Cedega and Linux Games

Linux.com's Stefan Vrabie has a look at the state of Transgaming's Cedega, which some claim to be the best current offering for running Windows games under Linux. While it may be better than nothing, the author still puts this solidly under the "plug and pray" column with the biggest drawback being the amount of fiddling required to make it work. From the article: "Cedega may not be the answer to games under Linux, but it's better than not being able to play at all, until gaming companies notice Linux users as a market and release games for Linux." Linux.com and Slashdot.org are both owned by OSTG.

Comments

No games?

[Short Circuit]

I bought Neverwinter Nights Saturday, and I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

With the Diamond Edition ($30 at Best Buy), you get both expansion packs, and you can follow some online directions to install to Linux without passing through Windows.

I also bought Return to Castle Wolfenstein a while back. That was good, too.

Oh, and there's DOOM, DOOM ][, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, several versions of Unreal...

If you'll go the Open Source route, there's DarkPlaces, Cube, Duke Nukem 3d (engine, anyway. You'll still need the gamedata.

Uhm...no games? How about, no hyperadvertised games?

Re:No games?

[spun]

You missed Civilization II: Call to Power. And on the open source side, try Wesnoth and Freeciv.

Re:No games?

[Short Circuit]

Freeciv is probably the most complete Open Source game I've had the pleasure to enjoy. Supplemental nethack interfaces (Such as Falcon's Eye/a.) take a close second.

Re:No games?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had my eye on this one and online it actually says it's 20 bucks.

Either way, it's nice to have such things that are ported directly to Linux.

In the holy wars of whether WINE benefits the Linux community or not, I think it hurts more than it harms. If you want to game with your PC, dual boot...you know, with that OS your machine came with. If you want to use Linux, convince yourself to use only native games. If you REALLY REALLY want to game, get yourself an XBox.

Re:No games?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm...no games? How about, no hyperadvertised games?

Uhm...no games? How about, no contemporary games.

Every semi-serious, hell every casual PC gamer has moved beyond all your listed games games years ago. You didn't present an argument for Linux gaming, you presented one against it.

Re:No games?

[gormanly]

• Doom III (plus the Resurrection of Evil Expansion Pack)
• Quake 4
• Unreal Tournament 2004

We all know that Linux isn't a platform for gamers, but still there are a few games for GNU/Linux.

Re:No games?

[grumbel]

No games?

Well, yes, you are right there are not "no games" under Linux, the throuble is there are only very few games under Linux. All the games you list are multiple years old, sometimes even a decade, and half of them happens to be done by id which is one of the very few Linux friendly game companies around. And the rest of the games kind of got more or less crippeled on its way (NWN came out half a year late, no editor, some throuble with videos, etc. when I remember correctly).

So in the end, yes, there are games on Linux, however in five years you get as much new releases under Linux as you see in the Windows world in a week or two, which really brings the state of Linux games very close to "no games". The sad thing is that it hasn't really gotten any better, five years ago we where stuck with a few first person shooters, today we still are, just with a few updated ones.

Re:No games?

[narooze]

You're forgetting Doom 3. Not only are there games for Linux, it's not uncommon that the hardware requirements are lower due to better hardware utilization. Doom 3 for example, sported official hardware requirements only 2/3 as high for Linux compared to for Windows.

Re:No games?

[JeffElkins]

==
In the holy wars of whether WINE benefits the Linux community or not, I think it hurts more than it harms. If you want to game with your PC, dual boot...you know, with that OS your machine came with.
==

I have to agree. As a former OS/2 user, in retrospect I think that having limited Windows compatibility hurt more than it helped.

Re:No games?

[CastrTroy]

If this is the case, why don't game developers put out a Linux Live DVD with their game pre installed. This way it runs if you have one of the supported video cards, and no more having to worry about background processes getting in the way of your gaming. I think this would be a great way to deliver games on the Computer, as the way we do it no often leads to a less than stellar performance, because you have Norton Antivirus and 17 other memory resident things running that you don't really want to/know how to shut down every time you want to play a game.

Re:No games?

[G-funk]

Because this isn't the 80s / early 90s. If I want to turn off my pc and run a game, I have a PS2. I sure as hell don't want to reboot just to play a game, and then again when I want to go back to browsing the net.

Re:No games?

[labratuk]

1: If it used the nvidia or ati proprietary driver, it would be illegal to distribute it (unless it did something mad like compile the module as part of the boot process).

