Is Blizzard banning Linux Users?

While some companies like Valve are working on porting their software to run natively on Linux, it appears some other large companies are going to the extreme to prevent users from running their software on free operating systems.

The company I am talking about? None other than Blizzard Games. Late last month users started reporting on the Wine APPDB page for Diablo 3 that their user accounts where getting banned simply for running their games using Wine! So this is me providing a fair warning to everyone else out there running Diablo 3 via Wine - don't. Unless of course you feel like having wasted 60$ spent to buy the game.

To quote some of the frustrated Linux gamers:

"Well I've had Diablo running on my FreeBSD machine now for a couple of weeks and have a level 53 Wizard.

I just got notice while trying to log in last night that I was banned, and when I checked my email, I hadn't received anything from Blizzard.

After I opened a support ticket with them, a short while later, this is what I received in email:

Account Action: Account Closure
Offense: Unapproved Third Party Software
A third party program is any file or program that is used in addition to the game to gain an unfair advantage. These programs may increase movement speed or teleport heroes from one place to another beyond what is allowed by game design. It also includes any programs that obtain information from the game that is not normally available to the regular player or that transmit or modify any of the game files.

I don't run any programs as described above.

I kite, I die, and then I repair. But hey it's fun."

And a second:

"I got banned last night as well. Other than running under Wine I can't imagine why. Level 30ish char and not so much as a gaming keyboard.

I also have a ticket open. We will see..."

And a third:

"Ditto. I suddenly got a banned email last night, and I'm more or less in the same position. I think they're getting a bit trigger-happy with this, considering I've been running WoW for years under WINE, too.

Ah well, ticket's up."

Please stop the madness Blizzard. You should try focusing your banning efforts on people actually cheating instead of those simply trying to play your games on their OS of choice. If you are looking for more information on this topic there is a fairly good write up about it here.

~Jeff

HOWTO: Diablo 3 on Linux

Like many nerds around the world this evening I am prepping for what, odds are, will be the first of many all-nighters involving Blizzard's soon-to-be-released Diablo III (which releases tonight at midnight!). If you have been by my blog before then odds are you will know that I prefer to do as much of my gaming as possible on my operating system of choice: Linux. Something else you may or may not know is that I am also a large fan of the company Code Weavers that produces the commercial Wine software Crossover.

Want to know the reason I am such a fan of Crossover? A few weekends ago I spent about 6 hours trying to get Wine sources to compile with various patches to make the Diablo 3 open beta work on Linux. The result? I ended up hanging my head in defeat and just playing on my OSx86 system so I didn't miss the weekend event. At that point Diablo 3 didn't work OOTB on default Wine builds or Crossover.

This morning I dropped by #crossover on FreeNode to check in with the Crossover folks to see what their plans were for the Diablo 3 release due out tonight - were us Linux folks going to have to wait?

Nope!

The Diablo 3 release is something they had been very aware of and had been testing rigorously in-house. I was informed they had internal builds of Crossover where Diablo 3 was functional enough to play this very day. In fact within three hours of my speaking with them they had an "unsupported build" release that was functional with the Diablo 3 installer (note: if you are not a current Crossover customer that above link will not work for you).

I promptly installed the update and was on my merry way:

As of now if you are using Crossover 11.1 or newer Diablo 3 is now officially supported,

Now - if you are not interested in supporting Crossover - you can attempt to succeed where I failed and compile Wine with some of the patches listed on the Diablo 3 Beta AppDB page. Odds are if you wait for the next Wine developmental release or two, Diablo 3 will just start working by default - the Crossover folks are one of the lead contributors to the Wine project and most of their code improvements go upstream.

Trouble Shooting Tips:
If you are having issues getting it to run via the latest Wine builds it might be worth your while to use winetricks to install the "vcrun2008" package.

If your login attempt is hanging at the "authenticating credentials" step, exit Diablo, open a terminal and run:

echo 0|sudo tee /proc/sys/kernel/yama/ptrace_scope

~Jeff Hoogland

Get Your Linux Game On

I've done a number of posts in the past complaining about a lack of support for Linux based operating systems from main-stream game companies. Today I would like to highlight a few different high-calibre game titles that bring Linux support to the table.

Oil Rush

Status: Available Now

Cost: 20 USD

Oil Rush is a truly interesting mash up of a game. From the creator's website:

"Oil Rush is a real-time naval strategy game based on group control. It combines the strategic challenge of a classical RTS with the sheer fun of Tower Defense. "

Savage 2

Status: Available Now

Cost: 0 USD (with premium content available)

I once heard Savage 2 described as a FPS-RTS-MMO-RPG, this description isn't that far from the truth. Savage 2 has combined some of the best elements from all of these types of games.

