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PC Games (Games) Software Linux

Cedega 5.0 Released 289

Posted by Zonk from the new-toys dept.
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."
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Cedega 5.0 Released More

Cedega 5.0 Released

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  • Pixel Shadier? (Score:5, Funny)

    by plover ( 150551 ) * on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @05:33PM (#13983164) Homepage Journal
    features such as pixel shadier 1.4 support

    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?

  • I've never been able to get wine/winex to work with my gamepad. It's a playstation to USB converter that just looks like a generic USB gamepad. Every other linux program works just fine with it. Does this work better in cedega? Can I give it a try before I buy it to make sure it actually works?
    • You can find it on most of the major bittorrent search sites, if you just want to try it to make sure it'll work for your setup.

      Not legal, I'm sure, but then you'll know and can pay for it if it does work.
    • Actually, you don't buy Cedega, you subscribe to it. If you want to try it out (and don't want to get it off BitTorrent like others have mentioned) you can pay $15 for the minimum subscription, and then cancel if it doesn't work. It's not free, but it's not that expensive either -- it's better than "buying" it (which would imply spending on the order of $50 or more).

  • As a gaming platform? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by taskforce ( 866056 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @05:38PM (#13983209) Homepage
    Having never used Cedega before, I was wondering what the noticeable drop in framerate would be as opposed to when the games were running natively in Windows XP? Hopefully some of what horsepower the computer is throwing at the game is refunded in that it doesn't have to run XP in the background, but I'd assume the net performance change is in the negative direction.

    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)

      by et764 ( 837202 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @05:40PM (#13983231)
      I use Cedega to play Half-Life 2 on an Athlon XP 2200+ and a Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128MB. It runs really smoothely. I've never played it on a comparable computer under Windows, so I can't say if there's a framerate drop, but the framerate is still high enough, and that's really what matters.
      • Damn, what's your secret? I play it on Windows, with an Athlon XP 2500+, a Geforce 6800 and 512 MB of RAM and it runs like a dog with no legs!
        • Damn, what's your secret?

          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.

    • This seems to be the best release to date
      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.
    • Games tend to run faster and smoother in Cedega. Especially if your comparison is to Windows XP.
      • That is such a load. A game will run just as fast, but never faster then when its running on windows. Linux isn't some magic go faster bullet when it comes to gaming.

        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.

        • That is such a load. A game will run just as fast, but never faster then when its running on windows. Linux isn't some magic go faster bullet when it comes to gaming.

          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)

        by NCraig ( 773500 )
        Not [tgdaily.com] according [slashdot.org] to [tomshardware.com] these [amdpower.com].

        But hey, pulling things out of your ass is good fun, right?
      • You're kidding, right?

        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)

      by bumby ( 589283 )
      I play world of warcraft using cedega, and it works fine. Of course, I'm sure I would have gotten a higher fps in windows, but then again, an average of 27 fps in enough for me.

      And my system is about a year old.
      • What kind of video card are you running?
        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.
    • Way back when it was WineX, I compared Quake3 in winex to Windows to native Linux and saw little diference. Native Linux was a little faster but only a couple of frames and this was on a Radeon 7500.

      I currently use it to play Warcraft3 andsome other games and it works fine.

    • Re:As a gaming platform? (Score:3, Informative)

      by 3vi1 ( 544505 )
      Here's my experience:

      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
    • I used to have an ATI card in my linux box. I installed Cedega, and did a direct copy from NTFS to get WoW running in Linux. After a bit of tweaking, I got better FPS (from 5 to 10) in Linux than in Windows. I went and got myself a nVidia 6600GT .. and the FPS dropped the other way, 5 to 10 down.

      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.

  • Would gaming companies target this platform? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Reality Master 201 ( 578873 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @05:41PM (#13983235) Journal
    From what I understand, IBM already tests the Notes client to ensure that it functions properly under Wine (or at least as well as it does under Windows). how long before game producers start to target these kinds of compatibility libraries? I understand that the linux gaming market is small compared to the whole, so direct support is unlikely.

