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Transgaming to Support Half Life 2 Under Linux
rpdillon writes "According to Half-Life Fallout, Transgaming Technologies has announced that they will be releasing version 4.2 of Cedega, their Wine based software allowing some DirectX games to be played under Linux. The new version will be released Dec 7th with official support included for Valve Software's Half-Life 2 and Steam, Valve's online software store and distribution system, and a required component of Half-Life 2."
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Halflife refers to the amount of time it takes for a radioactive substance to decay to 1/2 of its mass.
What is the relation to the game, exactly ?
Unreal Tournament 2003 ...
Unreal Tournament 2004
Quake 3
Doom 3
Postal 2
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more here...
Half Life 2?
Go on Valve!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd buy it!
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WINE = Wine Is Not an Emulator
You're right, it IS oart of the acronym
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
Steamed pengiun for dinner!
Wine stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". It doesn't emulate the graphics, it maps the syscalls from DirectX into opengl for graphics (This is my understanding of it, IANAWD (WineX Dev))
Linux users join the masses of gamers who are collectively WINEing about activation delays.
Because it's a sure way to lose money? Half Life 2 is a DirectX game (argue this decision if you want). It would take a great deal of work to convert it to OpenGL so it can work natively in Linux. It's not worth the development effort.
Because Linux users comprise less than 2% of the overall desktop market. Don't get religious about it; it's simply the fact that most of the time, it's not financially worth the development effort to port a game, especially a DirectX-based game, over to Linux.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
I can tell you that it already works. They released a preview copy of Cedega 4.2 to their Emerald members (those who have been subscribed for 18+ months). Steam has worked fine in Cedega 4.0.1 and up in the past, so Steam obviously wasn't a problem. As for Half-Life 2, it runs very well.
Wine is not an emulator, but a reimplementation of the Win32 API. The various system calls that are made available to Windows programs are reinterpreted by the Wine libraries, so as to perform similar functionality, sometimes by making system calls to Linux. In the case of DirectX stuff, 3D calls are converted to OpenGL. Some people have found that games can even run a little faster under Wine, but in most cases there is a small performance hit, probably equivalent to a few frames per second.
We bitch and bitch about how much we hate corporations sticking it to us. We hate DRM, we hate devices that phone home, we hate buying a game, and then being unable to take that game over to a friends and just play it.
And yet, everyones head is so far up Valve's ass, that noone seems to be bothered with how odious this steam thing really is.
I mean, you can't play single player without a 'net connection. You cant drag your disk over to your friends house and just play.
It stinks worse than ANYTHING I've ever seen. This is the absolute worst ass-reaming any pointy haired manager ever decided to give the consumers.
You all are just grabbing your ankles and grinning.
I won't buy, leech, crack, play, or even talk about Half Life 2 anymore until they reissue it in a format which I can just install and start playing the single player game without phone-home activation, or being bundled with your ad delivery service.
Fuck you Valve. I will never purchase games via Steam. Luckily I have Halo 2, Metroid Prime 2, Doom 3, and a pile of other titles to keep me entertained.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If anything this will make people not port the products to run in linux because they'll tell you to just use a WINE product to run them.
Free Mac Mini
The mods will assume that you're trolling, but that's unfair. Some people just don't know how WINE works. (Of course Slashdotters will accuse you of living in a cave, but whatever.)
I trust that you're being honest so I'll just answer the question.
"WINE Is Not an Emulator" is one of those recursive acronyms that was invented after the fact. It used to stand for WINdows Emulator. But the important thing is that the new name is pretty much right; it isn't an emulator, it's a translation layer. Windows EXE and DLL files are directly executed by the CPU; WINE's job is just to implement all the Win32 API calls that they make.
Transgaming took a branch of WINE and added some fixes, some workarounds, and a much better implementation of the DirectX APIs. Specifically, most Direct3D functions are translated into their OpenGL equivalents, so the graphics are still hardware-accelerated (assuming you have a Linux-supported video card).
So to get back to your question,
there is generally very little performance loss when WINE is compared to Windows. The binary is running natively on your CPU, and the video calls are still hardware-accelerated. The only difference is another level of API indirection.
It's interesting that some programs actually perform better under WINE, due to differences in the Win32 and Linux kernel architectures.
The speed at which Wine is supporting new games seems to indicate a certain amount of support from the game manufacturers. At the very least they're probably getting their hands on pre-releases in order to prepare for compatibility once the true game comes out.
This isn't as good as having an actual native port for Linux, but at least it indicates that there is an awareness that Linux and cross-compatability are a consideration.
"Consumers rank the ability to play video games on their desktop as one of the top 3 important reasons for the adoption of Linux."
Is there a "not" missing somewhere in that sentence.? As in "... one of the top 3 reasons for NOT adopting Linux." For me, game support is the biggest reason why Windows still exists on my desktop.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Is this [charging for software/subscription] not a violation of the GPL, and exactly the sort of thing it was written to prevent?
The GPL was not written to prevent charging for software, either a flat-rate charge or a subscription - from the GPL: "When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)" (my emphasis)
Now, I'm not a lawyer, and it is possible that Transgaming are breaking the GPL - but certainly not by charging a subscription.
This is where the serious fun begins.
In other news: WINE get sued by microsoft for IsNot Patent :)
First - they have removed "bobbing-and-swaying" when you walk, it's like you're riding on a Segway, just like it was in "Wolfenstein 3d" (1992). People are complaining of motion sickness and I say that IS THE reason! Pretty silly. Then the story is kinda jerky - ok, it starts great, just like adventure game (though "on the rails"). But then all of a sudden (I did not get why) you have to run somewhere with "energetic" music playing in background, then you shoot... Well - I tested it only for one late evening, so I may change my mind later ;)
:)
;)
Also - the whole Steam registration business is SO silly. I mean - warezed version is everywhere and runs seemingly problem-free w/o any registration. Oh, well, these days there is a new ironic meaning to the word "paying" in "paying customers".
Having read all the "wowed" reviews I expected a bit more, it's not bad, but not earth-shattering: you do need good hardware (my 8500 is barely usable, even though it's definitely faster than all the 9200s), fully-physical world is not so fully physical, not to say that someone aparently scripted all the holes and ladders - it's all on the rails I tell you. Gordon Freeman is the "Invisible Man" (and totally dumb. Speechless). And of course - the environment is a mix of post-soviet Russia - everything's dirty and broken - and that "Equilibrium" movie (talking man on the screens is a strong flashback
Well - maybe I will force myself and finish it though. Some day. I've spent over a year of sporadic play on the first Half-Life after all
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I simply refuse to buy games that do not have Linux Binaries. Yes I know I'm missing out on some decent games, but it's the principle. Id, Epic, and Bioware can all look at their logs and see how many linux binaries were downloaded, and I am represented in there. They can say, we sold X copies, but Y% of them were Linux Users.
If I buy Warcraft III, or Half Life 2, to Blizzard or Valve, I am a Windows user. They look and say "Look at all the Windows versions we sold. Why spend any time on making a binary for our next game when we know how many Windows copy will sell?"
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
It seems they are going to have an XBox version in 2005 (probably late), so if you don't like Steam and can wait then you have an option.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Wine is more of a translator. It takes the windows API and translates those calls to the appropriate POSIX one.
Most things run just as fast in WINE as they do in Windows.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life