Deep Black

Status: In Development

Cost: 30 USD

Deep Black is an arcade style, single player, third person shooter. It utilises a variety of different terrains namely water and ground.

Cradle

Status: In Development

Cost: TBA

I'm going to be a bit biased here and admit this is a game I'm waiting excitedly for. From the game's website:

"Cradle is a science-fiction first-person quest with freedom of movement. The story is built around the relations of the protagonist and a mechanical girl, who by enigmatic circumstances find themselves together in a yurt among the desert Mongolian hills. The player is to restore the lost functions of his companion's mechanical body parts and together reveal the mystery of the neglected entertainment park found not far from the yurt."

Whew! Some good entertainment to enjoy now and some to look forward to that all runs natively on my favourite penguin powered operating system.

It is nice to see more game companies are seeing the value in producing cross-platform entertainment. Hopefully more will continue to follow suite.

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Run your Games in a new Xserver

When I play a game that runs full screen on Linux but still want to have things running in the background I'd like to check on here and there without closing my game I typically launch my game into a new Xserver instance. This fairly simple setup allows you to change between Xserver instances by using ctrl+alt+f7 and ctrl+alt+f8.

To launch your application into a new Xserver instance you simply need to launch the program as follows (I'll use Desura in my example):

xinit /home/honey/desura/desura %U -- :1

Once you run this your screen will flick once or twice as the new X instance is created and the program is automatically launched within it. This new X will be accessible via the keyboard shortcut ctrl+alt+f8, to get back to your previous X instance simply press ctrl+alt+f7.

Now, one other thing to note is that on some Linux distributions you may be greeted with the following message when you try to run xinit as a normal user:

X: user not authorized to run the X server, aborting.

Don't panic, the fix for this is also simple. In terminal run:

sudo nano /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config

This will open a file for editing - we only need to adjust one line. Make sure somewhere in this file is the line:

allowed_users=anybody

Save and close the file and the above xinit file should now work. Happy gaming folks!

~Jeff Hoogland

Three Great Linux Gaming Services/Applications

Today I would like to take a moment to talk about three different ways to get access to some great games on your Linux PC. They are DJL, Desura and Gameoltih.

DJL -

DJL is an installable application that manages various games you can install from their repository. Their repository currently contains over 120 games that are all free to download. The user interface is fairly well designed and is easy to navigate:

DJL installs all game files to a single folder that you configure the first time you launch the application. While it is nice having all your game data located in one place, the draw back to this is that the games are not installed with your distribution's package manager.

Something I really like about DJL is that you can sort the games both by the type of game that they are:

And by what license their code is provided under (if at all):

DJL is fully open source and is written in QT and Python 2.5. DJL does not provide access to purchasing closed source games for the Linux platform.

Desura -

Desura is very similar to DJL in many ways. It is also open source and an installable application for managing games:

As you will notice from the screen shot above Desura offers games for purchase - this is it's largest difference from DJL. Two other things worth noting is that Desura also provides community rankings of games and you can register a good deal of your Humble Bundle applications through Desura:

In addition to commercial games, Desura houses a good deal of free (both as in beer and as in freedom) applications. My only complaint is that Desura does not have as nice of a search function as DJL. Yes I can sort games by type or by who made them, but there is no (obvious) way to sort games by cost. Desura doesn't have quite as many games as DJL, but their catalog currently contains just under 100 titles for Linux.

Finally, Desura installs all of your applications into a single directory in the same way DJL does. It does not let you to select which folder everything gets installed into by default though (mine installed to ~/desura). You can however easily move this folder and create proper symlinks if you would like your game data stored elsewhere (like on a storage partition).

Gameolith -

This option is fairly different from the first two I listed. For those of you out there that are into the who "cloud movement" Gameolith will be perfect for you. Instead of having an installable application, Gameolith utilizes a web front end for installing and managing your games:

Unlike the first two options, Gameolith only allows you to obtain and install games for purchase (AKA non-free applications). Once you purchase a game it is automatically added to your profile page:

One real advantage Gameolith has over DJL and Desura is that games you purchase through Gameolith can be installed via your system's package manager so long as you are using a Debian or Fedora based Linux distribution:

As you can see they also provide both 32 and 64bit binaries. If your package manager digests something other than RPMs or DEBs you are not out of luck, Gameolith also provide generic compiled files in tarbel form:

The only major draw back to Gameolith is the size of their current software selection. As of posting this they have only 16 games for purchase.

Closing -

In short all three of these provide different features. Which is best for you depends on what your needs are as a user. As I know information can get spread out over a post like this the following is a quick table summary of which features each of these services have:

Feature:	DJL	Desura	Gameolith
Installable Client	x	x
Commcercial Games		x	x
Free Games	x	x
Web Interface		x	x
Package Manager			x
Needs No Account	x
Large Game Selection	x	x

Cheers,
~Jeff Hoogland

Linux Gamers will Buy

"There is no money in making games of Linux"

They said.