2: It would miss the entire point of an operating system - to have a common environment that is configured once and has to be updated once to make all your applications work. The live dvd would bring a whole new meaning to the phrase "Unreal UltraMAX Elite 2009 doesn't work with my nvidia card!"

3: Offshooting from that, a live dvd would have to contain support for all future hardware that could possibly ever be designed.

4: I think what you're looking for is called a 'console'.

Re:No games?

[blank axolotl]

Because the game usually wants to make use the operating system resources. For one, the live CD would not as aware of filesystem permissions you have set up, so could overwrite things you would not want to allow it to. In fact, telling it where to save 'save games' would be tricky in itself, since your filesystem (defined by fstab) would not be immediately available. You'd have to tell it where fstab is every time you load the program in order to make meaningful use of your filesystem. It would be a mess.

Running an OS you are not in control of and know little about on your computer does not seem like a good idea at all.

Re:No games?

[number6]

I'm currently playing Vendetta Online, an Elite style MMORPG that has a native Linux port. Probably not up to the quality of things like Eve (I don't know, I only play games that are out on Linux), but it's a lot of fun. See www.vendetta-online.com

Another game I liked was Savage. An excellent RTS/FPS combination that had a Linux port available. As I'm liable to do, I didn't play it for 12 months, then when I tried to logon, discovered I needed to update it to play and there was no update available for Linux, so I wasn't able to play it anymore. Last time I buy something from that company.

I'd really like to see games like Rome:Total War (or even the old Medieval Total War games), but they don't even work under Wine/Cedega, and there doesn't seem to be much chance of them working in the future.

Re:No games?

[Indras]

Here, I keep this site bookmarked at all times:
http://doc.gwos.org/index.php/Native_Games

Lost Labyrinth is my current infatuation... well, that and Escape Velocity Nova (windows version) in Cedega, runs beautifully.

Re:No games?

[Phisbut]

* Doom III (plus the Resurrection of Evil Expansion Pack)
* Quake 4
* Unreal Tournament 2004

We all know that Linux isn't a platform for gamers, but still there are a few games for GNU/Linux.

I don't happen to enjoy FPS as my favorite type of game. Doom 1 to 3, Quake 1 to 3 and several versions of Unreal, that's all the same game to me. Thank god games aren't limited to FPS...

Well duh

[cyber-vandal]

why anyone would want to run Doom through Cedega, when ID Software offers a Linux binary for Doom (which needless to say runs better since it's native), is a good question.

If every software company was as generous as ID then Cedega wouldn't be required now would it?

Re:Well duh

[Planeflux]

Using OpenGL as the graphics backend does not imply that the program is compilable on other platforms, such as linux. There are many other things involved, of course, like third party libraries, such as bink (video format). Even though the game Neverwinter Nights had a linux port, it didn't include video support due to the closed nature of bink. OpenGL and Direct3D are obviously two completely different APIs. The interesting thing is that, a little less than a decade ago, OpenGL was mature while The DirectX stuff was still in its infancy. Nevertheless, as 3D acceleration became a reality, more and more developers began using DirectX. It was backed by Microsoft, after all. Why an alternative when you already have something that works? Because Microsoft didn't own it. It's that simple. As for which is "better", there is an interesting comparison at Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct3D_vs._OpenGL

In my opinion, and I'm sure everyone with a sane and reasonable way of thought will agree, an open source implementation would be a fool's errand. With the limited amount of hardware-accelerated drivers for linux, just how large are the chance for an implementation by a hardware vendor even if open source Direct3D was a reality? The best solution, which both Wine and Cedega utilize, is a Direct3D->OpenGL wrapper. It's not optimal, but it often works decently.

Re:Well duh

[the_bard17]

Even though the game Neverwinter Nights had a linux port, it didn't include video support due to the closed nature of bink.

Sometimes you get lucky, and somebody puts enough effort into discovering that it's possible. The following link provides a method to actually get the video support under NWN. It's not user friendly, but it gets the job done if you're willing to slog through it.http://home.woh.rr.com/nwmovies/

'Course, like I said, it's not friendly. At all. It's definitely not something that I'd want the average computer user undertaking, especially if they're used to "stick the CD in, and Windows autoruns the install..." *theatrical sigh*

Well...

[goldenratiophi]

Who really needs to play anything more than Frozen Bubble? :)

Is there a market?

