GameSpy.com: Ports vs. Wine

May 09, 2001, 01:30 (9 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by James Hills)

One for the gaming set here, as GameSpy takes on the question of whether Linux gamers are better off waiting for Linux ports (which aren't as plentiful as many would like) or getting behind Wine. Includes commentary from Gavriel State of Transgaming, which is working on bringing DirectX to Wine; and an assortment of pro-ports people including Scott Draeker of Loki, who maintain that compatibility layers are bad news:

On one side of the argument is Transgaming , which sees the reality that the process of creating native Linux ports is an extremely expensive procedure with very little monetary reward. Their solution is to refine and extend Wine , their "development toolkit for porting Windows source code to UNIX systems (Winelib), and?program loader which allows Windows .EXE files to run directly on Intel-based UNIX flavors," so that Windows games will work well under Linux.

On the other side of the issue are the porting houses such as Loki, Tribsoft, and Hyperion Entertainment . They have shown that Windows games can be ported successfully to Linux. Additionally, Loki proved that there is a demand for Linux games with their recent decision to discount several of their titles to $9.99. As of last week, Quake3: Arena for Linux was one of the top five selling games on EBGames and the Website now shows the title as being "backordered." While this move by Loki and Electronics Boutique proved that people would buy games for Linux, it certainly isn't economical to sell all their titles that cheaply.

Complete Story

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• LinuxGames.com: Game Developers Conference 2001 Linux Presentation(Mar 27, 2001)
• Gamespy.com: Interview with CEO Gavriel State of Transgaming Technologies(Mar 26, 2001)
• Linux.com Live!: Commercial Linux Games: Where are they?(Mar 10, 2001)
• Gamespy.com: Is Linux Gaming here to stay?(Mar 04, 2001)
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