"There is only a negligible market share for Linux"

They said.

"They" were wrong. Twice in fact they have been wrong. The folks who seven months ago brought us the first Humble Bundle have, just in time for the holiday, season brought us yet another chance to donate to some good causes and get some quality video games at the same time. For the next three days you can donate any amount you wish and receive each of the following DRM free, cross platform games:

• Braid
• Cortex Command
• Machinarium
• Osmos
• Revenge of the Titans
  

The cost of buying each of these games separately would be around 85$.

What does all of this have to do with Linux Gamers being willing to purchase their video games? Well, lets look at the statistics this time around for who is donating what to the Humble Bundle:


Once again users donating for the Linux platform have surpassed both Windows and OSX users for the average donation amount. In addition to that, our "negligible" market share has made up nearly 25% of the total donations. To all my fellow Linux gamers out there - please help us continue proving all of "them" wrong. If you haven't already made a donation for the second Humble Bundle I encourage you to go do so now! Even the small sum of 15$ is enough to continue to raise the Linux average donation amount - an amount that is more than fair for these great games!

~Jeff Hoogland

Eight Tech Signs the World really might be coming to an End

You have all heard the jokes that the end of the Mayan calender on December 21st 2012 might bring about "the end of the world" in some type of cataclysmic event. Regardless of whether or not this is necessarily true, there have been more than a few technology releases/announcements in the past couple years that many of us thought would never happen.

8. Starcraft 2 releases (and runs on Linux!). This is one many gamers have been waiting on for some time. After Starcraft Ghost turned into vaporware I think some of us where wondering if Blizzard was ever going to release anything other than WoW expansions ever again. Starcraft 2 is finally here and it was worth the wait, easily one of the best RTSes I have ever played.

7. Microsoft releases a decent desktop operating system. After their Vista fiasco that left many consumers running back to Windows XP, Microsoft took their time getting Windows 7 from beta to a release stage. The result is truly their best desktop operating system. Sure it is not as resource friendly as some alternative operating systems, but if you are coming from XP or Vista - Windows 7 truly does simplify your PC.

6. Broadcom releases open source drivers. The bane of Linux users for many years now has been Broadcom wireless chipsets. Sure, distros such as Ubuntu have made it easier in recent years to install the closed source driver - but a fully open source driver is by far a best case scenario. Once these drivers make it into the mainstream kernel releases, modern Linux distributions will support most all internal wifi chips OOTB.

5. Steam client comes to OSX. Easily the most popular digital distribution system for games on Windows, Steam has been released for OSX. In addition to this Valve company, the one behind Steam, is also re-releasing all of their source engine games (CSS, TF2, L4D, ect.) re-written to use OpenGL for Apple's platform. Something such as this could allow OSX to one day challenge Microsoft's dominance in the PC game market.

4. Microsoft extends Windows XP downgrade rights till 2020. This one might not signal the end of the world exactly, but I think it makes those of us who work on Windows wish the end would come a little sooner. Even though Windows 7 has done so many things correctly the business world is always afraid of change, meaning we will be dealing with this now decade old operating system for another ten years (at least).

3. Microsoft contributes 20,000 lines of code to the Linux kernel. In a move that shocked many Microsoft submitted code that allows Linux virtual machines to perform better when running on a Windows Server 2008 host system. Keep in mind that while 20,000 lines sounds like a lot, it is simply a drop in the bucket of the millions of lines of code that comprise the Linux kernel.

2. Enlightenment E17 libraries reach beta. After ten years and several rewrites later of being defined as "alpha" software, E17 has finally reached a beta stage. It is yet to be seen if we will see a 1.0 release any time soon, but for the time being a beta release is a step in the right direction. If you would like to easily check out the E17 beta, take a peek at Bodhi Linux.

Finally, drum roll please...

1. Duke Nukem Forever gets a release date (again). First announced on April 28, 1997 Duke Nukem Forever seemed to be eternally delayed. This makes for it's 5th (6th, 7th?) release date. This one appears to be a solid one though (so much in fact that there are "early access keys" being advertised on Steam). Hopefully this one will not disappoint when it finally releases after almost 14 years.

Where there any other advances in technology or releases in recent years you thought would never happen?

~Jeff Hoogland

Thousands Play Starcraft 2 on Linux

I play Starcraft 2 on Linux and apparently I'm not the only one. At the end of last month I wrote a brief guide for getting Starcraft 2 working under Linux using Wine. In the last ten days that guide has gotten nearly nine thousand views and currently has ninety comments.

