10 Points About Transgaming's Cedega/WineX

jvm writes "Attempting to raise the level of the discussion, Dan 'theoddone33' Olson has put together a list of ten critical observations that every potential Linux gamer should consider before buying Transgaming's WINE-based product Cedega (formerly WineX). Dan invites credible rebuttals to the points he's raised. The debate over the value of Cedega/WINE as a solution for the nascent Linux gaming community continues..."

Comments

Re:Slashdotted already?

[usefool]

here are the 10 points if you can't get to the site

# Performance

Cedega is designed to maximize compatibility with Windows games. However, many users find that their favorite games work poorly in Cedega, if at all. While TransGaming offers voting services to determine the most popular games, there are still hundreds of games that are not playable in Cedega. For games that are not officially supported by TransGaming, users may find that the performance of Cedega is "hit or miss."

# Pricing

TransGaming charges $5 a month for the use of the commercial version of Cedega, yet makes a development version freely available. The commercial version has additional support for games that use copy-protection methods such as SafeDisc, among other features. The commercial version of Cedega requires a minimum subscription of 3 months, and all games that it can be used with must be purchased separately.

# Progress

TransGaming's list of supported titles has not grown significantly since the first release of WineX in 2001. Today, less than 10 games have been given a 5-star rating, meaning that they can be expected to run without problems. Many games run with only minor annoyances, but they are not officially supported. TransGaming has also been criticized for slow release times, with 3 month subscriptions starting and ending without seeing a new release.

# Potential

TransGaming has stated that their goal is 100% compatibility with Windows games. However, it is highly improbable that they will ever attain this goal. Windows and Direct3D are in active development, and TransGaming developers will always be playing a game of "catch-up", while at the same time trying to find and fix current bugs in Cedega. In a sense, Cedega's destiny is tied to Microsoft as much as it is tied to TransGaming.

# Priorities

While TransGaming still offers Cedega to Linux gamers for the time being, it is clear that their primary interests reside elsewhere. They actively produce titles for Mac OSX, and their website advertises plans to support XBox and PS2 in the future. TransGaming has stated that no income from Cedega subscriptions is used to fund their other ventures, but while their finances may not be divided, the same cannot be said of their interests.

# Promises

TransGaming began with the promise to release their changes to the Wine project under an "open" license when the number of subscribers reached 20,000. Shortly after this, they introduced code into the project which they are not able to release openly due to contractual obligations. While the current number of subscribers has not been publically announced, it is doubtful that TransGaming would be able to release all of their changes when this milestone is reached. TransGaming has, however, given code back to Wine at various times.

# Packaging

While TransGaming offers a free development version of Cedega, they have repeatedly threatened Linux distributions that have offered packages of it to their users. Debian and Gentoo have both withdrawn packages of the development version of Cedega at the request of TransGaming, who stated that they would no longer offer the free version if it was packaged by third-party Linux distributions.

# Portability

TransGaming advertises Cedega as the world's foremost portability solution, and they claim that it can be used to migrate applications seamlessly between platforms such as PC, PS2, and even PDAs. These claims are sketchy for a variety of technical reasons. One example is that most PC games use over 100M of memory, while the PS2 has only 32M of main RAM. Cedega's strategy of reinterpreting runtime calls is likely to add more overhead than it can reduce, and is not sufficient for this task.

# Propaganda

For as long as TransGaming has had a website, it has been filled with dubious claims about the company, about the game industry, and about porting software. Unsurprisingly, most of these claims paint TransGaming in a positiv

Doesn't Work Too Well Here

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time a program tries to access the CD-ROM Cedega crashes in KERNEL32.DLL.wine_get_unix_file_name. I would love to play Red Alert 2 using the official CDs I bought, but I'm forced to use a cracked version off FastTrack.

Mirror

[antikarma]

It's getting slow, here's a Google cache.

Google's Cache of The Link

[unixmaster]

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:X7e-egvZJeoJ: curmudgeongamer.com/article.php%3Fstory%3D20040904 215153278+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Re:What the hell is /. doing posting this tripe?

[bobstevens_took_my_n]

They contributed to Loki's technology, Gavriel is on good Terms with Ryan (Icculus) and there are many other linux NATIVE technologies that owe their success in part to direct help from Transgaming.

