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Why Gaming Sucks On Linux
lseltzer writes "Efforts have been made to improve the situation, but things have actually gotten worse for gaming on Linux rather than better. If you're a gamer you're just plain better off running Windows and dual-booting (or VMing) between the two operating systems than hoping your games will run in Cedega or some such product." From the article: "So where does all of this leave Linux gamers? One word: Windows. Yep, you read that right. If you're a gamer, do yourself a favor and just buy a copy of Windows and set up a dual-boot system. Why bother to torture yourself with the headaches presented by Linux gaming? Why should you continually not have the games you want to play? Why settle for half-assed solutions that might or might not run the games you crave so desperately?"
Why Gaming Sucks On Linux
By Jim Lynch
Despite last week's article about running World of Warcraft on Linux with CodeWeavers' CrossOver, I can't help but feel a sense of despair when I think of gaming under Linux. It seems that over the last few years, with a few exceptions, things have gotten worse rather than better. Frankly, I've had it with gaming under Linux. It's not worth the time or the effort.
The Tragedy of Loki
You might remember that a while back a company named Loki Games tried to make a business out of porting Windows games to Linux. Loki had an ambitious idea and did deliver some good games for Linux. But could it pull it off? Could Loki show that there was a real market for games under Linux?
Well Loki sure did have some significant achievements. Here's a list of the games that Loki released:
Civilization: Call to Power
Descent 3
Deus Ex
Heavy Gear 2
Heavy Metal: FAKK@
Heretic 2
Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Kohan: Immortals Sovereigns
MindRover
Myth 2: Soulblighter
Postal Plus
Railroad Tycoon 2
Rune
Sid Meier's Alpha Centaur
Simcity 3000 Unlimited
Soldier of Fortune
Tribes 2
Unreal Tournament
As you can see, Loki offered a good selection of games (yes the games listed are old, but Loki has been out of business since early in 2002, so it's understandable that its product list is dated). And some of those games--back in their day--were considered top of the line and were wanted by lots of Linux gamers.
Alas, Loki was never able to make the numbers work and ultimately went out of business as a result. For Linux gamers, the death of Loki was a true tragedy. After that, who would want to ever bother making Linux versions of the latest and greatest games? As it turned out . . . nobody. And nobody will probably bother again . . . ever.
So where does the death of Loki leave us?
CrossOver Linux: The Few, the Proud...
As I noted in last week's review of CrossOver Linux, that program did a very nice job getting World of Warcraft to install and play under Linux. It ran well, and I'd recommend it to any desperate Linux player who wants to try World of Warcraft, right now CrossOver Linux is simply the best way to play World of Warcraft under Linux, period.
WOW and KDE
TransGaming: A Beautiful Promise...and a Bitter Disappointment
Now I can hear some of you immediately beginning to think "But wait: What about TransGaming's Cedega, Jim? Isn't that the solution for Linux gamers?" Well my own recent experience playing with TransGaming has left a bad taste in my mouth. So bad that I decided to can a review I was writing of the product, as I felt it simply wasn't worth spending any more time on. While I was able to get Call of Duty to run, I was unable to get World of Warcraft and some other games even to install, let alone actually run.
The fact that World of Warcraft gave me an error message and then refused to accept the second install CD just irritated the hell out of me. WoW has been out for ages now, it's not a new game. What is the point of TransGaming if it can't easily and quickly install something as common as WoW? CrossOver Linux did a fine job of handling WoW, so there is no excuse for TransGaming's Cedega product not to also handle it with ease and comfort.
I was also dissatisfied with the installation of Cedega itself. Installing it under a regular distribution was an irritating headache. Fortunately I had a copy of Mandriva 2007 with Cedega bundled. Even then though, installation of certain games didn't work properly.
TransGaming's Cedega download page itself is a mess. It should more easily guide customers to the proper version of Cedega for their distribution. Right now it's a disorganized list of files, and I think it should be cleaned up.
