Slashdot Mirror


Cedega 5.0 Released

kormoc writes "Transgaming has released a large update to Cedega. This release (5.0) changes how the entire product works, merging the GUI with the actual program, as well as implementing features such as pixel shadier 1.4 support, in order to get games such as battlefield 2 working. The release notes list all the new improvements as well as the newly supported games. This seems to be the best release to date and expands the feature set to work with a large number of new games."

25 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Behind the scenes tech? by et764 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's based on WineX, which was a Wine fork that had better DirectX support.

  2. Re:Behind the scenes tech? by szo · · Score: 2, Informative

    it's wine

    --
    Red Leader Standing By!
  3. Re:As a gaming platform? by et764 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I use Cedega to play Half-Life 2 on an Athlon XP 2200+ and a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128MB. It runs really smoothely. I've never played it on a comparable computer under Windows, so I can't say if there's a framerate drop, but the framerate is still high enough, and that's really what matters.

  4. Re:As a gaming platform? by bumby · · Score: 3, Informative

    I play world of warcraft using cedega, and it works fine. Of course, I'm sure I would have gotten a higher fps in windows, but then again, an average of 27 fps in enough for me.

    And my system is about a year old.

    --
    Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
  5. Re:Cedega will never get my money. by bumby · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can download the cvs-version for free. But you woun't get the directx-support, iirc.

    --
    Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
  6. Re:game pad support? by Fallingcow · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can find it on most of the major bittorrent search sites, if you just want to try it to make sure it'll work for your setup.

    Not legal, I'm sure, but then you'll know and can pay for it if it does work.

  7. Re:Why?! by alras · · Score: 3, Informative

    technically the core and gui are still seperated, its just not that obvious anymore. The binaries are now a little more hidden in the home directory of the user.

  8. Re:Cedega will never get my money. by wangmaster · · Score: 2, Informative

    What developers? The majority of games that are released for linux now are by the same folk who've pretty much always released games for linux (ID Software, Epic for their unreal games). There is significant work by icculus.org folks to port a number of games to linux (medal of honor, serious sam 1 + 2) but a vast amount of the work done at icculus is of very little interest by the time it's released (most of it isn't released and is still in alpha/beta form. While playable, they are buggy). Don't get me wrong though, the icculus guys absolutely rock, and it's not their fault, but since loki went away, the number of windows games with linux versions has declined considerably. Neverwinter Nights is one of the only other big ones I can think of, but it still can't play video cutscenes.

    Without cedega/winex/crossover/wine people, there are very few games to play under Linux. I can only go so far with quake4, doom3 and ut2004 before I get bored of them.

  9. Re:BF2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    No :(

  10. Re:Cedega will never get my money. by wangmaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    The transgaming folks have contributed alot of their work into the core wine stuff back. They also said they'll open up everything they can assuming they reach their subscription goal, which I believe they haven't reached, although admittedly there's some contraversy around how to account for where they are toward their goal.

    Their DirectX work is largely something they keep to themselves, but honestly, it's their right to. They took a wine version at a specific point where the license allowed them to do it, and they forked it. They didn't abuse the license, the license specifically allowed it. Sure some people later on felt jipped and changed the license, but that doesn't really reflect on the fact that someone should have considered it when the original license was chosen, especially if they didn't want this to happen.

    Plus, they're putting alot of hard work into the DirectX stuff. I can't fault them for wanting to hang on to it for a while. It's a very niche market they're targetting and they could use the revenue.

    The other component that they get alot of criticism for is the copy protection portions of the code, and I believe this is actually the only part not in CVS and there's a reason for that, it's licensed intellectual property that they aren't at liberty to give out the source code for. Since the legality of no-cd cracks is still in a legal gray area, plus the stability of some cracks are questionable, it's nice that they're able to implement this so we can run pristine binaries of the games.

  11. Re:Cedega will never get my money. by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not quite. You won't get the same sort of CD copy protection compatibility, as they can't legally release the source. Even vanilla Wine has DX9 support now. The CVS version of Cedega would be pretty much useless if it didn't have DirectX support.

  12. Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage by linuxkrn · · Score: 3, Informative

    Try Gentoo Portage http://www.gentoo.org

    http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=nwn

    See NWN with data and server right there.

    http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=doom3 for doom3

    And Portage put games into catagories.

    Like: games-fps, games-rpg, games-puzzle. etc.

    AND the best part, to install. emerge nwn
    It will download any and all deps for you!