[WombatDeath]

Or rather, a viable one?

That's not a rhetorical question. I have no idea how easy it is to make a game compatible with both Windows and Linux but I assume that it's a bit more complicated than changing backslashes to forward slashes. I also don't know how big the market is for Linux games but I doubt it's huge. If it takes an extra, say, 20% longer to make a game Linux-compatible I'm not surprised that it doesn't happen more often.

On the other hand perhaps it's just lazy design. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who doesn't share my ignorance.

Re:Is there a market?

[Dionysus]

Probably not. Loki thougth there was a marked and ported some games over to Linux (I bought the SimCity version). They closed shop after three years. Then again, the marked might be a little different now from the way it was four years ago (lots of newbie distros, like Ubuntu, Xandros, Linspire etc, that have brought in non-developers to Linux)

Re:Is there a market?

[StormReaver]

"Loki thougth[sic] there was a marked and ported some games over to Linux (I bought the SimCity version). They closed shop after three years."

Loki didn't close shop for lack of a sustainable market. Loki closed up shop because the company president and his wife were draining the company coffers for personal use.

Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...

[weasello]

I find it extremely difficult to justify porting or designing a game for Mac - and definately not profitable. When it's done it's usually an investment; garnering support for future releases or 'making a name' in the Mac community. Considering Linux is even smaller... The numbers just don't add up yet. It isn't really about market penetration or percentages, it's about pure numbers. How many Linux machines are on the planet; of those how many are used in a home-use desktop fashion; of those how many are willing to spend $40-60 on a game; and of those who would be willing to buy this particular game.

Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...

[weasello]

I'm not a developer, all I see are bottom-line numbers. Hiring a QA team and a support team for Linux is probably two of the biggest cost factors. it is quite simply adding up all the associated costs with:

releasing, supporting, marketing, testing, and (rarely) developing something for a platform a developer is not familiar with (and quite frankly, scared of)..

Versus...

Potential sales to a platform comprising largely of a "free" atmosphere (that I enjoy myself), of limited and wide distribution (there's no 'region' that could be targeted), with a poor track record of profit for game releases.

Two ways to bring gaming to Linux are to (a) reduce costs (such as making smaller scale, indy-style games), or (b) waiting the Linux community grow to a size where potential profits outweight the potential costs (which could be caused by (A)).

Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...

[G Morgan]

It could be done via the current methods of releasing a binary online and offering no official support. You can make clear that the game is Windows only officially. Linux users will support each other, we're good generally at making up for companies that give no support so companies that give the tiniest amount (in terms of releasing a patch 'as is') would bring us half way there to begin with. The linux mentality is do it yourself and if its possible the Linux community would help make it happen.

You'll probably find Linux users will write their own installation script if you don't provide one and then there is no problem.

From the development point of view theres no disadvantage to using SDL over DX apart from maybe devs have more experience with the MS platform (it's a rare one that has no SDL experience though, its usually the first port of call).

Another way of looking at it is this, plan for portability even if you have no intention of a Linux release. It costs nothing more to write portable code if you plan correctly and you at least then have the option. Then if a million Linux users cry "this game is SDL please port it" then you can judge the market from there.

Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...

[nukem996]

Ive done a little game programming and what ive always wondered is why game developers cannt develop their games with OpenGL, OpenAL, and SDL to allow maximum portability. If coded using these libraries then its very simple to port to Linux Mac, Windows, PS 1, PS 2, Gamecube, and many more platforms. By having your game availible on Win Mac and Linux you'll not only make your customers happy but more people will buy. I know I for one am much more likly to buy a game if there is a native Linux port then if there isnt. As for paying for support why not just do what id software does and release the game binaries for Linux but say that there is no support availible, only bug reports.

Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...

[Anonymous Coward]

very simple answer, DirectX currently beats the hell out of openGL for development time, saving millions in dev costs makes it easier for game companies to ignore the linux community, openGL needs to either massively improve or this will remain the situation for years to come.

Eagerly awaiting

[ZorbaTHut]

If Cedega and Wine could run all the Windows games I play, and the few apps I depend on that don't have Linux ports, I would literally switch to Linux tomorrow.

If only.

Cedega is a step in the right direction

[suparjerk]

Addressing those who say that "Cedega isn't encouraging gaming companies to develop games for Linux", as the article puts it.... you're somewhat right. It's not directly encouraging companies to make Linux games, but it is a step in the right direction.
 
