Does WineX have a future?

[preacher]

WineX is great in theory for linux users. It bridges the gap between linux and windows pc's by bringing great Windows games to linux. However from my own personal experience, I have experienced performance that was so poor on some games that they were practically unplayable on my moderate game machine. The game that stands out in particular is battlefield 1942, which was only playable on my pc at 640x480x16 with all detail settings at minimum. My pc is a 2.2 ghz Celeron with 512mb ram, and a GeforceFX 5200 video card. I constantly am at over 100 fps on rtcw, yet that is a native linux game. Sim City 4 for windows, which has higher system requirements, plays smoother, however it is not a game that demands high frame rates.

Simply put unless transgaming can get at least 90% of the performance of the windows version of a game, I dont think it will be worth continuing. Another game that runs great is Warcraft 3. It has modest system requirements though. I cant stand dog slow framerates. I am a gamer still, however I truly am concerned about not being able to play Half-Life 2, or any one of the other DirectX 9 games.

[Calum]

it would be better to just put the effort into getting companies to release linux/freebsd etc versions of their games, or release them open source.

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
it would be better to just put the effort into getting companies to release linux/freebsd etc versions of their games, or release them open source.

No offense Calum, but I hear this same comment from many linux users. The problem is that sometimes it is difficult to port a DirectX game to a system that focuses on OpenGL. Games that use OpenGL from the get go are easily ported from windows to linux, usually by creating a simple linux installer, and by the company including the linux installer on the same windows install disc, in the case of UT2003. Since much of the code has to be rewritten, then the company has to ask itself if it is worth the effort to write a port of their game just so they can get the 1% of the market that linux represents. Im all for native linux games too, but before we can get that, we need to have all games written using a single open standard.

None of this is in the immediate future anyway, and simply put I am not going to give up linux, just so I can play games, so I need games on linux, and I need them now. Not in some "could be" future where all games are ported to linux. The best way for me to get games for linux now is WineX. Unfortunately it is lacking in some ways.

[Calum]

quote:Originally posted by ThePreacher:
No offense Calum, but I hear this same comment from many linux users.

why would i be offended? this is not an insult. i am a linux user.

quote:the company has to ask itself if it is worth the effort to write a port of their game just so they can get the 1% of the market that linux represents.

it's more than 1% and it is a rising figure. the percentage of windows users is falling. i see no reason for this trend not to continue.
N

quote:one of this is in the immediate future anyway, and simply put I am not going to give up linux, just so I can play games, so I need games on linux, and I need them now. Not in some "could be" future where all games are ported to linux. The best way for me to get games for linux now is WineX. Unfortunately it is lacking in some ways.

mswindows lacks in at least as many ways. linux can play shitloads of games, but i agree not enough for a "hardcore" gamer (ie one with a specific standard of gameage and particular requirements for certain titles) it's enough for me but my favourite games are all megadrive and snes ones, i can easily use emulators. it's a whole different world.

anyway, you choose to use windows, your choice. i don't see how you can realistically say wineX isn't up to scratch when it is at least partially emulating this part of the OS which you were just saying is really difficult to port to linux.

anyway, i'm not up for an argument i just get a little tired of the "linux software is not perfect so it's not good enough, now i am going back to windows" stuff that i often hear.

[hm_murdock]

It took us about 6 months to get Unreal Tourney 2k3 on the Mac. We don't even have the game publishers doing it. There's a 3rd party company, Aspyr that ports the games because the publishers are too cheap and lazy to do it themselves.

It's easier to write software for OS X than it is for Windows, but they still write for Windows first.

It's not about the quality of the OS, but their shitty business ideals

[Faust]

WineX can theoretically run Windows games at full frame rates - in fact NORMAL Wine runs counterstrike on my PC faster than in Windows because my OS isn't wasting so much of my resources.  Zombie keeps saying "it's ok that Windows needs so much RAM, I have more than that" but the point is if I spend X dollars on new hardware, I want that X dollars to be going towards my programs, not my OS.

Calum, no offense but I disagree that it would be better to spend the time on native ports.  One, game design is supposed to be very non portable - these are hardly OS's so it's just "make it run then shove it out" then repeat.  So native ports wont be done until *nix systems have a signifcantly larger market share.  However getting that share would be a lot easier with some more programs from Windows running on Linux.  Yes, you and me both know that a Free program is usually a better one (except unfortunately for lots of games at the moment), but some people are stuck into a proprietary program, or cant adapt to a Free solution because they are stuck in their way of thinking.  Wine lets Linux close that loop so that while people still use their non free programs, they at least use it on a Free base and so are moving "closer towards" the final stages of freedom.  RMS puts it quite well, to paraphrase :
"having people move towards freedom is good, provided they dont accept that as the final stage."  I think he was talking about using the phrase "GNU/Linux" to remind people that Freedom is the final goal given that a lot of companies now are putting non free software on "Linux" and lots of people who dont know about GNU and Free Software are accepting "just using Linux" as the final stage.  Wine lets some people (even if they are "but this non free program is the best I cant stop using it!" people.) move towards the ideas of freedom, and that cant be a bad thing.

