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Games Entertainment

Direct3D on Linux? 114

Posted by michael from the no-more-dual-booting dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Newsforge [?] has a story about TransGaming Technologies releasing a patch to support the Direct 3D gaming API to Linux. It sounds like this could have the potential to greatly improve gaming in Linux." We've done a story about this already, but it looks like they're starting to make progress. It would be very impressive indeed to be able to run all new-release Windows games without Windows...
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Direct3D on Linux? More

Direct3D on Linux?

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  • Okay, so I won't buy linux games anymore (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if I buy a linux game, it'll only work on a linux system
    if i buy a windows game, i can play it on windows (duh), through wine , or maybe even download linux binaries for it
    and linux games are more expensive, harder to find (atleast where i live), and usually come out later...

  • Re:It's another advantage over Micro$hit (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TransGaming Technologies

    Shit. In my hungover state I just read that as TransGender Technologies.

  • I believe that the best solution for everybody would be a change in how games are distributed. I think what people buy should actually be the game's _content_. The binaries should become free as in free beer. Then people could just download any frontend they want from the Internet, be it Windows, Linux, BeOS, whatever.

  • Re:To those "in the know": (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Let's hope not. Of the seven FPS's on my system, not one runs better under DX7 than OpenGL. Some consistently break. If HalfLife had a solid Linux port under OpenGL I'd almost never boot into Windows.

  • Re:Port new games, run old ones in WINE (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think a REAL gamer wants to play native ports rather than wobbly WINE emulations.

    Yes, that's right, Gamers who use Wine are less real than gamers who don't. The best way to tell is to put a light behind them and you can see they're sort of transparent.

  • Re:Yes but (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'd attribute OS/2's failure in part due to the fact that it HAD a very vocal community. For sane people, meeting just one rabid cultist from Team OS/2 was usually enough warning. Some users were so shell shocked by such an experience that they took to sleeping outside of software stores waiting for Windows 95 to come out.

  • winmodem (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this may sound like noobie question but could i use a winmodem in linux with this?

  • Re:Getting closer, but not quite yet... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People are having trouble getting B&W to run under *Windows*, let alone WINE.

  • Re:Other considerations (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They can't do everything at once - give them a chance!

    People like you piss me off... If you think that is such a pressing problem, why don't YOU work on it?!!

    Stop your fuckin whining!!

  • Re:To those "in the know": (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28, 2001 @02:18AM (#260053)
    I've tried writing (no really serious code) in both OpenGL and DirectX 6.0, and found OpenGL to be a lot easier to work with and certainly more portable. Microsoft has been trying to kick OpenGL on Windows under the carpet in favor of Direct3D, and AFAIK don't have any plans to really support OpenGL (which will encourage the 3D accelerator card manufacturer(s) to optimize for DirectX), so Mesa might be the OpenGL-workalike of choice for both Windows and Linux soon. As far as Windows goes, I'm not counting on OpenGL becoming any more advanced with Microsoft's help.

    Game manufacturers may assess this scenario as "OpenGL for compatibility, DirectX for performance". Both APIs seem to do pretty well at this time on my Voodoo 3 under Windows 98 when I'm given a choice between the two in a game, but how well will they compare in Windows XP with an nVidia card a year or so from now?

    John Carmack's influence didn't hurt the OpenGL cause any, though; I remember 3DFX releasing special OpenGL minidrivers just for running Quake.

    I'll bet the most important factor in DirectX's success is the one you've mentioned: DirectX is an all-in-one solution. Not only can you get graphics, sound, a force-feedback steering wheel, netplay, etc. done with the same library, but Microsoft gives you a reasonable assurance that this API is going to be compatible with most graphics hardware, sound hardware, force-feedback steering wheels... well, you get the point. Mixing libraries that weren't designed to go together can be a trying experience as well (I'm experiencing this firsthand).

    I'm not too big on Wine, either, but I'm not going to knock ANYTHING that might bring games to Linux even if it runs them at 12MHz. It'll remind me of the great fun I had on the 286.

  • Re:This must be done... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28, 2001 @04:09AM (#260054)
    wouldnt it have been better if MS just supported opengl to start with, rather than playing catch up all these years

    they may be comparable now but think how much farther ahead opengl could be if MS started improving opengl instead of rewriting essentially the same thing from scratch for all these years

  • OS/2 (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:54AM (#260055)
    I hope the work to make it work correctly rather than making it work well. OS/2 tried to be a better Windows than Windows and better DOS than DOS. Why port to OS/2? It already runs your app better than the official platform (YMMV!)... Linux can not break into many home desktops without games. If games were able to simply run this would be a boon! I knew so many students dual booting to windows to play games. They all would ditch Windows if they could. All they needed was for their games to work. Even at half speed of windows for just about every game other than QuakeX (which id has a Linux version for...) that would be good enough. On the other hand if say just Black and White worked, but worked even faster than Windows there would be no reason for Lionhead to make a Linux port. Nor would Linux users even bother asking for one. Why would game companies spend time porting their games? The "open source community" just proved if they really want a game they can get it to run just fine.. Give me 99% of the games with DX running at 25% of MS's speed instead of 50% of the games running 99% of MS speed any day!

  • Impressive, yes... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28, 2001 @05:45AM (#260056)
    > It would be very impressive indeed to be able to run all new-release Windows games without Windows...

    'Impressive' maybe, but I'd still rather buy titles from a company like Loki, and support native applications. Since Microsoft loves its undocumented and ever-changing APIs, I'd rather not rely on emulation of their libraries for all my games.

    Direct3D in Linux would be neat, maybe it'd aid in porting, but we all know what happened with OS/2... a better Windows than Windows... *cough*

  • Re:Don't anyone remember when we switched to PC?!? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28, 2001 @05:52AM (#260057)
    With DRI and XFree4 continuing to improve, Linux has just about everything game makers need. What needs to happen is for ALSA(advanced linux sound architecture) to get integrated into the kernel and for OpenAL to make some good progress. Then we should have one amazing game platfrom.