I used to be constantly rebooting back and forth between Ubuntu and Windows XP as I switched between playing games (XP) and doing everything else (Ubuntu). Thanks to Cedega, I can now spend almost all of my time in Linux, as Cedega emulates nearly everything I want to play, and does so with minimal problems. I'm just about ready to give Windows a kick to the face and abandon it permanently. In my case, thanks to Cedega, there's now one more almost-purely-linux gamer and one less Windows gamer. Now that I game under linux instead of in Windows, companies do have more incentive to make linux ports of their games.

Re:Cedega is a step in the right direction

[drsquare]

In my case, thanks to Cedega, there's now one more almost-purely-linux gamer and one less Windows gamer. Now that I game under linux instead of in Windows, companies do have more incentive to make linux ports of their games.

Incorrect. If Linux users can now run games written for Windows, then there is ZERO incentive to make Linux ports at all. Why make a Linux port when the Linux users can use the Windows version?

For more information see Windows vs OS/2.

Re:Cedega is a step in the right direction

[Excelsior]

Incorrect. If Linux users can now run games written for Windows, then there is ZERO incentive to make Linux ports at all.

Nice blanket statement, ignoring many dynamics at play here. Cedega is about support existing Windows games in Linux. By Cedega making it possible for Linux users to play existing games in Linux, there are more full-time Linux users. Myself and GP both are examples of this. If there are more full-time Linux users, there is more incentive to make Linux games. Do you think somehow the alternative (dual-booters) helps drive the Linux game market? It doesn't at all.

The existing Windows games out there are unlikely to ever be ported, and so there is Cedega. If Cedega drives more and more people to uninstall Windows from their desktop, the market for future games to be made native in Linux will be more attractive, which is what Linux gaming needs. This isn't a perfect world we live in, but there are some benefits to Cedega.

For more information see Windows vs OS/2.

Please stop bringing up this rediculous point that has been made several times in this thread (maybe by you). OS/2 failed for dozens of reasons, most importantly because IBM is the worst company at marketing its products, EVAR (sic). Trivializing the failure of a multi-million dollar product in a multi-billion dollar market down to "Windows compatibility hurt it" is an exercise in revisionist history.

Anyone?

[tonyr1988]

Could anyone give me the link to the .torrent of Cedega?

All I can find is this pesky page.

Re:Anyone?

[corychristison]

How about CVS?

Linux is a game!

[corychristison]

With it's incredibly advanced architecture, linux is a game! Try rolling your own Linux install, that alone will eat up plenty of time. And if you are anything like me or possibly a lot of sysadmins here, it is fun, too. ;-)

Re:Cedega is produced by scum

[madcow_bg]

You should not that easily mod the parent troll.
Actually, some time ago WINE was under BSD license, that permitted proprietary modifications. After WINE was forked to WineX, then renamed to Cedega and closed their source, the WINE developers changed the license to GPL so future "freeloaders" are not allowed.

Now Cedega are going backwards because they cannot use the new WINE code. While WINE is going forward in the compatibility for things like DX9, the rest of the APIs in Windows, all Cedega developers are doing is trying to make it compatible with the latest and greatest of the protection schemes for CDs like SafeCD and such... Good for games, but for how long?

think about this from the other side

[tcc3]

Windows gaming didnt sprout fully formed from Billy G's Head you know. MS made a concerted effort to make Windows a platform conducive to gaming, Directx being one of the main developents. Anyone remember the old days of "IBM-PC compatible" gaming? Will my sound card be supported? Is my video card the right kind? Using the OS as a layer of abstraction for compatibility makes it easier for the developer. Granted, the sheer commonness of Windows accounts for the major reason developers choose windows. More users = more sales. But compatibility and ease of development counts for something to. So wheres the Linux answer to directx? Ask not what game developers can do for Linux. Ask what Linux can do for game developers (my apologies to Kennedy)

Re:think about this from the other side

[sinewalker]

I agree with you, but I think the big difference between OpenGL/OpenAL/SDL and DirectX, is that DirectX is the XBox platform. So writing for Windows DirectX is not a lot different to writing for XBox.

So it's not a technical problem, it's a matter of market forces and games developers only having a finite budget for porting.

When/if Sony release a development suit for Playstation 3 that can be made to run on Linux/PC, then we'll start to see titles made available for it. I don't think that's likely though, or if it is, it won't be Free Software.

