Windows games on Linux!

[Roland]

That's right. I am running Windows games on Linux! Thanks to a nifty program produced from a fork of the popular software WINE, I can now install and RUN Windows games on my (new) Linux box! :D

So far, I've tested Warcraft II: BNE, and Thief. They both ran fine, although Thief was a wee bit sluggish. Not bad, just not as crisp as I'm used to. Still very playable, although without a sound card installed on the box, I can't test sound for any games. :( There's lots more games that are "supported", but it's an ongoing process getting support for them. Some games will work fine, even if they aren't "supported", but others have issues (Diablo among them, supposedly, although D2 works flawlessly). And, best of all, Blizzard games DO work on Battle.Net! :D Some are a little sketchy, but most (if not all) work great.

I intend to try and test out loads more games, and keep track of which ones work well, and which ones need more development, for my own records as well as for the WineX developers. Their service is subscription based ($5 a month, with 3-months up-front), but dirt cheap, and not only does it grant you their software, but also influence as to the direction of future developments (via polling in the various forums). I highly recommend any Linux lovers to check them out. :) Especially if you're big into gaming.

http://www.transgaming.com/

BTW - I'm using Mandrake Linux 9.1, with WineX 3.1. Just an FYI, for those interested. ;)

[pakman]

This reminded me of this.

[Zedd]

For the record, Diablo 1 "sorta" works with WineX (crashes fairly often), Starcraft & Broodwar work near perfectly (also under vanilla Wine), Diablo II, as you said, works as well.

I've become a bit annoyed with Transgaming's policies as of late, so I won't be paying for their software (using the free cvs for now). Wine, however, has also become a bit annoyed with their policies, and have responded by beginning to beef up their DirectX support. Last I checked, they had Max Payne running.

Running the latest Winex-3.1-cvs and recent Wine builds here, on a Gentoo Linux system :)

[lemekim]

So if I understand this correctly, if you want to use prepackaged binaries of WineX, you need to subscribe to the site? Or you can also simply compile the WineX for free from CVS?

[Zedd]

Yes, for the most part.

The binaries, however, contain some copyrighted code which is not released in the CVS. This includes some Installshield stuff, and CD-Protection software. I, however, have had no problem with running most games with CD Protection (i.e. Broodwar), so I don't know specifically what games are affected. Paying customers also get access to "Point and Play", as I believe it's called, which (supposedly, haven't tried it) makes the installation of such software much simpler.

The CVS is public, and according to their liscence, yes, you are free to build your own binaries from it. However, after Debian and Gentoo made it a bit easier to do this, they recieved letters telling them to "cut it out", in a few more words. Basically, Transgaming said "Yes, our liscence allows it, but we don't like it. The CVS is intended for open source developers to help us debug code, not as a "free" version of the software. If needed, we will change our liscence to prohibit you (the distribution in question) from building binaries". That was completely paraphrased, but gets the point across. Also why I'm not much a fan of Transgaming at the moment ;)