Cedega 6.1 Gaming Service Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Cedega 6.1 Gaming Service Released

Back in February we shared that Cedega 6.1 would be entering beta soon and in June the Cedega 6.1 beta was released. Three months after the public beta, the final release of Cedega 6.1 is now available to Transgaming's customers. Transgaming is now advertising this release as a transformation into a "community-supported membership service." Transgaming is also providing a new Cedega Gaming Service Membership and has launched the Cedega Certified Series of PC Games...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=Njc0NQ

[Radon]

Great news! Thanks for the heads-up!

I've been supporting Cedega for 2 years now and this is the best release so far. Good to see progress being made.

[cruiseoveride]

An article on wine vs Cedega please.

And use wine "properly" with separate WINEPREFIX for each game, use native dlls as far as possible etc...

I strongly believe there is no advantage of Cedega over wine, if wine is used properly.

[M1AU]

An article on wine vs Cedega please.

And use wine "properly" with separate WINEPREFIX for each game, use native dlls as far as possible etc...

I strongly believe there is no advantage of Cedega over wine, if wine is used properly.

WINE vs PlayOnLinux then?

[byteframe]

Using as many native dlls as you can kinda defeats the purpose of wine.

[quintesse]

An article on wine vs Cedega please.

And use wine "properly" with separate WINEPREFIX for each game, use native dlls as far as possible etc...

I strongly believe there is no advantage of Cedega over wine, if wine is used properly.

Well, the advantage would obviously be that you don't have to know about any of that stuff just to run your favourite game ;)

I guess Cedega will have more of a problem when WINE starts making it really easy to get the optimal configuration for each game/application. It's probably one of the strengths of Cedega.

[aniruddha]

I see no new games supported by Cedega (except Spore) with this new release. Even worse Battlfield 2142 is still listed as officially supported while online isn't working (because punkbuster isn't supported)

I rarely use Cedega, crossover games works far better and has better support.

[deanjo]

I see no new games supported by Cedega (except Spore) with this new release. Even worse Battlfield 2142 is still listed as officially supported while online isn't working (because punkbuster isn't supported)

I rarely use Cedega, crossover games works far better and has better support.

NWN2 is officially supported now, that's the one I noticed.

[cruiseoveride]

Using as many native dlls as you can kinda defeats the purpose of wine.

Do you even know what a native dll is?

A native dll is a linux binary. Its _native_ to linux. Its usually built into wine or .so file in $libdir/wine

[Dragonlord]

Yes and now. Native can mean both native Linux or native Windows. Remember NDISWrapper? This "wraps" native windows dlls to look like native Linux libraries.

[cruiseoveride]

I dont think you understand.

Wine has its own implementation of most of the common windows dlls. They are not wrappers for windows dlls. they are usually labeled $name.dll.so

Wine doesnt need a wrapper, the wine loader can load actual windows dlls on the fly if necessary.

So when i said use native wine dlls, use WINE's implementation and dont pollute the WINEPREFIX with windows dlls. Which is usually the cause of many a problem when using wine.

[deanjo]

I dont think you understand.

Wine has its own implementation of most of the common windows dlls. They are not wrappers for windows dlls. they are usually labeled $name.dll.so

Wine doesnt need a wrapper, the wine loader can load actual windows dlls on the fly if necessary.

So when i said use native wine dlls, use WINE's implementation and dont pollute the WINEPREFIX with windows dlls. Which is usually the cause of many a problem when using wine.

Actually when it comes to wine, the term "native" refers to native windows dlls. Wine refers to it it's own as "builtin" (the elf files).

[Svartalf]

I dont think you understand.

I suspect they understand a bit more than you claim...


Wine has its own implementation of most of the common windows dlls. They are not wrappers for windows dlls. they are usually labeled $name.dll.so


This depends on if you're playing a game or using an office application. They don't have a clean or really complete implementation of the Direct3D stuff- you have to install Microsoft's DirectX 9c for at least some games at this time. Moreover, in at least some cases, you have to provide things a hacked up DirectDraw DLL derived from the WINE sources for some games to even PLAY them, and MS' stuff won't fix the problem either. I know, I FINALLY got Diablo II actually playing on my machines at home using this method with the latest WINE.



Wine doesnt need a wrapper, the wine loader can load actual windows dlls on the fly if necessary.


Yep. I will concur on this one.


So when i said use native wine dlls, use WINE's implementation and dont pollute the WINEPREFIX with windows dlls. Which is usually the cause of many a problem when using wine.