    But I would add 3 more requirements to the Linux world domination goal

    1. A single, easy-to-use method of handling fonts (for display, printing, tex, mozilla...)

    2. A really good Free office suite

    3. A Mozilla at version 1.2

  • This must be done... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28, 2001 @03:07AM (#260058)

    Superiority of OpenGL?

    Ah I sense we're in the lair of OpenGL worshippers.

    Listen, MS was incensed that game developers chose to write their games to OpenGL (and Glide) rather than their earlier versions of D3D.

    So, Microsoft tried to squash 'em, threaten 'em, and cajole 'em. They bought the rights to the OpenGL ICD win32 source code. They "partnered" with SGI to come up with "Fahrenheit"...the "successor" to OpenGL.

    Finally, they threw money, effort and programmers into making D3D better...and they've SUCCEEDED!

    Direct3D has out-evolved OpenGL. Now, after years of development, it's a much better 3D API. It has effects that OpenGL simply cant be made to do.

    Tim Sweeney of Epic Megagames (Unreal, UT), has said as much..."OpenGL...blahblahblah...is obsolete"

    Note that ATI, and NVIDIA design their cards around the DirectX/D3D spec, not OpenGL.

    Carmack continues to plug away at OpenGL, but I suspect it's because he has a soft spot for Macs, and (to a lesser extent) Unix workstations. He wants portability, but in all reality, in any business sense, the Windows market is all there is.

    Microsoft did the same for D3D as they did for MSIE. They started with a poor, nonstandard product and through years of effort, have made it the true standard...the best implementation there is.

    Hate microsoft if you like, but it's the truth.
  • Regarding the fonts...

    I'm not sure if this will go into KDE 2.2, but one of the KDE developers is integrating a module to put fonts just like in Windows - a very simple way..

    See the mailing lists for details
  • Well, if our dear friend arQon was just browsing the transgaming web page, he would have seen that they are making a module for the Linux kernel, that combined with it - you'll get your FPS in games under WineX at the same speed as Windows 2000, which doesn't seems to me that bad..

    True, SDL isn't a replacement for Direct3D, but it's getting used by loki for their new games releases - which means, you'll find there most of your functionality that you need for writing games. It's not perfect, but it's not that bad either..

  • I have a feeling Neverwinter Nights will be huge, esp in the Linux crowd since a lot of us are Role-Players.

    Says who? Since when did you become the expert on the social strata of the "Linux crowd"?

    Sheesh.

  • The capability for Linux to deploy all software from any operating system architecture should be a goal of the Linux community... it's a clear advantage over the limitations of Microsoft products.

    Isn't that pretty much the same thing OS/2 said? We all know how well that works. The only place I see OS/2 now is at my bank [canadatrust.com].

  • Why I don't like DX in general (Score:3)

    by WWWWolf ( 2428 ) <wwwwolf@iki.fi> on Saturday April 28, 2001 @05:36AM (#260063) Homepage

    (Disclaimer: I'm not a 3D stuff developer, just an user...)

    I'm not slightly more interested in seeing DX/D3D on Linux - OpenGL is out there and works. I certainly wish game companies would use OpenGL more.

    Why? Well, I have had most of my problems with DX anyway. OpenGL has never caused me any problems. (I have used only two graphics cards though - Voodoo 1 and Ati Rage128...)

    Sure, OpenGL may be slow on accepting all new extensions, but at least they look at those extensions and try not to break things. I have had severe problems trying to make old DX games to run under recent DirectX versions. (I hope I didn't mess up Windows settings totally with my most recent misadventure with DX5 game...)

    DX is nice when it works - but when it doesn't work, it's a nightmare. (Well, same can be said about all other MS software as well =)

  • Diablo II runs perfectly under Wine as well. Anyone had any success with Black&White?
  • Actually, it can probably be faster than windows. WineLib will basically wrap the traditional Linux APIs for anything it needs. Linux tends to be so much faster than windows that it overcomes the slowdowns caused by the wrappers. Remember that WABI was faster than windows on the same hardware, and netraverse's Win4Lin is also faster on the same hardware, and they're doing alot more wrapping.

    So, it may very well be that the best gaming solution for the hardcore gamer may very well be a ported windows game running atop of WINE.

    --

  • In my opinion this can only help Linux gaming.

    They will have a direct income with a known number of subscribers. Instead of what we have now with Wine, there will actually be numbers that show how many people are interested in gaming in Linux.

    I for one will sign up as a subscriber, and have already filled out their subscription survey and I urge anyone else that loves games and Linux to do the same. I've decided to back my loving words for Linux and Linux gaming with my money. And I'm doing this because I'll be helping Linux, Linux gaming, and a good company that is going to release everything back to the Wine project.
  • So you're saying you should buy a copy of Windows, just to use the fonts in Linux?
  • It couldn't be incorporated into the main Wine source code. That's the point; unless they find enough people willing to sponsor the code, it won't go into Wine. Once they do find them, it will go in. Until it's a part of Wine, it can't be included in distributions. It's part of the incentive to contribute.

    They're using the same license as Ghostscript, only GS automatically turns GPL after a year or two.
  • The capability for Linux to deploy all software from any operating system architecture should be a goal of the Linux community... it's a clear advantage over the limitations of Microsoft products. TransGaming Technologies smashes yet another lame excuse not to consider Linux - this time it's gaming. Nothing to fear. Conquest as usual.

    come off crisp and play up to the cynic
    clean and schooled right down to the minute

  • Yeah the demo works but not the full version. This was done by Transgaming too. I seem to remember something about lots of mutexes in the code, causing it to run slowly in Wine. j
  • Would be WineX running Bleem running Playstation games
  • Yeah and I know of one they could use real easy. Linux has problems reading XA-2 format CD-ROM data (what a VCD uses) without a special driver.

    I have not programmed a vcd-player as such, but I have collected the parts and glued them together in order to play vcd's from the cd-rom under linux. I found out that the VMWARE emulation of Windows under the host of Linux is not good enough to read a VCD.