    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?
    • Some might, but I don't see it happening for any of our products. We target consoles first (PS2/Xbox), and usually Windows as well, but so few of our sales come from the Windows version that it wouldn't even be worth doing if we didn't have the technology in place to make porting easy. Wine/Cedega/etc would be a fraction of that already small market, so it definitely wouldn't be worth it, at least not for the console-centric sort of games we make.
    • Surely if they were going to the trouble of testing for a second platform anyway, it would make more sense just to use OpenGL/OpenAL/SDL to begin with and save all the hassle, right? Besides, then it would work in Mac OS too.

  • Interesting business model. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuantumG ( 50515 ) <qg@biodome.org> on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @05:47PM (#13983299) Homepage Journal
    I signed up for Transgaming earlier this year. Like many others I gave them my money so I could vote for my favourite games. Unfortunately, like in just about any democracy, my vote wasn't worth anything, so my favourite games never made it to the top of the TODO list. That said, I still think Cedega is a good product and if Transgaming focused more on building a developer community than paying developers they'd get a lot more games working.
    • Your vote is worth exactly as much as everyone else's. If you want it to be worth more, try bribing your representatives.
      • What sucks is that you can only buy "5 more votes" or something like that. If I want to pay them $20,000 to get my favourite game voted to the top of the TODO list they should bloody well take it. But then again, I don't actually want to spend that much money, so they probably would :)

        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
        • Also, you can't seem to be able to temporarily buy extra votes once your subscription has started.

          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)

    by c0l0 ( 826165 )
    As a hobbyist software developer, I still believe in what's been taught at university:

    "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)

      by alras ( 858101 )
      technically the core and gui are still seperated, its just not that obvious anymore. The binaries are now a little more hidden in the home directory of the user.
  • Something I find vastly amusing is that, using Wine or Cedega, it is generally easier to install Windows program on Linux than it is to install a Linux program on Linux.

    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,
    • 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, unpack the tarball, run the updater script, done.

      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
    • If you are APT-GETting all over the place in a shell, shouldn't you know already what the difference between a .i386.rpm and .x86-64.rpm is? I sure hope so...

    • Try Gentoo, NWN and Doom3 is already in portage (Score:4, Informative)

      by linuxkrn ( 635044 ) <gwatson@linuxlo g i n . c om> on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @06:25PM (#13983640)
      Try Gentoo Portage http://www.gentoo.org [gentoo.org]

      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!
    • Perhaps you'd be interested in klik [atekon.de] then, which pretty much solves all the problems you just mentioned..

      Maybe you can email your favorite game companies and try to get them to support it.
    • It sounds like you need to use a distro with a better package manager, or learn to use your current one better. I use Gentoo, Ubuntu and Debian regually and they all allow software to be installed very quickly and easily. Synaptic (Ubuntu) provides an excelent search interface to choose a program and it's two to three clicks to install any package you want.

    • Re:Software Installation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Mad Merlin ( 837387 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @06:41PM (#13983776) Homepage
      Most Open Source/Free Software/Linux folks seem to think that the last option is _clearly_ the best choice. I'm not so sure. Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

      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:

      * games-rpg/nwn
      Latest version available: 1.66
      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
      Size of downloaded files: 2,420,283 kB
      Homepage: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html
      Description: Neverwinter Nights
      License: NWN-EULA

      * games-fps/doom3
      Latest version available: 1.3.1302
      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
      Size of downloaded files: 16,802 kB
      Homepage: http://www.doom3.com/
      Description: Doom III - 3rd installment of the classic id 3D first-person shooter
      License: DOOM3

      Or maybe you'd prefer the web [gentoo.org] listings [gentoo.org].

      Any other questions?

    • Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

      Hmmm.. I wonder....

