Cedega 5.0 Released 289
kormoc writes "Transgaming has released a large update to Cedega. This release (5.0) changes how the entire product works, merging the GUI with the actual program, as well as implementing features such as pixel shadier 1.4 support, in order to get games such as battlefield 2 working.
The release notes list all the new improvements as well as the newly supported games.
This seems to be the best release to date and expands the feature set to work with a large number of new games."
Pixel Shadier? (Score:5, Funny)
So exactly what is a shady pixel, and how does a pixel become shadier? Are there degrees of shadiness?
Let's say you have two pixels: one pixel threatens people on the sidewalk for money, and the other pixel runs a numbers racket. Which one is shadier?
Re:Pixel Shadier? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pixel Shadier? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pixel Shadier? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pixel Shadier? (Score:3, Funny)
The old stuff was Pixel Shader. The new stuff is Pixel Shadier. In the future, we'll have Pixel Shadiest, then we'll move on to some other measure of graphics-processing prowess.
Come on, this is all basic marketing.
Re:Pixel Shadier? (Score:2, Funny)
game pad support? (Score:2)
Re:game pad support? (Score:3, Informative)
Not legal, I'm sure, but then you'll know and can pay for it if it does work.
Re:game pad support? (Score:2)
As a gaming platform? (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone regularly use Cedega to play 3D FPS and if so are they playable with a non-cutting edge system? (thinking last generation card or whatever.)It would be nice to lose the XP install on my Hard Drive.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
Linux?
Just joking. I think the real reason would be that (I'm pretty sure) in Cedega Half Life 2 always runs in Directx 8 mode (would on the parent's card anyway). You can do that in Windows too.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
I think my graphics options are set to High--basically the settings that hl2 detected as appropriate for my machine. I notice that if I set the texture detail down to Low then it r
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be pretty good if they hadn't ruined the command line support... You now have to jump through hoops to avoid having to load the GUI prior to loading any games.
I agree though that from the Cedega engine point of view, it's a very impressive release.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
At best you get equal performance to Windows. More often then not your framerate suffers a little. Games are still playable but they don't run as fast as they would in a native environment.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:3)
No, Linux is not a magic bullet. Linux is a revolver. Better memory handling, better disk handling, better filesystems, better scheduler, less resource-intensive desktop environments and much faster development speed are magic bullets.
Seriously, there is simply no reason to expect that a game runs faster in Windows than in Linux. Games te
Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
But hey, pulling things out of your ass is good fun, right?
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
The _only_ game I've ever seen to run better in Cedega than in Windows is Anachronox [planetanachronox.com]. The level loading delays were significantly reduced, and the game didn't crash randomly like it enjoyed doing in Windows.
However, most games run significantly slower, especially if you don't have boatloads of RAM.
I remember Starcraft running smoothly on a 166 Mhz Pentium 1 with less than 64 MB RAM, in Windows. Try that in Cedega. The thing will be unbelievably laggy, even if you pop in a
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:3, Informative)
And my system is about a year old.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
FPS in World of Warcraft seems to be all over the place due to the number of players in your current area, but I average about 60FPS in 1280x1024 on a 6800GT in Windows.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
I currently use it to play Warcraft3 andsome other games and it works fine.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:3, Informative)
Framerate differences will vary greatly from game to game. For instance, EverQuest actually ran faster in Cedega than under Windows 98 for me. Now, the negative side is that the patcher runs *incredibly* slow. What takes 45 seconds in Windows takes about 5 minutes to patch under Cedega. Also, when the last two expansions came out and people started complaining of fubar'd textures in the new zones (so bad that you couldn't see), Transgaming did nothing to address the issues.
Counter-S
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
This was a little ago, as I haven't been playing much of late, but I'm now very tempted to get back and see if the new version changes things.
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:2)
I suspect that the reason Cedega often runs faster than Windows boxes are a combination of less background services involved, and very good translation that sometimes picks translation
Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is some wisdom here. I've been using Linux for over ten years, and you will be hard pressed to find somebody that likes it more than I do; however, the sad fact of life is that if you like playing modern games, you probably need to keep a windows partition around.
I do, and always have dual (and triple) booted my systems. I currently keep FreeDOS, Linux, and Win2k bootable on my personal home system. I also have Hurd and L4/Hurd somewhat bootable for experimental fooling around.