Now I've talked before about why I think there is a market for creating games for Linux and I think my above statistics only reinforce this idea. Don't believe me? Think about it this way - lets assume half of the people (4,500) who have checked out my guide have purchased the game and would prefer to play it on Linux. The game currently retails for 60$ USD.

4,500*60$ = 270,000$

That would be over a quarter of a million dollars from Linux gamers (in just over a week of the game's release). Are you telling me it would cost more than a quarter of a million dollars to bring a game, that can already run 100% using OpenGL, to the Linux operating system?

I doubt it.

I know more than a few Windows users who would drop the OS in a heart beat if they could play their Blizzard games under Linux and I know there are plenty of Linux users who would start buying Blizzard games if and only if they started creating native Linux installers.

So what do you say Blizzard? Comon - give us a native version of Starcraft 2 on Linux! It is 2010, people are using more than just Windows and OSX on their personal computers!

~Jeff Hoogland

HOWTO: Perfect Terran Proxy Build Order - Starcraft 2

Today we take a short break from our normal broadcasting to talk about a bit of gaming strategy.




In Starcraft 2 a "proxy" means you fore-go building in your own base and instead build your unit producing structures nearly on top of the opposing player. Timing is everything when using a proxy, so it is best used in maps where you know the starting location of your opponent(s). The following proxy build order is something I have been perfecting since the game was in beta and with the right amount of micromanagement I have found it rarely looses.

If you have never read a Starcraft build order before, the number before each listing is the number of SVCs you should have before building each object. In this particular build order the item listed in bold should be constructed in your starting base.

8 - Barracks
10 - Supply Depot
10 - Marine
10 - Barracks
10 - Marine
10 - Marine
12 - Bunker

The two key elements to any successful proxy are speed and micromanagement. As soon as the game starts, select five of your six starting SCVs and have them get to mining - the sixth SCV (your builder) should begin making his way to just outside the enemy's base. At the same time while all this is going on, get your first two additional SVCs building at the command center.

Most maps are large enough that by the time your builder SCV is outside the enemy's base you should have 150 minerals to get your first barracks building (if not wait a few moments). While that is building you should have time to build two more SCVs, followed up by a supply depot back in your home base.

As soon as your barracks finishes it should start producing marines - all of your barracks should be constantly producing marines until the match is over (which in a perfect world will be just a few more minutes). Now you have to wait around a few moments to gather resources, your first marine should finish and you should get your second training. Sometime between your first and second marine you should now have enough minerals to get your builder started on a second barracks. While he works on that make sure your first barracks continues to pump out marines and to ensure a steady cash flow once you get into combat you will want to produce two more SCVs as soon as you have the funds.

With 12 miners going you should have enough minerals to get a flow of marines building at your second barracks and throw down a bunker just outside their ramp. Right about the time you get your fifth marine your bunker should be finishing up - this is where the micromanagement begins. Take your group of five marines and attack forward into their base. If you meet heavy resistance, attack and then fall back to your bunker - if your opponent is a poor player (or not paying attention) you can bunker your marines and easily kill off their units.

That is the core of the build and typically enough to throw most people off their game. The key in winning the game from this point forward is to keep almost constant pressure on the other player by attacking with your continuous flow of marines. In terms of expanding more, you should have more money than just two barracks can drain, I typically construct a second supply depot at my starting base, a few extra SCVs, and then a third (and possibly a fourth) barracks at my proxy.

If you are having an issue with pushing all the way into the opponent's base right away, I've found constructing a second bunker at the top of their ramp you can retreat to does wonders. Also important to remember is that if you kill off all of a player's offensive units gun it for their mining line before destroying their buildings. A decent player will most times order their miners to attack what is left of your marines - do not let them surround your squad. Micro back and forth (lure them all the way back to your bunker if you can) dealing what damage you can to their miners in the mean time.

That is the jist of it - pour your stream of marines into their base until they quit or are wiped out. Give it a try and let me know how it works out for you - if you find something that works slightly better, let me know! I am always looking to improve my game :)

~Jeff Hoogland

Wine vs Native - 3D Performance Benchmarks

In the past I've done Wine on Linux versus native Windows 7 benchmarks for 3D applications. Source engine games are some of my favorite benchmarking applications. Since Valve ported Steam to OSX earlier this year and I recently acquired an OSX PC I figured this would be an opportune time to see how Wine performance measures up to a native client, not only on the same hardware - but on the same operating system.

