GOG now have Epic Pinball and the platformer Jazz Jackrabbit with Linux support

Quoting: Guestother issue with some old gog or wine games : they temporarilt switch the screen resolution and mess up my desktop

DOSBox can be configured so that it does not do this. IIRC you need to open the dosbox .conf file for the game, find where it reads [sdl], then under there find and set the following two settings as so:

fullresolution=desktop
output=overlay

In Wine you can use a virtual desktop to prevent it from changing the system's desktop resolution - if the game sets a resolution lower than your system's desktop resolution then the virtual desktop will resize & it'll effectively run in a window instead. This can be annoying when games run at fixed resolutions or have a limited selection of display resolutions though; it would be really useful if Wine had an option to scale full-screen output to fit your desktop/virtual desktop resolution.

Depending on the game there may also be other options available to prevent unwanted display resolution changes (e.g. widescreen fixes).

Quoting: linuxvangog

they meet, sadly, with poor reception, aka "meh, I could easily just run it with Wine myself"

This could be of course re-evaluated, if there was a huge demand for Wine-wrapped titles.

The upside can be convenience, but downside of Wine wrappers is that it would take you effort to keep Wine updated in it, since otherwise it will be fixed to certain version which you picked to wrap with. The benefit of decoupling Wine from the game are improvements in the Wine itself which will appear over time. Of course regressions can appear too, so it's a trade-off.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 December 2017 at 1:26 am UTC

Quoting: linuxvangogThis could be of course re-evaluated, if there was a huge demand for Wine-wrapped titles.

Though I agree with adamhm above as well, that when some game requires a lot of effort to run in Wine (too many tweaks), easy wrapper can be really welcome, especially by Linux newcomers.

Speaking of such wrapping. May be you can ponder this idea, or circulate it around. GOG team can help Wine developers with some remaining issues in The Witcher 3 (graphics and performance), and then wrap TW3 in Wine to make an official release, or may be even use Winelib (since you have access to the sources)? It wouldn't be any worse than how Feral are wrapping games. I'd consider it even better since you'll help a FOSS project in the process. And in addition it will redeem CDPR from the failure of TW3 Linux release and will uphold the failed promise.


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 December 2017 at 1:42 am UTC

There is a open source engine recreation called openjazz.
It touts multiplayer support.


Last edited by sr_ls_boy on 1 December 2017 at 2:20 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl(...)May be you can ponder this idea, or circulate it around. GOG team can help Wine developers with some remaining issues in The Witcher 3 (graphics and performance), and then wrap TW3 in Wine to make an official release, or may be even use Winelib (since you have access to the sources)? (...)

I admire your enthusiasm :) However I can tell you already this won't happen because of several reasons:

• GOG does not participate in process of developing CDPR games


• You are seriously overestimating our resources here - Linux version of Witcher 3 would require literally hundreds, if not thousands of QA hours


• Even if we went for it, the end result would most likely offer significantly worse experience than the Windows version, and I am pretty sure nobody from Linux community wants that :)

In the future, please direct CDPR games-related inquires to the studio directly:

• https://twitter.com/cdprojektred


• http://en.cdprojektred.com/

Last edited by linuxvangog on 1 December 2017 at 8:58 am UTC

Quoting: linuxvangogYou are seriously overestimating our resources here

If GOG Galaxy ever makes it to Linux, it could be interesting to have a PlayOnLinux style system included in it. The advantage is that these configurations would be sorted out by the community instead of requiring a lot of QA from GOG. While not being "official" support, they would be easily accessible to those that do not have the time or interest to set up Wine for a specific game.

Quoting: linuxvangog

• GOG does not participate in process of developing CDPR games

Sure, but how is it worse than you not participating in development of other games, yet you might wrap them in Wine potentially? In this case CDPR are your sister company, so if CDPR wanted, they could provide you with more than your regular partners, i.e. for instance simply with sources of CDPR games.

And on a side note, for example Humble Bundle while being primarily a distributor, actually hired developers to make Linux ports. Something that GOG can ponder as well.

Quoting: linuxvangog

You are seriously overestimating our resources here - Linux version of Witcher 3 would require literally hundreds, if not thousands of QA hours

Yeah, that may be. I'm not saying GOG should just do it randomly. It's something CDPR should help with I suppose, and allocate some resources to it. After all it was their promise which they blew, it's only fair for them to do something about it :)

Quoting: linuxvangog

Even if we went for it, the end result would most likely offer significantly worse experience than the Windows version, and I am pretty sure nobody from Linux community wants that :)

It's not uncommon for wrappers to perform worse than native versions. That doesn't stop Feral and even CDPR themselves from using them no? TW2 itself is a wrapper using eON after all. So with some effort, Wine wrapped TW3 can have acceptable performance.

Quoting: linuxvangogIn the future, please direct CDPR games-related inquires to the studio directly

I did that already naturally, but they lately aren't communicating anything, let alone answering proposals :) I thought GOG team are just in a unique position to move this forward, but as you said, without some backing by CDPR, it's of course a resource draining task. But you can at least pass this idea around ;)


Last edited by Shmerl on 1 December 2017 at 1:39 pm UTC

Quoting: ShmerlThough I agree with adamhm above as well, that when some game requires a lot of effort to run in Wine (too many tweaks), easy wrapper can be really welcome, especially by Linux newcomers.

Plus it would add to the number of games with official Linux support and in turn help grow the platform in general.

Quoting: ShmerlThe upside can be convenience, but downside of Wine wrappers is that it would take you effort to keep Wine updated in it, since otherwise it will be fixed to certain version which you picked to wrap with. The benefit of decoupling Wine from the game are improvements in the Wine itself which will appear over time. Of course regressions can appear too, so it's a trade-off.

On the other hand having wrappers use whatever version is installed on the user's system would be a nightmare to support, and a terrible thing from a user experience perspective. It wouldn't be a good experience to have games fail to run properly/at all right from the start due to having an older version of Wine or newer version with regressions, or to have games suddenly stop working due to a Wine update introducing regressions.

Using an older Wine version isn't that critical of an issue IMO as long as the game itself runs fine with it. Updating the Wine version periodically for any performance improvements they bring (and compatibility improvements for people wanting to use third party tools, mods, etc.) should be done but it doesn't need to be a frequent thing; perhaps just once a year or so to keep up with stable releases - that's what I'm planning to do with my wrappers.

Just bought Jazz Jackrabbit... So many good memories!

Now all we need is Jazz Jackrabbit 2 - I never got to play that one, so I'd love the chance to do so...

If anyone's interested, I put together a Wine wrapper for JJ2: https://www.gog.com/forum/jazz_jackrabbit/jazz_jackrabbit_2_for_linux