In general TransGaming needs to start focusing on the quality of experience that Linux gamers get from their products and not on mass quantity of games. Make the Cedega product easy to install, configure and us
Oh it's not that bad I don't think... yeah if your a gamer run Windows, but Linux is hardly the lost cause this summary makes it out to be. The only game I play right now that I need Windows for is FFXI. In Linux I play Civ4, WoW, UT'04 without problems (Civ4 does crash time to time, but it does in Windows too). I'm actually impressed with how far it's gotten over the years. Long way to go, but keep up the good work the guys at Wine and Cedega (yes I bought Cedega, and yes I got my moneys worth outa it in my opinion)
I leave the answer as an exercise for the reader.
Is as bland as top 40 chart music. I play games on linux, gleaned from http://www.happypenguin.org/. Sure, they're more raw than a commercial game, like a track from an unsigned band's blog is raw. But they're _more fun_ and have more integrity in the little finger of their blender-drawn blobby characters than 1000 gory commercial FPSes.
I recently spent 3 months with Ubuntu (6.06 LTS) after moving from Win XP Pro. I use the PC primarily for gaming, but took the Linux plunge when a trojan forced a reinstall of Windows (Side note,the trojan was my own fault as I ran an exe intentionally when I figured the risk was worth the potential reward). Using Cedega, I was able to play WoW, SWG, HL2, Guild Wars, and others. However, while these games were able to run, they didn't run well, and didn't come close to the performance in Windows. Obviously, they shouldn't perform as well as in their native OS, but it's worth noting that while they work, they don't work well (WoW being the exception, due to it's use of OpenGL most likely). I spent hours upon hours getting games to work, rather than actually playing them. And if a game had been released in the past 6 months, you may as well forget about it. By the time most games get around to being playable with WINE/Cedega, they're in the bargain bin at retail stores. So, I went back to Windows. As much as I'd love to leave MS behind, it's just not practical. I'll be getting a Wii also, and have a 360 that I won, but I still prefer a PC to a console and until developers start porting their games to Linux, I'll be stuck with Win.
This is utter rubbish. Our company has plenty of experience porting from Direct3D to OpenGL.
It isnt just possible, it has happened - frequently.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
http://linuxgamepublishing.com/
LGP has stepped in to fill the void that Loki left. In fact, they've already outlasted Loki and still appear to be pushing on, and several of their games are excellent.
The author misses a few critical points when he looks at Linux games. First, many companies are porting in-house rather than having a third party do the work. Often, these binaries are downloadable from the companies website rather than shipping them on the CD (Quake 3, Neverwinter Nights, Darwinia, etc.). Also - Sometimes things take time. I wouldn't say that Linux gaming is "worse", but is perhaps "different" than it was when Loki was around. Companies are being cautious. Take a look at the slew of high-cost Activision games that Loki managed to score, only to run themselves into the ground. Think that there is perhaps a reason for their fall?
I don't believe that WINE is an appropriate alternative to having a dedicated Windows gaming system. But for those that casually game on Linux, or play more console games than Linux games, we can still find many excellent Linux games available without resorting to using WINE. I feel that the author's turn from discussing Loki ports to using WINE for gaming on Linux misses the bigger picture... Because it simply details his bad experience with using WINE for serious gaming. *NOT ONCE* was a modern native Linux game mentioned, and there are several games that are (in my opinion) MUCH BETTER than many of the Loki offerings. So, basically his gripe is about being unable to play Call of Duty on Linux. Good job on summing up how well a compatibility layer works instead of talking about real Linux games.
I must confess... It really pisses me off when I post announcements about legitimate Linux games from LGP and other companies, and Slashdot mods neglect to inform the community by rejecting the article, further perpetuating the cycle of "sucky Linux gaming" because people are ignorant of the games that *ARE* out there... Yet, crap like this ExtremeTech article manges to get front-page news. Good job mods!
