Running Windows Games with WineX

GonzoJohn writes "Linux Orbit takes a look at TransGaming Technologies' WineX and puts it through its paces with eight different Windows games. In addition to reviewing: Diablo 2, Starcraft, LinksLS 1998 (Golf Simulation), Dungeon Keeper 2, Populous the Beginning, Black and White, Fallout 2 and Might and Magic 6 under WineX 2.1, we also give you some helpful tips to make your WineX gaming experience as pleasant as possible."

Comments

The key sentence in the whole article

[ObviousGuy]

Of the 8 games that I installed and tried to use with WineX 2.1, only half actually worked.

So, use WineX and take your chances that the game will work (50/50), or dual boot the Windows that came with your computer.

Also, the overhead of WineX must have been pretty serious. I was running Diablo2 and Starcraft on a PII 233 without a hitch.

WineX - Not ready yet

Re:The key sentence in the whole article

[Mr.Ned]

You're pretty unfairly ripping WineX. With a sample group of 8, statistics and percentages don't mean much. Check out Transgaming's list of games that work - it's pretty long. And the games they used aren't exactly new or anything - they use different versions of DirectX, and Transgaming has been working hard to provide wrappers for the _current_ version of DirectX, not the one from 3 years ago.

What I find funny is that I can't run the original Fallout under Windows 2000, but can run it under Wine/WineX.

I don't know about anyone else's experience...

[fatwreckfan]

...but the farthest I got with WineX was getting Warcraft 3 to install. After that, nothing.

Now, I wasn't using their membership-based binary release though, but still, why should I go through the hell of manually editing config files and removing the cinematics from my game when I could just reboot?

Re:try vmware et al.

[Neon Spiral Injector]

Well you have to buy VMWare, and a copy of Windows. Plus from what I last heard, VMWare doesn't support 3D acceloration.

Wine on the other hand has most of Windows' DLLs reimplimented internally so you don't need a copy of Windows. (But if you have one installed it can use the DLLs that it finds there to help itself along.)

Re:try vmware et al.

[fabiolrs]

Theres a serious problem, imho, regarding that solution. VMWare requires LOTS of hardware to run, not leaving many resources to the games themselves (which requires good hardware), games would not run smoothly on such configuration...

Short Term

[den_erpel]

I actually am pretty biassed towards WineX. OK, in the short term, it will help a number of people that are running Linux and want to play a particular game.

Unfortunately, WineX will in the long term halt or slow down development of games running native in Linux. Why would a gaming company put money in porting it, Linux users _can_ play their game.

The skills of the people running Linux might well be their undoing, ...

Mainly for this reason, I mainly buy _linux_ native games (Quake 1 and 3 and Kohan). Unfortunately, ID decided not to release a Linux version of Wolfenstein anymore, but the binary was downloadable from the net (unfortunately or fortnutely, one needed the wine to run the Windows-only installer from the CD).

Re:Short Term

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Unfortunately, WineX will in the long term halt or slow down development of games running native in Linux. Why would a gaming company put money in porting it, Linux users _can_ play their game.

No. I disagree. One point you've missed which dominates, which Microsoft most definitely have not missed is that a lot of people get the OS that can play their games. They won't install an OS that cannot play their games.

The more Linux can play the same games that Windows can play, the more people will install it on the desktop. The more installations there are, the more incentive there is for people to write games to run under it, or solely under it.

Besides, even if every game ever only runs under Wine, you shouldn't forget we're leaving the stage where performance is the most critical part of a system. I've seen the benchmarks with 200+ frames per second under Quake III on the current top end systems, minor percentage differences in performance are going to be far less relevant from here on in. Working/not working is always relevant though.

Re:WINE and other PC virtual machines

[Time Doctor]

" given that WINE is a virtual machine, according to its circular acronym ("WINE Is Not an Emulator")"

The maintainer of WINE refers to it as an emulator.

It is indeed an emulator. Even the kernel cousin for it refers to it as an emulator.

Black and White on Linux???

[LordYUK]

Sheesh, I can't even get the damn thing to run on WinXP and they've got it on Linux!!! What's next, Linux on my Playstation???

Re:WINE and other PC virtual machines

[Covener]

Virtual PC and VMWARE are virtual machines, WINE isn't.

It's a partial re-implementation of win32 and related API's. The approach of the former requires a licensed copy of Windows, the latter does not.

The reason some things do not work is that you have to implement more than just the documented externals.

True Linux Gaming

[RailGunner]

WineX is a very well done piece of technology, but I have to agree with an earlier post that said that if WineX really takes off, that there won't be any reason to port / develop games for Linux. For the short term, it's great. For long term, it's not enough. Companies want to sell as many copies of their games as possible, and the best way to do that is to target the vast majority of users, who unfortunately at this point are running a flavor of Windows.

The way I see it, one or both of the following scenarios needs to happen before we see a lot of Linux games - and we'll see more Linux games as the installed base gets larger.

Scenario 1: AOL/Linux. Seriously. As soon as the millions of AOL sheep get a new version of AOL that uses Linux, many of them will switch. There's countless numbers of people who buy the latest "whiz-bang" PC and all they use it for is Web / Email, and maybe an occasional game. The Operating System to them is irrelevant, they just want to email their friends and family. Many of them already think that they're just running AOL, and that AOL = internet. The game market for this crowd isn't as large as it could be, but it still changes the "numbers" of the installed base.