I use FreeDOS as basically a recovery system and have my GRUB bootloader's home on the FreeDOS drive. Other than that, I rarely boot it, but then again it only requires about 350MB so I keep it around just in case something really bad happens to my system.
Linux is my main system, and I run Gentoo (I'm very experienced with Linux, remember). I have an excellent Linux gaming system going with Nvidia 5900, full power OpenGL, Wine, and lots of Loki games. I regularly download Linux beta versions of games from Sourceforge and install into either my home or /usr/local to play around with them. Linux is my home system and I have a massive development infrastructure installed there. I'm an engineer, and if I want to make a science program, I boot to Linux and fire up Python.
I keep Windows 2000 as my bootable windows system. I use it mostly for games and CAD. If I can migrate a game to Linux in Wine, then I do so eventually, but if not I don't sweat it. It is a major hassle keeping my win2k system updated with virus protection and all that horseshit, but its necessary if you want to play games. I like win2k because its a no-nonsense windows version and I'm not looking forward to the time when I have to upgrade it.
There's no shame in dual-booting. At least you are learning Linux and using it when appropriate. In maybe 10 or 20 years, Linux will be a real powerhouse, and I've used it since it was a baby, but until it comes into its prime, use it when it makes sense and don't be a zealot.
Balance in all things grasshopper.
Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:4, Funny)
Any game programmers care to comment if/whether their company would deliberately code a product so that it would run well under something like this? Would you code with the compatability library in mind?
Probably not. (Score:2)
Why not just make it cross-platform to begin with? (Score:2)
Re:Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:2)
Re:Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:2)
Assuming the game company in question gives a damn about Linux users, what do you think is easier: Designing a whole new engine around OpenGL and training the developers to become accustomed to it, Or using a pre-existing engine written in DirectX and ensuring compatibility in the areas where Cedgea has trouble and/or continuing to use an API that their developers are already familiar with and have an existing codebase for.
I'm not saying that a full-blown port to Linux
Re:Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:2)
Re:Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:2)
Re:Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:2)
Except you don't have to make a "completely separate version" because the Linux version (i.e., the one that uses open APIs like OpenGL and SDL) will run perfectly fine on Windows
Interesting business model. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting business model. (Score:2)
Re:Interesting business model. (Score:2)
But the real tragedy is that even with the source code I was unable to get my favourite game working under Cedega. There was nowhere I could go to talk with other developers and get help. It was like using a proprietary pr
Re:Interesting business model. (Score:2)
Transgaming needs to change their voting system - Rather than having a -3 to +3 range where users can select any of the choices, voters should be limited to only allocating X points between the available options. This will force people to choose actual priorities, rather than +3ing everything they like and -3ing everything they don't like.
Why?! (Score:2)
"Seperate the program's core from its user interface."
So, what benefits does it give to incorporate "application logic" into it's graphical front-end, like the press release stub says. That's just stupid, isn't it? The only "plus" from my point of view is that the whole program would noticeably hang, and not just some kind of crashing server or back-end being controlled by a (maybe still responsive,) polish
Re:Why?! (Score:3, Informative)
Software Installation (Score:2, Insightful)
Cedega: Pop in the CD, run the installer, run the updater (if its not automatic), done.
Native: Open a terminal, run a shell script, watch it not quite work because your distro is 2 months newer than the software, manually hack the shell script to work, copy files over, manually create menu entries, download a tarball to update the game with,
Re:Software Installation when you are a n00b (Score:2, Insightful)
I've never had to manually hack a shell script to make an install work. Copy what files over? Once again, never had to manually create menu entries but if I did it's pretty simple. Downloading a tarba
Re:Software Installation (Score:2)
Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=nwn [gentoo-portage.com]
See NWN with data and server right there.
http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=doom3 [gentoo-portage.com] for doom3
And Portage put games into catagories.
Like: games-fps, games-rpg, games-puzzle. etc.
AND the best part, to install. emerge nwn
It will download any and all deps for you!
Re:Software Installation (Score:2)
Maybe you can email your favorite game companies and try to get them to support it.
Re:Software Installation (Score:2)
Re:Software Installation (Score:4, Informative)
It is the best choice. If you prefer to mindlessly click "Next" 5-10 times every time you want to install something and then again if you ever want to update it, when you could simply issue a single command or tick a single box and select install, and then have *all* updates handled for you, then I sincerely hope you have nothing to do with any important software development.
