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Games Entertainment

WineX 2.0 317

Posted by michael from the breaking-the-windows-habit dept.
ZaMoose writes "Looks like Transgaming has released version 2.0 of WineX (with full support for Jedi Knight II and initial 3D sound support. Joy!) Prepackaged .debs and .rpms are available only to subscribers, but you can always just download and compile it yourself (you just won't get the nifty SafeDisk workarounds/InstallShield proprietary stuff)."
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WineX 2.0 More

WineX 2.0

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  • BSD? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by groman ( 535485 )
    But does it run on FreeBSD?

  • This is all good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by beefstu01 ( 520880 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:00AM (#3363457)
    But still...

    It'd be really nice if games were ported/developed for linux. Then people will start switching operating systems. Nobody cares if you can run certain programs on linux with a bit of hacking except for those of us who already run linux. Recompile these games for linux, use standards such as opengl, etc...

    That being said, I really like seeing these things coming to linux. I love playing certain computer games, and really hate that they are only written for windows (I miss you loki). But hey, I'm off to play some JK II now
    • Chicken and egg. What comes first?


      I think that people will use at home whatever they have on their desk at work. That's why you see so many wintel machines being sold in the home market. If linux ever makes it onto desktops at work, I think you'll see a much larger move toward it for home desktops.

    • Re:This is all good (Score:2, Interesting)

      by torndorff ( 566594 )
      Of course it SHOULD be, but us [not-so-rich] programmers dont have the leverage/capital it requires to push developers to different platforms.

      The efforts put forth by projects like Wine show that these games have the ability to run and run VERY well on Linux/Unix/etc. It also shows that Linux is not just for business and servers anymore but for recreation and peoples' home offices. Maybe because of this new Wine release 20 people will notice that games can run on Linux with just a little bit of work and they'll notice that *nix is a bit more flexible than they thought. If 1 out of those 20 people give it a shot and like it, word of mouth could have 2 people with it, and it slows spreads in that manner (hopefully).

      And hey, even if that doesnt work, you can always dual boot ;)

    • Re:This is all good (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BrookHarty ( 9119 )
      Loki went out of business, not enough demand.

      Vmware runs most things, if it had DirectX support, team this up with a pre-empt/blah new fangled linux kernel, and you dont NEED to port games.

      I bet 5 years from know you will be able to emulate any OS, just run it under linux. So far I have Mac OS 9, VMWare, Amiga, Atari, N64, PS, DreamCast, Mame, C64, etc...

      • Re:This is all good (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Gaccm ( 80209 )
        actually if you read the history things that came up when loki died, it was from multiple reasons 1) believing the market would constantly grow (and thus loki grew, while the market stayed around the same size), 2) internet bubble popped and VCs wanted to pull out. The ceo or leader or whatever became curropt (buying new house when not enough money to pay employes).

        While Loki was in a screwed position from 1 and 2, its 3 that killed the moral and the compony entirely.
      • "I bet 5 years from know you will be able to emulate any OS, just run it under linux. So far I have Mac OS 9, VMWare, Amiga, Atari, N64, PS, DreamCast, Mame, C64, etc..." - yes but still to legally emulate them you have to own the ROMS (ie have the machine in the first place) - which makes you wonder why people bother emulating a machine they already have. ;o)
        • yes but still to legally emulate them you have to own the ROMS (ie have the machine in the first place) - which makes you wonder why people bother emulating a machine they already have. ;o)
          It is theoretically possible that one could buy the roms without the system, and then use them legally. Emulation is perfectly legal in and of itself, it is just in pirating software that you might run into legal trouble.
    • It'd be really nice if games were ported/developed for linux.

      Except they are [icculus.org].

      Sure, lately fewer are available [tuxgames.com], but still some are being released.
  • To install Max Payne - so far it is working flawlessly on my Gentoo Linux setup (installed using the RPM with --nodeps)

    Will write back with the results!