Scenario 2: The next killer game is Linux only. What would happen if say... Doom 3, or something similar, was Linux only? And what would happen if in the box with the game, was a Linux distribution? Given that I have an installation of Windows 98SE to play games on at home, how many people would be willing to install Linux in order to play Doom 3? I'd suggest there would be a lot. Or, what about a Linux Distro that just booted from CD, effectively treating your PC like a high powered console when you want to play a game?

Once one or both of these happens, then the installed user base gets larger and companies are going to be willing to eat the up front development costs to produce a game. And there will be a cost, as not every Windows developer has ever run g++ to build something, but in the long run it becomes much cheaper to develop on Linux then it does paying the MS tax over and over again. Even if Linux can get 40% of home users, then companies will be willing to develop native games. And then, WineX will be around to support old games, while the new stuff will run natively.

Re:True Linux Gaming

[EllF]

In the socialist-utopian model, this might work, but that's simply not how real life works.

Stop using the big words. They don't make you sound intelligent, especially when you use them incorrectly.

A socialist model would be one where a central authority taxes its citizens according to income, redistributing that wealth in the form of social services and/or employment. Nor is such a scheme utopian - quite a few practical and effective governments in Europe are overtly socialist, and even the United States has socialist leanings. However, this has nothing to do with installing Linux to play a video game.

It would also not be ironic for a game company to charge for a product marketed to a community who "largely feels that it should be distributed for free" - irony is defined as "incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs." It seems you did catch on, though, when you pointed out that such would be "stupidity".

What community are you talking about, anyways? I wasn't aware that there was a unified front of any sort claiming that entertainment software should be made available free of charge. The naivete seems to be yours, friend.

Providing a linux-only game would undoubtedly generate interest in the product. A company like ID probably can't afford to do it, but a small shop (similar to how Looking Glass was in its early days) could probably do so. Such a company's total operating costs would be less, and their shareholder responsibilities fewer.

Don't be so quick to dismiss a proactive idea just because it's never been done before.

PEOPLE PLEASE...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Read the page over at Transgaming for your favorite game before speculating on what works and what doesn't.

I am a Transgaming subscriber and I play several games with WineX (however I still have yet to get HL/CS working worth a damn on my machine, but I don't play it much anyway, so I haven't put much effort into it).

Re:Wine is NOT illegal

[0x0d0a]

What on earth are you talking about? WINE isn't illegal in the least! What law do you think they're breaking?

Trademark? It'd be tough to show that WINE infringes on "Microsoft Windows".

Patent? I really doubt it. I can't imagine that there is any patent that could keep you from implementing an API.

Copyright? This was already tried by MS, arguing that they owned the header files, and duplicating the information in them was infringing. It didn't work.

EULA for reverse engineering? The WINE guys at least put up a pretense of clean-room engineering, and I think it'd be hard for MS to prove otherwise. You really don't need to disassemble Windows to implement the Win32 API as documented by MSDN. Finally, the right to reverse engineer is expressly granted in many locales for the purpose of ensuring compatibility. In the EU, this would make even a non-clean room impementation okay. In the US, it's a little more dicy, as I believe the laws only apply to compatibility over a network protocol between two different hosts, but there's still a general trend towards allowing people to produce compatible products.

Look-and-feel? Look-and-feel was an approach specifically shown by MS to not be a valid case for suit in the US legal system when they butted heads with Apple.

MS would have a *hell* of a time trying to prove that no one could implement a compatible product, which they'd have to do to nail the WINE guys. The antitrust guys would have a field day on MS.

Finally, WINE is not an emulator. "Emulator" has a specific meaning in the computer world -- it would reimplement the hardware that the software runs on. This would almost certainly cause a performance hit. WINE carries no such required overhead. At least in theory, WINE can run just as fast as (heck, faster) than Windows.

Given your AC nature, I'd almost say that you're trolling, but I can't quite be sure.

playing games under Wine SUPPORTS MICROSOFT!!!

[swordgeek]

How's THAT for an eye-catching headline? :-)

Seriously, though. You go out, you buy a WINDOWS game, you spend ages trying to get it running under Linux/Wine, and what happens? The developer sees huge sales for Windows-only games. Result? They keep making games for Windows, and you have to keep playing with Wine.

A much better solution would be games under Linux of course. As a useful intermediate though, how about this idea: Everyone who plays a game through Wine should write to the developer and explain to them that they'd much rather the game was written for Linux in the first place. A thousand letters (or ten thousand) is hard to completely ignore.

Re:why I think this hurts both linux and PC gaming

[praedor]

They also see the linux zealots who, although a minority, are the most vocal and color all of the Linux user base as 'anti-corporate' and unwilling to pay for anything.

One name: Loki. They proved (as have idSoftware) that linux users ARE generally unwilling to buy games. We HAD native linux games from Loki and what happened? Some of us bought them but too many were infantile and simply could NOT delay their purchase of a game, just HAD to have it NOW - so they bought the windoze version. As for id, they tried selling a linux version and Linux users stayed away from it in droves AND BOUGHT THE DAMN WINDOZE VERSION.

I bought games from Loki and would have continued. I would have bought more id software linux games too. Fortunately, idSoftware is NICE enough to produce linux binaries anyway that linux users can download and use IF they buy the windoze version in the store. Guess what that does? Keeps the windoze game purchase numbers up, skewing the number of gamers towards windows even though a number of them will run the linux version. Other companies see this and think there is no linux game market. Thanks to linux users who refuse to A) wait a few months or B) pay for anything that is made for linux, there are no linux titles and wont be for a long time, if ever.