  • Errr ... it aint that hard either. I installed Mandrake 7.2 from a CD I bought in a newsagent. I selected 'Everything' from the graphical menu, it detected everything, and booted me into KDE.

    I arc'd up Konqeror, went to the mozilla.org website, and downloaded the installer, double clicked on it, it went out and got the rest of mozilla, and I was away.

    I was impressed. It was easy peasy

  • AFAIK, the current plan is to have all of the versions packaged together... which has the added benefits for Linux users of a) making it easier to find, b) it being available at the same time as the Windows version, and c) increasing mindshare as a gaming platform. Hopefully, their implementation is good on Linux, and the game runs well (not like MS's version of IE runs on Solaris).

    Presumably, when you connect to their Official Vault, they'll be able to get a good idea of how viable the Linux gaming community is. Also, isn't it the first Linux game that will be released concurrently with the Windows version?

  • This is cool, but
    I didn't know about msttcorefonts before.
    I just haven't
    taken the time to read through all package descriptions. (Some x K of them)

    There should be a categorised
    list of cool packages somewhere and msttcorefonts
    should be in there :)

  • Direct3D is cool and all, but why is chasing Microsoft a good thing? The Linux community should be able to produce something that competes in this space quite easily, without paying tribute to MSFT.
  • This is a good thing, if it's going to be used to improve Win* emulation under WINE, but I hope nobody uses it for anything other than that. I'm not all that familiar with 3D programming, but I think there's a reason why John Carmack prefers OpenGL to D3D, and I'd hate to see yet another inferior technology become standard.

    Just my $0.02.
    ------

  • For one thing, OpenGL puts most of the code in the driver. That means that the vendor has to write a good bit of the driver whereas with Direct3D you use Microsoft's implementation and hook it into your hardware.

    This has the nice benefit of making new drivers pretty fast right off the bat (see ATi's troubles getting decent RagePro GL drivers), but everybody's gotten mature enough OpenGL drivers that this doesn't matter much any more. Not to mention with the consolidation of the graphics market, no one will be writing new GL drivers, just revising their existing versions.

  • Re:World Domination? (Score:4)

    by PurpleBob ( 63566 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:55PM (#260079)
    No, you should download the fonts for free from wherever they are on microsoft.com.

    Or "apt-get install msttcorefonts" on Debian. Believe it or not, they CAN offer this on Debian, since the package doesn't contain the fonts themselves - it contains a script which downloads them.
    --
  • I've yet to make my HP 812c printer work under Linux. Maybe it'll work with the latest Mandrake release. I even bought the commercial version of CUPS. No dice. At least my USB mouse works...



    Dive Gear [divingdeals.com]
  • Gaming on Linux is the key to world domination on the desktop.

    Have everyone forgotten, why we switched from Atari and Amiga(*) to PC? What was the reason learning DOS, learning to configure interrupts, loading drivers into HighMemory areas, learning to install Soundcards? We all bitched and moaned, but we did it!

    It was because of the games. The PC had cool games and we couldn't get those for our old Home-Computer.
    Everybody of our friends were switching to PC too. We had lot's of trouble learning all those things we didn't need to know before. But we were able to ask a friend. We were a community of people who switched to PC and after half a year we knew most of the things we need to know to get things run smoothly.

    We need the same thing for Linux. Make Linux a gaming OS and people will happily learn all those quirks of this wonderful OS.

    (*)Yes, there is a reason why I mention Atari first ;)

  • thanks. :)

    the funny thing is that I did not say anything extremely opinionated for someone to disagree with! I was mostly asking a question aimed at those who had experience with it. :/


    --
  • So... it seems that you disagreed with everything I said. Disagreement != troll.

    don't you think it would have been better to bash my points as you've done above, so that others would read that instead and become informed? :)


    --
  • What was the reason learning DOS, learning to configure interrupts, loading drivers into HighMemory areas, learning to install Soundcards? We all bitched and moaned, but we did it!

    Dude, this gave me a Tie Fighter flashback. What an awesome game (game of the year, a few years ago) but damn near impossible to get running! So many hacks and tricks...


    --

  • To those "in the know": (Score:3)

    by dimator ( 71399 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:14AM (#260085) Homepage Journal
    Does OpenGL have one foot in the grave?

    I have not worked with either (DX or OpenGL) toolkit, but I have seen their syntax differences and code conventions. I know also that DX gives you a slew of interfaces to all parts of a video game's design (sound, joystick, graphics, network) while OpenGL is only for 3d graphics (I know about OpenAL, but as long as they are not in the same package, the same downloadable, it does not matter). Obviously, a developer would rather deal with one library than half a dozen. Does this make DX more popular? (Is it more popular/used?) Is/has opengl losing/lost all of its early momentum? Has DX fixed the problems so many people complained about in it's early incarnations?

    There is part of me that thinks that OpenGL would not even exist today (ie, it would not have been supported by card makers) had it not been for Id and Carmack's insistance on using it for the quake* series. How accurate is this?

    As far as this announcement is concerned: if it works, great. If it gains acceptance, great. If installing/running games on linux will one day be as easy as it is on windows, great. But this is Wine-based... and how long have we been waiting for Wine to run things slightly more complex than notepad.exe at a decent clip? (No Wine flames, please. I will NOT download it for the billionth time)


    --

  • Re:To those "in the know": (Score:3)

    by andi75 ( 84413 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @02:09AM (#260086) Homepage
    Does this make DX more popular? (Is it more popular/used?) Is/has opengl losing/lost all of its early momentum? Has DX fixed the problems so many people complained about in it's early incarnations?

    OpenGL is certainly the cross-platform 3d graphics library number one. DX has fixed many problems of earlier versions, but the learning curve is still a bit steeper (a simple OpenGL/glut app drawing a lit & textured teapot is about 30-40 lines of code).