    Derek
    • How does Max Payne on WINE perform relative to, say, Windows?
      Also, please post any weird flakinesses that may pop up. I'd install it on my Gentoo Linux setup, but its portage system (the whole thing) bit the dust after a power out. (and i'm using XFS!)
      Also, what hardware are you running?
      Thanks!

      • Re:Using it right now!!! (Score:4, Informative)

        by Gaccm ( 80209 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:32AM (#3363581)
        just telling you, if you want info about over 150+ games and how they work with linux, check out:

        Code Weaver's wine [codeweavers.com]

        just look on the left for "app database" and your set.

      • IT WORKS PERFECTLY!!! (Score:5, Informative)

        by friedmud ( 512466 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:50AM (#3363625)
        Holy shit!

        It is perfect! I was playing in 1024x768x32 and it is flawless. Everything is there, sound, FPS, movies, everything is just as it is in Windows! In fact I think it even loaded the levels faster than it does in windows - very cool.

        Seriously, on the FPS side, I couldn't tell a bit of difference from playing it in windows. This is on a 1.2Ghz Tbird with 512MB of RAM and a Geforce3TI500 using the newest nvidia drivers (2880).

        It even installed perfectly and added itself to my kde desktop/menu.

        Great job transgaming!

        Time to try some more games!

        Derek
        • Want to game in linux?
          Except it's not.
          It's gaming with the proven monopolist's API(s), and extending it's stronghold to Linux. Fun!
        • It even installed perfectly and added itself to my kde desktop/menu.

          Quick Q for you...Did you install from src or did you do the rpm/deb? Did you do any special config to get it working in KDE? The reason I ask, is that the last time I downloaded WineX (March 2002), I didn't get any cool menus added under KDE.

          • Plain ole Wine does this for you (at least since the March versions, probably earlier too).

            Wine itself doesn't add any menu items, but if you run a Windows installation program in it, when the installer trys to create the start menu shortcuts it goes in your KDE menu instead.
  • you guys (me too so i should shut up) have /.ed the site and transgaming have been complaining that they dont have enough money... they say if they do get enough money they will give all the binaries away

  • Counter Strike 1.4 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by GenCuster ( 121609 )
    Does anyone know if wineX will support CS 1.4/steam? I have tested the latested wineX cvs and latest wine cvs and can not get it to work.CS is the most popular online fps and it would suck if linux could no longer support it.
    • half-life (including CS) has worked for linux for 1.5+ yrs

      lhl.linuxgames.com [linuxgames.com]

      1 bug with current cvs builds is that sound doesn't work, you can either get an old copy of winex (check the forum for the site above, they have old working copies) or edit your config.cfg and disable voice.

      Also, even if the above worked perfectly, there is no way to transmit voice from linux, only listen.

  • benchmarks... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    if anyone is anything like me, then youre curious of benchmarks... more specifically, youre curious of benchmarks of the same game, on the same machine, between a native windows (2000, in my case) vs wineX comparison... one of the major things keeping me from putting linux on my main box is the game compatibility, and i want to know if the games that im already getting barely-playable FPSs on will improve, stay the same, or drop below playability... so, does anyone have any sort of comparison benchmarks of anything like this?...

    • Re:benchmarks... (Score:4, Informative)

      by friedmud ( 512466 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:26AM (#3363556)
      You can run 3dmark 2000 (not 2001... yet) in winex.

      I already have 2.0 installed and will do this in WinXP and Winex tonight and post back here. Last time I did it with 1.0 there was a serious drop in FPS - but it was still well above playable (on my 1.2GHz Tbird with a Geforce3 TI500)

      Derek

  • WineX is great but support the Ported Games! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:23AM (#3363544)
    Support people that porth the games!! I mean Wine is nice for trying to get people to use linux, but in the long run we need ported games! - - Happy Peguin [happypenguin.org] - Hyperion [hyperion-e...inment.com] - - Tux Games [tuxgames.com] - Introversion [introversion.co.uk] . .. plus hunt for more!

