Wine is a rather heated topic at the best of times, but I think we can all agree what the Wine developers have been able to achieve is nothing short of extraordinary. Wine enabled me to re-live an experience I had with a game as a child, and I felt the need to share it.
I'm never one to advocate the use of Wine really, in fact, in the past I have been rather against it. My tune changed and cooled down a lot during the years I've been running GOL, as it really is such an awesome bit of software I don't think anyone should turn their nose up at it.
I should state for the record that I don't particularly think it's a great idea to use it for new games, since there's always a chance they could come to Linux natively, but when it comes down to either using Windows, or using Wine on Linux. The answer should be obvious really, Wine it is. Not everyone is willing to give up certain Windows games they love, and I don't think we should speak out against anyone who does. It brings them a step closer to being a fully-native Linux gamer, so that's awesome really isn't it? A Windows user coming to Linux, using Wine and possibly buying future native Linux games further growing us as a platform can only be a great thing.
Anyway, When I was younger, I got absolutely hooked on a game called "Dark Reign: The Future of War" [GOG]. From what I remember, my dad purchased it for me after I discovered it while I was scanning the shelves in a local PC World store, and I was instantly hooked. It was the type of game where it could easily turn from morning to night without me noticing. It's not the best of games by today's standards, back then it wasn't exactly a well known title either or groundbreaking in the strategy genre, but it enthralled the younger me.
I ended up thinking about it last night for some strange reason, went looking and picked up a copy on GOG and it works near-perfectly in Wine's latest version (tested in 1.9.22). The GOG installer threw up some random errors at the end of the install, but they can be ignored. Only one issue in-game that I could see was that water had some weird flicker on it, but I could easily ignore it for a beautiful bit of nostalgia on Linux.
Dark Reign was one of my first-loves when it came to strategy games, it helped me through some rather difficult times in my childhood. Two hours had vanished before I knew what happened last night, and it's such a pleasure to be able to re-live memories of it on Linux without needing Windows at all.
One issue I would like to figure out, is why some fullscreen games break when I alt+tab. They become completely unresponsive after this is done forcing them to be stopped.
Kudos to the Wine development team for their amazing effort.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
ElectricPrism Nov 7, 2016
QuoteWine is a rather heated topic at the best of times
The only people who have a problem with Wine are the narrow minded ones that only care about their games and nothing else ;)
There some Linux gamers who can't imagine that Wine isn't only made for gaming. It's much bigger than that and I guess the most important (brings money to the table) branch is office software + support.
And yes Wine is a amazing technology. I'm glad that the developments is profitable for Codeweavers, even when the code is under a copy-left license. I need wine for my work flow and wouldn't have switched to Ubuntu without it. :)
Quoting: LeerdeckQuoteWine is a rather heated topic at the best of times
The only people who have a problem with Wine are the narrow minded ones that only care about their games and nothing else ;)
Well, I'm glad you winked that, but it doesn't much take the sting out of a cutting remark! I don't have a problem with Wine except when it's touted as the solution to a gaming problem. Or indeed, any nearly modern problem.
The one non-game case I'd use Wine for is Office 2013 support, since my work mandates its use. However it gets a bronze rating on Linux and doesn't even install fully. However, funnily enough, Crossover have just (last week) announced full support for Office 2013 in their next release (date tba). I might finally have a reason to buy Crossover again, after my initial purchase back in 2009 lapsed, since my experience with it, like Wine itself, was so tainted by complete inconsistency.
I agree with Liam - it's awesome software, fully deserving of the greatest respect... but I'd never recommend anyone use it. It's a complete crap-shoot if software works and even the AppDB reflects this - multiple reports from near-identical distributions with results varying wildly.
QuoteOnly one issue in-game that I could see was that water had some weird flicker on it, but I could easily ignore it for a beautiful bit of nostalgia on Linux.No! Don't do that! If there is an issue that you think might be related to Wine not working as it should, please file a bug report instead of just ignoring it.
Quoting: TobiSGDOf course, I meant in regards to playing it right now though.QuoteOnly one issue in-game that I could see was that water had some weird flicker on it, but I could easily ignore it for a beautiful bit of nostalgia on Linux.No! Don't do that! If there is an issue that you think might be related to Wine not working as it should, please file a bug report instead of just ignoring it.
"One issue I would like to figure out, is why some fullscreen games break when I alt+tab. They become completely unresponsive after this is done forcing them to be stopped."
In my experience this is mostly fixed if you run wine in virtual desktop mode and set the "desktop" size to your actual resolution.
There are three conditions that must be met when I consider buying any Windows games now:
1- Must be DRM-free. I despise DRM and won't tolerate it in general (the most I'll tolerate is Steam, but only for games that officially support Linux and only at a very deep discount), but it's especially important when it comes to Wine due to the potential impact on performance and stability.
2- Must have a good chance of running well in Wine (so no DX10/11/12 stuff atm).
3- Must be older/very unlikely to get an official Linux release and be sufficiently discounted. I'll only consider paying full price for something if it's both DRM-free and supports Linux natively.
Kimyrielle Nov 7, 2016
For older games - completely agree. These games won't otherwise be ported and usually DO run in WINE with minimal hassle.
Also, one useful trick to know about Unity and DX11 games: Unity games sometimes have a DX9 fallback mode so if you disable the d3d11.dll in Wine's configuration utility, you can then force any Unity game that has a DX9 fallback mode to run in DX9 :)
Last but not least, our very own GOG community has a nice thread with quite a few games catalogued that are known to work with Wine and you can find that thread here: GOG WINE thread
[email protected] Nov 7, 2016
It will take too long to catch up as the renderers become more complex on the Windows side. Starting with DX11.
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