winepak [Official Site] is another interesting Wine-related project. One that aims to package up an assortment of Windows-only games that work in Wine using the power of Flatpak packages.
I'm not going to get into the politics of Snap vs Flatpak, mostly because I don't care for the arguments surrounding it and end-users shouldn't care as long as they work and work well.
Much like today's previous post about Track Mania Nations Forever having an easy to use Snap package, winepak seems to aim a bit higher and offer a repository of games. The advantage of using such packages (Snaps or Flatpaks), is that it should come with everything you need to get the Windows game running on Linux, without having to mess around with configurations. It's a new project though, so there's likely a fair amount of kinks to work out.
Their listed goals are simple:
- Package wine applications via flatpak
- Make installing and running applications Just Work
Currently it seems to offer: League of Legends, Path of Exile, Blizzard's BattleNet client along with, Overwatch, Starcraft II and World of Warcraft, World of Tanks and more. The full list can be found on GitHub here, although some don't work like Fortnite. Obviously, it does depend on Wine and what Wine build they include with each game.
Testing it myself, it seems that both League of Legends and World of Tanks had no issues with their launchers downloading, logging in and updating using this Flatpak method.
For those wondering how legal this is, well, it doesn't have to include any of the installers itself. It will just download them for you, so it's not actually redistributing stuff it's not supposed to.
Curiously, it seems the mind behind winepak, Julian Richen, is the same developer who we chucked some bucks some time ago to help re-design our website (which turned into our current theme). Always nice to see more from someone you've worked with before.
Will be fun to see how far this project goes, as I said it's early days yet. If projects like this can help bridge the gap, for people moving over to Linux so they don't lose access to some of their favourite games and have an easy way to play them—I'm all for it. It can help ease the transition until they become fully fledged Linux gamers. A lot of potential here.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPPS: Here we see the fragmentation problem, again. Now we have PoL (which is minimally maintained, still), Lutris and this winepak (and possibly others, too). All kinda similar in their purpose. It would be better for everyone if they all worked together.
i think the only way to solve the fragmentation issue is if there is an monetary incentive and brand recognition.
mozilla is open source, in theory anyone can fork generating fragmentation, but no fork was able to attract an comunity so strong as mozilla comunity and they have huge pockets to make sure that the project dont die or lose traction to any competition, even if an fork can compete in the comunity side, it cant compete in comunity+paid employees.
the down side of this, is that they can do things that pisses the comunity off (such as: support DRM) and get away with it.
Quoting: PompesdeskyOnce we get maximum playability for Windows games with an install process that is a simple double click away then we should have a lot more users. Then when the Linux playerbase starts to really represent a good fraction of all gamers, developers will have to start thinking about what they're doing.its not ONCE but IF, its a "cat-and-mouse game".
MS add new things, we lost time rever enginering it, we finish reverse enginering it so we can support everything write?
except that by the time we took to reverse enginering it, they added new features.
that is one of the reasons why we have games with constant updates nowadays and all mobile games tend to follow this trend, even if someone manage to reverse enginering the game to pirate it, it takes time and when that happens, they update the game with new features and maybe an new drm scheme, the pirated version is always fighting to keep being updated so the margin for profit of the crackers or margin of enjoyment of pirates is reduced.
also, even if they cant stop the pirates they most likely can stop or delay the cheaters..
even if we could make old games run, they will be too old, maybe they got an remake/remaster in the mean time, maybe they have poor graphics/out dated mechanics and no one want to play then anymore, or simply the number of games that we can play is too low compared to the number of games we cant play.
indies became more relevant nowadays, and winehq cant track all of then, we may have more game developers than linux users nowadays.
some 10 years old game are still not playable
not to mention other softwares like content creation softwares.
what we need to reverse it, is either an console that sell a lot, or exclusives to increase the user base until thirdy parties start to support our platform
Last edited by elmapul on 15 June 2018 at 9:06 am UTC
Quoting: lucifertdarkI was last year when Wine died & I couldn't even uninstall it to get rid of it.
i had an problem with an broken package once, it was a pain in the ass to remove, i had to manually unistall it (delete the folders and all references/configs to it)
Quoting: RybladeThis is cool and all, but I do recommend people exercise caution with certain developers and publishers.