  • no need for winex (Score:3, Informative)

    by kraf ( 450958 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:25AM (#3363550)
    JKII works mostly fine with latest vanilla wine (I have radeon7k something) provided that:
    - you install it in windows, then you can copy it whereever
    - some non-3d cutscenes don't appear in single player
    - you don't set texture quality too high, with many players/big maps I see lot's of weirdness in the textures
    - the brightness setting does not work, you have to use xgamma youself, the result is the same
    - the cdrom must be mounted before starting the game

    However the wine+linux combo seems noticably faster than on w2k with same settings. I'm not drawing any conclusions though, it might be just shitty drivers on windows or some tuning stuff I missed.

    • Re:no need for winex (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ZaMoose ( 24734 )
      I had all sorts of sound glitches/graphical weirdness with the CVS version. I installed this bad boy roughly 3 hours ago. I'm still up, playing JKII at 3am EST *grin*

      It is indeed equal in performance to my Windows performance on my 1.1GHz Athlon w/256MB RAM and a GeForce2 GTS (32mb RAM).

      I can't wait to try it out on my work macine tomorrow. Dual Athlon MP 1900+s, 1GB RAM and my GeForce4 should arrive tomorrow as well! Sweet!

    • Kraf, thanks for the xgamma tip; I knew there must be a way to adjust gamma somewhere :-)

      There seems to be a problem with JK2's CPU detection code on 1GHz+ CPUs under vanilla WINE (the multiplayer executable gets to "Detected AMD CPU with 3DNow!" then crashes with a divide-by-zero).

      To fix it, get the vanilla WINE source (for Debian users like me: the result of "apt-get source wine" works nicely), open up win32/newfns.c, replace all occurences of

      #if defined(__i386__) && defined(__GNUC__)

      with

      #if 0

      and recompile (Debian users: cd to wine-yyyymmdd and run "dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc" to make new .debs).

      If you don't like having to find and mount the CD, the "DUCK" no-CD crack from gamecopyworld doesn't work reliably in multiplayer, whether you use Linux or Windows; the "BH" no-cd crack (the one containing Start-MP.exe) does. Please do actually buy the game though... writing a game this good should be rewarded with actual sales :-)

      I had no texture problems in High (not Very High) texture quality on a Geforce2 Pro with the latest nvidia drivers (version 1.0-2802).

  • Transgaming deserves your money... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:34AM (#3363590)
    They provide a truly useful service for Linux gamers at a very reasonable price (far cheaper than most games) where purchasers actually get control over the direction of the project with their subscriptions. They also make their source code avaliable to anyone, sans the copy protection needed to play a lot of protected games. Install WineX from their source, test the non-copy protected demo version of your game, and if it works, buy WineX.

    That said, they're two ways to install software on Linux. One is RPM, the other has non standard install, uninstall, auditing and verification, leaves crap all over your system, makes it a nigthmare to build applications upon, and generally sucks. Here's a spec file you can use to create source and binary packages of Winex.

    Summary: Runs Windows programs (especially multimedia ones) under Linux
    Name: winex
    Version: 20020407
    Release: 1mm
    Source0: %{name}-%{version}.tar.bz2
    License: APSL
    Group: Applications/Emulators
    BuildRoot: %{_builddir}/%{name}-%{version}
    Requires: kernel >= 2.4, XFree86-devel, gcc >= 2.7.2, flex >= 2.5
    Requires: bison, glibc >= 2
    %description
    TransGaming WineX is a derivative of the Wine project. Wine is an implementation of
    the Microsoft® Win32® APIs on top of UNIX and X-Windows - in essence, it is a Window
    s® compatibility layer. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows to be installed, as
    it provides an alternative implementation of Windows written from scratch with no Mi
    crosoft code whatever.
    TransGaming WineX includes a new implementation of the Microsoft DirectX multimedia
    APIs, including Direct3D - the core graphics system most Windows games use for hardw
    are accelerated 3D.