    OpenGL would certainly still exist today without Quake, but it would most probably be much less popular among game developers. Most of the applications in the modelling / CAD / medicinal / simulation sector rely on OpenGL, and there is no DX for the big iron (read: SGI Infinite Reality), only OpenGL

    I have doubts that DX will work well with Wine, since the XFree86 / DRI drivers don't support the required operations. The graphics card vendors certainly won't ship direct X drivers for linux, so you somehow have to stack all the DX functionality on top of OpenGL, resulting in crappy image quality and bad performance.

  • Re:Yes but (Score:3)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @04:59AM (#260087)
    Yes but, linx has something that OS/2 didn't have. A commuity.

    Someone please mod the above as flamebait, because this is very much false. OS/2 had and still has a community. It may be smaller today than it was 5 years ago, but it's still a strong community.

    In fact, all you need to do is read comparison stories of newbies going to Linux user group meetings vs. OS/2 user group meetings today, and you might even think that OS/2's community is stronger than Linux's. I've heard from a number of my OS/2-using friends that whenever they try to go to a Linux user group and get help, they're ignored because they're newbies, and so they stick with OS/2.
    --
    Lord Nimon

  • OS/2 did so have a community. It was even more militant than the Mac one. What's left of it is bitter and cynical. I meet a lot of Linux users who used to be Team OS/2 members.
  • They finally got it on their web site! Cool :-)

  • Scott Draker, CLIQ, 2001: (Score:5)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @02:53AM (#260090) Homepage Journal
    "If Linux becomes only a better way to run Windows, eventually Microsoft will catch up and then there will be no reason to run Linux." I think that's about right anyway. If you want to run windows, fucking install Windows. Wine is not a good long term solution. It's not even a particularly good short term solution.

    Of course, Draeker doesn't seem particularly interested in doing business with me, seeing as how I can't find anyone who wants to sell me his port of Tribes 2...

  • We do see OpenGL games, just have a look at Loki [lokigames.com], they sell plenty, including Quake3 and Unreal.
    ID Software releases Quake3 for various platforms, and they are able to do so because they use OpenGL.

  • That's a weak argument dude. X supports the same TTF fonts that windows uses. Hell, QT even supports Anti-Aliased fonts (sooo pretty!). You just need to put a little effort in. I'm sure though that soon enough TTF and AA will be pretty standard and accessible on linux.
  • This is pretty inaccurate. You have to keep in mind that wine is not an emulator. It translates windows code into native linux code, so once the debugging code is removed from wine, it *SHOULD* run windows apps as fast as Windows itself does. This can only help linux. One of the most important factors in what OS is most popular is an app base. Linux already has it's own app base, and wine is going to add all of those windows games/apps to Linux as well. Then the killer apps will be available for windows and linux with no extra effort from vendors.

  • The real reason for Id (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:00PM (#260094)
    Id didn't choose OpenGL because it was cross-platform.

    Id wanted to port Quake to the Voodoo chip, which was an exciting new and powerful 3D graphics processor. However, they had already done VQuake, and part of the contract was that they couldn't port the game to another graphics chip.

    This meant they couldn't do another card specific port. They started doing Direct3D Quake, but D3D 3.0 was a total disaster, so he switched over to OpenGL and created the GLQuake we know and love.

    As a result, MS made efforts to improve D3D (to the point that my understanding is that it is pretty powerful and not impossible to learn), but Id continued with Quake on OpenGL because everyone was supporting OpenGL for Quake, Carmack likes Linux and cross-platform, so if they can sell the copies, why switch.

    However, OpenGL on Windows is ONLY because of Id. WinNT had OpenGL support because of the 3D Modelling, etc. WinNT needed OpenGL. The only game for OpenGL was Quake, and MS wanted to kill OpenGL gaming, refused to release the OpenGL subsystem for Win98 that was seen as a beta, forcing everyone to write either the Quake mini-GL drivers, or write a full ICD. The plugable OpenGL subsystem for NT was killed for Win98 to kill OpenGL gaming.
  • blah blah slow blah blah evil Bill blah blah OS/2 blah blah slow blah blah OpenGL blah blah
  • Direct3D is *not* easier to program than OpenGL (or at least, not in the earlier versions). In the newer incarnations they *redesigned* the APIs so that D3D was more like GL to program. The reason lots of people are attached to D3D is that, being designed by a monopolistic company like Micros~1, it changes and adds new 'features' a lot quicker than GL, which is designed by committee.
  • Actually, MS does have a stake and interest in OpenGL - from what I've read, not only are they part of the OpenGL ARB, but are also the only entity besides SGI that can liscence OpenGL.
  • Now, if the open source community made a well documented, up-to-date, easy to code for, massively supported / cross platform API then we might get somewhere.

    Uh, what about OpenGL? It meets all of these requirements, while Direct3D does not. I don't get it, what technical advantages does Direct3D have over OpenGL? As far as I can see, it has only disadvantages.

  • In all of that post, you did not provide one single factual argument why D3D is technically better than OpenGL. If you say "It has effects that OpenGL simply cant be made to do.", why not provide some examples? Maybe because there are none?

  • Re:Neverwinter Nights will prove it. (Score:5)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @03:38AM (#260100) Journal
    If that is not a testament to cross-platform gaming, I don't know what is.

    MAME


    .oO0Oo.

  • Re:This is a big step forward (Score:3)

    by donglekey ( 124433 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @11:13AM (#260101) Homepage
    Consoles have much better performance than comptuers because the hardware is dedicated and static. A console with the same hardware as a computer will end up having much better graphics because game developers can write games specifically for the hardware and push it to the max. Right now, you could buy a Geforce 3 but no game is going to take advantage of it. Games are just now starting to take advantage of T & L. An example would be that the playstation, uses a 33 MHz main processor, and the nintendo 64 uses a 90 Mhz. I had a 33 MHz proc once, it didn't even run doom very well at all.
  • This is a *superb* idea, and there is one game I would use all the time on it. EverQuest.
    Sony/Verant themselves have said time and time again that they have no plans to make a native Linux version, so this would be most welcome.

    As far as I know it will be a long time until EQ works with it, but if anyone's managed to get it working I would be most interested to hear how.

