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'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.

Multiplayer Games in the Dust

Well, the title really says it all. I've been itching to switch over to a Linux only rig for a while now. I'm tired of Windows, I'm tired of all of the problems. I'd rather spend my time playing games than diagnosing the upteen million problems I've encountered with Windows.

It's too bad that my main source of enjoyment (Multiplayer FPSes) are not readily available in Cedega.

At least, not ones that use Punkbuster, the most ubiqitious anti-cheat available on the market. Battlefield 2 certainly isn't playable (at least, 1.3 isn't), so if I want to play a Ranked game, I've got to be on Windows.

I'm keenly watching and waiting for Cedega on Linux to be a true Windows gaming replacement, but it won't happen without a major change in the marketing strategies of the linux companies.

Cedega is great, ATI still sucks

Cedega is great - I have it. ATI, however, sucks some major ass. I still can't play any of my Windows games, not because of Cedega, but because my ATI Mobility 9200, which is claimed to be supported, still won't work properly with ATI's drivers.

-Eric Kincl

Wine works better for me.

The funny thing is... Cedega doesn't run half of the games I run under normal Wine.

Just not worth the hassle.

I've almost bought Cedga a few times (you know, wallet held pensively in left hand with with the other poised apprehensiively above the mouse) but in the end I just haven't been able to make the leap.

I keep a (legitimate) Windows XP install on my desktop box for the sole purpose of playing games. Rebooting into Windows in order to play something is a hassle, sure - but not as much hassle as trying to get it to work smoothly under an emulated/reimplemented environment and trying to figure out which bugs are in the implementation and which are in the game.

Most of my gaming has moved to consoles anyway, with a few exceptions - the only thing I've played on my PC in the last several months is Dungeons & Dragons Online. I just don't want the hassle involved with PC gaming anymore. I *remember* the bad old days of DOS gaming, I was *there*. At the time being able to make boot disks to squeeze an extra couple of k of memory wasn't simply a necessary evil, but a mark of respect.

It's not as though getting Cedega to work is beyond me, either - these days I'm a unix admin with almost a decade of experience, looking after big SMP systems (from 32P to 128P) for a living. But gaming is my "fun time" - I have a wife, a family, other hobbies and professional obligations. Time spent getting a game to work is time spent not playing it.

I encourage all efforts like Cedega, and agree with those who say that efforts toward providing good tools for game developers to encourage native development are steps in the right direction.

But for me, unfortunately I've decided to wait until somebody else does the hard work. In the mean time I'll take my games in the easiest, most convenient form I can find them.

not profitable?

People say that developing for Linux is not profitable. More developers should make games setup like Unreal Tournament. Unreal Tournament contains the Windows, mac, and Linux installers on the disks that you buy. By making a game that will run on any os, you are actually vastly broadening your audience. People greatly underestimate the number of Linux and Mac users who would buy games. Thus, by providing universal support, developers are widening their audience and thus making more money because the game now appeals to more people. Developers should care if you are playing their game, not what operating system you are playing it on.

Almost worthless

Unless you're a zealot who refuses to dual boot windows for gaming, the performance will never measure up, ever. It's just about useless.

Sorry

But you're going to see games massively available for the Mac before you see them for Linux. Why? Standarized hardware. Macs have been shipping with basic Radeon cards for awhile now. Truth be told, if you're developing a next generation game, the last thing you want to worry about is supporting a low end card like a Radeon 9200 or poor driver implementations. Factor in the ease of developing for DirectX and you're basically got a no go for most games. Yes, some games like Quake or Unreal can run on Linux, but those are usually by established companies with a history of Linux gaming. However, bear in mind that DirectX 10 will be Vista only. Although Unreal Tournament 2007 will run on DirectX 9 and below, it is slated to use DirectX 10. So while UT 2007 won't require DX 10, you aren't going to get all of the graphical wowness playing on a Mac or using Linux. And this is for a game that traditionally is very Linux friendly. Also, with the XBox 360 sharing so much with PC gaming there's even more reason to use DirectX since it can be easily ported. You could port to Windows with less time, more ease, and reach more users than if you ported to Linux. So it's only to get worse folks, as DX 10 cards hit the market. Many people, including me prefer the OpenGL standards but when developers don't use it, there isn't much you can do. And they don't have a good reason to use it. Look at World of Warcraft. There's a Linux version petition going around with 20,000 signatures + a promise of a full year's worth of subscription. Out of WoW's 6 million+ pool of subscribers, twenty thousand is a completely negligible number. In terms of percentages, that's less than 0.35%. Do the math. Yeah, gaming is the last barrier for me switching over to Linux but honestly it just isn't going to happen.