My benchmarking tools this time around will be Counter Strike: Source and Team Fortress 2, as they both run native on OSX. For Wine software I used the recently released Crossover Games 9.1

Scores:
Counter Strike: Source

• 1680x1050, Wine - 44.16fps
• 800x600, Wine - 48.59fps
• 1680x1050, Native - 54.02fps
• 800x600, Native - 56.22fps

Team Fortress 2

• 1680x1050, Wine - 43.88fps
• 800x600, Wine - 49.58fps
• 1680x1050, Native - 50.56fps
• 800x600, Native - 58.47fps

As you can see - the numbers are fairly close (at least closer than they are with the Windows vs Linux Wine benchmarks). With CSS Wine scored 81% the speed of the native version and in TF2 Wine was 86% the FPS native version. It is fantastic the progress the Wine project has made over the past few years, to the point where it can almost keep up with a native version of modern games - even so I would love to see native ports of these games to my favorite operating system.

~Jeff Hoogland
Please note while these benchmark scores presented are accurate to the best of my abilities, they only represent my personal hardware and software configurations. Your results on your own system(s) may vary (and if they do, please share them!).

HOWTO: Starcraft 2 on Linux with Wine

Okie dokie - so I've mentioned before that I play Starcraft 2 under my Linux install with no issues. Since the game's official release a few days ago I have been getting a good bit of traffic on those two pages - so I figured I would put together a quick HOWTO for getting Starcraft 2 working on your Linux distro of choice. The game runs under Wine 1.2 and/or Crossover Games 9.1 with a small bit of work (the latter is easier to make work).

Since free is good I'll talk about the Wine HOWTO first. First off, download and install Wine 1.2 on your system. Next, run the following commands in terminal:

cd ~/Downloads

wget http://winezeug.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/winetricks

chmod +x winetricks

./winetricks droid fontfix fontsmooth-rgb gdiplus gecko
./winetricks vcrun2008 vcrun2005 allfonts d3dx9 win7

winecfg

In the configuration Window it opens go to the libraries tab and enter mmdevapi in the new override for library box and click add. Now scroll through the existing over rides list for mmdevapi click edit and set it to disabled. Finally click on the audio tab and set it to alsa.

If you still have audio issues after doing this and your distro uses Pulse Audio (Ubuntu does) install Wine 1.2 that has been built with pulse audio support with the following commands in terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:c-korn/ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

As of Crossover 9.1 Starcraft 2 is listed as "officially support" and as such you will find that it has an entry in the automated games installer. The only issue is that after the game has actually finished installing the StarCraft 2 process hangs around - meaning Crossover never actually knows that the game has finished installing and thusly never creates menu entries for it. Thank fully there is a simple fix for this - after Starcraft 2 has finished installing, open up your system monitor and look for any rogue Starcraft 2 processes and kill them off. After you have done this the CXGames installer will know that it has finished installing and will create the menu entries as it should.

If you have audio issues under Crossover you can open your Starcraft 2 bottle's WineCFG, select the audio tab, and set hardware acceleration from full to emulated.

Also - if you are trying to install from the retail CD (with Wine or Crossover) you might need need to manually mount the disc due to an issue with its split PC/Mac auto mounter. To do this run the following two commands in terminal:

sudo umount /media/SC2*

sudo mount -t udf -o ro,unhide,uid=$(id -u) /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom

Note some drives may use /dev/sr0 (or other mount points) instead if /dev/cdrom. If you are having issues getting it working scroll through the comments for some good tips - if you are still unable to get it working after that, make a comment of your own :)

Also - if you are attempting to get the game running with an ATI card, it was suggested in the comments that making it run under a virtual desktop allows it to run on some systems it otherwise fails to work on.

I tested the above methods on Ubuntu 10.04, Linux Mint Debian, and Chakra - but they should be applicable to any modern Linux distribution. Have any issues feel free to drop a comment below and I will do my best to lend a hand debugging. Happy gaming!

~Jeff Hoogland

Starcraft 2 and a bit of Wine - Linux Performance

EDIT: If you stumbled upon this page looking for a HOWTO for getting Starcraft 2 working under Wine check here.

I mentioned earlier this month that I was enjoying the Starcraft 2 beta on Ubuntu 10.04 thanks to Wine software. In my previous posting I had simply stated that SC2 was "playable" under Wine. I have a fairly powerful gaming laptop that sports an nVidia 260m GTX and a 1680x1050 resolution panel. SC2 defaulted itself under Wine to "ultra" settings on my system - after playing one game at these settings (well it was really more like playing a slide-show). I promptly lowered the details and textures to low (while leaving the resolution the same).

With these settings I average around 40 FPS at the main menu and in game. At the high end I see just over 50 FPS while playing and at the low end it bottoms out around 20 FPS in combat. (For those wondering how I obtained these numbers press control+alt+f to put an FPS counter in the upper left hand corner of the screen while in SC2). These numbers come from the latest SC2 patch as of today (05/25/10).

