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?"

Comments

Re:Uh

[erik umenhofer]

the whole point is not "whatever". the point is people want to play games that aren't 2-3 years old. I like having new games around and playing on any *nix system was a chore.

Are you stating that all linux users should be happy with their old games? I find it very worth while to have windows installed.

OpenGL

[aralin]

It is all about OpenGL vs DirectX. As long as developers will opt for DirectX, the games are not going to be portable to Mac OS X and Linux. And if the trend ever reverses, we might have a chance. Anyway, most people just buy a game console and are done with it. But there is a ray of hope in the fact that these consoles start to use Linux and OpenGL to run/make games. So theoretically...

Re:OpenGL

[Svartalf]

Heh... You say this, but you've not a SINGLE clue on what it takes to get access to such things
as "the latest games".

Part of what destroyed Loki was they bit off more than they could chew, more than they could afford.
Each game published costs a given amount of money, typically anywhere from $10-50k for the privilege
to just simply see the code and port it. In some cases, even MORE than that (Just look at licensing
fees for the some of the hot engines out there- they can charge as much as a quarter mil...).

And then, it depends on the quality of the code as to how long it takes- not how difficult it is
to go from D3D to OGL and whatnot. Most of the problems end up being that someone took shortcuts
they shouldn't have or were so C++ happy they did something ill-advised that VC++ let them get away
with.

Michael's got some slick stuff in the pipeline- some relatively recent stuff, from what I understand,
with more on the way. Besides, all you Windows users are a fickle bunch, looking for that next fix
that never quite seems to come. You're not my market- yet... Soon enough though- one major change
of hardware in your future and you'll be begging Microsoft for another activation, and they may
insist on you paying for a new license... Heh... Either you'll pay up to Bill, you'll go console only,
go MacOS, or go Linux. In the case of the last three, your dollars makes an ecosystem that encourages
those very titles you crave for to happen for Linux.

Getting worse?

[scribblej]

I can't see how that's supported by the fucking article.

I'm not a linux gaming apologist. It sucks on Linux, I can't deny. I've not tried crossover, but I DO subscribe to Transgaming. I've only been able to get a couple of old games to run well enough to play after much tweaking. Lately I find it's easier, in fact, to get a CD crack and use regular-old-wine for most of the games I would play.

My examples are Fallout II and Planescape: Torment. Both reasonably old games. I was completely, and utterly unable to get either one to install under Cedega. Both installed, and after using CD cracks, played on regular Wine. Although it DID take considerable trying of different settings to hit on a configuration that was useable given my parameters: I wanted it to play in a Window, not take up the full screen. Both worked full-screen right off the bat.

I, personally, find the Cedega interface (point2play) to be nasty and difficult to use. But I admit they're trying very hard to make it easier -- the buit in updater/upgrader has always been nice, and the recent addition of a database of game settings for a variety of games is also nice -- although as usual none of the games *I* am interested in is on the list!

That's all I guess. I don't have any mystical insight... just my report as a user. I guess it might be interesting to some that Wine often works "better" than Cedega.

-Chris

OpenGL can't compare to COMPLETE DirectX packages

[OzPhIsH]

The thing is, is that DirectX is a complete Windows gaming development environment. Implementing sound, movies, network play, and all that other good stuff that makes up gaming is way easy via DirectX, essentially providing a good abstraction from having to deal with all those hardware issues directly. DirectX is WAY more than just Direct3D. This ease of use is just going to attract more budding devs who want to just jump right in to creating games. Why would a newb hobbiest game programmer even want to mess with getting all those pieces to work together in Linux? If you're just learning the ropes, you're probably going to use the easiest package out there to get your feet wet, which is DirectX. That experience is just going to carry over and influence decisions of said newb turns into professional game dev. In that respect, Linux really needs to get its shit together. There is no layer of unification between all these subsystems that games use that is consistant across all linux platforms, like one finds with DirectX on Windows. Has Linux finally moved onto a mature sound sub system? Using my Ubuntu DD as example, why the hell, if I'm listening to an mp3 via a media player while surfing the web and see a video on you tube I want to watch, does the sound not Just Work? I have to close the player freeing the sound resource, restart the browser, and then revisit the page. What a pain. How the hell is busted architecture supposed to support all the layers of sound and music in a game? Another contention I have is OpenGL itself. What happened? Direct3D simply has more advanced support for today's hardware capabilities. Every game I do play that has both rendering options, the Direct3D version has far superior visuals. One particular example I can recall is some transparant surfaces in FarCry. When switching to openGl, some of those surfaces lose their transparancy, turing into shiny, but opaqe surfaces. This is simply unacceptable in todays games. While I don't know if it is necessarily a result of the difference of capabilites between Direct3D and OpenGL, or simply lazy devs, it just makes you wonder.

God what a ramble.. But the unfortunate reality is that developing games for linux is a nightmare compared to windows. I want to ditch Microsoft as much as anybody. It is such a pain in the ass, the way they go out of their way, to make you go out of your way, just to get your pc to do what you want.. But what when I want to do is play a game with all the latest whiz bang features, there just isn't any other choice.