    There's only one concern I have. It barely works with a "Real" version of Windows if you have an SB Live (particularly Win2000, which is the only version I will agree to use). Still, it would be quite a laugh if it ends up working better in Linux :)
  • I don't have any trace of a Windows install on this pc, and I installed wine perfectly well under slackware 7.1...

  • Getting closer, but not quite yet... (Score:5)

    by vandan ( 151516 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:33AM (#260104) Homepage
    I was absolutely amazed 6 months ago when I downloaded & compiled wine with no probs, installed Starcraft + Expansion CD and started playing. Since then I've had varying success with Office 97 & 2000. I can't for the life of me install either into a non-windows setup, but parts of Office 97 run OK run a Windows installation. I'm haning out for 3 things ...

    1) A freaking configuration utility for a non-windows setup.
    2) Office to install into above setup.
    3) Something other than Starcraft working. To be fair, I've almost gotten half-life to work, and I had IE 5.5 going too. But no 3dmark 2000, or anything else I throw at it. Maybe it's me.

    I like the idea of wine though. I don't think it will impact the development of Linux software. ALl those who were going to write for Linux still are. We're just attracting the attention of those who previously wouldn't have had that option. And if the wine libs prove to be more stable (heh) and faster than Windows - which is quite possible - then we'll really have something to make a noise about.

    Crank on wine!
  • You know... There is a difference between a community and a cult.
  • Me, I'm waiting for the chance to use my Wacom Pen in quake (using D3D). That ought to give nice framerates ;D
  • Well, I went around, and did find the instructions to setup the fonts. And it is MUCH better now. (thanks for the starting point) But my point was, why isnt this included in the distro's? This is one of the most basic functions of the os, providing readable output is it not?

  • World Domination? (Score:5)

    by WillRobinson ( 159226 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @04:45AM (#260108) Journal
    Well you know what, I run both windows and linux, really I would prefer to be in linux all the time. I believe the only thing keeping linux from taking over is crappy linux fonts. It was the first thing my wife noticed, "ewww.. I cant read that" was her first comment when she tryed to us my system.
    So, if you want to take over the world and be a real hero, put together a font package and give it to all the distro's!

  • Re:Why ape Microsoft? (Score:3)

    by Kryptonomic ( 161792 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:15AM (#260109) Homepage
    First of all, there already is such a product: OpenGL. Why don't we see OpenGL games on Linux, then?

    It doesn't make economic sense to the game manufacturers to write games for many different platforms. Most of the games nowadays use Direct3D, so if the goal is to get more games for Linux, the only right way is to adopt and not to compete with Direct3D.

  • It's not the developers that would be the problem.
    It would be either:
    1. The developers' boss(es) who don't like the idea of relying on several different, possibly disparate libraries, perhaps with different compatabilities, license requirements etc.
    2. Users who don't want to download several libraries and have to install them. Even is it's in a convenient, easy-to-use RPM or similar, it's not the automagical process it is with Microflaccid.

    3. Let's not even start with the err... less competant users.

  • Re:To those "in the know": (Score:5)

    by calumr ( 175014 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @02:52AM (#260111)
    There was a recent post on opengl.org that announced the GeForce3's OpenGL extensions exceeded the DirectX8 specifications. OK, it will take some time for other companies (ie. ATI) to implement these extensions and therefore make them standard, but it is a sure sign that OpenGL is alive and kicking.

    Who cares if OpenAL and OpenGL are seperate downloads? Are you saying that users and developers will ignore an entire API because it comes in 2 files as opposed to whatever form DirectX comes in?

    I don't think you can count DirectX as one library either. It is made up of several seperate components; DirectDraw, Direct3D etc may have similar names but developers still have to understand each library seperately.

    OpenGL may lose a little momentum sometimes, but all it takes to get moving again is some new extensions to keep it up to date with what 3D hardware can do.

    Yes - Id did give a huge boost to OpenGL, but they did so for a reason. It's a more portable API, that's very easy to write code for. I wouldn't say that OpenGL wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Id - OpenGL is not only for games. It's used a lot in 3D modelling packages.

  • Nononononono....

    You got it all wrong, dude...Wine will surely work WITH winblows installed, but the OBJECT of it is to run the INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS MADE FOR Winblows...

    Cause Microsoft ain't all that great...But Diablo2 is...And 3dStudioMax is...and plenty of other programs "IS" too...

    Really sucks to feel like you've been left out in the cold just because you'd like to try something DIFFERENT and longterm BETTER...

    It's all fine and dandy to be ethically superior and PURE and all that...GO FOR IT. I'm gonna be PRACTICAL.

    And besides- It feels pretty good to rub something like this in MS's face..."I'LL run your silly little program MY way, thank you! And Nope- I won't be using your silly little DOS based program to run it either...You're rich enough as it is.

  • For some time now, OpenGL has worked fine. I've been using XF4 with Mesa support, and besides no FSAA, i've had good framerates.

    There are two reasons I dont game in Linux...
    1: There are almost no games available (This is what might be fixed in the long run...)
    2: There are weak support for gametools, such as Wheels, Joysticks etc.

    Unless i cant use my lovely joypin and my lovely wheel, i wont game in linux.. :-/

  • Windows 2000 has direct support for Direct3D and it still can't play games such as AOE2 and NBA Live. What makes you people think that a patched Linux will run these games?

    --

  • ...every other game in my collection, too. Let's see, I have (in no particular order): Kohan, Age of Ampires, Age of Kings, Blade of Darkness, Heroes of Might & Magic 3, Diablo II, Fighting Steel, Starfleet Command II, RealMyst, Majesty, Combat Flight Sim 2, Age of Sails 2, Heretic II, Pharoah, Warcraft II -- and they all work just dandy. I think you need to check your drivers...

    Ya know, it's amazing I get any work done with all those games on my system... ;)


    --
    Scott Robert Ladd
    Master of Complexity
    Destroyer of Order and Chaos

  • Why not optimize the kernel for game use?

