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.

No games?

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?

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

Re:No games?

==
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?

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?

• 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?

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?

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?

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?

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'.

Well duh

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?

Well...

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

Is there a market?

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?

"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...

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...

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...

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.

No games?

Last I checked, Unreal Tournament ran under linux... And so do most Infogrames games. most notable being Darwinia and Uplink. (Yes I like Uplink, cheesy as it may be) The problem isn't no games, it's that linux is a FUNCTIONAL operating system. It is meant for office use and for stable, spyware-free home connectivity. Much like Mac OS. You want awesome easy to use graphics and video editing/processing? I'd go Mac. You want a super stable server or a secure way to go online? Linux may be your answer. Windows? Easy for games. Very easy. Not many flavors of Windows really, just different layers all stacked on one another. Companies have a lot of practice making Windows games, and thats cool. But just like I don't expect or demand Windows to be secure, I do not demand Linux and Mac to be vigilant about plug and play, which many games rely on.

Eagerly awaiting

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

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.

My computer has the Hz, why do I need the MS?

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 and that newer direct-x releases will only install on vista.

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 modern video card's best features.

But the hardware is there!

why does the underlying OS matter so much when the raw hardware processing power is right there!?

Anyone?

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

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

Bah

Moon-buggy and Nethack are all I need.

Linux is a game!

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. ;-)

Write an engine for both?

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).

Plug and pray

Aren't all games, and new pieces of hardware plug and pray in windows so it doesnt seem so bad that the app for linux gaming is the same.

think about this from the other side

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

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.

What the article doesn't mention

Cedega running on Linux is nice and peachy - it installs games well, and will try and configure its WINE/transgaming layer to run the game as well as possible. However, you can forget playing a lot of games if you have an ATI graphics card. I know a lot of folk on here frequently espouse how bad driver support for ATI cards on Linux is, but you would still expect to be able to at least play some of the more popular games. I couldn't get Halflife 2 (well, any source games) to work after a fair amount of trying, and Battlefield 2 will plain not work with any ATI card (so the Cedega release notes say).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to deride Cedega for what are clearly ATI's shortcomings. It is, however, fairly disappointing to have a theoretically decent graphics card that can't be used for gaming on Linux. TFA would do well to include such a note for ATI card users contemplating a Cedega subscription -- I'd certainly have given it more careful consideration.

Now, if we could convince ATI and nVIDIA to release specs for their cards, while convincing more games companies to release a native Linux client, I'd be very happy. And I'd bet that a significant number of gamers would switch to Linux (any takers?). We'll see what happens when Vista-only DX10 comes along...

The problem is.

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.

Not good enough. Not even close!

I tried it last year, and the results were very hit-and-miss; GTA III would play (kinda), but Sims 2 wouldn't.
Really, at the end of the day it boils down to one simple princible: Use a desktop OS (windows) for desktop tasks (games), use a server os (Solaris) for server tasks.

Don't try to make a purse out of a pigs' ear, you'll just end up with a messy cludge like Cedega.

Bad for gaming on linux?

These types of compatability layers don't really help developers to port their applications to Linux, but they remove a significant amount of the incentive to do so, as there will be less demand for a linux port when the game can be run (at least on some machines) through the compatability layer.

I expect that effect this may kill, or at least stifle the development of mainstream games on Macintel.

Just play savage

http://savage2.s2games.com/ [s2games.com] -- linux client at launch, absolute best game there is. What more could you want?

Not practical or profitable to develop for Linux

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:Not practical or profitable to develop for Linu

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'