Now for a bit of an ironic story regarding SC2. Late last night I dual booted my system with Windows 7 Ultimate again due to the need for an embedded youtube video to work in an Office 2007 power point presentation (it failed to work under Crossover and youtube plays poorly in VMs, thus native install was my only option left). Back on topic - since I had Windows installed anyways I figured I would copy over my SC2 files (god bless Blizzard and their portable installs) and see how comparable the performance was on the native operating system.

Needless to say it performs better, in fact the FPS I see under low settings on Wine is about equal to the same FPS I was seeing under high settings on Windows. That is about where the things that worked better under Windows ended for SC2 on my computer.

I would like to prefix my following statement with the fact that my network drivers are installed, working, and I had used several other applications online just fine.

When I joined my first SC2 game on Windows I had just selected my workers to start mining when the lag started, around two minutes later I was dropped from the game and it counted as a loss in my ladder league. I figured it was just something funky with my internet line, even though I had not had any issues in SC2 under Wine in the last three weeks, as such I promptly selected "find match" to start another game. Two minutes later I had "lost" another ladder game due to "connection" issues.

Fan-flipping-tastic.

Just out of curiosity I decided to boot in Linux to see if the issue existed there as well (I'm hoping the irony of rebooting into Linux to play a game isn't lost on anyone). Needless to say the problem was not present there, after sweeping two ladder games without any connection issues on Ubuntu I can indeed confirm that it was a "connection" issue with the SC2 was only happening under Windows.

Yes: I know this game is still in beta.
Yes: I know odds are this issue is limited to my system.

Is it still annoying? Yep. It is ridiculously ironic? You bet.

Anyone else have fun story they would like to share about an application working better under Wine than it does on Windows itself?

~Jeff Hoogland

CXGames 9.0 - Hands on Review

Back on October of last year I did a comparison of Cedega and CXGames. As of yesterday Codeweavers launched their CXGames 9.0. If we had heard any news or updates from Cedega in the last five months this would be an updated comparison, but since Cedega has not changed I simply am going to be reviewing the newly released CXGames.

The first thing you will notice when using CXGames 9.0 if you had used past versions is that the GUI has under gone a refreshing change.

Application Installer:

Bottle Manager:One of the key things you will notice when installing a game is that there are now "profiles" built in for games. Officially supported games have a profile as well currently a handful of other games. Similar to how Cedega works people can now submit the Wine settings they use to successfully run a game to Codeweavers so others can replicate these settings with a single click from the installer. With the number of users Codeweavers has accumulated over the years I have no doubt that we will soon see profiles for the multitude of gold and silver rated unsupported applications listed in the Codeweaver's data base.

New GUI, game profiles, what else is new in CXGames 9.0? A much needed Wine version upgrade has been added to this release. CXGames is based off of the recently released Wine 1.1.42. If you are not aware newer Wine versions often times include many bug fixes that can allow applications that had failed to run under Wine in the past to suddenly start working. The benefit of purchasing commercial Wine software such as CXGames is that while you gain all the benefits of an updated Wine version you do not have to worry about experiencing any regressions that may have found their way into the Wine base.

From a gamer's aspect the most important thing about this new release is added support for the recently released Steam GUI. The new interface for the Steam content delivery service I find runs much better under CXGames 9.0 than the old Steam interface ever ran under past Crossover versions. CXGames 9.0 also advertises added support for StarTrek Online and the Starcraft 2 Beta. There is a profile under "unsupported applications" for StarTrek, I am not much of an MMO guy so I have not tested this game yet. Upon searching for an entry for Starcraft 2 you will not find one, on the Crossover forums one of the staff makes the claim that it just works OOTB when selecting "install other application". I can confirm this is not the case. By default SC2 crashes at upon startup, after some tweaking I have it at least showing me a loading screen (even though it freezes with no terminal output).

Finally I always like to mention cost, CXGames 9.0 continues to be 40$ (this includes one year of support and updates). Overall CXGames 9.0 is another great release in a fantastic product line. The GUI updates are for the better, the game profiles work well, and a newer Wine version is always appreciated. If you are a Steam gamer on Linux then CXGames 9.0 is a must have, if Starcraft 2 under Linux is what you are looking for you are going to have to pass on CXGames for the time being - but I have no doubt that by the time SC2 releases at the end of July it will be fully supported under Crossover.

~Jeff Hoogland

Why there is a Market for Linux Games

Linux users are starved for quality games - there is no doubting that. Bring up the topic of a Linux port on most gaming forums and you will typically see responses about the market share of the operating system, that Linux users are cheap (thus why they use a free operating system) or there are too many package formats to support (which really is a non-issue). I'm not even going to bother trying to argue the point of market share, we all know Windows is a large majority and Linux is the under dog - lets leave it at that.