From portage:
Or maybe you'd prefer the web [gentoo.org] listings [gentoo.org].
Any other questions?
Re:Software Installation (Score:2)
Hmmm.. I wonder....
# emerge doom3
Calculating dependencies
>>> emerge (1 of 1) games-fps/doom3-1.3.1302 to
# emerge heretic2
Calculating dependencies
emerge: there are no ebuilds to satisfy "heretic2".
# emerge nwn
Calculating dependencies
>>> emerge (1 of 1) games-rpg/nwn-1.66 to
Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
Add i
Review at Linux-gamers (Score:4, Informative)
Doesn't seem too shabby.
The Ultimate Accomplishment (Score:5, Funny)
So MS will go away when... (Score:2)
Somehow I don't think so...
until wine is merged into the linux kernel (Score:2)
what benefit would there be in having this in the kernel? do you even know the difference between the kernel and userspace? are you just throwing fancy words around because they sound cool? you realise that it's impossible to impress women with
Re:until wine is merged into the linux kernel (Score:2)
why would a bunch of windows shared libraries be in the linux kernel? they're not in the windows kernel.
They should go into the kernel for PRECISELY that reason. Microsoft wasn't innovative enough to think of what I've come up with and they will loose for it. By putting them in the kernel instead of luser space, they have total access to the system meaning absolute power!! They will outprform the sludge that comes out of Microsoft 10,000,0
wine server perhaps (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of wine should not be in the kernel. However (parts of?) wine server would be better off in the kernel. One major performance problem that wine has is everytime you need to use something in the wine server, you need two context switches. For some programs this doesn't happen often, but for others it makes wine half the speed of Microsoft Windows.
If wine server was in the kernel there would be no context switch.
Note that I'm not arguing that moving wine to the kernel is the best solution to this pr
5.0 is a double edged sword. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:5.0 is a double edged sword. (Score:2)
If so, you seem to be complaning that the hacks you implemented to make the old version work are no longer necessary. how is this bad?
Re:5.0 is a double edged sword. (Score:3, Informative)
That's nothing. Anyone who used command-line only -- like me -- is now totally screwed. EVERYTHING I had set up previously was hosed, and it was a nightmare trying to get things to a mere semblance of how they behaved before.
I want an app where I can go to the command line and run cedega with just a reference to the executable file and have it work (if the file can work at all with cedega/wine). I could d
So is wine ahead or behind with dx9? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did this ever make it into
Re:So is wine ahead or behind with dx9? (Score:2)
Re:So is wine ahead or behind with dx9? (Score:3, Insightful)
After that I'm going to commit the performance patches that should bring wine to a comparable level to Cedega (some of the patches give a huge performance increase over Cedega).
There are still a lot of no DirectX related issues that need fixing in Wine so that games
Gaming the O-System (Score:2)
convert instead of translate.... (Score:2)
Just a thought...
But will it play Civ 4? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sure as hell isn't playable under Windows for a metric assload of people.
It's not MSs fault, just poor programming released too early, but maybe the memory leaks won't kill performance after only a couple turns.
I'll have to try it when I get home.. Well, if I get home....stupid PERC cards.
Re:But will it play Civ 4? (Score:3, Informative)
I got home, turns out Dell had an update for people with my exact card and storage solution combined. It worked too
Download latest version, put it in
Emerge Cedega. Trying to emerge the version I already have. Doh! My computer is the local rsync server and it's not in cron, ok emerge --sync.
Emerge cedega (take 2). cedega 5 is blocked by Point 2 Play. Right, someone else said Point 2 Play is gone. unmerge that.
Nice Advert, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Honest Question For Cedega Users (Score:2)
Whats the best environment to use Cedega in? I know enough to know that running games inside of Gnome is a bad idea because Gnome likes to eat my resources, but what is the best way to do it? In a super light-weight Window Manager like openbox? I was planning on just logging out of Gnome and running the command to start the game inside the GD
Re:Behind the scenes tech? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Behind the scenes tech? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it is WineX. WineX was TransGaming's origional name for Cedega.
