeon doesn't seem to have good drivers yet, I wonder what the matrox parhelia will be like.

Same goes for Quake 3 Arena

[antdude]

You don't need WineX to run Q3A. :)

Re:WineX is a dead end

[blixel]

If EITHER of these things happen, then where are we

I don't know where you'll be but I'll be the same place I am today. Playing games on my console system and using my computer for applications. All it will take for me to never look at PC gaming again is decent Networking Support for consoles and an HDTV. (I admit - currently console games don't look as good on my television as they do on my 21" ViewSonic.) I'd much rather sit in my living room on the couch and play WarCraft III with my friends from out-of-state via my GameCube.

Re:Oh. Never mind... (Off Topic)

[DarkZero]

Chris does post a lot, but it seems that most of his posts have at least one error in them. Occasionally it's spelling, but more often it's just inaccurate or obvious statements. You see this as a sign that he truly cares, but I see it as a sign of someone that just doesn't bother to proofread what they write. It seems like he immediately posts whatever comes to his mind before actually thinking it out or even bothering to check the spelling.

But spelling thing was actually just a little joke to attach to my post. The real reason I posted that was because I felt like an idiot for having fallen into the same trap that at least a dozen different /. users fall into each day: wasting time and comment space correcting Chrisd's Small Inaccuracy Of The Day(TM). The joke was just a small addition that wasn't meant as maliciously as you took it.

WineX kernel module?

[sanermind]

I'll be content as long as the kernel module is open source. I don't over-mind running untrusted code as an untrusted user [occasionaly possible [but quickly patched] local root exploits asides], but kernel mode is ring 0, baby. That's bigger than root. I don't like the idea of a propriatary kernel module one bit.

Re:WineX kernel module?

[zCyl]

but kernel mode is ring 0, baby. That's bigger than root

Actually, it's equivalent to root. A process running as root can install arbitrary modules.

reverse engineering

[spongman]

The article states that the reason we can run DirectX games on Linux is the same as the reason that we don't have to buy PCs from IBM. But I'm not sure that's the case.

When Compaq reverse engineered IBM's bios they had two separate teams, one to study (reverse engineer) IBMs BIOS and to write a detailed specification of its workings and another to interpret that spec and produce a working copy.

I wonder if TransGaming's developers work like this, or if they're just debugging DirectX on one machine and writing code on another?

If that's the case, does that put them in a difficult legal position?

nVidia latest drivers crash WineX

[OpCode42]

I "upgraded" to 2930 yesterday. Glxgears was 500fps down and winex refused to run Jedi Knight.

This was solved by going back to 2880.

Hope that helps out some people whose games suddenly stopped working.

Re:nVidia latest drivers crash WineX

[Afrosheen]

It's a personal problem. Glxgears runs fine on my box and so does JK2. Both Mandrake 8.2 and gentoo have zero trouble with the new drivers.

Q3 isn't even DirectX

[DABANSHEE]

As we all know its OpenGL, so its useless uing it to test DirectX implimentation in WINE

nVidia Drivers for X are *very* good...

[Lethyos]

I have a Riva TNT2 based card in my gaming box (a 1.4GHz Athlon /w a Tbird core). This box, running Windows, could never give me decent frame rates in Unreal Tournament or Quake III with resolutions above 800x600 with decent texture quality. Now, under X, UT is silky smooth at 1024x768 with maximum detail. Quake III is only marginally better, but there is definitely an improvement. The only downside is that I have to clock the memory speed of my card down using NVclock otherwise I get random crashes (such that the mem and core speeds are the same). (But it's still faster than Windows.)

Anyway, the point is that Linux turns out to be a powerful gaming platform (duh). It's a shame that there isn't more commercial game development taking place for it. TransGaming is doing a great job, but this bit about only supporting nVidia at this point is frustrating. This line, "This could change if other graphics card vendors improve their Linux drivers, but for now Nvidia is the only game in town" seems silly to me. ATI Radeon support under Linux is pretty solid (maybe not as good as nVidia's, but it is open source and that makes a huge difference) and so more attention ought to be paid to it. Besides, what's the point of restricting development to nVidia? We're dealing with OpenGL here, which is a common interface to all 3D hardware. What difference does it make, so long as X has proper GLX support? Does TransGaming get funded by nVidia?

Seems I shouldn't upgrade my TNT2 for a while. :\

Re:A few things....

[veddermatic]

1. I dunno. =)

2. you neat at LEAST 60fps at all times, and every human eye is different, so your flicker rate and mine are different (and other things like beer and pot (both of which gamers may consume) changes it as well) A harcore, skilled gamer can definitely notice the difference between 50 and 60 fps.

what are you talking about?

[Ender Ryan]

Transgaming has been working recently on getting winex working better with DRI based drivers, such as the Radeon.

Why not upgrade your TNT2 to a GF3 or 4? They're the best video cards around right now, and they will be until other card vendors start using a better driver architecture(like NVIDIA's "unified driver architecture") and stop having to write an entirely new driver for ever new card they develop. That would also make it much more reasonable for other vendors to support Linux, as it would take much less resources to do so.

