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WineX and the Future of Linux Gaming
SQLz asks: "I'm a Linux user and an avid gamer but unfortunately for me, I have a very limited selection of games to play without having to reboot into my 'Xbox partition' (a Win2k partition with only games). To supplement my aging collection of Loki titles, as well as UT2003 and a few Q3A mods, I use WineX to play titles like Battlefield 1942, SimCity 4, and Homeworld Cataclysm. Apparently this is bad, as many people in the community feel that Transgaming's WineX is discouraging developers from creating native Linux ports. Does anyone have any real proof of this happening? Do developers really point out WineX as a alternative to doing a native Linux port?"
If MS Word worked really well under wine, would that stop people from wanting a native Linux word processor?
;)
WineX is great, but nothing beats a native game, and developers using WineX as an excuse to be windows-only are just lazy.
Okay perhaps you are right - laziness is very common after all
What's your GCNSEQNO?
Profitability. Or lack thereof. Same reason why there aren't more Mac games. Do the potential gains justify the cost of porting it? Some games would be easier than others, but theres not a lot of money to be made in the Linux market.
The other thing is that most people that play these kinds of games dualboot windows/linux. I'd say dualbooting is much more prevalent than using winex for games.
I'm not saying anything negative about Linux. I use Linux. But how many gamers, or just regular casual gamers, use Linux and only Linux at home?
An almost-perfect Wine/WineX 'emulation' of some parts of a game might just be a perfect way for companies to start selling Linux ports.
For some trivial things like menu interfaces, performance is not an issue. The real trouble lies usually in the fast heavy graphical stuff. As GL is becoming less of a barrier, an hybrid-port (regular stuff via WineX, CPU-intensive GL stuff recompiled for Linux) could be a good bet for game companies.
I can understand that spending 10,000USD or more for a Linux port might not be that bright right now for a game company, but if Wine/WineX can lower that cost, companies will have "nothing to lose".
And while that's not the perfect solution, don't expect companies to release stuff "free as in speech" for a couple of years anyway.
So why did the companies allow it? Why not? All it did was generate good publicity, no support costs, no development costs.
But there may be another reason why companies should look at linux/mac. Microsoft is a direct competitor to every game company. It has been producing games for a long time but since directx it also controls the enviroment in wich games play. It has been found guilty in the past of using hidden parts of windows api to give itself an advantage over competitors in the desktop market. Is it really beyong belief that MS is doing or doing to do the same thing with DirectX?
With them now also involved in hardware it may be to any games company advantage to be flexible on hardware. It is already perfectly normal for games to be crossplatform why not include two more and cover 100% off all computer owners?
A dream? Years ago I read an article on OSes in a gaming mag. Linux was mentioned as a geek plaything that could barely play solitaire. Now many Multiplayer games depend on it for reliable servers. Who knows what will happen in the next few years.
What I am still wondering about is why no game company has created the selfbooting game. No problem without to date drivers or thousand of background services causing crashes blamed on youre game. But then I suppose that would be like expecting hardware manufacturers to include software for a bootdisk with the bios files.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So why did they bother
Some games are ported to Linux because they want Linux based game servers. Once you have the server the client-side game is a small step, but without the server there would be no client-side game. There's no money in it otherwise. Even id had stated in Game Developer magazine that a Linux port of Quake did not make business sense, they only did it because they thought it would be cool.
... developers using WineX as an excuse to be windows-only are just lazy
No they are profit oriented. The Linux "game market" is not as large as most people think. It is not the number of people willing to buy a Linux port of a game. It is only those individuals who would never buy the Win32 version of the game. Most Linux gamers dual boot or use WineX, they are already customers. A Linux port does not generate a new sale, it merely replaces a Win32 sale with a Linux sale, there is no new profit, no economic justification for the port.
But M$ shipped better SDK with better documentation for DirectX with their compiler (MSVC), and lame programers code with what is already there (Windows + DirectX). The problem is, those who write good games are basically in the same company as those who white bad games but outnumbered, and given the mentality as such ("we use DirectX by default"), virtually all games are in DirectX now. And when it turns out it's difficult to port, easiest solution is not to port it at all. This is kinda natural, except that M$ planned it this way from the very begining. Just another example how M$ use their "open" standard to grab market share.
...it'd be so weird.
It's so easy to say: "Make new open source games for linux. Make them high quality". Do you think people strive to make low quality games?
As far as I can see, there are 2 primary differences between games and most other software:
1) Product cycle. Unlike other software, most games are one-time products. This is true for any game with a story of any sort - most single-player games. Developing games like other open-source software, by releasing mostly-completed (read half-completed) software and then evolving will not work for games. People play games, and then they're done with them. If it's really good, it'll last a few months. Multi-player versions prolong it's life, but not indefintely, given rapidly evolving hardware. Take Mozilla as an example. Or the linux kernel. That kind of development cycle will *not* work for most games.
2) Artwork. Ask most open source game developers, or look at the websites. Everybody needs good artwork. And that doesn't come for free. I'm not going to speculate upon reasons for this, since I don't know any game artists. Anyone care to shed some light?
So the bottom line is that the entire development process for open source games needs to be reviewed carefully. Also, it would be useful to have some sort of website or community for artists who are willing to do artwork for projects they consider interesting. Or is there already something like this?
If a native port is not available, then wine is the only (free) option available for Linux.
The crux of the matter is that you should let the developers know that you are running it on Wine. Without this feedback you are just another windows statistic - to be regurgitated by MS at a later date as a reason not to port the software.
If they are aware of the linux demand, we stand a better chance of getting compatible/native releases.
If developers are informed that they are almost cross platform already, they will be much more open to the possibility of rewriting the portions that would help make it a better/faster/more stable linux game.
Q.
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I think Transgaming took the right step in discouraging automated checkouts, but I still think they should consider releasing nightly tarball snapshots of CVS for users to download. Sourceforge has a lot of bandwidth available for file distribution, and the majority of users wouldn't care whether their WineX came from the CVS server or from a tar.bz2.
(If you'd like to see evidence of this, wander in to #winex on irc.freenode.net - note the number of completely clueless people who ask for help with CVS throughout the day. They're just looking for free WineX, they're not interested in testing/development at all)
Free games is a great idea, and I play Day of Defeat (free half-life mod) all the time. However, most of the decent free games are reasonably simple. A Half Life mod, although a major piece of work, is a tiny amount of work compared to (say) Zelda:WW. The CS people don't need to bother with story or cut scenes, the levels are all pretty small and simple.
I don't think open source games are the way to get gamers to use Linux. The only way that will happen is if a majority of new titles have a linux version released at the same time as the Windows version.