Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

GameTree Linux Is Trying To Be Its Own Steam-Like Platform

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • #11
    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.

    Comment


    • #12
      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.

      Comment


      • #13
        ...you're really just best off buying the Windows game and then running it under Wine, which will not cost you any additional money...
        Maybe 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.

        Comment


        • #14
          Originally posted by devius View Post
          Maybe 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.
          Right. What they need to do, in order to differentiate themselves, is to make the emulated experience (Windows games on Linux) as seamless as native games on Steam. You buy the game from a browser window or custom application, the game downloads, and you can start it with some form of double clicking an icon or pushing a button. End of story.

          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.

          Comment


          • #15
            CodeWeavers should be in bed with Valve right about now. Then they will be the ones porting Steam games to Linux when the time comes.

            Comment


            • #16
              Originally posted by BlueKoala View Post
              Valve denied working on it when there's clearly a steam client for linux out there. Just saying...
              Uh...no...they gave an answer that denied working on it at that time. BIG difference there. It's the typical PR non-committal answer you should expect when they've got plans, but they're not completed yet. A denial would have been, "No we're not working on it and won't be for the forseeable future"- which isn't what they gave everybody.

              Comment


              • #17
                Originally posted by deanjo View Post
                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.
                If it's a bandaid that gains numbers, I wouldn't be inclined to use it myself (heh...I port games... ) but I could say that it's a better answer than WINE alone. The thing that's a problem is that I think they want to charge a premium for it when all you need is CodeWeavers and Steam right now. CodeWeavers costs $40 and that's it. Steam costs nothing and you pay the Windows price for games.

                Comment


                • #18
                  ... 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.

                  Comment


                  • #19
                    Since when do you need Codeweavers for Steam? It works directly with wine too...

                    Comment


                    • #20
                      Originally posted by Kano View Post
                      Since when do you need Codeweavers for Steam? It works directly with wine too...
                      Steam is nothing without working games. Codeweavers can work with Valve and its clients to guarantee compatibility of games that are officially released for Linux. Wine is just one tool in the box.

                      Comment

                      Working...
                      X