Blizzard Still Has a World of Warcraft Linux Client

[trapni]

What do we care, "wine WoW.exe" -opengl is already perfect .

which is NOT, and as several reports state, you'll have the lowest graphics feature set WoW provides when running WoW on Linux (did not try non-opengl mode since quite some time). I want all those graphics features that *do* work on my high-end GPU and did quite some time using -opengl until some point where blizzard decided to stop providing these features for OpenGL (at least when running from within wine).

[mirv]

The old "multiple distributions" FUD does no longer apply to Linux.

Linux binaries have multiple ways to handle different versions. The C++ ABIs haven't been broken in years, and if needed, C++ libraries can travel with the application, as they do on Windows.
The placement for binaries and configuration files is heavily standardized, too.
In fact, I've been using binary software on my kind-of "linux from scratch" system since the dawn of time (e.g. firefox, opera, java, rar, adobe reader) without problems (at least since the glibc days).

I think the only real problems preventing commercial games deployment on Linux come from buggy display drivers. But, publishers could add a disclaimer to their games, stating that the game has been tested only on the proprietary Ati and Nvidia drivers (I have the impression that they only test those two on Windows, anyway).

Sound should be no problem, because by targeting the pulseaudio-compatible subset of Alsa, the game would do the right thing and run nicely on both pulseaudio-enabled systems and plain Alsa systems.

I think using OpenAL and letting the system take care of how to fit it in everywhere else is a better option. Quite a few games already do this.

[deanjo]

and let's not forget Id Software (granted, they don't officially "support" linux, but all their stuff works anyway)

Almost all their stuff, the latest Wolfenstein never got a native port.

[pvtcupcakes]

which is NOT, and as several reports state, you'll have the lowest graphics feature set WoW provides when running WoW on Linux (did not try non-opengl mode since quite some time). I want all those graphics features that *do* work on my high-end GPU and did quite some time using -opengl until some point where blizzard decided to stop providing these features for OpenGL (at least when running from within wine).

There are a couple of things you miss out with OpenGL in WoW like the nicer water and sun rays that were part of the 4.0 patch. But that's due to the fact that Blizzard didn't do those effects for OpenGL at all, it's not wine's fault.

[efikkan]

First of all, nVidia offers enterprise quality drivers for GNU/Linux, and their stability and performance is on par with both their Direct3D performance and OpenGL performance in Windows. These are very good drivers, but they lack some user oriented features, such as profiles for games, overclocking for Fermi and support for Optimus.

For AMD(/ATI) the situation is a bit different. The overall quality of the drivers are lower, and ATI has a history of bad OpenGL implementations. But in the recent times AMD has worked out OpenGL 2.1 support, so it should have decent performance and good stability, not quite the performance of Direct3D on their drivers, but it might get there. AMD's OpenGL 3.x+ performance is a bit different, AMD is clearly lagging behind nVidia and it's not OpenGL's fault. I'm afraid the driver team's recent loss of two important developers will prevent this from improving anytime soon.

For high end games you can just forget the open source drivers.

The proprietary drivers are currently good enough for major game developers to embrace OpenGL, especially games using SM3 features (like most games currently do).

BTW, the developer of SDL, Sam Lantinga, worked for Blizzard until recently.



We as a GNU/Linux community has to realize that we need a common software distribution platform to get more software (especially commercial software), and more software is required if we want our market share to grow. Before you start yelling at me, keep in mind I'm talking about a common package format supported by all major distributions, and natively handled by the different package managers. I'm not saying that Red Hat or Fedora should abandon rpm or Debian deb, I'm saying we need a basic package format supported "everywhere," and software developers can create a single package and know this would install on all major distributions. This has to be in place before major companies like Blizzard, Valve, id, Epic, etc. release their games and companies like Adobe release their software. (Note: if the developers need special versions of libraries, then they include it in the package)

A temporarily solution would be to create a program wich generates different packages from a basic set of options. I'm considering making something like this myself, but this would not be a reliable solutions for the big software companies.

[Shining Arcanine]

Yeah.. fragmentation/openness/whatever is both a strength and weakness of the free software and/or Linux ecosystem.

However.. if studios were to target a distro, no doubt it would be Ubuntu.

Regardless of that though. Target PulseAudio for sound, SDL for input, OpenGL for graphics? Something like that. I guess those things might be moving targets as well. If that's the case, maybe the nerds making this stuff need to set standards that don't change A bit like creating DirectX versions, but for Linux.

I'm sure all this has been said before too. *grabs fire extinguisher*

They should probably use OpenAL for sound. It is platform agnostic.

[yogi_berra]

Almost all their stuff, the latest Wolfenstein never got a native port.

The latest Wolfenstein is not an iD game and when TTimo retires Linux ports of their games will disappear.

[Adarion]

Phoronix: Blizzard Still Has a World of Warcraft Linux Client

What exactly is the problem with all that?
First I think there are not so much more MacOS installations than Linux. It depends on which sector of life you look at.
Second: Yes, Distributions are not totally equal. But:
a) There is W9x, WME, W2k, WXP, WXP SP1, WXP SP2, WXP SP3, Vista, Vista with SP, W7 and W7 soon to be or already with SP1.
They are also different and share the same problems. Often you read that some compatibilities break even with service packs, or you need at least the funtionality of a recent SP.
b) So there is a difference. But is this a gaming relevant difference? I doubt it. Or do they need a specific version of Qt for gaming?
c) So the libs are not the same, okay, then make a static compilation. That's it. Compile the exact libs you want with your game (or bring them with the game distribution like good old DOS games did).

Just tell the user that he/she/it needs e.g. a working OpenGL x.y. implementation (so leave it to the user to achieve that by free or unfree drivers) and that should be ok.

[PsynoKhi0]

Regnum Online seems to manage just fine...

[FreeBooteR69]

Just tarball the file and distribute it that way.