Re:think about this from the other side

[Aypok]

Agree and good comparison! Making games for Linux now is like what making games for DOS was years ago.

Obviously you have not tried developing games for Linux. If you had (and actually given it a good go), you would have come across the wonderful world of SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc.

The problem is.

[spysmily1]

PC games in general don't have the market they use to. I remember going into some place like Babbages or EB(now everything seems to be Gamestop) and they would have almost two full walls of games. Walk into any store now including Best Buy or Circuit City and the selection is smaller with the fact that PC games don't generate revenue like they did at one time.

So with the smaller interest there is commercially to develop games for PC I'm sure it is especially difficult to find a company that wants to port their games to Linux. I am puzzled why games like The Sims don't get ported to Linux with the sales they put up. Or did they port Sims and I didn't notice. Not that anyone is missing much.

Nevermind...

[hackwrench]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights Hordes of the Underdark...

Re:Cedega is produced by scum

[Mad Merlin]

Now Cedega are going backwards because they cannot use the new WINE code.

They can actually, and do still. Only a month or two ago they took several dlls from vanilla Wine (they, of course, are still licensed under the LGPL, not the regular Cedega license).

Furthermore, Cedega is generally full of hacks to make specific games work, which is good in the short run, but bad in the long run. This is especially showing now, as in many ways, vanilla Wine has better D3D support than Cedega. Expect this gap to continue to widen as time passes. There may be a point where Cedega starts using vanilla Wine's D3D implementation too.

Not practical or profitable to develop for Linux

[Runesabre]

Gaming companies don't develop for Linux because it's not pratical to support properly.

There are too many Linux distributions, none of which have a big enough of the Linux market to be considered the de facto standard Linux distribution to develop for and build a customer service department to support.

Game applications are the most strenous and sensitive to the capabilities of the platform. Windows is pretty standard with DirectX. On Linux you don't know what's going to work; the very philosophy of choice with Linux translates to everyone's machine is just different enough in a way that makes developing a game for Linux a real frustration.

Finally, once you manage to get things working on a couple distributions, a new release comes out that invalidates your existing application. And in another 6 months another release of Linux is going to come out and invalidate your work again. A developer has a hard time keeping his game working under one distribution from one version to the next. Now multiply that by 10-20 for the most popular Linux platforms each releasing new versions every 6 months.

Shipping source code to your customers and expecting them to build it every time they upgrade their machine or switch distributions isn't a solution.

Combine the constant, frequent changes that aren't guaranteed to be backwards compatible like the Windows platform provides with the sheer number of distributions of Linux you would have to support to make it worthwhile, and then consider that all this effort just to support one platform might translate to an extra 5% sales and you have your reason why game companies don't develop for Linux.

Linux is a great platform to develop for; it's a terrible platform to support. This is what's holding Linux back from becoming truly mainstream. It has nothing to do with features or hardware support or useability. If a company can't reasonably develop and SUPPORT their applications for a platform and expect a reasonable amount of sales while doing so then it's not worth doing it when you can simply focus on another platform (Windows) that is much easier to support and maintain and hits 90% of your whole market in the first place.

Re:HOTU?

[Simon80]

don't give up if wikipedia doesn't work.. GIYF

Re:Cedega 4 was cooler

[fimbulvetr]

I'm on ubuntu. I downloaded the deb. Double clicked the deb. Typed my sudo password. Waited a few moments. Got the install screen. Clicked yes, next and ok. Boom! It's in my applications menu.

Wine works better for me.

[Ash-Fox]

The funny thing is... Cedega doesn't run half of the games I run under normal Wine.

Re:Wine works better for me.

[Ash-Fox]

have an issue with Zoo Tycoon right now, not recognizing the CD.

You might want to report that on Wine HQ's AppDB. Sometimes someone does go out of their way to test issues and may post a workaround, or even contribute a patch that would solve your problem.

Re:Not practical or profitable to develop for Linu

[NullProg]

I'm not picking a fight, but I have a couple of issues with your post. First, I spent over $500US in the last seven months on Linux games. I think this is profitable for someone. When Win95 came out there was a transition. People didn't rush out to buy native Win95 versions of thier DOS games.