Cedega is so-so

Man is this wierd. I just installed cedega a week or so ago and then today my video card blows smoke. The same day it's a story on slashdot. Probably unrelated, except using my video card at full tilt playing HL2 via cedega seems to have helped it over the edge.

Would've required an XP dual boot to play Steam games before. Cedega fixed that. Still haven't tweaked it right for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, but I think it's possible.

Cedega has a good system, paying customers can vote on the games that the development team should focus their next patch on, apparently splinter cell never garnered many votes. Mostly RPG/Strategy games, which is cool if that's your thing. So I don't quite have buyers remorse but I'm not too impressed when a game supposedly based on the unreal engine flops.

Nobody is mentioning Loki?

I bought every Linux game Loki Games [wikipedia.org] ever ported. I still play half of them quite often (under FC5). However, it seems that nobody else did, as they went belly-up and near the end of their life the games were liquidated at EBGames for $5.00/title.

It'll be a while before investors try Linux gaming as a business again, unfortunately.

CodeWeavers anyone?

As an advocate for CodeWeavers CrossOver X The newer verions are starting to be able to play windows games in linux (like world of warcraft, half life.. etc...) when 6.0 gets released from it's beta state it will be able to play these games and others as well although they may be unsupported.

Gamers for Linux = Check it out!!!!

If your a linux gamer, it's time you spoke up and let the developers and publishes know you are looking for companies support of native linux games. Once they figure out that there is realestate on the linux desktop they will start testing the waters. Check out the patetion you can sign to speak out and let them know you want games! http://www.gamersforlinux.com/index.php [gamersforlinux.com]

Eval version? Listen to customers?

My big problem with Cedega is how they don't provide a evaluation version. I have no idea if Rise of Nations will run. (The game database lists someone last trying in 2004). The only way to try the software is to buy a subscription and nowhere does it say you get a refund if it doesn't work. Emailing [e-mail] doesn't elicit a reply.

Cedega for Mac OS X - PLEASE

I want Cedega for Mac OS X. I'm tired of the crap I put up with for native Mac OS X games - buggy versions that come out six months to a year later that run at half the speed and aren't compatible over the network with the PC versions. Boot Camp is OK, but rebooting is a pain just to play some CS:S for 30 minutes.

Believe me, I'm a big Mac fanatic - but I've just given up on Mac gaming. For the casual gamers out there, it's fine... there are enough decent ports for the Mac that a casual gamer will be just fine (most of my friends play WoW for instance, which is a fantastic Mac port, as are all Blizzard games, and whatever they play that isn't WoW they don't care enough about to notice the downsides). But for those of us who are a little more hardcore it's just abysmal.

I know a lot of the Mac porting gods, and they're really good people - I don't blame them for the situation; indeed, it's amazing the games get as far as they do in six months, considering there's *maybe* two programmers working on a game with a monstrous, poorly-organized codebase that relies incredibly heavily on proprietary Microsoft technology and buggy-on-the-Mac third-party libraries. But I get the feeling they just don't have enough resources to truly finish the job. Due to rampant piracy and a terminal lack of interest from the Mac community, a 10,000 copy game is considered a hit on the Mac, and after all the licensing fees are paid to the original PC publisher and third-party library providers, the porting company is just barely breaking even.

I've supported TransGaming for years...

I must admit that I'm disappointed. Very few games run perfectly. Hell maybe none. I've never ran any that didn't have a few issues.

My support is pretty minimal; five bucks a month. So I guess I can't complain too much. I keep hoping that they'll make a break through.

I do almost everything in Linux but I keep an old Windows 2000 partition just for gaming. I also buy native Linux games when I come across them. I believe that as more and more people run Linux the gaming companies will see a profit to be made there. Especially the smart ones who use graphics libraries that are available both on Linux and Windows. Because the profit margin is so small on Linux it doesn't pay to port their games unless it's real easy and quick.