Also keep in mind that there's MANY a problem that're just the builtin (which is the PROPER term for this...) WINE DLL's fault as well. Stock WINE doesn't run quite a few things right without an adulterated configuration, which causes other problems elsewhere as you imply...

I will say that WINE lets me run the Tax software I've used for the last four years without having to boot XP to do my taxes here in the States. I just got Diablo II working (Diablo's toast, though...Gold rating, my backside...)- but you need a bunch of jiggery-pokery, some of which WineDoors or WineTools set up for you, to even get things like the Tax software to work "right". Some of this jiggery-pokery is actually done by Transgaming and CodeWeavers in the first place in their installs.

[Svartalf]

NWN2 is officially supported now, that's the one I noticed.

Heh... I won't touch that one. Not after Atari's conduct in that matter.

[christian_frank]

Hi guys,

the following new games are supported:

CNC3 Tiberium Wars (including LAN play)->works great, looks great

Call of Duty 4-> works great,every graphic option choosable(not like in wine were some graphic options are unusable)! Multiplayer performance much better than in wine. Singleplayer performance also superior in most cases. (believe me, i heavily tested both)

NWN2->works fine, online patcher also works (not sure if that already works in wine)

Spore-> Works great, spore drm supported

+ HL2.Episode2, Portal, TeamFotress2 ( but i do not own these games, so no experience with them)

And yes, 6.1 is a great cedega release.

Christian.

[aniruddha]

Hi guys,

the following new games are supported:

CNC3 Tiberium Wars (including LAN play)->works great, looks great

Call of Duty 4-> works great,every graphic option choosable(not like in wine were some graphic options are unusable)! Multiplayer performance much better than in wine. Singleplayer performance also superior in most cases. (believe me, i heavily tested both)

NWN2->works fine, online patcher also works (not sure if that already works in wine)

Spore-> Works great, spore drm supported

+ HL2.Episode2, Portal, TeamFotress2 ( but i do not own these games, so no experience with them)

And yes, 6.1 is a great cedega release.

Christian.

Yay, all of these worked already with Wine/Crossover. I'm going to dust of my Cedega install to test COD4, I have bad experiences with cedega and ATI however. Lots of officially Cedega supported titles don't work with ATI :mad:

[niniendowarrior]

When I compare WINE and Cedega, Cedega's real advantage is getting it to work with less fiddling on stuff. That's if it's supposed to work anyway. That's what you are paying for, IMO.

Wine is a little bit for those adventurous folks who want and have the time to tweak and play around with things. Wine support is getting better but it's not quite there yet.

To be frank, nowadays, I have become less dependent on Wine/Cedega, only using them when I have little recourse on things (I have only one or two apps on it). Those software just makes me want to vomit. Really.

[Chris]

This depends on if you're playing a game or using an office application. They don't have a clean or really complete implementation of the Direct3D stuff- you have to install Microsoft's DirectX 9c for at least some games at this time.
FYI, installing MS's DX runtimes does not give you MS'd D3D. MS's D3D works on several layers, some of which being internal that Wine has no need to implement (even if there was documentation available), before even getting to the graphics driver. Wine's D3D is really just a d3d -> opengl API wrapper. Native D3D goes through a bunch of "local" management in d3d*.dll, through gdi32.dll, etc, and finally to the display driver.

Installing the DX runtimes does more to harm a Wine installation by giving your windows\system directory a bunch of junk DLLs.. some not used (Wine will generally take its own builtin .dll.so's over the win32 native .dll's), others that are used, and some that aren't meant to be used. It may make some things work initially, but especially as Wine updates, things tend to break.

I just got Diablo II working (Diablo's toast, though...Gold rating, my backside...)- but you need a bunch of jiggery-pokery
DDraw in general is not that good. Native ddraw pretty much gives you direct access to the hardware (you draw accelerated anywhere directly on the screen), and many apps expect 8bpp modes. Not something you can do with GL. The closest you'd get in X would be DGA, but that requires root privs and has been strongly deprecated (some drivers don't even offer it anymore). Doesn't help that you can't even change to an 8bpp mode in X without at least restarting it.

Though in geeneral, I am pretty critical of Wine's internal D3D management. It tries to stuff it all together in one dll (wined3d.dll.so, which d3d9/8/7/etc talk to), which IMO doesn't work too well when you need to support D3D9/SM3 level hardware and pre-D3D7 hardware in the same place. I also don't really like how it handles d3d/gl states.
I actually got fed up with it enough that I wanted to try making my own (cross-platform!) d3d lib, but focus solely on d3d9 and d3d9 hardware, and I actually made some progress.