Well, one-third of that is true, so I guess congratulations.

Have you considered the possibility that the author of this article might be a real contributor to the gaming industry in Linux?

Re:Slashdotted, but I bought it last month, so...

[PhoenixFlare]

It actually makes me think of Linux as a viable platform for games... not a viable platform in five years' time, but a viable platform now.

Maybe, unless you want to use WineX to play something that's not an MMORPG, FPS, or RTS game, with a few exceptions - personally, the last time I tried it I couldn't get anything to work but Diablo II and Starcraft, and even then they had several major playability problems.

More specifically, I tried it about 1.5 years ago, followed the installation directions to the letter. Then tried getting several games (Starcraft, Homeworld, Warcraft II, Diablo II, Civ II, even freaking 10-year old Lemmings wouldn't run right) to work for about a month with almost no success, and cancelled my subscription in disgust.

I'd love to give it another shot, but the only games people ever mention it working with are the same ones over and over again. As well, their game database lists a massive number of non-working titles still, and if a poster on the linked story is to be believed, they're not even updating the database anymore.

Doesn't exactly make me want to shell out more money. I'm sure there's others like you out there who are happy with it and have everything you want working, but I suspect you're in the minority.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Slashdotted already?

[bman08]

I've invested in this product 3 seperate times. So we're looking at 45 bucks at this point, and it's worked HORRIBLY every time.

They've also been dishonest about not competing with native ports. Yet Quake and RTCW were, last time I looked, on the list of supported games.

I'm glad you're having such good luck with the product. For me, even games with a '4' rating generall work horribly, or are such a PITA to install that it's not worth it.

You're also very lucky to get one new release with a three month subscription. I'd feel way less decieved by these guys if they'd just sell the product for 10 or fifteen bucks and not pretend that I was becoming a 'member' of something.

Games that work under WineX/Cedega

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Since the article is slashdotted, here's a list of games that I run successfully under WineX 3.2.1 (not even the current version):

• Age of Empires II
• Icewind Dale
• GTA 3
• GTA: Vice City
• Baldur's Gate II
• Diablo II
• Starcraft
• Warcraft II BNE
• Fallout II
• Max Payne
• Thief (Gold)
• Thief II
• Deus Ex
• Grim Fandango

Not all of these work perfectly; for example BGII network play is not available. However, for the most part these are totally playable and sometimes even run better than the same games running under Windows. I really wish Transgaming would put more effort into supporting older games, but I guess more gamers want to play Counter Strike 2, not Diablo I.

Re:my reason why i dont use it..

[MarcQuadra]

You know, you dont HAVE to use ATI's driver. I have a RADEON 7500 and it's totally 100% accelerated for 2D and 3D by completely free drivers that reside in the kernel and XOrg builds.

ALL RADEON cards have full 2D acceleration in the latest from XOrg (and xfree as well, IIRC). The 3D support usually lags a while behind the hottest cards.

Right now the best ATI card you can get fully-free 3D acceleration on is the RADEON 9200, which ain't a bad card at all.

vaporware?

[sl4shd0rk]

I dunno. I tried Transgaming for a few months, and when I did finally get Yuri's Revenge to run, the performance was unacceptable. I asked others on the forum how it was that they had gotten it to run so well, but never got any answers. Finally ditched the subscription. It seemed like Transgaming was just slowly sucking up my $5/month and making grand claims.

Kohan series - check YOUR facts.

[Svartalf]

You might want to check yours. The code WAS returned to the original developers or publishers pretty much in it's entirety- at least that's what I've heard from ex-Loki developers and other parties that would know the exact details. The problem was that Loki's deals muddied the waters. There was some legal issues with regards to at least some of the ports that were done or were in progress at the time Loki shuttered it's doors. In the case of Kohan, Timegate was checking into the matter and considering going with LGP for the next set of versions, etc.- but while they wanted to do a Linux version, they didn't want to wait for the legal issues to settle on the Loki developed port. Enter Transgaming and the Winelib versions. As for DeusEx, they weren't spending ANY money on that- if you believe that, you don't know much about how porting goes. Loki spent all the money on the port up to that point and it was in Beta at the time Loki expired.