Um.. PC games at all are dying

Sadly PC games have spent the last few years on the decline, to the point that in the US it represents as low as 0.5% of sales in some stores (hence Gamestop/EB relegated PC games to a single middle of the floor display rather than a whole wall like PS2), according to the EB managers where I live in canada PC games still represent ~12% nationally (which with 3 consoles, 2 handhelds and PC's means they're holding their own). Of the total PC games market linux represents a small (probably not trivial, but small) fraction.

I think Wow supports linux natively, but otherwise what games do you want? Sports games? Not enough of the market to be worthwhile. All other MMO's? Not worth the effort. I figure each dev supports perhaps 5-10K players in most other MMO games, and I doubt one dev could do the port, and writing from the ground up for Linux useablility isn't popular, since directx is so easy (not that openGl is hard persay, but people still like DirectX). Strategy games might have a market, and I'm a bit suprised that when doing a Mac release companies don't do a windows release as well since the market share isn't that different. RPG's? Well Oblivion is a no go but since NWN how many good RPG's have there really been? And if you're going to do a 360/PC launch title its probably not worth the effort to do a linux release. Maybe the PS3 since it uses Cg and an OpenGl variant as its language, but the whole rest of the architecture is different so I wouldn't bet on it, and what % of PS2 titles come to the PC at all let alone to Linux?

The biggest weakness of PC gaming at the moment IMO is crap video cards sold in both desktops and notebooks (hint hint intel), if games won't play properly on them, people with those systems don't buy games and then the PC games market as a whole is weakened. Within the PC games market there's much better support for the hardware and development under windows (remember if your windows implementation of things don't work there is a whole team at microsoft who may help you depending). I would be interested to know what percent of games that do run under linux are actually run under linux. While linux may be 5% of the desktop market, does it represent 5% of the PC gaming market? 10%? I have no idea. If Microsoft is successful in its revival of PC gaming with vista (a dubious but hopeful claim), it probably won't help the linux market since that's just one more layer of complexity to try and change over, and the truth is that unless XNA is spectacular (and to be fair, its pretty spiffy), the hardware vendors pull their heads out of their asses, much of the PC market is going away, and we'll be left with mostly niche titles anyway, which isn't a bad thing if you like those games, but not going to inpsire anyone to write for linux any time soon.

Putting linux gaming into a real perspective

I think this skit correctly sums of linux gaming of what we will see for ages to come. http://tv.truenuff.com/mac/gaming_wmv.php [truenuff.com]

Two more reasons

While most of the arguments against writing games running under Linux as well have already been given here, I will add two more : - if people use free software, they probably are not that eager to throw fifty bucks on a game every month / week. Therefore, Linux users are even less interesting as a market. - whatever we say about DirectX, it is now much more powerful platform for games development then any combination of what OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL et consortes can offer for games developers. So in fact developping a game under Open[$insertNameHere]is much longer and tedious process, while developing using both is practically equal to developing two games at once. No wonder game companies don't want to do that. I must say that as a long time Linux user I am a little annoyed by the situation, but I see the logic behind it and don't think it will change soon. Still, what I actually can do is support the companies that try to include Linux users on their customers list and buy the games that run under Linux (UT 2004, Doom 3).

Remember...

LOKI games? The only problem with Loki games was the owner. He ran it into the ground, along with some of the devs finances as well. Actually, I believe he was under criminal indictment after Loki went belly up. The point is this. I bought several Loki games and they all worked fine. I had a couple of install problems but a quick email to the dev and a return with a couple of command flags during install and they were up and running. Likewise, after Loki went the way of the Dodo I got hooked on WINE. I had problems with WINE, but I could run some games. Then Transgaming's "WineX". For just $5/month and I had access to a specially tweaked version of wine - specifically for gaming. Well, that was a bust. Some games worked and others didn't. And all for $5/month. Fact of the matter is that I had better luck with plain old "WINE" then WineX. For some silly reason I kept contributing to Transgaming in hopes of getting a version that would run the games I wanted - never happened! I finally cancelled my so-called subscription and just spent time getting Wine running my games. Ironically I have always had better luck getting games to run under Wine then WineX/Cedega.

