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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?"
.nosig
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
Dual booting is okay for games, but how about when you want to play music in the background? And all of your music is on your ext3, Reiser, or XFS file system? How is the read/write support from windows back to linux? I think there have been advances on read/writing NTFS from linux, but how about the other way around?
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)
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.
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...
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I leave the answer as an exercise for the reader.
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
It really drives me mad when slashdot refuses to post articles about the last 3 games we released, despite at least 30 or 40 people (that I know of) sending in messages about it, and then go criticise the state of Linux games. If they did their bit maybe our company would be in a better position to get the licenses for more games.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
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.
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 used to also get frustrated that I couldn't play
any of the windows games on my Linux box and that
none (or nearly none) of the game makers would port
their games to Linux. It took me a long time to realize
what the problem was:
Simply put, the game makers can't keep up with the pace
of Linux. Let me try to explain what I mean. Take a look
for example at how many Linux distros there are out there:
something like 300 now or so based on distrowatch.org.
And some of those distros run on different hardware platforms
than just x86.
On top of that, not every Linux distro has the same versions
of the same libraries at the same time with the same patches
and compilation options.
There is no way that the proprietary software makers can
keep up. That's why Oracle only supports RedHat Linux and
only for certain versions. This is why Adobe's effort to
provide 1 flash plugin (version 9) for _all_ Linux distros
by doing some funky static compiling is at best misguided
and at worst massively brain damaged and stupid because it
won't work for any platform except for x86.
It's no wonder that the game makers prefer writing to windows:
It's not just that windows has 90% market share -- what kind of
profit oriented businessman would say: I could make 10% more
profit with a little bit more work --- but screw that, 90% is
good enough at most! And that's assuming they _could_ get massive
penetration when realistically all they could expect is at most
10% of the windows population.
The genius of Microsoft Windows is _not_ that it's ubiquitous.
The genius of Microsoft Windows is that it's stably obsolete ---
it's glacial in its pace of development. Five freakin' years of
the _same_ libraries! My God, that's hog heaven for proprietary
software makers!
Contrast that with the Linux world, where 6 months is a lifetime.
If you're software is older than 6 months, it's already obsolete
and might as well be dead. The only kind of software that could
survive that kind of testosterone laced Darwinian death-to-the-weak
Jungle is open sourced software, and only in the case that the
Linux distros maintain the downstreams versions of the software
package to guarantee it will work. So, it's no surprise to see
that the only (popular) games that run on Linux natively are
open source games: Tuxracer, frozen bubbles, gcompris, bzflag,
cube, nethack and all its variants, blob wars, etc.
The only counterexamples that come to my mind are:
Enemy Territory. Are there any others?
--Johnny doesn't use proprietary software if he can help it.
OpenGL != DirectX.
OpenGL is close to what Direct3d offers, but Direct3d is offering a LOT more than OpenGL currently can. Even the latest additions to OpenGL do not bring it to what Direct3d 9.0, let alone 10.0 offer
Now if you want to include the fact that the DirectX suite has a tonne more functionality than just Direct3D, like DirectSound, DirectPlay, DirectInput, DirectDraw, there is no way in heck that OpenGL can compete with it. DirectX is exactly why developers have made the move to it (including Carmack), you don't have to worry about all those things like sound drivers and engines, network stack plug-ins and the like.
Compare Direct3d to OpenGL all you want, but before attempting to FUD, at least know your facts.
Until Linux offers a similar all in one API for game programming, and until Linux users actually go out and pay for the software (read about Carmack's tracking of Linux SKU's for Quake sales), then there is no way in hell any developer interested in making money is going to focus the time and resource to make a portable game, espeically for the Linux platform.
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.
And you know what? They're probably wasting their time. The people who are interested in indie games are going to be gaming hobbiests who are gonna have a closet full of consoles and a Windows machine. There's the techie/computer nerd crossover, but even the majority of that crowd doesn't use linux.
Gaming on Linux sucks because users need a reason to switch to Linux first to make it a viable platform. OSX is a success and it still sucks for gaming, why should Linux be any better? "Because it's free and open source and you should support open source" isn't really an answer...
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Huh, what do you mean no games?! There are plenty of them:
1. Extreme Man Page Reading
2. Obscure error puzzle palace
3. Mega Nmap Death Ping
4. Ksolitaire
5. sudo
6. IRC
7. Learning Emacs
I could go on and on!
Ok, let's close the sarcasm tag for now. This is not news. How did it get to the front page? It has been obvious for years.
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
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.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
We see this type of comment all the time. A few problems:
1. Drivers. You have to include drivers for all the hardware that your game needs (graphics, sound, network, input devices), including future devices in these categories. I've heard some interesting ideas for ways around this. They're interesting, but lead to a complicated and lengthy install process. You need to get your OS to boot on everyone's crazy hardware configurations.
2. Networking and patching. If you're making a network enabled game you're asking people to put their computers on a network (likely even the Internet) with an OS that can't be updated without spinning another DVD. There will be security holes found in the OS. Lots of people running the exact same unpatched OS version will be playing these games. Just because the OS installation on the CD/DVD can't be modified, it leaves open an attack vector to data on the hard drive. Game manufacturers like the ability to easily patch their games for bugs, anti-hacking techniques, and other random things. Argue all you want that they should get it right the first time, they wouldn't want to give that up.
3. Rebooting. People don't like rebooting. It takes a long time. They have to disconnect from IM programs, they have to turn off their music players, etc. They lose their software stack and configuration info (think configurable input devices that require userland apps for configuration). Configuration that would be shared between multiple games must be redone for every game you buy. It's more difficult for people to minimize the game and post the video of their latest frag to their website.
4. Licensing. What OS would game developers use for this? Windows or some similar variant. The driver support and developer tools are there for Windows, and most PCs sold today have undergone QA on Windows. Paying the licensing costs would drive up the price of the game.
And what is gained? The day-to-day experience (that is, the experience outside of patching and installation) for Linux/Mac users would be the same as now: a reboot into an OS they use mostly for gaming; in fact, since a real Windows installation would be more useful than the game OS the experience would really be slightly worse. The day-to-day experience for Windows users would be much worse: two reboots to go from regular use to game and back. Reboots between different 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.