There are too many Linux distributions, none of which have a big enough of the Linux market to be considered the de facto standard Linux distribution to develop for and build a customer service department to support.
I bought just about every port that Loki did and I didn't have any problems playing them on on any >= 2.4 kernal version SuSE, RedHat or Ubuntu. Instead of a customer service department, how about a good technical support forum? The Linux Standards Base is your friend.


Finally, once you manage to get things working on a couple distributions, a new release comes out that invalidates your existing application. And in another 6 months another release of Linux is going to come out and invalidate your work again. A developer has a hard time keeping his game working under one distribution from one version to the next. Now multiply that by 10-20 for the most popular Linux platforms each releasing new versions every 6 months.
See above. All my Loki games have worked since SuSE 6.4/RedHat 7.0. As a user space game programmer why should you care about kernal changes. Just code to SDL/OpenGL (Both are backwards compatible).

Game applications are the most strenous and sensitive to the capabilities of the platform. Windows is pretty standard with DirectX. On Linux you don't know what's going to work; the very philosophy of choice with Linux translates to everyone's machine is just different enough in a way that makes developing a game for Linux a real frustration.
Thats nonsense. Code for the lowest good versions of SDL and OpenGL. You will be suprised on how many different distributions of Linux it will run on.

Shipping source code to your customers and expecting them to build it every time they upgrade their machine or switch distributions isn't a solution.
I have purchased over 20 commercial Linux games, none came with source. Are you trolling? You have never purchased/installed a native Linux game yet your an authority on shipping source with a Linux game? I call bullshit.

I buy my Linux games from here: http://www.tuxgames.com/ (No I'm not affilated with the site).
Check out the loki games from here, http://liflg.org/, pay special attention on how the installer works. You can get the installer sources for free from here: http://www.lokigames.com/development/setup.php3

As a Windows developer, you can always code your game/application to work with wine. http://www.winehq.com/ It seems to work OK for Google http://earth.google.com/earth4.html.

Your post does disgrace Interplay, SirTech, MindScape, SSI, Origin and many other great gaming companies from the 80s/90s that did (Intel/Non-Intel CPUs/OSs) cross-platform games.

Enjoy.

Re:Sorry

[AlgorithMan]

you didn't understand the whole point in wine/winex/cedega... it is not that it uses directX dlls (which might not work outside of vista) but brings its own directX by mapping the api calls to openGL,ALSA whatever calls...
if UT2007 uses directX 10 functions which would be unavailiable in winXP (since XP won't get DX10) this doesn't mean that the wine and cedega programmers can't map the new DX10 calls to linux-system-calls

cedega stems from wine and WINE-IS-NOT-AN-EMULATOR... its an api-compatibility layer

what about tremulous?

[kevlarman]

you forgot a really big one in your list of open source games: tremulous (http://tremulous.sourceforge.net). it is based on the GPL'ed Quake3 engine and the data is released under a creative commons license. and while i'm listing stuff based on quake3, i think Wolfenstien: Enemy territory deserves a mention, it's a great game, and it's free as in beer.

Gamers for Linux = Check it out!!!!

[Shadowfire3000]

If your a linux gamer, it's time you spoke up and let the developers and publishes know you are looking for companies support of native linux games. Once they figure out that there is realestate on the linux desktop they will start testing the waters. Check out the patetion you can sign to speak out and let them know you want games! http://www.gamersforlinux.com/index.php

Putting linux gaming into a real perspective

[syndicationucsc]

I think this skit correctly sums of linux gaming of what we will see for ages to come. http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/gaming_wmv.php

Re:Um.. PC games at all are dying

[kiddygrinder]

"US retailers sold $10.5 billion of gaming hardware, software, and accessories"

"2005 saw PC-game revenue slide from 1.1 billion in 2004 to just $953 million"

source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6142571.html

so it's under %10 in north america including console but not PC hardware, i'd say it's a bit more than .05%, no matter where you shop.

You are right that the linux gaming market is not worthwhile however, who uses linux for games? The most intelligent thing these companies could do is drop a bundle of cash on the cedega crew to get some better support via cedega, then include a 3 month subscription to cedega with the game itself. This would make the whole thing cost them bugger all and they could look like good guys in the process.

Cedega's all you'll get for new games on Linux

[pandrijeczko]

I really do not see there being any increase in games companies making native Linux games.

For starters, even if you suggested that 10% of computer users in the world are using Linux currently (possibly side-by-side with Windows), then that community of users is made up of many different distros and many different types of people - it's dangerous to assume that all of that 10% actually want or care about commercial games on Linux.