Re:Behind the scenes tech? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Behind the scenes tech? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:4, Informative)
Their DirectX work is largely something they keep to themselves, but honestly, it's their right to. They took a wine version at a specific point where the license allowed them to do it, and they forked it. They didn't abuse the license, the license specifically allowed it. Sure some people later on felt jipped and changed the license, but that doesn't really reflect on the fact that someone should have considered it when the original license was chosen, especially if they didn't want this to happen.
Plus, they're putting alot of hard work into the DirectX stuff. I can't fault them for wanting to hang on to it for a while. It's a very niche market they're targetting and they could use the revenue.
The other component that they get alot of criticism for is the copy protection portions of the code, and I believe this is actually the only part not in CVS and there's a reason for that, it's licensed intellectual property that they aren't at liberty to give out the source code for. Since the legality of no-cd cracks is still in a legal gray area, plus the stability of some cracks are questionable, it's nice that they're able to implement this so we can run pristine binaries of the games.
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Troll)
You also have to pay for Windows to run the game on!
Damnit, why should you have to pay twice!?
I bought a car.
I also need to keep buying oil and new tires and brake pads for my car!
Damnit, why should I have to pay so many times!?
Cedega will continue to be necessary in future years. If nothing else, all the current Linux games will stop working as the glibc and kernel hackers continue going out of their way to screw users of proprietary software. Eventually some change to stack sizes or l
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Informative)
You're FUDing. Stop it. There has been one (1) incompatible change to glibc in the last ten (10) years. If you look, you'll probably discover that your distro still ships the older libc.so.5 library. And the kernel interfaces (the external ones, which you
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2)
In no case is it ever 'free.'
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Interesting)
That's very true...cedega will attract more users in the short term
What about in the long term, however? Something to think about: Does Cedega cause some gaming companies to refrain from providing a native Linux port for their games because they run "well enough" on Cedega? As you probably know, gamers are also into hardware: they need the fastest possible performance. Therefore, there is an advantage to playing games natively in Windows. If these games aren't ported to Linux, then we could see gamers
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2)
That would either force the game companies to provide a native linux port, or contribute to Cedega to make sure their game runs well. Either way, it's a win f
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2)
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:4, Insightful)
you figure it out.
the word FREE as in "I want everything and don't want to pay for it" annoys the dog piss out of me... I prefer my FREE as in "I want everything. I want it to work. I want to be able to fix it myself if it in fact it does not work like I need/want it to. oh and if it meets these requirements.. i'm willing to pay."
my objection to windows... is that is doesn't meet those requirements...
Cedega is a hell of a program and has taken the Wine(x) to a whole different level when it comes to Game compatibility. it's worth the price of a subscription...
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2)
Next, pay for windows? See my other reply to that. I haven't paid, nor have I legally been required to pay, for Windows since I last bought 3.11 (WFW) Either it came pre-installed when I bought the computer from another person (legal transfer of license and key) or it came with the laptop I got from my college.
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Informative)
Apart from all the patches they contribute back to Wine, that is. But I suppose you're free to ignore those if it makes it easier for you to justify your mindless hating.
Re:Cedega will never get my money. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux (Score:2)
ATI do not make great linux drivers and punk buster don't make linux software AFAIK .
Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux (Score:2)
Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux (Score:2)
Re:Battlefield 2 on Linux (Score:2)
As for ATI, Linux boxes don't have ATI cards anyway for all intents and perposes, and drivers arn't really cedega's problem.
I think they have done quite well with this. It's very sad that they have given so little back to open source wine though.
It still costs less... (Score:4, Insightful)
...than buying a copy of Windows XP.
Re:It still costs less... (Score:2)
Good theory... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Windows with 90+% of the market
2) Linux with 5-10% of the market, give or take
Also, keep in mind that anybody who's a serious gamer has a Windows machine, or dual-boots.
Re:Good theory... (Score:2)
Ummm... okay, well it is for the vast majority of the commercial game developers. As for open source games a couple thoughts:
1) You will not be able to write a game in your spare time that is of such earth shattering quality that people, not ordinarily inclined to do so, would install Linux to play it.
2) If it's truly open source, somebody can port it to Windows if it's all that.
I mean, just think of some really great open source game
CVS? You've got to be kidding! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Damn slashdot Effect (Score:2)
Re:food for thought??? (Score:2)