Slashdot Mirror
Transgaming's WineX 2.1 - Supports WarCraft 3
friedmud writes "WineX 2.1 is out on the street, get it at transgaming.com. It boasts, among other things, full support for Warcraft III. Other games now included are: Grand Theft Auto 3, Civilization III, and Black and White. Check the press release for further info. And, if you haven't already, go here to get an account... It is definitely worth it." I've been rebooting my laptop to
WC3, so maybe I'll give this a shot. I bought a subscription originally
in part due to their misleading Sims compatibility claims, but this looks like
it finally is truly emulating top windows games.
Soon, there will be as many games that you can play on Linux as there are games that you can play on Macintosh!
You don't need this to support MS's Remote Desktop Client...
rdesktop has been doing this for a while. Try it at http://www.rdesktop.org/. I use it to connect to Windows 2000 servers and Terminal Services servers without any problems. If I remember correctly, XPs RDC is the same protocol as the aforementioned products.
Give it a shot.
warcraft 3 has worked with winehq wine as far back as the warcraft 3 beta, see this post to the wine-devel mailing list.
I hear the MS guys are making a Linux emulator for Win32. It's called Beer 3.2. The reasoning is, Beer is more popular than Wine so it will appeal to a broader user base. Women tend to like Wine better but Men overwhelmingly prefered Beer in product testing. Beer 3.2 is still a beta, and will be released when it's content reaches version 5.0.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Actually WineX is a very good idea for supporting Linux. Even in the rare cases where linux is still on the desktop most people maintain a windows partition for gaming. Something like WoneX will allow them to move over to pure linux. This wil help spread linux, you CAN use all your M$ software still and you get all this all this great other linux stuff, you haev nothing to lose! Furthermore as more people start to use WineX and like products the game manufacturers will start to notice this market share and try to make sure their game doesn't do anything cookey (did I spell that right) that would make it unusable under WineX. As this happens linux becomes more popular and continues to grow in market share until finally companies find they can get an edge by offering native linux games instead of stuff running over a compatibility layer. Now you get you linux games, I very much believe Wine and WineX are one of the best weapons linux has to take the desktop.
I stole this Sig
See, I totally disagree with this.
WineX has not taken anything away from Wine. They use their code, and Wine is no worse off for it. Your criticism of TransGaming assumes that they would have written the same software if they had used the GPL. But they wouldn't have. If you want to sell software (and not support or some other intangible) you simply can't use the GPL. The only thing you can hope for is to tack a $1 surcharge on CDs shipped to people with connections to slow to download the free package.
Profit is a motivator for innovation, like it or not. I like and fully support the GPL, but I also like and fully support some things done by better for-profit software companies. If Transgaming had been forced to GPL their work, there would be no WineX.
"Support" good software that you want to use, in whatever form it comes in. If there's a product out there that is filling a gap, then support whatever system that created it. Linux may or may not succeed on the desktop. Linux will not succeed on the desktop with ONLY GPLed software.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
The main reason for the fork was because WineX includes reverse-engineered copy-protection support code to support games running. If Transgaming released the source code to that, it would be entirely possible to modify/hack the code so that you could play pirated games, a likely violation of the DMCA and exposing Transgaming to all sorts of legal issues. If they don't release the source code to the copy-protection, they can honesty claim that it's only an emulator, and still doesn't allow you to circumvent copy-protection. That's fine, I guess.
But I really do agree that they really should open-up their non copy-protected related code, and make that LGPL, and back-port any (non-copy protection) improvements into the official WineHQ tree.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
Issued on Wednesday April 17, 2002
Play Warcraft III on Linux with TransGaming's Release of WineX 2.1
Issued on Thursday August 1, 2002
TransGaming subscriptions cost $5 per month, with a minimum three months payment.
It's been just over three months since the last major release. Coincidence?
www.eFax.com are spammers
"Diablo II, Civ 3, and Unreal Tournament should be enough for anyone"
-- Elbereth, 2002
Do those games run with 640K?
Keep in mind that when Transgaming has made enough money to cover all their development costs (through subscriptions etc.) they're merging all their new code back into the standard Wine tree. Eventually 95% of what they've done will be free and open source, excluding the Safedisc and other licensed protection schemes of course. Those generally aren't a problem anyway due to no-cd cracks and the like.
While this is true, it doesn't explain why they threatended Debian to change their license when someone proposed packaging the CVS version into a .DEB file. Turns out that packaging the source is permitted under the license at the moment, but as soon as someone does they'll close that door.
More info:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debian-d evel-200205/msg02823.html
Sorry, these guys aren't great OSS citizens, no way around it. Hey, whatever happened to releasing the code after 10,000 people signed up? Does that still hold? Have they posted numbers on how close they are?
And none of this "shut up and pay your $15" garbage. I've bought plenty of OSS and non-OSS software (including VMWare and CodeWeaver's stuff) Transgaming is trying to look nice and open, but they're not. If they want to keep things closed, that's fine. What's not fine is saying one thing and doing another. As it is, the sources are mostly free but only as long as they're a pain to install. What good is that for people who don't know what CVS is?
Ben
Has anyone that supports WINE actually given a thought to what happens if this is the way things go? Let me once again state the blindingly obvious timeline that WINE leads us to
1) WINE improves its windows emulation, more games work under Linux than ever before.
2) Development of native Linux games is pretty much destroyed by WINE emulation because the few porting companies struggling to survive at this early stage cannot hope to keep up with dozens of well funded windows development companies.
3) Emulated games become the norm. By definition they are slower than native, less reliable, but we can sacrifice reliability because we can play games NOW!
4) As Linux games are all now emulated, sales figures for Linux games are all showing up as Windows sales. Linux sales figures effectively become zero, giving no incentive for any software company to produce native ports.
5) Microsoft, who though evil are damned clever with their lawyers, finds a nice little legal way to kill WINE, through a patent issue, or some DMCA clone or who knows. WINE development stops.
6) New games stop running on Linux because WINE cant support DirectX 12 or whatever the latest version is. Nobody thinks to worry about it in the game development companies because Linux sales figures are zero (see 4).
7) Linux gets less games that will work. The companies that busted their balls trying to make native Linux gaming viable, companies like Tux Games, Loki and LGP have all long since gone.
8) With nobody left to support Linux gaming, Linux gaming dies.
9) With no new games, Linux desktop becomes less attractive and people happily move back to windows so they can play the latest games NOW (see 3)
10) Bill Gates sends thankyou letter to Transgaming and other WINE supporters.
Any questions?
Sure I am a biased party. That is because by founding Tux Games, I have put my money where my mouth is and bet the whole house on native Linux because unlike Transgaming, I BELIEVE THAT LINUX DOES NOT NEED TO USE WINDOWS AS A CRUTCH AND THAT LINUX IS A DAMNED FINE OS IN ITS OWN RIGHT..
Note: Tux Games has been offered time and again, the opportunity to carry Transgaming games. We are well aware that if we did so, we would make more money, but we STRONGLY believe in the above timeline threat, and so we put our morals where our mouth is and stand by Linux native. Want to do the same? Then dont inflate Windows sales figures, support those that are working all hours to bring YOU new products.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.