Although I'm a relatively avid gamer and a user of Linux far more than Windows, I personally am not that interested in any commercial software on Linux. I'm a Gentoo Linux user, I enjoy tweaking and optimising my systems and I'm more than happy to compile source code to run as best as it can on those machines whether it's a game or application. I'm just not prepared to take someone else's closed-source pre-compiled executable and trust it on my Linux machines, especially when I update the machines a lot and will end up breaking those same executables quite quickly due to dependency issues. Besides which, I don't want to "pollute" my nice Open Source-based operating system with closed source software and I think a lot of the core Linux user community thinks entirely the same way.

Yes, I'd like to see more games on Linux but I'd rather see games companies releasing source code to older games (like ID and the early Quakes) at which point I'm happy to go buy the Windows version of the CD in order to get hold of the games data files and levels.

I've no problem with commercial software or Windows and probably buy a game a month to run on my Windows XP machine. But I've no "passion" for Windows XP - as long as it does what it's supposed to do, I really don't care to know how or why it does it.

However, my Linux machines are *mine*, I decide what and how software gets installed on them, no argument - again, a lot of Linux users feel entirely the same way.

Therefore, it's safe to conclude that the community of people who want commercial games on Linux is a very small minority, to the point where it just isn't ecomonically viable for games companies to port the games across. Sure, I'd *like* to see it happen for those people because Linux is about "having it your way" but I personally wouldn't buy any closed source Linux software.

Screencasts to easily setup Cedega on Suse Linux

[ianOz]

We have two screencasts (swf) which show how to setup and test Cedega for Suse Linux. These were contributed by Bruce Cadieux of ItsYourPC.org. It all looks rather straight-forward, but I haven't tried it myself...maybe these help with the 'plug and pray' comment in the original article?

TransGaming Response

[gavriels]

While this article is informative and the author has shared his views, some of the information provided is simply not correct. We at TransGaming would like our say on a few points.

In response to the comments on TransGaming's contributions to the Wine project, we began development of Cedega while Wine was still under a BSD-style license which fully allows the creation of proprietary derivatives. During the time before the Wine license was changed to the LGPL we contributed dozens of patches to the Wine project including key infrastructure for DirectDraw, DirectSound and DirectInput. The LGPL change made it more difficult for us to work closely with the WineHQ community, but nevertheless we continued to contribute code in areas such as DirectSound, OLE, COM, DCOM, the Wine IDL compiler, a 2D DIB rasterizer, and the WinInet APIs. We also made proposals for improving Wine performance through the use of a prototype shared memory WineServer. Those wishing to view our contributions can easily find them in a simple search of the wine-patches archives:

  http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=wine-patches&w=2&r =3&s=transgaming&q=b

We continue to work with the Wine project, with Cedega incorporating several of the WineHQ DLLs under the LGPL license. Full source code to these DLLs is of course available from our website. We're also thinking carefully about how we can cooperate further in the future.

On the topic of ease of installation and use of Cedega, the TransGaming team has taken huge strides recently to make Linux gaming much easier. With the inclusion of the Game Disc Database (GDDB) using Cedega has never been easier. Simply insert a supported title in the drive and Cedega will detect the disc and use the optimal settings for both installation and game play. No more messing or tweaking with settings.

Is Cedega hurting Linux gaming development? This topic is hotly debated by armchair quarterbacks, however, as Linux gaming is our business, we have some pretty in-depth and intimate knowledge here. We have been talking to game publishers and developers for years and the fact is that most game publishers prefer to stick to the markets that they know and understand - standard console and PC projects. Working on other platforms would require not only a direct investment of resources, but also means fewer resources directed to traditional console or PC projects that the publishers already know how to make money on.

TransGaming works very hard to show publishers that exactly the opposite is true - that a vibrant gaming culture exists on Linux.
Unfortunately, the misconception that all Linux users believe that software should be free-as-in-beer makes many of the decision makers feel that even if they were to produce a Linux game it would simply be pirated rather than purchased. Fear of wide scale piracy plays a significant role in preventing quality commercial games from transitioning to Linux.

TransGaming is still pushing to prove the value of the Linux market and will continue to do so at every opportunity. Meanwhile we will continue our work to improve Cedega, to provide better support for more titles and to give customers the ability to play their favorite games on the platform of their choice.

Take care,
  -Gav