    Take out all the unnecessary stuff to make it lighter first, then put in some real time features (RTLinux), accelerated frame buffer with OpenGL and Direct3D API and a sound server (OpenAL/DirectSound APIs).

  • Re:My Opinion on this... (Score:3)

    by King of the World ( 212739 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @02:12AM (#260117) Journal
    You are correct [codeweavers.com].
  • Yes, but Wine Is Not an Emulator!
  • For me, for a long time, StarCraft was the only thing running on Wine.

    My theory is the developers of Wine went off playing StarCraft after the emulator worked. Now it seems Wine is gettign better - maybe the StarCraft gamers have grown up and out of the game.

  • ...but more importantly it hasn't shown any signs of a decent-sized PAYING customer base. id took a gamble on Linux, and it wasn't worth the effort.

    That's pretty much what it comes down to, isn't it? The remarkable thing is how well Linux advocates were able to convince companies and journalists that this base existed, in the absence of any facts, purely on the basis of shouting and anecdotes about their alleged grandmothers.

    The free ride is over. VC's aren't going to be handing out any more money to free software projects with hare-brained business plans and the commercial companies aren't going to do Linux ports out of fear of Not Getting It. MacOS gets new software for its ~5% share of users because those users are willing to pay, and to wait a few months. Linux users had better either learn to do the same or hope that KOffice and Tux Racer can fill the gap.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  • Re:My Opinion on this... (Score:3)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:05AM (#260121) Homepage

    I don't see how this is relevent. The idea of a Linux game not selling well doesn't make any sense -- wine runs software that was written for windows. The game sells just as well as it would sell if it were Windows platform only. They only stand to gain customers by having wine work well, otherwise, they just keep selling to Windows as usual, nothing is lost.

    I'm really unsure as to the point you've expressed.

  • You're absolutely right that Direct3d is harder to program for than OpenGL (which is why most students learn OpenGL before Direct3d). The thing is, Direct3d is part of DirectX, which, as a package, makes the whole game-development enterprise a bit simpler. Plus, as you said, features get added much quicker to Direct3d because of the more efficient feature-adding environment. What we need is someone with the efficiency of Microsoft (you really can't fault Direct3d too much as a product) to produce an open DirectX-type system. There are open source projects to this direction, but nothing that compares to DirectX yet.

  • Re:Why ape Microsoft? (Score:4)

    by zhensel ( 228891 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @03:59AM (#260123) Homepage Journal
    Assuming the X-Box has moderate success, developers will begin to move even further away from open graphics protocals. Like it or not, Direct3d is really easy to program for and has great compatibility with graphics cards in Windows. Look at the OpenGL drivers for ATI cards and you'll see what I'm talking about (apparently this has improved somewhat). Companies always care about the bottom line. Until Linux gets more market share, full on ports will only be done for the biggest games (and this even has yet to be reasonably profitable). I think companies would be willing to make cross-platform games if there were common libraries across the board - also, if there was something universal that was as easy to code for as Direct3d. Making a Direct3d wrapper like this (that can take direct 3d calls and render them with OpenGL or something) is a decent solution. Not perfect, but until someone makes something better than Direct3d companies aren't going to do anything. Now, if the open source community made a well documented, up-to-date, easy to code for, massively supported / cross platform API then we might get somewhere.

    Linux won't get commercial games until it has more desktop market share - conversely it probably won't get a lot more desktop market share till it has games. Making it easy for developers to make cross-platform games is the solution.

  • This is a big step forward (Score:4)

    by hillct ( 230132 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @02:14AM (#260124) Homepage Journal
    This is a big step forward. Support in Linux for Direct3D, through Wine is the first step in the obvious progression to establishing Linux native support for direct3D. Support through an emulation layer isn't the conclusion of the development effort. This is a basic tenet of Open Source. The work of TransGaming is a great contribution, but if they choose at some point to conclude their efforts, others will pick up where they left off. Eventually there will be native Linux support for direct3D. This I am certain of.

    As for following Microsoft, implementing their API rather than promoting the potentially vary competitive OpenGL; well, open source operates with an entirely different market model than treditional corporate development. Some market segments such as enterprise IT equally receptive to open source as to treditional software. This allows open source solutions to thrive in that market space. Other market segments such as computer gaming, target a customer base which is generally less technically inclined, and in pursuit of entertainment rather than productivity solutions - I maintain that development of efficient solutions to productivity issues is one of the driving forces behind open source development -, anyway, the gaming customer base is seeking entertainment rather than technical solutions to technical problems. As such, the gaming market will always be dominated by the easiest to use OS, with the simplest setup, and the most readily (as percieved by novice customers) available commerecial support.

    This is why game consoles are still as popular as they are. There was a time when game consoles were themost advanced and highly customized platforms for video game entertainment. With the advent of extremely high quality video cards, sound cards, and control devices for PCs over the past decade, it would be reasonable to assume that customers might choose to purchase a PC (which can now be priced competitively wihth some game consoles - as amazing as that is, in and of itself), which is more flexible, and by every reasonable measure, more useful, but, alas! - game consoles are still extremely popular. I maintain that this is because the gaming customer seeks simplicity and ease of use that (as much as it pains me to say) linux doesn't yet provide at this point, even with the great efforts of Ximian, and the Gnome Project, among others

    The point of this rambling diatribe is that computer game designer will always favor the simplest to use platform, which is inherently, where the majority of gaming customers will be. This means, that regardless of the elogance or superiority OpenGL, the Linux community will need to adopt direct3D because, as others have pointed out, no programmer wants to port code from one platform to another especially when that requires a significant API change. TransGaming has done great work so far and their progress is indicative of great things to come.

    --CTH
    ---

  • Re:Another great reason to not port games to Linux (Score:3)

    by acceleriter ( 231439 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @05:38AM (#260126)
    And there's a perfect historical parallel: OS/2. IBM did such a good job making Windows 3.1 programs run under OS/2 (while they had access to the Windows source under previous agreements with Microsoft) that hardly anyone made native OS/2 applications. When WordPerfect Corp. saw there wasn't a big OS/2 market, I remember them distinctly saying they were stopping development of WP at 5.2 for OS/2 and concentrating on making the Windows version "run better" under OS/2. WordPerfect was only one such nail in the coffin; who knows how many developers that might have tried their hand in the OS/2 market didn't because the current Windows applications would run just fine.

