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10 Points About Transgaming's Cedega/WineX

Posted by timothy on from the asbetos-underwear-requested dept.

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..."

3 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Slashdotted already? by usefool · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

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    Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. Games that work under WineX/Cedega by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.