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Cedega and Linux Games

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jul 31, 2006 05:41 PM
from the pay-and-pray-gaming dept.
Software PC Games (Games) Linux
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.
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  • No games? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Short Circuit (52384) * <mikemol@gmail.com> on Monday July 31 2006, @05:42PM (#15821231) Homepage Journal
    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 [bioware.com] 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 [icculus.org], Cube [cubeengine.com], Duke Nukem 3d [icculus.org] (engine, anyway. You'll still need the gamedata.

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

    • Re:No games? (Score:4, Informative)

      by spun (1352) <loverevolutionary&yahoo,com> on Monday July 31 2006, @05:56PM (#15821309) Journal
      You missed Civilization II: Call to Power. And on the open source side, try Wesnoth and Freeciv.

    • Re:No games? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've had my eye on this one and online it actually says it's 20 bucks [bestbuy.com].

      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? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by JeffElkins (977243) on Monday July 31 2006, @08:14PM (#15822043)
        ==
        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? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2006, @06:24PM (#15821456)


      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? (Score:5, Informative)

        by gormanly (134067) on Monday July 31 2006, @06:33PM (#15821504)
        • 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.

        • * 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...

    • Re:No games? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grumbel (592662) <grumbel@gmx.de> on Monday July 31 2006, @06:44PM (#15821570) Homepage
      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.

    • 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? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CastrTroy (595695) on Monday July 31 2006, @08:31PM (#15822131) Homepage
        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? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by G-funk (22712) <josh@gfunk007.com> on Monday July 31 2006, @09:19PM (#15822325) Homepage Journal
          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? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by labratuk (204918) on Monday July 31 2006, @11:03PM (#15822766)
          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'.
        • 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.

          Ru

  • Well duh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cyber-vandal (148830) on Monday July 31 2006, @05:45PM (#15821247) Homepage
    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?
      • 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
        • 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/ [rr.com]

          'Course, like I said, it's not friendly. At all. It's definitely not something that I'd w
  • Who really needs to play anything more than Frozen Bubble? :)

  • Is there a market? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WombatDeath (681651) on Monday July 31 2006, @05:48PM (#15821267)
    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.
    • Probably not. Loki [lokigames.com] 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? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by StormReaver (59959) on Monday July 31 2006, @07:12PM (#15821736)
        "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.
  • 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.
    • Alright, since you're a "game marketer" could you tell us how using free GL libraries and doing a two-hour recompile costs more than a DX9 SDK?
      • 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)).
        • 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 pro

    • Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nukem996 (624036) on Monday July 31 2006, @07:02PM (#15821678)
      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... (Score:3, Informative)

        by 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 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ZorbaTHut (126196) on Monday July 31 2006, @05:55PM (#15821306) Homepage
    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 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suparjerk (784861) on Monday July 31 2006, @05:57PM (#15821313)
    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.
    • 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.

      • 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

  • It really peeves me that the linux gaming scene is so underdeveloped.

    However, on the one hand I can understand. Games are arguably the most sophisticated and difficult computer programs to create.

    But on the other hand I just can't stomach the fact that I pay $2k for a nice system, but I must have windows to play my games. It's like all those FLOPS from my CPU and video card are useless unless I am beholden to the software trickery of direct-x.

    Now I hear rumors that future games will require vista for play a
    • w33t, I agree entirely. Here's a message to the Game Developers, I WILL NOT PURCHASE ANY GAMES THAT DON'T RUN NATIVELY ON LINUX!
      Of course, if I find a game in the bargain bin that runs on Win2K, I will consider it. Either way, they aren't making top dollar (pound, euro, yen, etc.) off of me.
    • But on the other hand I just can't stomach the fact that I pay $2k for a nice system, but I must have windows to play my games.

      Why do you care what OS is underneath? Your nice $2K machine came with Windows, right? And it plays all your games out of the box, right? So what's the problem? Or is this some sort of irrational religious thing?

      It's so artificial to me. I mean, I know that direct-x's APIs allow for ease of development and speedier time to market, as well as giving a simpler interface to moder
  • Could anyone give me the link to the .torrent of Cedega?

    All I can find is this [transgaming.org] pesky page.

  • Linux is a game! (Score:3, Funny)

    by corychristison (951993) on Monday July 31 2006, @06:17PM (#15821413)
    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. ;-)
  • Why not just make the original game's engine workable on all OSes,get out of this "Direct X part 2383739" bullshit and make one which every OS can use in some form. It may require a lot of work but your market would increase in the future if only because the OSS Community would support you for doing it (even if not the content).

  • think about this from the other side (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tcc3 (958644) on Monday July 31 2006, @06:27PM (#15821475)
    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 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sinewalker (686056) on Monday July 31 2006, @07:48PM (#15821918) Homepage
        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.
  • 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.
    • 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/ [tuxgames.com] (No I'm not affilated with the site).
      Check out the loki games from here, http://liflg.org/ [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 [lokigames.com]

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

      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.

  • Wine works better for me. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ash-Fox (726320) on Monday July 31 2006, @07:21PM (#15821788) Homepage
    The funny thing is... Cedega doesn't run half of the games I run under normal Wine.
      • have an issue with Zoo Tycoon right now, not recognizing the CD.
        You might want to report that on Wine HQ's AppDB [winehq.org]. 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.

  • Cedega's all you'll get for new games on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pandrijeczko (588093) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @04:32AM (#15823677)
    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 (Score:3, Informative)

    by ianOz (988378) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @06:19AM (#15823957) Homepage
    We have two screencasts [showmedo.com] (swf) which show how to setup and test Cedega for Suse Linux. These were contributed by Bruce Cadieux of ItsYourPC.org [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 (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gavriels (55831) on Tuesday August 01 2006, @12:29PM (#15826056) Homepage
    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 [theaimsgroup.com]

    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

    • Re:Cedega is produced by scum (Score:5, Insightful)

      by madcow_bg (969477) on Monday July 31 2006, @06:20PM (#15821437)
      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?

      • Re:Cedega is produced by scum (Score:5, Informative)

        by Mad Merlin (837387) on Monday July 31 2006, @06:40PM (#15821547) Homepage
        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.

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