      # emerge doom3
      Calculating dependencies ...done!
      >>> 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 ...done!
      >>> 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)

    by pshuke ( 845050 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @06:30PM (#13983681)
    Linux-gamers [linux-gamers.net] have put up a review, if anyone are interested.
    Doesn't seem too shabby.

  • The Ultimate Accomplishment (Score:5, Funny)

    by eno2001 ( 527078 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @06:30PM (#13983682) Homepage Journal
    The Microsoft dominated computer industry won't go away until Wine is merged into the Linux kernel so that it gets optimal performance and actually out-Windows Windows itself. Just imagine if the entire whole of Cedega was merged into the Linux kernel to be a completely self contained OS that runs all Windows applications including virii, wormii and and server applications. Just imagine what a combo like Linux + Cedega + IIS would wrought on the world!? It would be awesome. Microsoft would drop dead in it's tracks and no one would ever use Windows again. And not only that, you could run IIS at the same time that you have Unreal 2008 running at 20,000 frames per second with total perspective vortex shading. This would go a long way to improving the work conditions of many IT grunts because the production servers would now be useful for more important things than serving out the corporate web site. :)
    • ... Linux is completely dependent on an API that's controlled by Microsoft...

      Somehow I don't think so...
    • why would a bunch of windows shared libraries be in the linux kernel? they're not in the windows kernel.

      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 /. posts, right?
      • Your Slashdot ID suits you well young padwan... Watch and learn:

        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)

        by bluGill ( 862 )

        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)

    by ahpx ( 907631 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @06:31PM (#13983699)
    I'm a Transgamer subscriber. Having downloaded and installed 5.0, and used it abit. I'd say 5.0 is a double edged sword. The positives on it is that it fixes alot of problems with older versions and fixes support for the Steam patch that recently broke it before. However the negitives to it is that it completely kills the use of Point2Play which I enjoyed using. Now you have to import all your old settings into Cedega's new GUI which at first might not seem like something bad until you relize that all your old custom made launchers and syslinks and now useless. All in all it's not a bad release, they could have just left some features alone. Now I and many other users have to change syslinks, and rework the old launcher programs we had before.
    • what's a syslink? are you trying to spell 'symlink' ?

      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?
    • However the negitives to it is that it completely kills the use of Point2Play which I enjoyed using.

      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)

    by Sark666 ( 756464 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @06:52PM (#13983872)
    I remember reading about progress with dx9 making it into wine. http://directxwine.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    Did this ever make it into .9 beta? Kind of curious how the two compare now.
  • What exactly is a "game"? Wouldn't a merger of Cedega and WINE let us run all those Windows apps under Linux? Is there a complete list of tested apps? Seems like those tests would be a great way to harness Linux's "massively parallel" userbase, and possibly the best argument for switching from Windows to Linux.
  • I've always been concerned with the performance of windows games under linux. Since wine is able to translate (not emulate) windows calls into equivelant linux calls would it be possible to use the wine codebase to write software that, instead of trying to run it on the fly could look at a set of windows executables and libraries and then create a native linux binary and set of libraries (as close as wine translates now) so we could run it without running wine?

    Just a thought...

  • But will it play Civ 4? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Darby ( 84953 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @07:56PM (#13984326)
    I'm wondering if Civilization 4 will be playable with it.
    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.

    • Well, somebody considered it interesting so what the heck.

      I got home, turns out Dell had an update for people with my exact card and storage solution combined. It worked too ;-) So I'm home.

      Download latest version, put it in /usr/portage/distfiles/.
      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)

    by 3vi1 ( 544505 ) on Tuesday November 08, 2005 @08:17PM (#13984448) Homepage Journal
    I was thinking about re-subscribing to check it out, then stumbled accross this poll [transgaming.org]. For some reason, 3/4ths (at this time) of the people responding have negative feelings about the update. That's not a very good sign.
  • I am thinking of messing with Cedega (buying it once is pretty cheap) just so I can finally play through the copy of Half-Life 2 I bought, but I have a question first.

    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

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