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WineX 3.0 Examined
GonzoJohn writes "When I first subscribed to Transgaming's WineX 2.1 product last year, I was pleasantly surprised that nearly half of the games I had were supported to a degree. The games that did run ran pretty flawlessly. The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game (the installers seemed to work). With the release of WineX 3.0 from Transgaming on April 17th this year, it looked like it was time to revisit the wonderful world of Wine. This time around, Transgaming WineX 3.0 has some new tools as well as improvements in the number of games supported and gaming speeds. In this article, we're going to take a look at the new features of WineX 3.0, with a focus on their new GUI installer called Point2Play."
The games that didn't work had varying degrees of success, all just short of actually being able to play the game
Only a die-hard WineX advocate would count ONLY getting installer to run as some degree of success. Everyone else would count such cases as complete failures - one notch above utter and complete failures (when the installer won't run). Actually, if the game itself won't run I'd probably rather have the installer fail.
Please answer me this one question:
Suppose WineX becomes perfect. Suppose Linux gamers by thousands load up their games and enjoy the latest Windows games. Suppose as a result Windows game developers see incrementally better sales (less than 5%, probably closer to 1-2%). Now, why in the world would they suddenly throw away all the code, tools, and experience they have on their current platform to grab some tiny extra percentage by learning, developing for, and testing on a new platform?
After all they can happily tell those Linux people "You're unsupported. But try WineX!" When it fails, they simply say "You're unsupported!" They already have your money, after all, and it's your own fault for trying it on an unsupported platform.
Let's be honest: Isn't WineX just a bandage for all those Linux users (former Windows users) that can't give up Windows games? It isn't bloody likely to convince anyone to leave Windows, the platform for which those games were made in the first place.
Look at Bleemcast (PSX emulator for Sega Dreamcast). It emulated the original games on a different platform, even with graphical enhancements, but it didn't convince anyone who already had a PSX to jump on the Dreamcast...it just made already-committed Dreamcast owners happier.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
Under Windows
Insert CD
Autoruns
Type in ID number
Wait..
Click Icon
play Game
Under Linux
Insert CD
Start Wine
Load Binary
Crashes
Load Again
Goes a bit further
Move you mouse X11 Locks up
Download lastest CVS version
Rebuild
Try Again
Crashes
Give up and do something else
Now I really like Linux. Honestly I do, but this is one of those times Windows just wins
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Get some perspective.
Since this article is games-oriented, why isn't it in the new, garish-colored games.slashdot.org?
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Point2Play basically acts kind of like a registry for windows games. Not exactly what it does but a reasonable analogy. I wish you could add directories/executables directly to it rather than having to do an install, but other than that it's working well as a launch point for my windows games.
Over all I am pleased with wineX3. I thought the wineX3 preview was lacking but this version seams acceptable.
I do security
Hey, maybe you should do a little INVESTIGATION before you start posting:) WineX IS free. The source is free for download. If you want precompiled binaries and official support, that is what you pay for (and boy, is it CHEAP). Please don't tell me you can't handle ./configure; make && make install.
It's also a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a copy of windows to play.
If I had the money, I might not complain so rudely, but come on people!
Yeah, c'mon people! Why would you think that releasing your source is enough? Shouldn't you freely support and hand-hold every shlub that uses your product?
Just download the source and compile, and sate yourself with a little hard-earned fun, instead of complaining about nonexistant problems.
Has there been any interest in having the gaming companies support Wine during their test cycle, as well as printing Wine requirements on their shipped game packages? I'd be more tempted to purchase a game for use on Linux if I knew it was supported on Wine by the vendor. Having the information printed in the requirements box could be a big help in selling Linux as a gaming environment. Thanks.
-Bob-
"Once all the game developers have already stopped porting to linux they wont come back"? WHAT game developers are porting games to linux? C'mon! Virtually none. Id software produces linux binaries of all their games as a matter of tradition. Perhaps one or two other vendors may consider porting, but usually they are coaxed into allowing someone else to port.
Wine isn't hurting anything because there is nothing to hurt. All you need is for linux on the desktop to become more widespread and you will see linux ports from the actual game source rather than a bunch of hackers doing a port a year or two after the game has been out and played already by the rest of the world. In any case, it isn't as if game developers/companies are building FOR wine - most game do NOT work on winex or winehq or codeweaver's wine. It is practically an accident when a game does work. Thus, if companies were actually building for wine rather than for windoze proper (or linux), then you MIGHT have an argument, but even then it would be pretty weak. Why NOT build for a standard (wine) library so that you know your one game will run on windoze and linux out of the box? You don't HAVE to work to produce multiple versions unless you are also writing for Macs, then it would be two versions instead of 3 (best case): Mac, Windoze, and linux.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I don't know about you, but I think getting one game to work that was writting for another operating system without any sort of recompiling or hacking the actual binary, and without having to have anything from the intended platform, seems like quite a feat to me.
Support people who are writing natively supported (ports) of the games. Buying a subscription to Transgaming will get you the game you currently are wanting to play, yes, but later when another game comes out, you will probably not be so lucky. OTC, I have had very little problems with my non-supported Loki produced games.
