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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.
from the pay-and-pray-gaming dept.
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)
(http://shortcircuit.us/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @02:01AM)
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)
(Last Journal: Tuesday August 07, @01:18PM)
Re:No games? (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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)
We all know that Linux isn't a platform for gamers, but still there are a few games for GNU/Linux.
Re:No games? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.kibbee.ca/)
Re:No games? (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.gfunk007.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday May 27 2006, @04:33AM)
Re:No games? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
If every software company was as generous as ID then Cedega wouldn't be required now would it?
Well... (Score:2)
Is there a market? (Score:4, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.thedailyblitz.org/)
Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.thedailyblitz.org/)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
No games? (Score:1)
Eagerly awaiting (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.mandible-games.com/)
If only.
Cedega is a step in the right direction (Score:4, Insightful)
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? (Score:2)
(http://w33t.com/)
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? (Score:2, Funny)
All I can find is this [transgaming.org] pesky page.
Bah (Score:1)
Linux is a game! (Score:3, Funny)
Write an engine for both? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Sunday September 19 2004, @10:03PM)
Plug and pray (Score:1)
think about this from the other side (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:think about this from the other side (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://sinewalker.wordpress.com/)
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 (Score:2)
(http://roberthallam.com/)
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. (Score:2, Interesting)
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! (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday July 29, @04:31PM)
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? (Score:2)
(https://customer.lylix.net/aff.php?aff=006)
I expect that effect this may kill, or at least stifle the development of mainstream games on Macintel.
Just play savage (Score:1, Informative)
(http://www.langwidge.com/)
Not practical or profitable to develop for Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkblack)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 07, @10:21PM)
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 (Score:2)
(http://www.sglider.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday January 16 2007, @03:02PM)
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 (Score:1)
(http://eric.kincl.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 16 2005, @07:20PM)
-Eric Kincl
Wine works better for me. (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://scorch.quickfox.org/)
Just not worth the hassle. (Score:1)
(http://varrqnuht.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 30 2004, @11:22PM)
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? (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Monday September 18 2006, @01:00PM)
Almost worthless (Score:2)
Sorry (Score:1)
Cedega is so-so (Score:1)
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? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
It'll be a while before investors try Linux gaming as a business again, unfortunately.
CodeWeavers anyone? (Score:1, Interesting)
Gamers for Linux = Check it out!!!! (Score:2, Informative)
Eval version? Listen to customers? (Score:2)
Cedega for Mac OS X - PLEASE (Score:2)
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... (Score:2)
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 (Score:1)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
Two more reasons (Score:1)
(http://bartsnews.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 21 2006, @07:38AM)
Remember... (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday December 31 2005, @06:37PM)
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? (Score:1)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
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... (Score:1)
also: there's still open ttd, which still rocks.
Screencasts to easily setup Cedega on Suse Linux (Score:3, Informative)
(http://showmedo.com/)
I'm a linux n00b (Score:1)
Standard Gaming Platform (Score:2)
(http://www.micromux.com/)
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 (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.transgaming.com/)
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&
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... (Score:2)
(http://www.phoenixgarage.org/)
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 (Score:1)
(http://www.deizel.co.uk/)
A little more linux gaming please? (Score:1)
Re:Cedega is produced by scum (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
(http://otc.dyndns.org/game/)
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! (Score:2)
Yes, I have had a few drinks.
Re:Cedega 4 was cooler (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Counter strike (Score:2)
Re:Counter strike (Score:2)
(http://www.matthewgrove.co.uk/)
Re:Forget Halo! (Score:2)
(http://bielefeldtpapers.blogspot.com/)
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! (Score:1)
(http://www.algorithman.de/)
Re:Why bother with lunix at all? (Score:1)
(http://carnagepro.com/)
PenGun
Do What Now ???
Re:Cedega is produced by scum (Score:2)
(http://www.mangaschool.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday January 03 2006, @07:51AM)
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 (Score:2)
(http://xyzzy.dyn.dhs.org/)
Re:Cedega is produced by scum (Score:2)
(http://www.askduds.co.uk/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 05 2002, @04:37PM)
Re:Cedega is produced by scum (Score:2)