Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

WineX and the Future of Linux Gaming

Posted by Cliff on from the linux-native-games dept.

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?"

9 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. Don't think so by jazir1979 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?
    1. Re:Don't think so by gregh76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Lazy? How can you make such a stupid comment?

      Did you ever stop to think that it's ultimately not up to the developers? The game companies are, first and foremost, businesses. Considering what happened to Loki, porting mainstream games to Linux is not profitable (yet, anyway). Too bad, too. I bought Loki's ports of SOF and Q3A and thoroughly enjoyed playing them.

      Where I work (not the gaming industry), developers' ideas are constantly getting shot down due to lack of money. And it often doesn't matter how good the idea is or whether it will make things "better" or not.

  2. The thing stopping more linux games is... by dafoomie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:The thing stopping more linux games is... by TechnoPope · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Er, you mean "Portability". Porting is cheap if you use cross-platform APIs from the beginning. What's needed more than anything is OpenGL 2.0 and SDL 2.0, so game companies can stop writing to DirectX.

      I feel this actually shows how young you appear to be. Game companies really aren't all that interested in writing to many standards. This was apperent during the OpenGL/glide/Direct3D days. Right now, there is pretty much one viable choice for developers, Directx.

      Because of it's installed user base, DirectX already has an edge, not to mention that DirectX makes many things, like network play, easier on the developer by giving them a pre-built framework. The other problem is that the majority of game developers look at DirectX as a godsend in terms of getting hardware to work. Easy access to all of the advanced features of the hardware without having to work for it.

      While it is possible for OpenGL to make a comeback against D3D, SDL is kind of stuck. It's not going to provide enough features to make developers switch to it. As it stands, the only thing it holds over DirectX is that it is open and cross platform. Unfortunatly, this doesn't mean much to a game company who, in all honesty, isn't all that concerned with the small percentage of non-Windows gamers.

      --
      Slashdot...it's like Fox news, but without the biased sl...or maybe not.
    2. Re:The thing stopping more linux games is... by EthSoma · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hey, I've got a smaller user id than you ;)

      The point I was trying to make and maybe made too quickly is: the reason for the lack of native Linux games has more to do with the current lack of competitive cross-platform APIs than it does the number of Linux gamers. 1% martketshare is easily enough to justify a port if the cost of a port is effectively nothing. I think you reinforce that point.

      --
      It is truely written: a man has five times as many fingers as ears, but only twice as many ears as noses.
  3. Re:Mac Gaming by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Well, if you want to debate why companies would want to release linux versions of their games, why not look at the three companies that did. ID, Bioware and whoever does unreal. So why did they bother, well in all three cases as far as I know it was because at least one coder wanted to do it and was prepared to work on it in their free time.

    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.

  4. There is no Linux "game market" by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... 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.

  5. If wishes were horses... by arunarunarun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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?

  6. Re:Well... by Jay+Cornwall · · Score: 5, Insightful
    To be fair, CVS was never designed for the kind of mass distribution that many WineX users expect from it. A lot of people seem to checkout the source, build it, and delete the old source - if they fancy a new version, they just reget the entire source tree from the CVS server. It's put the Sourceforge CVS server under a lot of strain (or at least contributed heavily to it), which has made it almost unusable at times for other projects, where users genuinely need CVS checkouts to build and update from.

    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)