    Of course, when MS released Windows 95 and broke backward compatibility with Windows 3.1 for new apps, it was all over for OS/2. If Linux comes to run Windows applications seamlessly without significant problems, then as you point out, there's not likely to be much Linux commerical development.

  • Re:This must be done... (Score:3)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @09:59AM (#260127)
    Yeah ! We all know Microsoft has always been supporting open standards, and has never wanted us to use Windows only technology, like vbscript, .NET, or MSN online services.
  • Tuxgames or the Lokigames website.

  • Other considerations (Score:5)

    by iomud ( 241310 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:37AM (#260129) Homepage Journal
    Our goal is to achieve 100% compatibility and full performance for off-the-shelf games. Both applications need to be installed on a Windows partition and transfered over to a Linux partition manually, since Wine currently doesn't work with installers made with the latest version of InstallShield.

    Perhaps someone should get cracking on the installer problem, it seems quite like chicken or the egg to me. If the goal is eliminating the windows environment shouldn't some effort be put into creating a method of install that does not rely on one having a windows machine|partition?

  • Neverwinter Nights will prove it. (Score:5)

    by LordArathres ( 244483 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:54AM (#260131) Homepage
    Neverwinter Nights will prove to the Gaming Companies that releasing games under multiple platforms is a good thing. I will buy the linux version of the game upon release. My friends will buy the Windows version. If they are not on the same CD? Since Neverwinter Nights is being made in OpenGL they can use the same code base and just modify for the different OS's when problems come up.

    I have a feeling Neverwinter Nights will be huge, esp in the Linux crowd since a lot of us are Role-Players. It is being released on Windows, Linux, Mac AND BeOS. If that is not a testament to cross-platform gaming, I don't know what is.

    Arathres


    I love my iBook. I use it to run Linux!

  • Re:This must be done... (Score:4)

    by davechen ( 247143 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @04:38AM (#260132) Homepage
    Wow! DirectX sounds so COOOOLLL! Can I run it on my Mac? Can I run it on my on my Irix box? My Sparcstation? Can I use it to run Maya? That would be sooooo awesome, baby!

  • When I said WINE it I meant use WINElib to port it. WINElib creates a semi-native binary as I understand... The source is Win32 but the binary is Linux. I belive it is linked to WINElib like Gtk+ or Qt, though I'm not certain.


    --Volrath50

  • When I wrote that I was thinking of Corel Office 2000... I haven't tried it yet (I do intend to buy it when I get some money though), but from all the bad reviews I got the impression that it was slow and I figure that games would be worse.

    Also I have tried WINE in the past and the only game I ever got running was Starcraft, at about 2 FPS, I wouldn't call that fast. I do realize that WINE will get faster, but because WINE's relying on a non-native API it will propably never get as fast as Windows.


    --Volrath50

  • My Opinion on this... (Score:5)

    by V50 ( 248015 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @12:52AM (#260136) Journal

    IMHO if this gets too good it could backfire and we will have no Linux games:

    Company Wants to Port to Linux
    Company has two options, Port it or WINE it.
    Company figure WINEing will be cheaper
    WINEd game is released.
    It's slow and gets bad reviews
    Linux Game doesn't sell well
    Company hates Linux.

    When an OS relies on the API of anouther OS (paticularily a Microsoft one) it can really be hurt be API changes... Think OS/2. It's DOS & Windows API layer was perfect so no-one wrote native apps for it. M$ releases Win32 OS/2 gets no more new apps. How long until Win64 is released and WINE becomes obsolete?


    --Volrath50

  • Re:What would be sick (Score:3)

    by Edgewize ( 262271 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @07:02AM (#260138)
    Never going to happen.

    Bleem! was designed by people who knew all about the tricks that warez groups might try to crack their product, so they use every undocumented trick in the Windows API to try to be unhackable. Plus, the Bleem CD has something like 32 tracks of data and audio both with specific corrupt sectors. The WinASPI layer fails in a very specific way when reading parts of that disc, and Bleem won't start if it doesn't. But because of the way the CD-ROM is abstracted by the kernel, Wine can't properly emulate that behavior.

    So it's realy never going to happen.
  • ...but not a great thing.

    Who cares if game companies decide to port their propietary products over? Does a free OS get any better when it can run Diablo with Direct X?

    Sure, it becomes more marketable in the short run, but free software is more powerful than the market. Our strength is in the community and our ability to create our own products and share them with one another. I would be more excited if we wrote our own Diablo.

  • Isn't that the source of Microsofts Power? What I mean to say is that Microsoft is the giant that it is because, IMHO it has all the best software and games produced for it.

    Linux really has a potential to become more popular amoung the consumer market if it can run popular games and apps at or above the speed of the Microsoft Operating Systems.

    Sounds to me like Direct3d for Linux might accomplish this. If Direct3d would hurt the future of Linux, Microsoft would have already published it.
  • 2: There are weak support for gametools, such as Wheels, Joysticks etc.

    Unless i cant use my lovely joypin and my lovely wheel, i wont game in linux.

    My joystick (Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital) and wheel (Logitech Wingman Formula GP) work just fine on Linux, and there are several games that support them. I can even reboot my machine by chording buttons on the stick.

  • If everyone's going out and buying Windows games, then running them under WINE on another OS where's the incentive for anyone to spend the time, money and resources on porting those games to unix natively?

    Nice temporary measure that screws the long term interests of everyone. The only compromise is where there is a native port please wait a little while for it to come out rather than jumping on the Windows version the second it arrives and send the message to the producers that nobody wants to buy Linux games.

  • Port new games, run old ones in WINE (Score:4)

    by mightyflash ( 444716 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @01:55AM (#260146)
    Companies like Loki should concentrate on new games. If they ask to much money for the port -> transgaming.
    I think a REAL gamer wants to play native ports rather than wobbly WINE emulations.
    Although older games should run fine in WINE cause the hardware requirements are often lower.