In all honestly perhaps they have actually improved Cedaga. I am a musician and run some fairly demanding (and expensive) software. One such program is called BFD (Big Fucking Drums) and it is actually pretty damn good - and I like to consider myself very demanding and picky in this area. The point is that one poster on the forum asked about getting BFD running on Linux (has dual binaries for Mac and Win). Well he got it up and running without any complaints on RH using Cedega - I was impressed. It was laggy but he's not running a pre-emptive kernel, which would likely solve the latency issues. But overall I really think Cedega is more hype that product overall.

Just MHO.

Virtualisation coming, so why should i care?

With new processors it'll be no problem to run windows/linux/whatever at the same time without the performance hit of e.g. vmware. So i'll just have a windows for my games (maybe the hypervisor can reboot it every 2-3 hours ... (;) and use linux for all the important stuff.

Sure it would be nicer to have the games natively for linux but what really bothered me was that i had to reboot my pc just for 10 minutes of gaming.

Cedega's all you'll get for new games on Linux

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.

wine is (getting) better...

and better. i stopped using cedega, which now comes with an all ugly point2play interface. no cli any more, at least not easily. wine (with patches) runs world of warcraft on my laptop (cedega doesnt) and warcraft 3 (better than cedega).

also: there's still open ttd, which still rocks.

Screencasts to easily setup Cedega on Suse Linux

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?

I'm a linux n00b

I just installed Kubuntu (Dapper) and I'm loving it. I want to get as far from Windows as possible (Vista looks like $@*# to me). I'm currently dual-booting (Windows XP Pro) and the only reason is because of games. I do my best to buy Linux games (Neverwinter Nights & Unreal Tournament) but I would love to see more developers making native Linux games.

Standard Gaming Platform

Having suffered WineX and now Cedega, my subscription was never able to provide gameplay for any of the games I enjoy. My list of games is not very long and for the most part they aren't too demanding, but they simply won't install or play correctly under Cedega.

It's frustrating and it means I need to keep a Windows 98 partition so I can boot and play games. There probably isn't a good fix for any of these legacy games, but going forward there is a lot that vendors could do.

Game manufacturers should agree on a platform using an application virtual machine implementation similar to Java or the Microsoft CLR. Examples of this include things like ScummVM [scummvm.org] or MAME [mame.net] -- but a true gaming system would require 3D capability and some hardware access (eg: play audio CD). For this kind of virtual platform to work, major game vendors need to band together and garner support from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

Imagine the benefit! We could play a game in our Windows PC, Macintosh, XBox or even portable GameBoy. The _same_ game. Console vendors could choose to implement features of the game machine in hardware or software, and it might even open up the market to competition from third party gaming consoles. Game makers would cut expenses by developing to a single virtual platform, and they would not need to recode popular titles to multiple platforms... they would just work.

It won't really adversely affect the console vendors, since gamers who want a console would still buy one. Console vendors will need to provide other value to help increase sales, which has already become a reality for the XBox and WMC. Users with PC's could purchase either third-party emulators or download open source implementations when the become available. There should be a reference implementation suitable for running under Windows, and other platforms can follow from that.

TransGaming Response

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

Linux could revolutionize gaming...

...and game development, if we (meaning the Linux community and gamers) really wanted it to. I have posted about this before. I wish I could start it myself, but I have too many personal projects as it is, plus I don't have the "clout" to really get this off the ground.

Basically, you build a Live CD/DVD distro that is "cut down" enough to include everything needed to run the game OS and game, providing for everything needed for playing any game developed for the system. Include on this distro a standard set of tools and libraries to develop games with which can play on the distro as well. When the distro is booted, if it is the "demo" distro, have it show a simple graphical menu to let you 1) Drop into the demo game (something simple like "Frozen Bubble"), 2) the game development system (base it on a couple of languages and libraries - Python/C, SDL/PyGame/PyOpenGL, etc), 3) install to hard drive. If it is a "game distro", have it run the game directly, but leave a way to explain and pop out of the game to the same menu, perhaps also including instructions with the game on how to do this.

The other step is critical: Provide a "reference hardware platform" for the same distribution. This could be a set of hardware specs, but ideally it would also be a device you could sell. These specs should not be the most "up-to-date", but rather specs for hardware that is "known good" to the Linux community. Include notes and other information with the download of the ISO and on the website (perhaps included in the dev environment as well) explicitly stating where to get the specs, perhaps what they are, and that there is no guarantee that the distro will run as well or at all on any hardware outside of the reference spec. Provide this spec so that others can build the hardware platforms for game playing and development (maybe they could then certify that their systems are "to spec" and get a sticker or such, or they go be "better than spec" and certify that the run properly or such).