  13. Review at Linux-gamers by pshuke · · Score: 4, Informative

    Linux-gamers have put up a review, if anyone are interested.
    Doesn't seem too shabby.

  14. 5.0 is a double edged sword. by ahpx · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a Transgamer subscriber. Having downloaded and installed 5.0, and used it abit. I'd say 5.0 is a double edged sword. The positives on it is that it fixes alot of problems with older versions and fixes support for the Steam patch that recently broke it before. However the negitives to it is that it completely kills the use of Point2Play which I enjoyed using. Now you have to import all your old settings into Cedega's new GUI which at first might not seem like something bad until you relize that all your old custom made launchers and syslinks and now useless. All in all it's not a bad release, they could have just left some features alone. Now I and many other users have to change syslinks, and rework the old launcher programs we had before.

    1. Re:5.0 is a double edged sword. by Dimensio · · Score: 2, Informative

      However the negitives to it is that it completely kills the use of Point2Play which I enjoyed using.

      That's nothing. Anyone who used command-line only -- like me -- is now totally screwed. EVERYTHING I had set up previously was hosed, and it was a nightmare trying to get things to a mere semblance of how they behaved before.

      I want an app where I can go to the command line and run cedega with just a reference to the executable file and have it work (if the file can work at all with cedega/wine). I could do that up until 5. Now I have to configure settings in the GUI for ANY DAMNED EXECUTABLE THAT I WANT TO RUN! I have to jump through hoops just to run a one-time use hotfix patch exe file. I DON'T HAVE TO GO THROUGH THAT MUCH SHIT IN WINDOWS!

      So I'm back to 4.4.3 until and unless Transgaming returns a proper interface to command-line users.

  15. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  16. CVS? You've got to be kidding! by ClassicG · · Score: 2, Informative

    The public CVS version of Cedega is horribly out of date and is missing a lot of pretty criticial stuff, not to mention quite difficult to compile and set up. It's just NOT worth messing with unless you really want to look at the code, rather than just get a 'demo' of Cedega. Rathar that fight to get the CVS code to compile and run, there's a 'timedemo' version of Cedega available at http://nzone.com/object/nzone_cedega_downloads.htm l. It's not Cedega 5.0, but it's a lot better than anything you'll pull out of CVS.

    --
    I game, therefore I am...
  17. Re:Cedega will never get my money. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Basically, Transgaming is making money off a free project without really giving anything back to the community.

    Apart from all the patches they contribute back to Wine, that is. But I suppose you're free to ignore those if it makes it easier for you to justify your mindless hating.

  18. Re:Software Installation by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 3, Informative
    Most Open Source/Free Software/Linux folks seem to think that the last option is _clearly_ the best choice. I'm not so sure. Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

    It is the best choice. If you prefer to mindlessly click "Next" 5-10 times every time you want to install something and then again if you ever want to update it, when you could simply issue a single command or tick a single box and select install, and then have *all* updates handled for you, then I sincerely hope you have nothing to do with any important software development.

    From portage:

    * games-rpg/nwn
    Latest version available: 1.66
    Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
    Size of downloaded files: 2,420,283 kB
    Homepage: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html
    Description: Neverwinter Nights
    License: NWN-EULA

    * games-fps/doom3
    Latest version available: 1.3.1302
    Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
    Size of downloaded files: 16,802 kB
    Homepage: http://www.doom3.com/
    Description: Doom III - 3rd installment of the classic id 3D first-person shooter
    License: DOOM3

    Or maybe you'd prefer the web listings.

    Any other questions?

  19. Re:As a gaming platform? by 3vi1 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's my experience:

    Framerate differences will vary greatly from game to game. For instance, EverQuest actually ran faster in Cedega than under Windows 98 for me. Now, the negative side is that the patcher runs *incredibly* slow. What takes 45 seconds in Windows takes about 5 minutes to patch under Cedega. Also, when the last two expansions came out and people started complaining of fubar'd textures in the new zones (so bad that you couldn't see), Transgaming did nothing to address the issues.

    Counter-Strike: Source ran at about 24fps under Cedega for me, as opposed to 44fps in Windows - and Windows looked much nicer, with the reflective water and other visual effects that had to be disabled in Cedega. I get about 14fps using the current WINE CVS, but they haven't really started their optimizations yet.

    24fps is just bad enough to give every newbie a leg up on you, so I never play it under Cedega. It would run faster for sure, if I had the cash to blow on newer hardware.