Lets stop and think about something for a moment - nowhere near all of those Windows users are gamers. In fact with the world we live in that is so heavily populated with consoles I would be surprised if even half of the people using Windows are the type that go out and purchase the latest and greatest PC games (or even play casually). Linux users on the other hand are typically a more tech savvy bunch and tech savvy people more often than not tend to gravitate towards being gamers.

Alright - enough speculation and assumptions, lets look at some cold hard numbers. Two recent games that had successful Linux ports would be 2DBoy's World of Goo and Frictional Game's Penumbra Series. 2DBoy reported that since they released their Linux port of the game 10% of their total game sales have been for the Linux platform. Frictional Games reports a similair statistic - in fact 12% of their sales for the Penumbra series up to this point are for the Linux operating system.

Still need more convincing? If you have not been made aware of it yet as of my posting this there are still two days left to participate in the Humble Indie Bundle experiment. The Humble Indie Bundle offers your five games (including World of Goo and the first of the Penumbra series) at what ever cost you can afford. All five of the games are fully cross-platform (Windows, OSX, Linux) and when you make your donation you are asked to mark which operating system you are purchasing the games for. Take a look at the following statistics up until this point from the donations they have received:
Judging by that pie chart Linux users appear to make up almost 25% of the donations and their average donation amount is almost double that of the average Windows user donation. This means that of the 571,048$ donated thus far 142,762$ is from Linux users. But remember Linux users are cheap and their is no money in Linux game market - right.

Games that already exist on only the Windows platform need ports as well. In fact there is so much demand for some of these games to run on Linux that Codeweavers has a business commercially supporting many of these titles on the Linux operating system (it's not perfect - but for now it works).

I can huff and puff about the facts and statistics till I am blue in the face, but the point is this: There is a market for Linux gaming and one that is still largely untapped at that. If you are a game developer I implore you to please port your game to Linux!

Anyone know of any other games released for Linux that have been successful? Let me know! I am always interested in picking up a new game that runs natively on my systems.

~Jeff Hoogland

Some WINE with your Starcraft 2?

EDIT: If you stumbled upon this page looking for a HOWTO for getting Starcraft 2 working under Wine check here.

It finally happened. I have a Starcraft2 closed beta key! What feels like decades ago now I had applied for a Starcraft2 beta key on Battle.net and had all but given up hope after many months of waiting when a friend was kind enough to give me one of his invite passes. I entered the key into my account and was thoroughly excited when I saw the beta appear in my downloads. I was clicking through the website as quick as I could so I could get the game downloading, when reality came crashing down on top of me as I hit the downloads page and was asked to choose between a Windows and an OSX client.

What is a Linux user to do? With the recent release of Ubuntu 10.04 I had removed Windows 7 from my hardrive as it had not been booted into in over a month and was simply taking up storage space. My first thought was to simply reinstall Windows 7, giving it just enough space to boot and install Starcraft. Then I thought about the fact that I almost never reboot my system and that having to restart just to play Starcraft would be a real kill joy (and a time waster).

I run all of my source engine games on Linux via CXGames however upon looking at their entry for Starcraft II I had little faith that it would work under Crossover. Not quite ready to give up hope yet I headed over to the WINE AppDB entry for SC2, lo-and-behold it had a gold rating! Browsing through the page you will find a wonderful HOWTO for recompiling WINE from git with a custom patch for SC2. Always one to jump in with both feet first I promptly uninstalled my current WINE version from my system and began downloading/compiling a patch version of 1.1.43 Twenty minutes later (I have a fairly good processor) I had the patched version of WINE built and installed. I then proceeded to download the beta client and get it installing under WINE (I also followed the directions here that contains some extra tweaks for running the beta under WINE, it also installs SC2 to it's own WINE prefix).

I have been happily playing Starcraft 2 under Ubuntu 10.04 for the last three days now. All I have to say is that it is a true testament to how much progress the WINE project has made in recent years when it can be counted upon to run a new title that hasn't even been fully released yet! Performance under WINE is not perfect, but on lower settings it is more than playable (which is what really counts). There seems to be a processor bottle neck on higher detail settings (also present in L4D2 under WINE actually) that hinders performance.
~Jeff Hoogland

Steam Client and Source Games Porting to OSX

So the devil called me this afternoon and said they where having a snowstorm in hell.

In other news Valve announced that their revolutionary "content delivery service" known as "Steam" is being ported to OSX and will be available as early as April 2010. No really its true, straight from the horse's mouth. In addition the actual client and "Steam-works" being brought to Apple's operating system Valve also plans to port all of the Source Engine games, these include:

• Half Life 2 Series
  
• Counter Strike: Source
• Team Fortress 2
• Left 4 Dead Series
  
• Day of Defeat: Source

All I have to say is: Microsoft has to quaking in their boots. For some time Microsoft's Windows operating system has been the standard for gaming on the PC. With Valve making the push into OSX this means more than just trouble for Microsoft's operating system. It also means their famed DirectX API that is Windows only may be in jeopardy. I say this because as stated in Valve's official announcement in order to port their engine/games to OSX they will be reimplementing them in OpenGL. After the porting of these past released source games Valve plans to treat OSX as a "first tier" operating system. Meaning that all future releases of source games will occur simultaneously for OSX, Windows, and Xbox 360.

