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

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

[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?

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

[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? :-)

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.

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

[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

[kenthorvath]

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

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

Real benchmarks!111

[Time Doctor]

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

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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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.