Re: UT2003, Does Mac OSX have a Linux binary compatibility feature?  The BSD's do, so it shouldn't be hard to port to MacOSX with it's BSD base, and considering Linux seems to be getting a lot of new FPS games (like ut2003) it would be a cool way of each OS helping each other out.

How is Wine support for OS X anyway?  If it's bad that could be a good area to focus on for some Mac development companies.

[Stryker]

quote:Originally posted by ThePreacher:

The problem is that sometimes it is difficult to port a DirectX game to a system that focuses on OpenGL.

easy solution. stop making games that use directx.

[flap]

quote:"having people move towards freedom is good, provided they dont accept that as the final stage." I think he was talking about using the phrase "GNU/Linux" to remind people that Freedom is the final goal given that a lot of companies now are putting non free software on "Linux" and lots of people who dont know about GNU and Free Software are accepting "just using Linux" as the final stage.

I imagine what he was talking about there was actually the use of software like wine in running non-free software. He's suggested that wine is a good thing if it allows people to run their non-free windows software, and in fact better than the non-free programs getting ported to GNU/Linux. If people are running non-free programs under wine then the hope is that the relative inconvenience/low performance of this should inspire people to look for native, but free, alternatives.

[mobrien_12]

quote:Originally posted by Stryker:

easy solution. stop making games that use directx.

Absolutely.  Unfortunately for us, game developers for the windows platform seem to have abandoned OpenGL.    

I did a little experiment a month ago.  I went through the games shelf of a store near me.  I found only two games with 2003 copyright that had OpenGL support, and they were titles I had never heard of before.  

The only OpenGL game development I have heard of lately Doom III which still hasn't been released.

[Master of Reality]

quote:Originally posted by Stryker:


easy solution. stop making games that use directx.

ah, just get microsoft to release the directX source code  

[ September 07, 2003: Message edited by: The Master of Reality / Bob ]

[preacher]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
mswindows lacks in at least as many ways. linux can play shitloads of games, but i agree not enough for a "hardcore" gamer (ie one with a specific standard of gameage and particular requirements for certain titles) it's enough for me but my favourite games are all megadrive and snes ones, i can easily use emulators. it's a whole different world.

anyway, you choose to use windows, your choice. i don't see how you can realistically say wineX isn't up to scratch when it is at least partially emulating this part of the OS which you were just saying is really difficult to port to linux.

anyway, i'm not up for an argument i just get a little tired of the "linux software is not perfect so it's not good enough, now i am going back to windows" stuff that i often hear.

I never said anything about linux software not being good enough. You assumed thats what I meant. What Im saying is that I want games. They dont make too many new games with ports for linux. What do i do? Go back to playing dig dug and pac man and laugh at the windows users because all they have is programable vertex shaders? I dont think so. Im going to find some way to get half life 2 running on linux.

I did not say once I was going back to windows. My point was that I want them to improve wineX. I thought I made that clear by the subject title. You know what really pisses me off. You say that I choose to use windows. Where? WineX is not windows. Sim City 4 and Battlefield 1942 are not windows. Mandrake Linux 9.1 is not windows either. In fact absolutely nothing on my hard drive comes from microsoft and is microsoft windows. I choose to use linux.

[insomnia]

Their's only one future for Wine(X).
To become completely unnesessary.

PS: Wine isn't even an emulater.

[Windows_SuX_@$$]

How does wine work  ?

[insomnia]

quote:Originally posted by Windows_SuX_@$$:
How does wine work  ?

An emulater makes an app. believe that it's running natively. Wine creates an own enviroment that accepts different dll structures.

Documentation:
http://www.winehq.com/site/documentation

[solo]

Wow does no one think forwards any more or are we taking a lesson from Windows on stupidity? Please people, if DX is such a huge thing with games these days... maybe we should seperate Wine[X]'s DX implementation from Wine[X] and complete it at a Linux native system. Perhaps that would encourage DX game developers to start Linux ports...

I don't know how good or even usable Wine[X]'s DX implementation is but if it sucks I don't think it's a problem, look at some of these companies who want Linux to be big and are helping it out with Wine (transgaming, disney, etc). If they were to help create a Linux DX implementation, they would be laying the foundation for attracting the largest computer user categorization: gamers.

Just because DX isn't as good as OpenGL in our high and mighty minds doesn't mean that we shouldn't support it... however I think we should remember OS/2 with it's Windows compatibility... companies didn't bother to make OS/2 native apps because it ran Windows ones anyway.

Which brings me to an off topic idea: why doesn't IBM clean (legally) the Windows compatibility code in OS/2 and open source it...