Half-Life 2 Under Linux Review

as writes "TransGaming Technologies, a developer of software portability products that allow game developers and publishers to develop games for one system and deploy them across multiple platforms, has released version 4.2 of their Wine fork Cedega on 7 December 2004. The new version of Cedega 4.2 offers support for Valve's bleeding edge action shooter Half-Life 2. linuX-gamers.net has tested Half-Life 2 with Cedega 4.2 and has written a short review of the game under Linux."

Comments

Did you read the article?

[MMaestro]

If 'one more update' is going to fix HL2 on Linux, then it'd have to be a pretty big update. Just from the review:

Brand new video drivers have to be downloaded.
There are loading issues.
The graphics are not loaded correctly.
Gameplay and frame rate drop for an unknown reason.
Turning down the graphics settings do little to fix the frame rate.
Attempts to modify the video settings results in HL2 locking up.
Different drivers do not work.
Textures and lightmaps do not always work.
Sound does not work properly.
Loading screens are very long despite high system specs.

I don't know about you, but it sounds like there are some serious problems with the Linux version.

Re:Did you read the article?

[0racle]

allow you to run on hardware different from the original
That would be a hardware emulator.

win32 implementation for Linux
No, its intersepting win32 calls and translating them to something the Linux system understands. It is emulating a Windows environment.

There is nothing about it being an emulator that means it has to pretend its running on different hardware then it is, for instance VirtualPC running on a Intel machine. Its still an emulator, but it is providing exactly the same machine type and hardware to the guest OS. Wine emulates a Windows environment, it is an emulator.

Don't use Cedega for new games

[advocate_one]

How does using the game with Cedega register as a Linux sale??? The games publishers aren't going to get any feedback that it was a Linux sale at all... they'll just see it as an ms-windows sale and thus won't have any incentive to port it to Linux. Using Cedega to run new games isn't doing Linux gaming any good. You should be boycotting the game and telling the publishers exactly why you are doing this.

When an exciting game is announced by a publisher, take the trouble to go to the website and check if it will be available for Linux. If not, let them know you're not happy by using the feedback provided. If they don't know they're losing customers, they'll think everybody is happy.

Re:Don't use Cedega for new games

[Anonymous Coward]

That is retarded.

If there is no linux version, there will be no linux sales. NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO.

If you want to go bitch to them about it not being available for linux, go for it.

But there's absolutely no reason not to buy the game and have a good time playing it under emulation.

Saying "there are no games for linux and no one should use emulation" is a great way of keeping anyone from using linux in the first place. Great job ass.

If people migrate to linux using emulation, there will still be a huge push on developers to make the game for linux, because
a) there will be a lot more games on linux
b) the performance and bugginess under emulation will always be worse than a native port

Re:Allow me to summarize

[gl4ss]

*6) I couldn't see the cut scenes, so I skipped them.*

hl2 had cutscenes?

Issues in Windows?

[Khuffie]

From the review: The sound _is_ a problem for I didn't found a way to get it without the dropouts and hangs.

It doesn't explain HOW much this happens. This is also an issue in the Windows version (it still happens to me even with the latest patches).

Regardless of those issues this game has one major drawback: 'Loading..'

Once again, these issues are also present in Windows. It takes ages to load, sometimes up to 2 minutes...