I think this is actually great news for linux users. Although it is not the absolute best solution (that being a native port), it should resolve a lot of issues that wine users experience (such as upgrading wine allows application B to run but in the process breaks application A). It is a bandaid solution but to get the ball rolling on linux commercial gaming this might be what the doctor ordered. When Transgaming went into partnership with EA for their Mac titles it lead to not only more gaming options for OS X users but also brought the attention of other publishers to the OS X space. This has resulted in more native ports for OS X.
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GameTree Linux Is Trying To Be Its Own Steam-Like Platform
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That being all said, if linux users decide to "snub" this option they will be shooting themselves in the foot in the effort to get more games published for linux use. Take the bandaid for now and get some market recognition where publishers can start seeing some tangible numbers instead of the usual speculation.
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...you're really just best off buying the Windows game and then running it under Wine, which will not cost you any additional money...
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Originally posted by devius View PostMaybe not physical money, but it will surely cost time. A lot of time. Unless you're only playing one or two games, getting a fair ammount of them to run under wine is very tedious: find the right version of wine for that game, install winetricks, patches... then for the next game do it all once again... not fun. If that GameTree thing manages to get all games working without having to mess around it might be successful.
Obviously, they can't do this in the general case of arbitrary Windows applications; Wine has been investing more development effort than Cedega into that for years and it is far from that target. The main reason it can't be done is that the Windows platform is a moving target, with bugs, new versions, new APIs, etc. constantly cropping up all over the place. Likewise for bugs in applications causing weird behavior, or Windows libraries getting patched to work around faulty app behavior, so then Wine has to figure out how to emulate the hackaround, and so on.
So they need to get into partnerships with specific publishers for specific games, and focus on those with all due effort. Make the emulated game run as well as physically possible. No hitches, no bugs, no rendering artifacts, no random crashes, full multiplayer and (if applicable) in-game browser and VoIP support, and task switching would be nice, thank you. It's a tall order to ask for, even for a single game, but the real question is how long it will take the Cedega team to take an arbitrary tier 1 Windows game and make it run as well as I've just described, with only light support from the game studio development team.
It can be done, and it works well when they put their mind to it, but the number of games they can initially support this way will be very low. Accelerating the pace of game "porting" (it's not really porting so much as a give and take between developer patches and Cedega modifications to make a game run well) is a long-term goal that will fatten up the library of game offerings on GameTree.
Wine and CrossOver go for quantity over quality by their very nature. A general purpose solution that can't possibly ever cover all specific cases with the desired level of functionality and performance.
GameTree really ought to go for quality over quantity, for people who are serious about getting the native gaming experience on Linux, or the emulated illusion thereof. And I think most people would prefer a couple really well-working games over 50 games that half work but crash or have multiple issues.
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Originally posted by BlueKoala View PostValve denied working on it when there's clearly a steam client for linux out there. Just saying...
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Originally posted by deanjo View PostThat being all said, if linux users decide to "snub" this option they will be shooting themselves in the foot in the effort to get more games published for linux use. Take the bandaid for now and get some market recognition where publishers can start seeing some tangible numbers instead of the usual speculation.
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... I love being blunt.
Michael, when it comes to Transgaming and Cedega, you have a record that is best measured in terms of Zero. So far no bit of news on Transgaming or Cedega that has been posted on Phoronix has had a shred of accuracy to it, up until you copied over the transition notice, and even then I'm amazed that the copy function worked so well.
At this point there has been no indication given by Transgaming that the GameTreeLinux conversion will stop allowing the arbitrary instillation of existing pre-compiled client software intended for Microsoft Windows Platforms.
Transgaming has been asked to comment on the exact future of the transition process and what exactly the limitations, if any, of the GameTree software will be. At this point Transgaming has not responded to any existing Beta Members or Press members of the changes to the software.
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Originally posted by Kano View PostSince when do you need Codeweavers for Steam? It works directly with wine too...
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