I agree with you about Linux being a powerful gaming platform. It is way the hell better than windows. All Linux needs is more commercial support, and easier driver setup tools.

Re:what are you talking about?

[Afrosheen]

It's hard to beat the driver setup tool for Mandrake 8.2 nvidia users at my site. http://tuxbox.by-a.com/mdk_rpms. Simple and effective.

what the fuck?

[Ender Ryan]

What the fuck are you talking about?

20 Months subscription? $100? You don't need a 20 month subscription, you can subscribe whenever you want to upgrade. winex isn't going to stop working if you stop subscribing. And you can still use the CVS version if your a wanker who refuses to pay for anything, but you'll have to find nocd cracks for your games.

Note to fucktards, D3D *IS* SUPPORTED IN THE CVS VERSION, just not safedisk.

And why would you have to throw your Radeon away, it's got Linux support and from what I hear it works pretty well, and trangaming has been working on improving support for DRI drivers. Still, your better off with a Geforce anyway(in linux or windows) because the drivers are MUCH better.

And for some people, rebooting to windows to play a game for a few minutes just isn't an option. I often play games as I'm taking a break from working on something, and I'm not about to close all my work to reboot to windows, and what if I'm downloading something? Personally, I find it much less painful to use winex than to reboot to windows.

Emulation beats the original sometimes

[0x0d0a]

Would you rather play Nintendo games through an emulator, or that NES attached to the TV in the corner

I don't really play NES games, but I do play SNES games (on snes9x), and I can definitely say that I'd rather play in an emulated environment. I turn on some of the resolution enhancement modes, have an unlimited number of Game Genie codes that can be entered (plus can use Pro-Action Replay and Gold Finger codes), can get interpolated Mode 7 scaling, can speedily zip through boring or annoying bits of a game, can save the memory state at any point and go back to that point...why would you want to use the original at *all*?

Yet another example of the DMCA sucking

[dh003i]

This is yet another example of a good project being hindered by the meritless DMCA. Because they feel that it would be against the DMCA for them to open up their source, due to copy-protection crap, they have to split from the LGPL'ed project.

Yep, that DMCA sure is helping innovation.

Blueprint for a win for Linux.

[MsGeek]

No, the answer is simpler than that.

1.)Get Open Office or pay for Star Office 6.
2.)Open those .DOCs and .XLSes in OO/SO.
3.)Save copies in native OO/SO format, which is based on XML. Archive the old MS format files on CD-Rs.
4.)Keep one lone copy of Windoze and Office for opening .DOCs and .XLSes people outside the company send you.

Problem solved. A win for Linux.

Yet Another Win For Linux

[MsGeek]

throw away key pieces of software which are vital to their business like PDF generation

Here's another fun way to use Linux to eliminate yet another proprietary solution, kids!

1. Save file you want to convert to a PDF as a Postscript (.PS) file.
2. Use ps2pdf to magickally convert the .PS file to a full-fledged .PDF file.

You wind up with a proper .PDF, openable in Acrobat Reader, that is made without tithing to Adobe! W00t! Linux wins again.

Re:Yet Another Win For Linux

[Mr_Silver]

Here's another fun way to use Linux to eliminate yet another proprietary solution, kids!

Shouldn't that be "Here's another fun way to use Linux to convert a documented into a proprietary format without paying anything to Adobe which, in turn, will only help strengthen their belief that porting their applications to Linux is pointless because they get the impression that people wouldn't buy it as they're using the 'free' concept to disguise the fact that they're a bunch of freeloaders"?

I'm all for the reduction of proprietary file formats, but this doesn't reduce it's usage, merely ends up hurting the company that could, through it's applications, help Linux.

Stick with telling people to use RTF.

Re:Probably not faster on Linux

[MrResistor]

A DirectX game would not be faster, but and OpenGL game could be (reduced overhead and all that). It doesn't seem like OpenGL is being used much these days, which is to bad. I understand why, though.

thanks TTimo!

[twilight30]

Your work helped me out of a jam in using Q3 on Linux, and I remember you featured the fix on your page at one point. I don't think I got the chance to thank you properly, and am not sure if you'll read this thread again, but I just wanted to say that your work is greatly appreciated.

False: server market implies client market

[AHumbleOpinion]

... They were questioning on a Linux Client (if THAT would make more money). My assumption is if companies consider making servers for Linux, could the same consideration be made for clients? My answer is yes.

Your assumption is false. Deploying Linux based servers has a significant cost savings over deploying Windows based servers. This justifies the servers.

Clients are a very different situation and the fact that nearly all Linux gamers aready dual boot or emulate essentialy makes the client a moot issue. You seem to center on the technical, that is naive. The fact that a client is not far removed from a server is meaningless. The cost of a game to a developer/publisher includes QA and support. A few extra sales to hard core Linux fans who will not dual boot or emulate is more than offset by the additional QA and support.