  • Bullshit (Score:5)

    by dinivin ( 444905 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @05:09AM (#260148)
    Tim Sweeney of Epic Megagames (Unreal, UT), has said as much..."OpenGL...blahblahblah...is obsolete"

    What an incredible misquote. Tim turned around and hired Daniel Vogel, the guy who wrote an amazin OpenGL renderer for UT under Linux. Epic has not abandoned OpenGL specifically because of it's cross platform availability.

    Besides, if you've ever run UT using this OpenGL renderer, and compare it to the D3D one, you'll never want to play the game in D3D again.

    Dinivin

  • Maybe there's more to it.... (Score:3)

    by Snodgrass ( 446409 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @09:17AM (#260151) Homepage

    ....than just games, I mean, I'm a Linux newbie myself, and while I would like to jump with both feet into a life of pure-Linux, there are things I just don't know how to do. Plus, there are many things (games included) that I have that don't work in Linux...I mean, I've been an MS drone up until now, so I have a lot of Windows apps. Things like The Sims and B+W that don't run in Linux are enough to keep me dual-booting.

    But if I get all my cool games to run in Linux, that's one less reason to keep Windows around, and it's one less BIG reason for other newbies not to make the jump to Linux. I'm sure there are others out there like me that would make the change if they could keep their games and stuff. (I'm not just a gamer, but most everything else has a Linux alternative)

    On a more personal (off-topic) note, maybe more people would make the switch, too, if there were less "I am a Linux GOD! Trouble me not, oh ignorant one!" and more actual help...but that's just my personal opinion (not everybody was raised on C++ and Unix). ;)



  • Well I don't see why it would be "slow and get bad reviews". All the games that *DO* work under wine that I've tried, run just as fast as under windows. The main problem that needs to be overcome is the ease of use. It's a sonofabitch to get the games that work, working. but once they do, its generally just as good as windows.

  • Re:To those "in the know": (Score:4)

    by arQon ( 447508 ) on Saturday April 28, 2001 @05:41AM (#260157)
    That's fairly close to the truth, yeah. id's pretty much responsible for the current state of consumer-level OpenGL.

    But let's get this one pet hate cleared up first: DirectX != Direct3D. D3D is the (formerly steaming) pile that JUST does graphics. Windows games, even OpenGL-based ones, will use the other parts of DX (sound, input) no matter which renderer they use.

    OpenGL is still much nicer to develop for than Direct3D, and doesn't suffer from the backwards-compatibility issues of D3D (I have OpenGL code from 6 years ago that still runs fine, whereas 90% of the D3D code from >3 years ago just crashes), but the two are pretty much functionally equivalent these days. Given that there was a lot more development for D3D even before that was the case, you're unlikely to see people switching to OpenGL any more; and with the marketing muscle behind D3D, new outfits are more likely to go with it.
    (A couple of years ago when MS became a publisher as well as a developer, we talked to them at GDC: their attitude at the time, and I expect it's the same today, was: "If you want use to publish your game, you have to use D3D. We're not interested in OpenGL games". That's a pretty strong incentive for a lot of independents and smaller houses. There were a lot of rumours of "cash incentives" for teams using OpenGL to switch, but let's not go there).

    Note to zealots: you might as well skip to the next post right now. The rest of this isn't going to be pretty...

    Getting back to the Linux side of things: SDL isn't even remotely close to being ready for primetime. I'm not saying it's a worthless effort, but at the moment it's just not very good. Add to that the development cycle of a typical project, which is getting close to 2 years these days, and that might give you a rough idea as when you MIGHT begin to see decent games that are Linux native.
    Assuming that anyone bothers, after the Q3 sales figures.
    (Those of you who are going to try and justify that with "waaah... but... but... the Windows version came out first" - STFU. That wasn't the problem, and your attempts to pass the buck on it like that are pathetic).

    A DirectX layer in Linux isn't going to cut it. Hell, almost none of my D3D games work properly on W2K, let alone anything else. And while I *might* consider playing somthing like The Sims under WineX (if there was a hope in hell of it actually working before I'd long since lost interest in the game) I certainly wouldn't be willing to give up 60% of my framerate in an FPS.

    At the moment, the future of OpenGL (and hence Linux gaming in general) is in the hands of Nvidia. Yeah, those people that you constantly whine about because they don't open-source their drivers. As the hardware eveloves and supports more cool tricks, the specifications for those and the drivers to implement them need to be written. For instance, had Nvidia chosen not to expose the combiners of the GF2 or the VS of the GF3 in OpenGL, that would have been it.

    GLX is a wonderful thing. And ooh, it's been shipping in a form SOMEWHAT usable by newbies for, wow, nearly a month now.

    As it stands, the best we can hope for in the Linux world ATM is that it might "kinda" be supported. Certainly, no serious company is going to develop ON it, or make it their platform of choice. It's still hopelessly lacking in decent tools for content creation (yeah, the GIMP is nice - that covers 5% of it) and development tools (emacs - the Windows of the Unix world; and don't even get me started on gdb), but more importantly it hasn't shown any signs of a decent-sized PAYING customer base. id took a gamble on Linux, and it wasn't worth the effort. How long do you think it'll be before the next company decides it's worth a shot?

    Sorry that I'm so down on this, but WineX or something along those lines is a total waste of time. It's a half-assed solution trying to simply hide the real problems with Linux gaming rather than address them.
    Here's my advice to the people involved with it: scrap this pointless exercise and do something useful instead. Help out with SDL. Write some decent tools. Remind people that it's free as in speech, not free as in beer, and that games will be neither of those.

    Judging by the "success" of Wine, by the time this thing becomes usable in 2004 there'll be 3 games that run on it, none of them being DirectX 12 ones, and even my dual 6GHz Jackhammer system will only get 35fps...

    arQon
    (waiting for the "-1, Unpleasant truth" moderation) :)

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