When I compare WINE and Cedega, Cedega's real advantage is getting it to work with less fiddling on stuff. That's if it's supposed to work anyway. That's what you are paying for, IMO.
If you're going to pay for it, you may as well pay a company that actively gives back to Wine (CodeWeavers' CrossOver).

[me262]

Necessary evil at the moment though.

Still waiting for the Gentoo ebuild too. Synced this morning and nothing!

Cedega makes up for it by supporting the copy protection on the games. That's mostly where the money goes to. The fact that Spore works on it is amazing (and you're all doomed now that you have DRM on your computer).

[niniendowarrior]

Necessary evil at the moment though.

Still waiting for the Gentoo ebuild too. Synced this morning and nothing!

Cedega makes up for it by supporting the copy protection on the games. That's mostly where the money goes to. The fact that Spore works on it is amazing (and you're all doomed now that you have DRM on your computer).

Is it really that amazing? You do know that Spore has a Cider release...

[niniendowarrior]

If you're going to pay for it, you may as well pay a company that actively gives back to Wine (CodeWeavers' CrossOver).

I'm not. I'd rather have both companies go belly up.

EDIT:
Maybe that was a little harsh. But looking long term, these really don't help the cause, I think. I'd dread that the more dependent we become of this, the more Windows we are, in the sense that we keep running Windows apps to do personal computing. Thinking about a situation where everyone runs Wine for anything just makes me shiver.

[Chris]

But looking long term, these really don't help the cause, I think.
I think it depends on what you see as "helping". Will Wine/Cedega/etc "help" make companies port their apps to Linux? Not really. But they will (and do) help bring people to use Linux and ditch Windows. And that will help convince companies to port.

I'd dread that the more dependent we become of this, the more Windows we are, in the sense that we keep running Windows apps to do personal computing. Thinking about a situation where everyone runs Wine for anything just makes me shiver.
It'd only be dependant in-so-far as unported apps, and apps that have no Linux equivalant, go. Wine isn't sustainable as a "replacement" to Windows.. it's in a perpetual condition of playing catch-up with real Windows. And as such, it will only be needed as long as Windows is around, which will be as long as people use Windows, which will be as long as needed software is Windows-only.

EDIT:
Furthermore, Wine has a place in running old Windows apps that even WinXP/Vista can't run anymore, similar to how DOSBox/FreeDOS has a place running old DOS apps.. for those things that won't ever be updated again, let alone ported.

[aniruddha]

When I compare WINE and Cedega, Cedega's real advantage is getting it to work with less fiddling on stuff. That's if it's supposed to work anyway. That's what you are paying for, IMO.
Unfortunately a lot of games don't work for me (C&C generals, Farcry, BF2, BF2142).

[me262]

I think it depends on what you see as "helping". Will Wine/Cedega/etc "help" make companies port their apps to Linux? Not really. But they will (and do) help bring people to use Linux and ditch Windows. And that will help convince companies to port.

It'd only be dependant in-so-far as unported apps, and apps that have no Linux equivalant, go. Wine isn't sustainable as a "replacement" to Windows.. it's in a perpetual condition of playing catch-up with real Windows. And as such, it will only be needed as long as Windows is around, which will be as long as people use Windows, which will be as long as needed software is Windows-only.
Up until companies say "we don't need to develop it for Linux, we'll just have them run WINE/Cedega/Crossover/etc...
That's the REAL gotcha...

Is it really that amazing? You do know that Spore has a Cider release...
Cider = Cedega on Mac... how's them apples? :D

[niniendowarrior]

Cider = Cedega on Mac... how's them apples? :D

Yeah. Wouldn't that mean though that the source code is a bit friendlier to Cider/Cedega? And I'd think the same can be said for their copy protection.

[Chris]

Up until companies say "we don't need to develop it for Linux, we'll just have them run WINE/Cedega/Crossover/etc...
That's the REAL gotcha...
And if they say that, they don't really care about it running on Linux (as I've said before). Plus Cedega and Crossover require money (if not subscriptions), so a someone requiring one of those would be forcing the potential user to buy other products in addition to their own, thereby reducing the overall amount of customers they would've had otherwise.

[3vi1]

Up until companies say "we don't need to develop it for Linux, we'll just have them run WINE/Cedega/Crossover/etc...
That's the REAL gotcha...

What we need are enough users that companies actually think about Linux in the first place. They will make Linux their primary (or co-) platform only when either: it has the largest share of the market, or the market is too divided to pick a monopoly.

When companies start to pose questions like "WHAT?!?! Our product won't work under Wine?" - we're doing great.

Back to step one: The way to get users is to allow them to use the most popular apps, and apps they already own for that "other" OS.