That said, it's my understanding that LGP has a few AAA games coming up that will knock our socks off. Will they be ignored by the Slashdot crew like the last few great games were? I sure as hell hope not, because I'm sick of reading articles like this. IF YOU WANT MORE GAMES ON LINUX, STOP BEING LIKE THIS EXTREMETECH GUY AND BUY LINUX GAMES INSTEAD OF RESORTING TO WINE AND BITCHING ABOUT HOW IT DOESN'T WORK!
I did submit an article to Slashdot about the release of a game not long ago by LGP, and as Michael says, indeed, they refused to post it. I guess bitching about the situation is more fun than supporting the only real company trying to make a difference.
Majesty Gold
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Creatures Internet Edition
Doom 3
Unreal Tournament 2003
Candy Cruncher
Uplink
Medal of Honor: Allied Assault
Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
Hyperspace Delivery Boy
NingPo MahJong
Soul Ride
Savage: The Battle for Newerth
Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark
Dominions II: The Ascension Wars
Gorky 17
Software Tycoon
Unreal Tournament 2004
Northland
Postal 2: Share the Pain
Darwinia
Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood
X2: The Threat
Quake IV
Tribal Trouble
Airline Tycoon Deluxe
Cold War
Dominions 3: The Awakening
A lot of these games may be older, but not all of them, and most of them are top notch and FUN games. Go try some, and enjoy them! Natively, no need for emulators, or rebooting. Now if you can tell me that there is no way to play games on Linux, I think I'll have to just disagree.
Right now we are working on a number of deals for some games that will be far better than anything Loki managed to publish. Of course when we do, I am sure slashdot will ignore the release announcements and continue to report on the death of Linux gaming.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
For those who have this problem:
/cdrom" step? That means bash is in the CDROM's directory. That means bash is "using" the CDROM.
/cdrom/Setup.exe. Unless you have a system that has an automounter that keeps "using" the CDROM (and sadly, this is pretty common these days), you can easily unmount the CDROM now that it's not being "used."
See your "cd
Instead, do cd ~, cedega
Anonymous = no karma whore. Laters.
Enemy Territory is free (beer), but there are other examples. The best of those are Doom 3 (and its expansion, Resurection of Evil) and Quake 4. Bioware did a great job porting Neverwinter Nights for Linux as well but, unfortunately, Neverwinter Nights 2, which is made by another company and AFAIK due to be launched today won't run on Linux. Unreal-based games are also very portable (see UT and America's Army 2.5 and earlier).
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
> Maybe if LGP didn't sell a game for £20.00, then sell an UPDATE for £3.00 which actually doesn't add any
> new functionality, but merely provides support for that game from LGP and the ability to install future
> updates, people would be more receptive.
Yessss and if you had RESEARCHED this properly you would understand. The update we sell is for the LOKI version so that to get support people dont have to pay and get a whole new game. We arent going to support the loki version because a) its not our game, we dont have the source, and b) its not our game. The update is sold so people get a supported game for LESS.
> Maybe if Tux Games didn't charge $35 more for Quake IV than Best Buy does for the Windows version, they'd
> get more sales.
We are in the UK, we have to pay a lot more for the games we buy. We actually make NO PROFIT on over half of the games we sell. We sell them at cost price.
> What do you mean by doing "their bit"? Should they keep their mouth shut about the problems they have
> running the games they want to play, yet shout from the rooftops when something actually IS released that
> supports Linux?
No but nor should they ignore any progress Linux gaming makes and criticise Linux gaming on a regular basis. Some of each would be nice.
> Should they purchase games they don't want, to generate more sales for you, which is really
> the only thing that's going to entice developers to give your company licenses for more games.
If slashdot reports on the games that are available, sales go up. Thats a fact of the slashdot effect. If we get more sales we can afford more licenses. That is the fact of licensing games. Companies that we license games from care about MONEY, and if we sell more games we license bigger games. I dont want ANYONE to buy games they dont want, but letting people know what is out there would allow people to know about them and buy them IF they want.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Pretty sad too. Both are excellent titles. Guess people are too wrapped up in making Cedega work to be playing Linux games.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
pygame is much, much easier for a newb to "just jump right in to creating games" than DX is.