The only way to further alternative platform gaming (including MAC and *NIX) is to support the native code writers (icculus.org), the shops that sell the alternative OS games (tuxgames.com), and especially the companies that port (or pay to port) the games (Epic, Bioware, IDSoftware, etc).
Transgaming is wash! They "support" many games, but that support is strickly community-based and it may be a while before you get an answer. Their so-called "support" includes telling the customer they will need to use a CD-CRACK to get some games working (probably a really bad idea). And, not to mention, you pay for a service for a game that you already "own". Example: I pay $50 for a game I want to play and then I pay $15 (minimal subscription fee for Transgmaing) just to get it running (maybe?!) in Linux. I would much rather pay $50 (one time and maybe more $) for a game that is ported and I know that 75% of time it is going to run out of the box.
The new GUI, Point2Play is a good example. It looks as though they planned, developed, and released this thing in a matter of days. Geez, I understand they want to make money, but I think there may be better ways to do it.
The biggest security hole sits between the keyboard and chair.
-Andrew McAllister
I mean, how hard is it to use portable libraries and code from the beginning?
Seriously. It never ceases to amaze me when I see programs meant from the beginning to run on multiple platforms, yet written in DirectX. Neverwinter Nights being the prime example of this. It just seems like a bad decision to maintain two separate codebases like this. I only muck around writing 2D, and fairly simple 3D, but I consider it not compiling on any supported platform, with no changes needed, to be an error which should be fixed immediately. It took me a little time to get WxWindows down, but I've saved that many times over in not having to do what amounts to writing two programs to do the same function.
Everything will be taken away from you.
"We may save some fuss, but we are also telling game developers that we don't want native ports, which is not true."
No you're not. They have 0 clue that you didn't buy a game because you don't use Windows.
Nobody's going to make gamnes for Linux until the market is big enough to be successful. There is no Linux game market, that's why you're getting a trickle of cheap-to-produce ports.
If you want to send them the message you want Linux ports, using WineX is doing absolutely nothing to help you. It gives them an excuse to say "We don't need to do a Linux port then." If you really really want them to make games for Linux, then don't buy the Windows games period. If you feel that's unreasonable, then you're going to have to play by their rules.
I'm in the same boat. I want GTA Vice City. It's only on PS2 right now. I will not buy a PS2. I'm personally boycotting Sony because I was a salesman for their PSOnes when they originally came out. 1 in 4 of those things were defective and Sony absolutely refused to treat their customers (mostly kids) with respect over it. It's a long story, the important part is that I'm boycotting them for reasons similar to why a lot of people here won't buy MS software.
I could probably pick up a used PS2 for a reasonable price. Since it's used, Sony wouldn't see a dime of that. Cool, eh? No. I want Rockstar to prioritize PC development. I'm sending them the message that they have to develop for PC or they won't get money from me. (Essentially what I'm advising to you.)
The bad news is that I don't get to play Vice City, but the good news is that Rockstar's gone ahead and ported it to PC. I'll have it in my hot little hands in 2 weeks. It's been a loooong week. Sadly, there are other games on PS2 I'd like to play that I never will because I just cannot support Sony.
So I hope my point sort of makes sense. If you're really devoted to avoiding MS so you can get games made for Linux, then turning around and playing the games anyway isn't helping. If I had given in and bought the used PS2, I'd be sending the message "its okay to only support PS2, I'll bend over backwards to follow you."
"Derp de derp."
I use Linux because of its advantages in speed, stability and configurability by the end user. I use Winex as a stop gap so I can play EverQuest with my wife. One of many things I have noticed with Winex is its resource hogging and lack of real stability, even between versions.
Ever notice that between versions some games that worked now no longer do so?
Finally, when Transgaming first started they stated that they would not compete with native ports, well that turned out to be a lie.
Winex is a strange beast, on one hand I see its value, on the other I can see its potential at destroying good solid ports. And native ports run faster, with a lot more stability than winex enabled games; finally, they help improve and mature other tools like OpenGL and things like SDL rather than just directx. Oh and before people say 90% of the desktops are Windows, well sales fell around 3% last year with regards to PC Games, I saw two whole isles at Fry's be given over to Country music. So in essence, if you make games for Mac and Linux you would have gained back those lost Windows sales and a little more and you would have entered a new market, rather than been where everyone else has been.
StarTux
Microsoft, bless their black little hearts, made a concerted effort to woo game developers away from DOS-mode and on to Windows by adding all kinds of features, and even then as you point out, it took Microsoft several iterations to get right.
I mean, how hard is it to use portable libraries and code from the beginning?
It's not hard, obviously. But just as 90% of people are morons, 90% of game developers are morons.
Why do companies choose to use DirectX instead of OpenGL?
Because it's better. DirectX 9 is simply a better graphics API than OpenGL at this point, which is just an unfortunate fact of life. If you're developing for Windows, using DirectX will get cut down your workload tremendously, simply because so much more is already done for you.
Even if you use DirectX, how hard is it to make that choice irrelevant to the rest of the implementation, and the switch to OpenGL transparent?
That's the correct solution, and it's what I do (I am a game developer). It does take some real thinking to come up with a good abstraction which will take advantage of the power of each API while dealing with its limitations as well, but it's not impossible.
It must be possible for eevry company to build portable games and engines when they build them from scratch, shouldn't it?
Most companies are just trying to get the damn game finished and shipped.