    Cedega can be a nice solution if they already (actively) support the game(s) you want to play. Don't hold your breath for the ones that aren't supported though: The Sims 2 and plenty of other hugely popular games got crushed by negative votes month after month due to the FPS/MMORPG-centric subscriber base. Transgaming's programming efforts seem to be centered around keeping Steam working and adding a new and "hot" game each month. When I was a subscriber, I was left a bit disappointed that they did not concentrate more on baseline compatibility rather than adding hacks specific to each game they're trying to support.

    After being a subscriber for about 8 months, I decided to give up on them ever supporting some of the games I already owned and cancelled my subscription. I'll wait until they can run in WINE, which has been making leaps and bounds of progress in the last year.

    One thing to note is that their support for ATI cards is abysmal. The same card that gives me great framerates in the Linux versions of America's Army or Enemy Territory performs abysmally under Cedega. My nVidia card, on a system that's pretty much the same runs much better. Sure, ATI's Linux drivers are not as good as nVidia's yet, but they're clearly not the only problem here when native Linux OpenGL apps perform so well.

    In EverQuest, CS:S, and other programs I had to play around with disabling pixel shaders, and other things to get the games working; many ATI users couldn't get some of them working at all. Troubleshooting these problems in their forums many times consists of people telling you "ATI's crap, go buy nVidia". Oddly, there's no disclaimer on their subscription page that says something along the lines of "WARNING: May run like a wounded tortoise when used with ATI hardware".

  20. Re:Cedega will never get my money. by andyross · · Score: 2, Informative
    Eventually some change to stack sizes or libc interfaces is going to effectively kill off your proprietary games. Cedega will be able to run the Windows versions of the games better than Linux will be able to run the Linxu versions of the games. :-/

    You're FUDing. Stop it. There has been one (1) incompatible change to glibc in the last ten (10) years. If you look, you'll probably discover that your distro still ships the older libc.so.5 library. And the kernel interfaces (the external ones, which your games use) have been more stable still. I'm not aware of any commonly-used syscall whose calling conventions have changed incompatibly, ever. Backwards binary compatibility is very important to the kernel people.

    More generally, programs linked on machines running truly ancient distros continue to run fine on modern ones provided you install the appropriate compatibility packages.

    It seems to me like you're just whining about progress. Do you have a specific complaint about a binary on your system that no longer runs?

  21. Huh? by NCraig · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not according to these.

    But hey, pulling things out of your ass is good fun, right?

  22. Nice Advert, but... by 3vi1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was thinking about re-subscribing to check it out, then stumbled accross this poll. For some reason, 3/4ths (at this time) of the people responding have negative feelings about the update. That's not a very good sign.

  23. Re:But will it play Civ 4? by Darby · · Score: 2, Informative

    Well, somebody considered it interesting so what the heck.

    I got home, turns out Dell had an update for people with my exact card and storage solution combined. It worked too ;-) So I'm home.

    Download latest version, put it in /usr/portage/distfiles/.
    Emerge Cedega. Trying to emerge the version I already have. Doh! My computer is the local rsync server and it's not in cron, ok emerge --sync.
    Emerge cedega (take 2). cedega 5 is blocked by Point 2 Play. Right, someone else said Point 2 Play is gone. unmerge that. Don't have much there, don't care if it gets borked. Not worth even reading up first.
    Emerge cedega (take 3). Worked like a charm. I love you, oh Gentoo cedega package maintainer.

    Run cedega. It says, you used to have point 2 play, so lets import all your old crap. Thanks!

    Stick in Civ4 disk 1, click install, click mount. Browse, select setup.exe. Bork! Bork! Bork! Crap.
    Ok, try autorun.exe Nice!

    Update direct X. Hmmm... well, WTF I really don't care if it kills everything go for it. OK, installing away.

    "Insert disk 2". Alt-Tab click mount. Disk pops out. Insert second disk, click mount, Alt-Tab, click ok. Install away.

    Finish, swap disks again, click play.
    Show first loading dialog, nice.

    A whole screen ( in the terminal I ran cedega from) full of:
    0005:: Bad stuff: client ignore setting select events for 0x900ed830 to 1

    and not much else.

    Could try to figure it out. Too late, too many hours this week already. Heck, my boss already gave me Friday off.
    But the cluster is up, and mysql01 and mysql02 are all updated. Amazing what changes in the year and a half since they were rebooted ;-)

    YMMV obviously, I suppose a week is a little early to expect a game with the latest directX and an already demonstrated glitchy implementation on its native platform to work well.

  24. Re:Behind the scenes tech? by BobPaul · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's based on WineX

    Actually, it is WineX. WineX was TransGaming's origional name for Cedega.