    %prep
    %setup -q

    %build
    %configure
    make depend
    make

    %install
    %makeinstall

    %post -p /sbin/ldconfig

    %postun -p /sbin/ldconfig

    %clean
    rm -rf %{buildroot}

    %files
    %defattr(-,root,root)
    %{_bindir}/*
    %{_ libdir}/*
    %doc README ANNOUNCE BUGS DEVELOPERS-HINTS LICENSE LICENSE.winehq

    %changelog
    * Sun Apr 7 2002 Mike MacCana 1mm
    - Created packages
    • Money now, product later? No doubt these particular guys are honest, but it doesn't give them a whopping big incentive to do their best work as quickly as possible.

      Realistically, people are signing up mainly to support them, i.e. donating. Why on Earth should they say, "If you want to donate, this is the amount you must give. We won't take less, and we're not interested in more." ?

      I still don't understand why so few open source software projects are taking voluntary payments. It seems like the perfect match: "We give you the software with no obligation, you pay us whatever you like to encourage more work."
    • Remember, keep the resulting files for your own use. Redistributing binaries of Winex breaks the license and means you're freeloading off a company that gives you a whole lot for free anyway and doesn't charge much for a subscription, and that because of this, you suck.

      • cd /var/tmp
      • cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.winex.sourceforge.net:/cv sroot/winex login
        Hit Enter when prompted for a password
      • $ cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.winex.sourceforge.net:/cv sroot/winex co wine
      • mv wine winex-(today's date if ISO format, eg 20020418)
      • tar -icvf winex-20020418.tar.bz2 winex-20020418
      • mv winex-20020418.tar.bz2 /usr/src/(distribution, eg `redhat')/SOURCES
      • Download the spec above and save it into a file called /usr/src/(distribution)/SPECS
      • Edit that file. Change Version to today's date, in the same format you did earlier. Change release to, say 2davesmith (because you made the package, not `mm' - i.e. Mike MacCana / Nailer.
      • rpm -ba /usr/src/(distribution)/SPECS/winex.spec
      • When the compile is over, you'll have a source package and a bianry package in /usr/src/(distribution)/SRPMS and /usr/src/(distribution)/RPMS.
      • Install the RPM.
      • Thanks for the instructions. I only noticed two typos: Slashdot-induced spaces in "cv sroot" and the -I switch to tar.

        The rpm build fails pretty early on with the error:

        configure: error: can not find sources in . or ..
        This is after the following libtoolize warnings:
        Remember to add `AC_PROG_LIBTOOL' to `configure.in'.

        Using `AC_PROG_RANLIB' is rendered obsolete by `AC_PROG_LIBTOOL'
        You should add the contents of `/usr/share/aclocal/libtool.m4' to `aclocal.m4'.
        I'm not a total newbie, but autoconf and rpm make me feel like one.

    • That said, they're two ways to install software on Linux. One is RPM, the other has non standard install, uninstall, auditing and verification, leaves crap all over your system, makes it a nigthmare to build applications upon, and generally sucks.

      Actually, I think .debs are far better than .rpms. Care to explain your rather strong statement?

      • There are things that either RPM or Debs have over the other. RPM has better package verification tools than Debian,. and can often be used a s a kind of poor mans tripwire. I userstand the GPG stuff is a lot better in RPM packages than Debian packages too. Debian has suggested / recommended / required dependencies (and excellent and useful feature) and some nice nice policy (tho similar stuff exists for many RPM based distros). Most people don't realize that both have apt-get support. RPM 3 is the current Linux standard for packaging and this will be changed to RPM 4 once Maximum RPM is updated for the new version.
        • Okay, now you're sounding like a reasonable person. Yes, package verification for rpms is currently better than for debs, and that won't change for a few months yet. The more detailed inter-package dependency model is the primary reason that I think debs are currently better, although of course it's the Debian policies that make 'apt-get install' (or, even better, 'aptitude install') work so nicely.

          RPM does have the advantage of being a "standard", although one that even Red Hat doesn't actually use (the version 3/4 issue you mentioned).

          All of this is fine, but doesn't square with your previous comment at all:

          One is RPM, the other has non standard install, uninstall, auditing and verification, leaves crap all over your system, makes it a nigthmare to build applications upon, and generally sucks

          How do .debs "leave crap all over your system", "make it a nigthmare to build applications upon" and "generally suck"?

          • All of this is fine, but doesn't square with your previous comment at all:

            How do .debs "leave crap all over your system", "make it a nigthmare to build applications upon" and "generally suck"?

            It squares fine with my previous comment - which never mentioned Debs, but were rather about installing any piece of software with using a packaging system. Deb's wouldn't be to bad, they're just not the current standard and (unlike RPM 4) aren't likely to be in the future.

    • Some 3 weeks ago I went to transgaming's website for a gander at how much a subscription costs. I crawled over that thing like a maggot for hours, clicking every link in site, before giving up. I could not find anywhere on the site with pricing info, or where to sign up for a subscription, or how. For a company that wants your money, they sur emake it difficult! Most places have a big "Sig up now!" link on the front page, but not Transgaming. It seems mired in enigma.

      Am I just dumb? I hope so. Can anyone post the link that shows how much a subscription is and how you sign up?

      • It seems with this release there is a Subscribe Now! link on the front page after all. I guarentee that was not there before!

      • There should be a thing on the left side of the screen that says "Subscribe here" near the login. This link should also take you to the signup.
        http://www.transgaming.com/create_accnt.p hp

        The subscription is $5/month

  • Biggest New Feature (Score:5, Informative)

    by Laven ( 102436 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @12:44AM (#3363617)
    It seems that everyone missed the biggest new feature of this official release. This is the first official release of WineX with DirectX 8.0 support, meaning the newest games have a chance to work.
    • This is the first official release of WineX with DirectX 8.0 support, meaning the newest games have a chance to work.

      If only that were true. I just downloaded and installed the new version, and it doesn't support the "newest game" I have, Dungeon Siege. DS insists on having DirectX 8.1 before it will install. Of course, any coder worth his/her/its weight in donkey turds knows that you shouldn't change the API between minor versions, so the program shouldn't care whether I have 8.0 or 8.1. But to give Microsoft (the publisher of DS) the benefit of the doubt -- which (A) I'm still willing to do, even though they rarely deserve it, and (B) even so, doesn't make them look too good -- GPG probably found some nasty bugs in DirectX 8.0 while writing this game, so MS had to fix the bugs and release DirectX 8.1 to make this game work.

      Not to dis TransGaming, though -- Diablo II works beautifully, and the LoD expansion seems to work as well (still need to test this more thoroughly), so major props to them. I'd do more tests tonight, but I have to work for a living.
      • Microsoft's always kept competitors playing the catch up game. Back in the OS/2 days it seemed like they were changing win32s weekly (In fact, we dubbed this "The Microsoft API of the Week Club.) OS/2 Windows support was great, but IBM couldn't keep up with various Microsoft releases. And Joe Average user didn't want to have to think about whether that software package he bought at CompUSA was going to work with his OS or not. And developers were unwilling to do native ports because they could just target Windows 3.1 and cover all the platforms in one go.

        On the plus side, Wine runs Lotus Notes pretty well and saves me from having to reboot at work to check my mail.

        • I did the OS/2 Windows shuffle, and I've been thinking about that a lot as I've been messing with cxoffice and winex.

          I think we have two things going for us that OS/2 didn't: We've got the Power of Open Source (TM), and, more importantly, we've got the Internet to distribute patches.

          When MS broke OS/2 2.1 Windows support for new apps, all you could do was wait for a new release of OS/2, which would take months or years.

          Now, you just download a new version. Eventually, if these guys get on the ball, they'll have autodownloading. Sure, if you try to play DS the day it comes out, it won't work. But, a month later, it'll say, "New version of WineX required to play this game. Download now?"

          Unfortunately right now we're at the dancing bear stage (what's important is that it dances at all, not how well it dances). In this stage, I've been very impressed with both of them. But I'm looking forward to when they both work even better.
      • Note the change of the API to stop DX8.0 working with DX 8.1. And the hurriedly released DX8.1 synchronised with the cessation of 'official support' for Win95.
        As far as I can see, it looks more like MS wanting to stop any Win 95 users from even having a look in at new games, tying them into forcible upgrades to XP.
        That being said, I hear there were additions to support extra features that were added to ATI's radeon card that were not present on the GeForce3 range, so there is some extra functionality added. However, most games won't use this extra functionality.. Wo why not just let them be, with requirements for least common denominator in the API?
        Seems like incentives being offered to upset the user base, and get yourself the nice shiny new stuff that MS is pushing for cheap.

        Cheers,

        Malk

  • Transgaming Will No Longer Support Wine! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2002 @01:09AM (#3363685)
    Lost in this release is a far more important announcement. Transgaming is throwing support behind a fork of Wine: ReWind! [transgaming.com]

    Seems, they take issue with the recent change of licenses for Wine. They are actively encouraging developers to contribute to there X11 fork. Understanding that a vote of the developers leaves there branch in the minority, they are touting cash incentives and the some of there 2.0 source as bait.

    The war of the branches begins...
    • IMHO, X11 license is much better for Wine because it is a lot less scary for business use of Wine. For example, Corel would have never used Wine to port WordPerfect and CorelDraw to Linux if it were under LGPL back then. Although LGPL is compatible with most possible business uses of WINELIB, it makes it impossible in certain cases like Transgaming's patches to make games with CD copy protection work. They CANNOT releases these patches due to the DMCA. =(

      Corel understood open source, and released all of their changes to Wine back to the X11 tree. And the man behind Corel Wine was Gavriel State, the same man behind Transgaming WineX.

    • Re:Transgaming Will No Longer Support Wine! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Moritz Moeller - Her ( 3704 ) <`ten.xmg' `ta' `hmm'> on Thursday April 18, 2002 @05:19AM (#3364254)
      The war of the branches is over.

      Any improvement in the X11 branch can be used in the LGPL branch, but not vice versa.

  • A possible Bait and Switch? Judge for yourselves. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18, 2002 @01:45AM (#3363786)
    For all those who believe that hybrid proprietary and free software business models might be stable, please compare:

    http://216.239.35.100/search?q=cache:9MjQn79wp0U C: www.transgaming.com/businessmodel.php+transgaming+ subscriber+aladdin&hl=en

    with

    http://www.transgaming.com/businessmodel.php

    Notice how all the talk about eventually returning the semi-proprietary code to the community has been unceremoniously removed...

    It saddens me that they have apparently abandoned the idea of eventually freeing their customers and letting them share freely with their friends once they have a stable subscriber base sufficient to pay the expenses.

  • Neato.. but.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Ogerman ( 136333 )
    What Transgaming is doing is pretty cool as an interim solution for gamers. On the other hand, I hope to see more Free Software community-developed games in the future. There certainly is an incentive to create free games: they're fun to write and fun to play! One of these days I trust there'll be a really killer Open Source multiplayer game that everyone will enjoy and at no cost. Various libraries like SDL and CrystalSpace are making headway. It's going to be exciting as they mature.
    • I think you are missing half of the part of games: game ideas and art. You are right, there are a lot of geek-work for building game libraries and clones of games. The problem is, the art part is not following. Take a look a freecraft [freecraft.org] the code is quite advanced, but basically the game relies on the artwork of Warcraft. The "original" art designed by OS comunity is quite awfull.