It wouldn't prevent people from "rolling their own console" if they followed the spec, or you could sell them a "spec console" for a price, which would include the console, controllers, and distro. In a way, this could become the "Linux Console Gaming" revolution. Keeping everything open source (code and specifications), while selling reference consoles and certification agreements to those wanting to sell custom consoles based on the specification, could be a viable business. You would have to periodically re-certify hardware as it became obsolete or hard to find on the market (and as drivers were developed for it for Linux - perhaps the business could be a part of the dev effort for drivers?) - perhaps every 6 months or a year.

That's the basics - a free business idea for anyone that wants to pick it up. There are plenty of live CD/DVD distros out there to base things on. The really hard part is coming up with the specs once you have a working distro/dev environment. Once you have decided on the specs, and you have the distro, roll it out on the web and announce it here, then sit back and see what happens. If the bite is big enough, work on that reference hardware platform, and start selling it...

Steam Powered

At the end of the day, if Steam worked natively on Linux, everyone would have it installed, hence making it worth their while.

A little more linux gaming please?

I'm personally waiting for the gaming industry to openly embrace Linux. I'd switch in a heart beat if i knew i could go to a store and buy the games I want and install them on my Ubuntu distro. I just want my games, there fore i'm stuck with Windows :(

Re:Cedega is produced by scum

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

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.

Re:Forget Halo!

Hell, who needs games when you can rant on slashdot? I'm getting a truckload of entertainment on this subject alone, and I have mod points today too. Woo-hoo!

Yes, I have had a few drinks.

Re:Cedega 4 was cooler

I'm on ubuntu. I downloaded the deb. Double clicked the deb. Typed my sudo password. Waited a few moments. Got the install screen. Clicked yes, next and ok. Boom! It's in my applications menu.

Re:Counter strike

Counter strike works fine in cedega and wine. The only problem is the game gets to repetitive.

Re:Counter strike

I have played CS and then CS:Source using [WineX|Cedega] at the end of virtually every working day for nearly 4 years. FWIW I am a happy customer who continues to pay for Cedega every month so I get my fix. Without Cedega I would not be able to play CS at all.

Re:Forget Halo!

You'll probably be undermodded, but you bring up a good point. The games that are included in most Linux distributions are way better than most of the free games for Windows. People like my wife and myself, who enjoy the simple gameplay of games like tuxracer, frozen bubble, clowns, pioneers, and the like will find Linux a superior platform.

There are over 700 games included in my Linux distribution (gentoo). Of course, a lot of them are not worth a second look, at least by adults, but I still discover a gem every once in a while that I didn't even know existed.

I look forward to seeing what my daughter will like when she gets old enough. I didn't have any video games at all until I was 12, and then it was only one TRS-80 game until college. I would have done almost anything to have the selection of games that she will have.

As for the more modern games, that's why I have a TV dedicated to video editing and an Xbox.

Re:Get a Life you Jackasses!

sure - buy me a legal copy of windows...

Re:Why bother with lunix at all?

Nah ... OSX is for those smart enough to see windose is crap and too dumb to run linux.

    PenGun
  Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

Re:Cedega is produced by scum

I cancelled my subscription when it became clear that only the latest and greatest would be supported. I wish there was a way to play DX5 games (particularly TIE95), but it's not going to happen.

Since they don't make the tarballs available for a one-off price and instead insist you subscribe for a minimum of 3 months, screw em.

Re:Cedega 4 was cooler

I have it set up to run apps from the command line. It took a few moments to set it up exactly as I wanted it, but now I have apps running from either a script or an icon in a Konqueror folder rather than Point2Play. There was a short period where the command line was gone, but it's returned and I'm quite happy with 5.0 now.

Re:Cedega is produced by scum

And that's why people don't port games to linux, they don't think they'd make any money from the free software community.

Re:Cedega is produced by scum

I don't think they're scum at all. The source is still available from their own webstite [transgaming.com], all they're charging for is the support, Point2Play, access to their forums and the right to vote for what games you'd like to see supported next. I run the cvs (which I got from their website) and run it on FC5 and it didn't cost me a penny - and it's legal!