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Cedega 5.1 Released
Gamasutra reports that Cedega 1.5 has been released for Linux gamers looking for a Civ IV fix. From the release: "TransGaming Technologies has released Cedega 5.1, which features support for some of the newest PC titles such as Sid Meier's Civilization IV, FIFA 06 and Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Cedega allows games originally created for the Windows platform to run on Linux, straight out of the box. Other titles supported on Cedega 5.1 include Battlefield 2, Dungeon Siege II, City of Villains, Madden NFL 2006, World of WarCraft, Half-Life 2, Guild Wars, and many others. Cedega 5.1 builds on this growing list of game titles with new features that improve overall game play."
Wine 0.9.8 was released today.
I've been off Microsoft(TM) for about 8 years. I fooled around w/ Cedega a while back and although it could install games I wanted to play (X-Wing Alliance, Command & Conquer). It would always segfault when I tried to run them. Now my hardware is nothing spectacular, but these games are older and shouldn't require the latest and greatest. I actually had better luck w/ dosemu to play another version of X-Wing vs. TieFighter that was DOS based instead of Win95 based.
I was wondering how much more taxing the games are on hardware than when running natively on a Win based machine. Also does Cedega have requirements itself?
Jason
-- 42
-- 42 --
From the blurb:
Gamasutra reports that Cedega 1.5 has been released for Linux gamers looking for a Civ IV fix
A bit of editorial nostalgia, perhaps?If all you have is a grenade, pretty soon every problem looks like a foxhole -- MightyYar
You must mean Wine 8.9.0
I was just evaluating Cedega 5.x the last 2 or 3 days with Battlefield 1942 and it worked pretty good but there's still plenty of issues with Punkbuster unfortunately. After a day or two of messing with manually updating Punkbuster (I think) I may have actually successfully updated it and was able to get on a few Punkbuster servers without getting the annoying O/S privileges messages. A good tip is to change your profile to WinME or Win98 if you have it as WinXP or Win2K. I'm still debating if I want to actually subscribe or not though. I would almost be able to run Slackware full time now that I have Windows 2000 running satisfactorily in QEMU. A Cisco VPN client and about 5 or 6 games are all that's keeping me dual-booting these days.
I have Cedega 4.1 and got Steam working in it (before they changed the skin) and Anarchy Online. I didn't even need to do anything; just fired up cedega and ran the executable.
Ryan - http://www.thecosmotron.com/
when they stop charging you like a mmorpg.
The link is labeled "Cedega 1.5" while the title and summary clearly state it as "Cedega 5.1". Can we fix this please? Thanks.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
I hate to yank everyone back to reality here, but if you can't get your favorite Windoze games to run with Cedega, and you REALLY want to play those games, why not dedicate a true gaming PC running XP and not munge your clean Linux system with all this patchy crap ? Yes it costs money, but Cedega costs money, and games cost money. You have to pay to play. Either that or invest in an Xbox/Playstation.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Are you kidding? That would require forethought, and research, and abandonment of the precious DirectX API! Fire would rain from the heavens! Locusts would eat all our crops! Everyone would be covered in boils! It would be the apocalypse!
I tried Cedega once. TransGaming claim to support Half-Life 2 through it, so I gave it a go.
Steam installed fine, so did HL2. After everything was ready to go, I ran the game.
Hard lock up.
Rebooted the PC, started again. This time everything worked fine, except I got maybe 1fps. This on a not spectacularly fast PC/graphics card, but one more than capable of properly running HL2 under Windows. Even turning down details, resolution etc until everything was at the level of a NES game didn't help. Frankly pathetic.
This is why I use Windows...simple tasks, like running a game, just work properly and with a minimum fuss. I can hear everybody going "Well get Valve to release a Linux version then." Well, when they do, and I doubt they will, maybe we won't need stupid hacks like Cedega, which barely work.
I really do wonder what the deal is with people saying they got speed increases from Cedega. My experience is...well, no way.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
many people, including myself (GeForce FX 5900, non-ultra) have been playing WoW nearly bug-free for a long time. in fact, i heard most of the texture problems have been resolved, but most of those that remain are due to the ATi drivers. there are numerous known (and acknowledged) issues with ATi cards and drivers in particular, and the forums are rife with people complaining about their Ati stuff not working as expected.
that said, support improves every month with every new release, and with your subscription, you can vote for what matters to you. (and, since ATi issues come up every voting cycle, VOTE, DAMNIT.) (note, i typically vote -1 on most ATi issues, but i'll stop that if you agree to start voting.)
also, read the forums. it's a bitch, i know, but really, there is a lot of helpful information there if you just take the time to find it. the really big things get stickied (0x10000000 mem loc. fix for mouse in WoW, for example) and everything else will come up from time to time. and don't rule out your distro's forums, either. the official Gentoo gamer forum has threads for all sorts of problems that come up in Cedega, with tips on getting other games to work in vanilla Wine.
they claim it's out-of-the-box compatibility, but as with anything on linux, you have to care enough to fiddle with it a little.
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
Microsoft would bother trying to write a full DirectX port for Linux. Who knows? It may actually work for once, and there may be a boost in the software market, if perhaps it's done free. I'd buy software if I had the free tool to run it flawlessly on another OS. *Might have opened my mouth too late*
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
People complain all the time about Cedega not being completely open-source. You can blame the DMCA and United States patent law for that.
The problem is that almost every game is copy protected. Pretty much the *only* current popular games that are not are WoW and Guild Wars. (CD keys don't count as the copy protection I'm referring to here.)
Because almost all modern copy protection systems rely on intimate details of Windows to make it difficult to crack - most of the modern ones even install kernel-mode device drivers - it is impossible to directly emulate/simulate the API closely enough that these protection schemes. As a result of this, you really have two choices:
1. Disable the protection. This works well, but it is very time consuming. More importantly, it is in direct violation of the DMCA, a felony.
2. Rewrite the protection. In this method, you implement the protection yourself, doing whatever CD check necessary and disabling the original protection scheme. This method has three legal problems:
a. The protection schemes are usually patented by the protection companies.
b. In order for this to work, you must disable the existing protection. Even though you are adding a protection system to replace it, the DMCA does not distinguish this, and so this is illegal.
c. Implementing it yourself means that it will be unobfuscated. Anyone with the source - which is just about anyone - can edit out the check in your code and the protection is broken. The fact that the protection is severely weakened might be seen as a judge as violating the DMCA. Considering the way courts have decided lately, I'd say it's quite likely.
The only legal solution is to have the protection companies make you a Linux version of the protection and/or describe how the system works so you can make a wrapper. There is absolutely no way this will happen without an NDA, something a fully open-source project cannot do.
Cedega is the best we'll have as long as American law is the way it is now. Everything points to the laws becoming even more strict over time - we haven't even reached the apex of the pendulum swing.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Maybe Microsoft should try to beat Cedega to the punch and port DirectX to Mac OS X? They could sell it for $30 per major revision, with free updates in between to keep things in sync with Windows. MS could start losing some serious business if Cedega ever gets "good enough" (although this doesn't seem to be the case so far).
Also, if it was done really well, it would discourage the development of native OS X games, which I'm sure they'd see as a nice bonus.
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience