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Emulation (Games) Classic Games (Games) Software Entertainment Games Linux

WineX 3.3 Out - Now Supports Steam 85

Posted by timothy from the making-things-work-together dept.
AstroDrabb writes "WineX 3.3 has been released, with more impressive support for your favorite Windows games from within Linux. According to the Release Notes, Valve's Steam content delivery system, including the latest versions of Half-Life, CounterStrike, Day of Defeat and other mods, is now supported. The list of games supported by WineX is getting pretty impressive. So head over to Transgaming and sign up for a subscription to help further development."
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WineX 3.3 Out - Now Supports Steam More

WineX 3.3 Out - Now Supports Steam

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  • I continue to be impressed with OSS! (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:03PM (#8312005)
    This is just the stuff to get my friends to switch over to Linux. They can't be stuffed to move from Windows, because currently it supports all their games, comes free with their machines, and is user-friendly and familiar.

    Way to knock off another barrier, Transgaming.

    • Re:I continue to be impressed with OSS! (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Huh?

      Your friends have a OS that "currently supports all their games, comes free with their machines, and is user-friendly and familiar." and they want to dump that to pay $5 a month for a service that helps them play those same games on a different OS than the one they have, when they can just stay with their current OS and save that money?

      Wow, you have stupid friends.
    • Well, WineX, in it's current state won't support all of their games with 100% compatibility. That is, unless your friends only play:
      * Warcraft III (and Frozen Throne) * The Sims (Mandrake Gaming pack) * Hoyle Card Games 5 * Max Payne * Diablo II * Kohan

      If your friends like a game made after 2000/01 then they are better off staying on Windows.

    • Windows doesn't actually come 'free' with the machine. The cost is passed on the manufacturer who include it somehow into the general price of the computer. Now an open-source OS on the other hand, may truly be a 'free' piece of software for the consumer.
    • They can't be stuffed to move from Windows

  • Steam :) (Score:3, Interesting)

    by captainclever ( 568610 ) <rj&audioscrobbler,com> on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:11PM (#8312064) Homepage
    Anyone know of a good howto or guide to getting Steam working in wine?

    Surely i cant just copy the install over and run the exe.. or can i?

  • Support development (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <(spencr04) (at) (highpoint.edu)> on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:14PM (#8312089)
    I think it's a better idea not to buy WineX and support native ports by buying native Linux games instead. Supporting WineX just lets them talk about their "compatibility technology"(or whatever they call it now) more and more, while developers use that as an excuse to make Windows only games.

    • Re:Support development (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 00420 ( 706558 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @10:20PM (#8312507)
      I understand your concern, but I look at it this way. WineX may be the final thing that convinces some Windows users to switch to Linux, which is what Linux needs right now.

      Once Linux has a large userbase companies will want to make Linux ports of their software.

      Of course, this isn't to say that one shouldn't still support any company that is already making Linux games.
      • "WineX may be the final thing that convinces some Windows users to switch to Linux, which is what Linux needs right now."

        No, what we need is more programmers, more contributing powerusers, more people willing to understand the importance of the Free Software model. We need quality, not quantity. Quanitity is just a bonus.

        We welcome the normal users but saying that we need them is going too far...

        Besides, anything keeping the XYZ23B3D.RAR, XYZ23B3D.R00, XYZ23B3D.R01, XYZ23B3D.R02-kiddies away from Linux i
        • No, what we need is more programmers, more contributing powerusers, more people willing to understand the importance of the Free Software model. We need quality, not quantity. Quantity is just a bonus.

          We welcome the normal users but saying that we need them is going too far...

          I think the point the poster is making that without a larger user base it's going to be a lot harder to attract those who will contribute and ultimately improve what we have.

          I think many people would disagree with you and and have
      • That's exactly what first caused me to switch over to Linux - I was angry at WinXP for being dumb, when a buddy of mine showed me WineX, and how it would run EverQuest nearly flawlessly on Linux (I was starting up with SuSE 8.2 at the time, after a couple of years away from my Linux Experiment).

        Of course, since then, I've stopped playing EQ, and switched from SuSE to Gentoo. I'm sorry to say, sometimes, that I still dual-boot WinXP for a few games (I'm still liking Knights of the Old Republic), but I've

    • Re:Support development (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Seahawk ( 70898 )
      Games on computers is a niche market allready. I would think that most games coming on the PC platform will HAVE to be Linux/Windows compatible to have any chance of earning money in 5 years.

      Hint: Console game revenue is MUCH larger than PC game revenue allready.
      • That's a very good point. It's amazing how many developers do make games for PCs, considering how much revenue they can get for console games, and people do seem to forget that.

        Even an X-Box only title can easily sell more copies than a Windows PC title, and it's no harder to make games for the X-Box than for a PC (and it many ways, it's easier, though I'm not sure I'd say the same about doing a PS2 title).

        ID, for example, have said they fully expect to make far more money from console version of Doom 3 t
    • Corel set a great bar for this type of situation...no wonder MS paid them to "lie down". When Corel ported WordPerfect to linux they made heavy use of Wine upfront...and saving them selves lots of work too!

      In the best possible world, Game developers would develop and test their games under Windows & Wine from the go. It would save time and energy porting stuff over, as well as "unoffically" supporting Linux. The situation right now is that a program that runs under Wine should also run properly unde

  • Silver Dollar City (Score:3, Funny)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:19PM (#8312118) Homepage Journal
    "WineX 3.3 Out - Now Supports Steam"

    Whoah, my great grandfather would rejoice!

    • Re:Silver Dollar City (Score:5, Funny)

      by Deraj DeZine ( 726641 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @11:24PM (#8312932)
      Judging by how much noise some of my friends' computers make, it would appear that they have already taken advantage of this new-found steam powered computing technology.

      Time to replace that old "turbo" button with a "turbine" button.

      (when you're tired, every joke is funny)
  • Does that have anything to do with getting iTunes/Winamp5/etc working well?

  • Depressing, in a way... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:22PM (#8312139)
    Supporting Steam is ok, but that's really just a Windows app, regular Wine could probably support it.

    Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine back when the 3DFX Voodoo2 was new and nVidia was pushing their soon to be released TNT2 cards really isn't that amazing to me. In fact, it kind of underwhelms me.

    The mean time between WineX releases is slowing and the gap between the stuff they can support and the stuff being done on current and modern games is always widening. The utopian dream of being able to install any Windows based game you buy off the shelf at BestBuy on your Linux box and run it seamlessly won't, imho, ever become reality.

    • Re:Depressing, in a way... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      again, whats wrong with supporting quality and quality with a fanbase instead of a fragmented society of new games? i'd write support in my product so that i can help out 50% of my users instead of writing alot more to support 20 new games for 20% of the users.
    • Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine

      Quake 1, actually.

    • Re:Depressing, in a way... (Score:5, Informative)

      by PyromanFO ( 319002 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @10:29PM (#8312576)
      Announcing that WineX 3.3 has support for Valve games that were written on the Quake 2 engine back when the 3DFX Voodoo2 was new and nVidia was pushing their soon to be released TNT2 cards really isn't that amazing to me. In fact, it kind of underwhelms me.

      Then you really haven't been paying attention. Half-Life has been supported for a very long time. Steam, you know, the part that wasn't based on Quake 2 and didn't come out with the Voodoo2 was king, that is now supported.

      I'm just disappointed these improvements didn't add PunkBuster support, since I've stopped caring about Half-Life anyway.

      • Re:Depressing, in a way... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @12:59AM (#8313365)
        Actually, I have been paying attention. I know that the Q1/Q2 engine games have been somewhat supported (Working Rating 4 for all HL based games) for a while now. But, even by Transgaming's admission on their website, you're better off playing them in OpenGL mode than the D3D mode.

        WineX 3.3 can't even fully support the version of Direct3D (I'm guessing DirectX 3) used in games released circa 1998. That doesn't bode well for them supporting any game released now.

        A quick search of the Supported Games List over at Transgaming shows that there are only seven (7!) titles that get a Working Rating of 5. Only two of those titles are 3D games and both of those have OpenGL renderers. There are no Direct3D only games that WineX 3.3 supports 100%. The newest game of the seven is Warcraft III, which is fast approaching two years old. The other five games are Direct 2D based and average in age from 3-4 years old.

        Extrapolating out that means that I could reasonably expect to play a game released in 2004 sometime in 2007 if I'm going to use WineX. That's being lenient and assuming they will somehow leapfrog DirectX versions 4-8 and get to D3D 9 sometime soon. If I were to start paying my $5.00/month subscription now I will have paid $185.00 (5 * 37) by the time I can play a game made in 2004. I don't even have a guarantee that there will be another WineX release between now and then to hold me over.

        I can buy an XBox or a PS2 now for $180.00 (or a Gamecube for $100) and know with 100% certainty that it will play any modern game released for it. High polygon counts, pixel and vertex shaders, high resolutions, large textures, etc... It's all there and I can play those games now. Currently on WineX I can enjoy, with 100% compatibility, five 2D sprite based games, a three year old third person shooter (Max Payne), or Warcraft III.

        Check out this paragraph I took from the Business Plan page at Transgaming.com:
        "TransGaming is working with among the largest game developers globally to bring the most popular and the highest demand gaming titles to new platforms. Our core technology has demonstrated that it is the only technology of its kind and allows us to accomplish within a couple of months what would take most other companies as long as two years to achieve. TransGaming's technology is taking the video games industry to new levels and is changing the rules in how multi-platform games are deployed."
        (emphasis mine)

        The newest game they support fully is almost two years old, yet they claim to have technology that allows the translation of games to Linux in just a matter of months.

        At best you can say they've taken two years to get Warcraft III working. By their own admission their library of 100% fully supported games could've been made to run under Linux in half the time if they'd ported them directly instead of working on WineX.

        It's just not that impressive.

        • > I can buy an XBox or a PS2 now for $180.00 (or a Gamecube for $100) and know with 100% certainty that it will play any modern game released for it. High polygon counts, pixel and vertex shaders, high resolutions, large textures, etc...

          The PS2 doesn't have pixel shader support.
          It's "high resolution" is 640x448

  • What's the performance like? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by skermit ( 451840 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:42PM (#8312268) Homepage
    I never decided to "switch" because of two things. I don't have as good of a *nix background as I would like, and it seems pretty daunting to run my own box. The second is that I'm an avid gamer. I probably use my computer for no less than 30% gaming, 30% internet, 20% watching tv-shows/movies, and 20% doing actual work (heh!).

    Such turnkey installations are available, and I guess I can take the plunge with Knoppix boot tests, but with WineX, everything's looking a bit more lucrative.

    My only reservation is performance. If WineX is an emulator of sorts, what's the performance hit that's associated with newer games such as Warcraft 3 vs. the older engine'ed games like Half-life (CS, DoD, etc.). Anybody wanna help convert me?

    • Re:What's the performance like? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @09:50PM (#8312319) Homepage
      WineX is based on Wine, which is actually an acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". It's not a full emulator (like running a gameboy emulator would be), it simply intercepts system calls and translates them into the Linux equivelents, the actuall program code doesn't need to be translated. So programs that make very few syscalls (things like, just to take the far end Super Pi, which simply calculates Pi to various accuracies) would run almost identically. On the other hand a program that uses tons of Windows calls (like something that uses Direct3D) would be very slow. Games that don't make tons of those kind of calls (like simple card games, 2D games, etc) should run fine (close to "Windows" speed) as should OpenGL programs (because OpenGL can be passed to the OpenGL subsystem and doesn't need to be translated into OpenGL (or something else) like must happen with D3D).

      So it really depends on the program. I assume you could find out for a specific game by searching google or the WineX forums or support pages (they have pages that list supported games and their status, right? Been a while since I've been to their site).

      • Huh? Who would mod this up informative? Come on people do a little [winehq.org] reading [transgaming.com]

        Wine consists of a program loader, which loads and executes a Windows binary, and a set of libraries that implements Windows API calls using their UNIX or X11 equivalents. There is no "translation" and no "emulation". A win32 binary should run as fast if not faster as under MS Windows on the same hardware. Some programs I have run under Wine do seem faster and others seem slower. What could cause that? It is the Wine source c

        • That's what I meant by "translation." It intercepts the system calls (library calls, etc) and makes the equivelent Linux call instead. Sounds like translation to me. I also said SPECIFICALLY that is was NOT AN EMULATOR. Your post seems to be identicle to mine, so my guess is that you just missunderstood my point.
      • >On the other hand a program that uses tons of Windows calls (like something that uses Direct3D) would be very slow.

        Have you actually used WineX? I use it to run Everquest and I can assure it's anything but slow, let alone very slow.

    • Performance is a funny issue.. Back in the 1.5 days, CounterStrike ran MUCH better in wine than in windows XP. I'm talking atleast 20fps difference, easily more.

      I've yet to try the new winex/steam as I play counter-strike in leauges and really don't want a VAC bug to ban me for 5 years, both for having to explain 'no I was not cheating' and because I'd have to ditch my 0:1:2496 steamid.

      I'd honestly not want to rely on winex now that Valve is pushing an update once a week over steam, the chances of it bre
  • Will it run my Windows version of UT2004?

    • Re:Yes, But... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Medieval_Gnome ( 250212 )
      You do know that there will (afaik) be a native port of UT2004, just like there was of UT2003 (it was on cd3, for what it's worth)
      • I've been playing the linux demo for the past couple of days, and it runs better than UT-2003 on my system. From what I've seen, they are going to make sure that linux support is listed on the box this time.

  • What about the REAL Wine, people?! (Score:5, Informative)

    by IntergalacticWalrus ( 720648 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @10:33PM (#8312603)
    I find it pretty sad that almost everybody thinks that only WineX can run games. Reality check: Wine does have a DirectX emulation layer too! Including Direct3D to OpenGL translation! In fact, the few times I tried running a Windows game under Linux, I had better luck with Wine than WineX (CVS build, from back when Gentoo had an ebuild for it).

    So, please, don't support those monkeys at Transgaming and use the one, true Wine instead.
    • Just FYI: I tried the december wine snapshot, and it would not run STEAM. It had a few fatal errors. So winex supporting steam is a big breakthough.
    • Much of the support for games regular wine enjoys has been contributed by "those monkeys at Transgaming".

      The copy protection is the part Transgaming cannot release, but other than that they do give back to the community. After WINE changed to the LGPL, they're doing it thru ReWind [sf.net] but I'm sure the changes finally trickle back to the main wine tree if they're any good.

      TransGaming is not such a bad company. I don't agree with what they're doing, I feel it may eventually or has already hurt GNU/Linux as a

      • No, the big problem with Transgaming is that they don't give anything back to Wine. Hell, their license isn't even OSI-approved.
        • ReWind is available under the MIT license just like WINE previously was. It doesn't have everything that WineX has, but most of the stuff eventually gets there. WineX itself as a product is proprietary, but it shares code with ReWind.
        • What are you talking about? You can get the code from CVS to WineX from here [transgaming.com]. All of the WineX stuff gets back to Wine except for a few proprietary technologies that Transgamming does not own. Many commercial Win32 games have copy protection crap on them. WineX works with that protection, however Transgamming is not allowed to just release the code to some other companies copy protection technology. In fact, the only two things you cannot get from WineX without purchasing a subscription is copy protect
        • > No, the big problem with Transgaming is that they don't give anything back to Wine.

          Completely, totally and absolutely not true.

    • I'm not going into the wine/winex points you raise, but when I tried both winex and cvs winex, with the cvs winex, you had less working games than with the binary winex. So it's hardly a good point to start a comparaison with vanilla wine.
      Let's compare winex and the wine that one can get with its distro of choice and the wine one can get by compilling it.
    • Also, according to the Wine [winehq.org] website...

      TransGaming has done extensive work to get copy protection working. They've added support for popular formats such as SecuRom and SafeDisc. In the case of the latter they've licensed SafeDisc LT from Macrovision and incorporated the necessary changes into the core parts of their Wine tree.

      Currently in the LGPL Wine tree you can find support for SafeDisc 1 with SafeDisc 2 on the way. The caveat being that Wine must run in NT mode (configure winver "nt40" in the wine c
      • I was talking about the WineX CVS ebuild. Transgaming asked the Gentoo maintainers to trash it, as it encouraged too much people to just use WineX from CVS, which, according to Transgaming, is only provided to see the source, not actually use it without paying their subscribtion costs.

  • Ultimate Wine cvs automation script (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dan_bethe ( 134253 ) <slashdot@@@smuckola...org> on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @11:01PM (#8312800)
    Check out this script [homeunix.org] for automated management of the cvs source of all Wine versions and branches, including WineX. I'm just trying it out now for the first time.

    I do feel somewhat bad replying to a commercial announcement, with a freeloader announcement ;-> But there are a lot of unemployed hackers out there, and a lot of people who'd test it out and give WineX a louder voice. Do support free, commercial software if you have the means.

  • Great. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Night Goat ( 18437 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @11:09PM (#8312848) Homepage Journal
    I can now run Steam in Linux. Too bad I can't run Half-Life in Steam because some dick used a keygen and my legit key came up, and now I can't register my key. This is the exact reason why key verification via server hurts customers far more than it does software pirates. Fuck you Valve, you had better fix this before Half-Life 2 comes out. I'm not buying if Steam is the only way to play.
    • Or maybe you got your key stolen because of not updating your windows installation?

      I have NEVER seen the problem you are compaining about from people i KNOW have a serious security policy on their computer.

      On the other hand I have heard stories like yours often from people I know have no clue about security, and hom install all kind of junk on their machines.

      It might be a coinsidence - but I have seen it enough times that the odds of that should be low!
      • The odds are low, but it does occur.

        Another very real possibility might be that Steam f-cked up again, and 'stole' his key.
        In the early days of 'the non-beta version' *snicker* Steam I've heard this happening various times.
        • Yeah, the biggest issue I have is that there doesn't seem to be any mechanism in place to allow me to verify my key. It may have been stolen, I've had the game since '98, so there certainly is the possibility that someone over the years had swiped it, but really, I shouldn't have to guard the key like a mofo. Over six years, it's certainly possible that someone copied the key off my CD case. Not much I can do about that.
      • in any case he should be able to play the game he has actually purchased.
        • Not if he got his key stolen because HE didn't have basic security on his machine.

          Bad, but not useless analogy:

          If you buy a new car and it gets stolen because you didnt locked it, its definately not the manufacturers fault :)
  • means I'm not buying it. I don't play that many games, but I'm dedicated to the ones I do play.

  • Why not get the real deal? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    One has to wonder: If Linux users have to jump through all these hoops to emulate the play of a real game, why not just get a real OS to run it on?

    You know, I hear if you retrofit a motorcycle with 2 extra wheels, add an additional drive train, pound some steel into an extended body frame and overhaul the steering and electrical systems, you can emulate having a car! (Or you can just get a car to start with and not have to deal with that stuff.)

  • Don't forget to support your friend Icculus.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by msimm ( 580077 ) on Wednesday February 18, 2004 @02:02PM (#8318195) Homepage
    Winex is neet and all and I'll give them credit for not adding game support for games that are actively being ported to Linux. But if your trying to decide between a couple of games try to get the one that has a Linux port before chosing one with emulation (ok, wine is not emulation..ygmp).

    Between inhouse porting and Icculus [icculus.org] a lot of the major releases are coming out with native Linux ports. The developers are doing their part to support a Linux market that we've been clamoring about it for ages, so...buy something from ID Software or try out Savage, Neverwinter Nights, MOHAA or Unreal Tournament. Or save a little money and try America's Army. I'm playing a hell of a lot of Postal 2 STP and its *addictive as hell* and I haven't even touched Tribes 2 in months. Supporting WineX is just begging to go back to playing Tetris clones and Solitare natively under Linux. ;-)
  • Has anyone got European Air War working under any version of Wine?

    http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=7 70
    Rating: 0 out of 5 [ Does not install and does not work. ]

    I would really like to hear that you have.

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