      Until the OS community is joined by skilled art people OS games will be limited.

  • For the Cheap ones among us (Score:3, Informative)

    by evil_one ( 142582 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @02:09AM (#3363839) Homepage
    If you patch your safedisk game with a crack, you can run without the binary version.
    Alice (full version) works beautifully this way.

    Ironic that the pirates would come to the rescue of legimate game owners.
    • It is not illegal to crack (as in "no-CD crack") software you own.

      There's even a law that explicitly allows backups, at least in Switzerland. This is a rough translation of article no. 24 of the Swiss copyright law: "Whoever has the right to use a computer program may make one backup copy thereof. This right cannot be revoked by contract." Nice :)

      And in order to make such a copy, you'll need the no-CD crack - otherwise the copy becomes worthless.

      Patches for most games and to work around SafeDisc etc. can be found at GameCopyWorld [gamecopyworld.com], which is also rather legal. Unless you're in the US and someone tries to use the DMCA against you, maybe.
      • The DMCA makes it illegal to crack the copy protection on games you own, because you don't own the games. You just own a plastic circle and a licence to play the game, subject to whatever restrictions the authors place on you. That's the justification behind DeCSS being illegal, even if you want to use it to play DVDs you own.

        It's not just in the USA either... much of Europe is adopting similar measures.

    • Back when I was first on the Atari scene (about 1982) I met people who bought and paid for legitimate copies of programs they liked, put the box unopened on a shelf, and downloaded a cracked version from a BBS. The pirates deliver a solution that works reliabily, while many copy protected programs abused the hardware to the point where you needed 7 tries to load a program you had a right too.

  • Transgaming and open source... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Error27 ( 100234 ) <<error27> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday April 18, 2002 @02:40AM (#3363925) Homepage Journal
    I know that Transgaming contributes some stuff to the wine project already where it's convenient, but if I recall correctly they were going to release a lot more when they had a certain number of subscribers.

    What ever happenned with that? Did they reach the number of subscribers? Did they scrap that idea?

    I personally am always doubtful, when people claim that they are going to release source under an open source license at some future date. From what I've seen they seem to change their mind over half the time.

    I guess, I really don't care either way if release the source or not. I'm not subscribed and so they're under no obligation to me, but I was just curious.

    • actually, as someone posted above me, they will never give anything to wine again. Wine used to have an X11 style liscence, now its LGPL. Transgaming can't use the new wine stuff while keeping some stuff, like cd-copy protection secret (which, according to them would violate the DMCA if it is released). you can check out the offical word here [transgaming.com]

      • FUD Re:Transgaming and open source... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Laven ( 102436 ) on Thursday April 18, 2002 @03:56AM (#3364087)
        This is FUD.

        Transgaming plans on releasing many pieces to the X11 Wine branch for two good reasons.

        1. It costs more to maintain these many code deltas from the main (Rewind) tree. If they are general bug fixes that aren't strategic like DirectX or InstallShield, they want to release it to X11 so they don't have to use resources to keep maintaining it.
        2. For strategic pieces like COM for InstallShield, they plan on trading those pieces for other LGPL Wine pieces that they need. For example, if they want a certain LGPL piece, they may consider licensing their own ASPL piece if that LGPL piece is also made X11. Everyone benefits.

        I personally support both Transgaming and CodeWeavers financially. I hope both succeed and continue to improve Wine for everyone.
      • which, according to them would violate the DMCA if it is released

        There is no DMCA in Canada.

        this is Transgaming FUD.
        • Well, there isn't a DMCA law in Canada maybe, but it will be the last thing a business will do (to release copy protection support code) if they want to sign game companies as partners (like they worked on the code of The-Sims).

          Get it?
    • They said they will release almost all their modifications once they'll reach 20,000 subscribers...