I remember reading several years ago that Blizzard actively perma-banned people from Battle.net if they are "caught" using Wine and Linux. Could someone confirm if their hostility and paranoia is still this bad today?
some were banned but were able to explain to blizzard that they were usng wine instead of a cheat software, so they could get unbanned.
Quoting: elmapulthat is one of the reasons why we have games with constant updates nowadays and all mobile games tend to follow this trend, even if someone manage to reverse enginering the game to pirate it, it takes time and when that happens, they update the game with new features and maybe an new drm scheme, the pirated version is always fighting to keep being updated so the margin for profit of the crackers or margin of enjoyment of pirates is reduced.So wait, you're saying that pirates are responsible for game companies releasing updates and new features for games? I never realized pirates were so awesome!
Quoting: elmapul"Not everyone is going to be both as patient and anal as I am. "Sure, but since we are talking about playing games here, having free time is already something of a given.
not everyone has time.
Not that I have wasted that many hours of my life getting a game to work with WINE. As long as the game starts at all it is usually fairly trivial to get it up and running in my experience. Especially since as I have already mentioned many of the games I use WINE for will no longer play nice even on a modern Windows system.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: elmapulthat is one of the reasons why we have games with constant updates nowadays and all mobile games tend to follow this trend, even if someone manage to reverse enginering the game to pirate it, it takes time and when that happens, they update the game with new features and maybe an new drm scheme, the pirated version is always fighting to keep being updated so the margin for profit of the crackers or margin of enjoyment of pirates is reduced.So wait, you're saying that pirates are responsible for game companies releasing updates and new features for games? I never realized pirates were so awesome!
what you call update, i call relase an incomplete game and patch it latter on.
Quoting: HamishQuoting: elmapul"Not everyone is going to be both as patient and anal as I am. "Sure, but since we are talking about playing games here, having free time is already something of a given.
not everyone has time.
Not that I have wasted that many hours of my life getting a game to work with WINE. As long as the game starts at all it is usually fairly trivial to get it up and running in my experience. Especially since as I have already mentioned many of the games I use WINE for will no longer play nice even on a modern Windows system.
i rather spend 2 hours playing, than 1 hour 55 minutes trying to make the game work, and 5 minutes playing it.
(assuming that i only have 2 hours after the work, trafit, studying and so on)
Quoting: elmapulBut that's not how long it takes.Quoting: HamishQuoting: elmapul"Not everyone is going to be both as patient and anal as I am. "Sure, but since we are talking about playing games here, having free time is already something of a given.
not everyone has time.
Not that I have wasted that many hours of my life getting a game to work with WINE. As long as the game starts at all it is usually fairly trivial to get it up and running in my experience. Especially since as I have already mentioned many of the games I use WINE for will no longer play nice even on a modern Windows system.
i rather spend 2 hours playing, than 1 hour 55 minutes trying to make the game work, and 5 minutes playing it.
(assuming that i only have 2 hours after the work, trafit, studying and so on)
If a game doesn't run with wine from the get-go, it won't run. In some rare cases, you can install a few libs using winetricks to resolve an issue, but that't it.
You spend 10 minutes at max on that. And then it either works forever (so those 10 minutes are unique), or doesn't.
My Wine prefix has all the usual dlls needed installed and I just need to run Steam via wine, install a game and play it - and it will either work or won't, but I won't lose much time either way.
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 18 June 2018 at 8:01 am UTC
Quoting: elmapulsome were banned but were able to explain to blizzard that they were usng wine instead of a cheat software, so they could get unbanned.
So Blizzard has aggressive anti-cheat detection methods that generate false-positives for Wine users, and you have to go through their support staff to get unbanned once it happens?
That sounds like an enormous pain in the ass. I know I've never been VAC banned just for using Linux. I'll stick with Steam, thanks. I've never really enjoyed Blizzard's games much, anyway. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much.
Last edited by Ryblade on 18 June 2018 at 2:30 pm UTC
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