      According to their web site - they got "over 3000" - which mean they need almost 17,000 more subscribers in order to release all their modifications (sans copy protection - due to DMCA)..
  • Are any games *actually* supported with this release? I think they're *still* being sneaky if they're claiming this is the second version of WineX that supports running Windows games under Linux. Famously, version 1.0 only 'supported' the Sims, and it turned out that meant that you have to have a semi-ported-to-Linux version, and that the Windows version wouldn't run.

    Which begs the question: is the Sims now supported?
  • I have WineX 1.0.3 and Jedi Knight II seems to work fine for me already.. :)

  • Jedi Knight II (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ogre7299 ( 229737 ) <jjtobin AT umich DOT edu> on Thursday April 18, 2002 @05:11AM (#3364231)
    It is really funny that in Windows Jedi Knight II crashes immediately wheny I try to load multiplayer mode. In Linux with WineX it works perfectly, just as long as I use the native dsound lib. Kudos to the guys at Transgaming!
  • I am searching for any info for a long time. Does anyone run Civilization 3 or Capitalizm 2 with winex? Is it possible? What about HOMAM4?
  • I've spent the day fooling around with WineX and Diablo II/LOD. It was a pain, but worth it.

    1. Uninstalled WineX 1.03
    2. Nuked my Diablo directory
    3. Installed WineX 2.0
    4. Installed Diablo II and LOD
    5. Failed to get it to run, banged head against wall
    6. Realized it wouldn't run because I didn't have 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions defined for my xserver.
    7. Added the additional resolutions.
    8. Ran the game! w00t!

    Not being happy with the way things were, I then reconfigured everything to run the game on a second xserver at :1.0. Now it's perfect. No window manager to interfere with the game (the ALT meta key was a particular annoyance), it runs using the full screen, and doesn't interfere with my KDE desktop at all.

    Performance it's bad, about 30 fps compared to 50 on Windoze. The font used to display status info (type "fps" in the chat box) is much too small, but other than that, it seems solid.

    Time to kill Baal for the billionth time.
  • The game is HO-HUM at best. Nice to see more work done in providing an alternative gaming platform but did no one learn anything from Loki's messy demise ?
  • Here's my predicament.

    I want to get out from under Redmond's thumb just like everyone else here. (Heh, funny considering my cert...) However, there is a whole category of apps that have not materialized for Linux. What are they?

    PRO AUDIO APPS.

    There is no native Linux Digital Audio Workstation software available. Nothing that is anywhere near the caliber of Sonic Foundry's Vegas or Digidesign's ProTools. There are stereo audio .WAV editors, tons of MP3 and OGG tools, but nothing like those programs. There is nothing out there that compares to Sound Forge, which right now is the Gold Standard for audio mastering. And there isn't ANYTHING that resembles ACID, Sonic Foundry's loop composition software.

    If Wine, WineX, ReWind or Grandma's Chicken Feet (I don't care, I'm not picky about licenses or product names) could get Sonic Foundry products to run, and run predictably and solidly, under Linux I would be able to convert our audio production machine from Windows to Linux. That would mean one less Windows box, one more Linux box.

    Linux still needs polishing. Linux still needs to be able to install predictably (My friend Chad ironed out my optical drive problems on one of my Linux boxen...apparently depmod didn't do everything it should have during the Red Hat 7.2 install) and it still has tons of usability problems. However, it is headed in the right direction.

    Windows, OTOH, is headed the wrong way...more complexity, more bloat, less functionality, an unruly codebase according to some informed reports, and of course tons of security problems no Ex Cathedra pronouncement by Bill Gates can fix. And there's that wee, small issue of licensing and Microsoft continuing to tighten the screws on that issue.

    Until someone steps up to the plate and writes some serious audio apps for Linux, emulation or something that asserts it is not an emulator but the duck test says otherwise is the only hope I have. And any progress along those lines will be cheered. In the words of Daria Morgendorffer, "Go. Go. Kick butt."

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