Not a fan of Valve's flag-ship gaming engine? Not a problem, take a peak at these other titles already for sale on Steam that have a native OSX client:

• Aliens versus Predator (original)
  
• Altitude
  
• And Yet It Moves
  
• Ankh: Battle of the Gods
  
• Ankh: Heart of Osiris
  
• Aquaria
  
• BioShock
  
• Braid
  
• Brainpipe
  
• Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars
  
• Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror
  
• Call of Duty
  
• Call of Duty: United Offensive
  
• Call of Duty 2
  
• Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
  
• Championship Manager 2007
  
• Championship Manager 2008
  
• Championship Manager 2010
  
• Civilization IV
  
• Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
  
• Civilization IV: Colonization
  
• Civilization IV: Warlords
  
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
  
• Darwinia
  
• DEFCON
  
• Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
  
• Deus Ex
  
• Doom
  
• Doom 3
  
• Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
  
• Doom II: Hell on Earth
• Dragon Age: Origins
  
• Elven Legacy
  
• Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
  
• Eschalon: Book I
  
• Europa Universalis III
  
• Europa Universalis: Rome
  
• FlatOut 2
  
• Final Doom
  
• Football Manager 2009
  
• Football Manager 2010
  
• Football Manager Live
  
• Freedom Force
  
• Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
  
• Harvest: Massive Encounter
  
• Hearts of Iron II
  
• Hearts of Iron III
  
• Heretic
  
• Heroes of Might and Magic V
  
• Hexen
  
• Hexen II
  
• Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
  
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  
• Jade Empire
  
• LEGO Batman: The Videogame
  
• LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures
  
• LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues
  
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
  
• Loom
  
• Luxor
  
• Luxor 2
  
• Luxor 3
  
• Machinarium
  
• Multiwinia
  
• Osmos
  
• Peggle
  
• Peggle Nights
  
• Penguins Arena
  
• Penumbra: Black Plague
  
• Penumbra: Overture
  
• Penumbra: Requiem
  
• Plants vs. Zombies
  
• Prey
  
• Prince of Persia (2008)
  
• Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
  
• Quake
  
• Quake II
  
• Quake III Arena
  
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein
  
• Rome: Total War
  
• Samorost 2
  
• Shaun White Snowboarding
  
• Sid Meier’s Pirates
  
• SiN
  
• Spore
  
• Star Wars: Force Unleashed
  
• Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast
  
• Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
  
• Star Wars: Dark Forces
  
• Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
  
• Tales of Monkey Island
  
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  
• The Dig
  
• The Graveyard
  
• The Path
  
• TOCA Race Driver 3
  
• Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield
  
• Tomb Raider: Anniversary
  
• Torchlight
  
• Unreal
  
• Unreal Tournament
  
• Unreal Tournament 2004
  
• Uplink
  
• Virtual Families
  
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
  
• World of Goo
  
• X²: The Threat
  
• X³: Reunion
  
• X³: Terran Conflict

Phew! Who was it that said you couldn't game on a non-Windows operating system? Well truth be told thanks to wonderful software like CXGames some of us have been enjoying source games on the operating system of our choice for some time now. (Food for thought and maybe a future topic: What do you think this announcement is going to do to Codeweaver's bottom line?)

What brought this seemingly sudden announcement from Valve? Well a few months back a rumor had surfaced that a lead Steam developer had posted looking for people with experience porting Windows software to OSX and Linux.

Yep, that is right and Linux.

While there is still nothing official about the latter of these two operating systems from Valve, all I have to say is that the porting of Source Engine to use OpenGL only makes the eventuality of them running without emulation on Linux much more likely (not to mention in the mean time Windows games that run under OpenGL tend to perform better under Wine).

~Jeff Hoogland

The Problem with FOSS Software on an FOSS Operating System

Earlier this evening I was cruising through the latest additions on HappyPenguin.org (Linux gaming website) when I stumbled across JVGS. Its a nifty little platform based game that is loosely based on XKCD webcomic.

Its a newer game so it wasn't in the Ubuntu repositories yet. Not a problem, I've compiled more than my share of programs from source before. I download the source code in your standard .tar.gz package format, extract the contents, and open the README file in gedit. Fairly straight forward compile, grab the listed dependencies using apt-get, run cmake, and then make to build the package.

JVGS is not a graphically heavy game, I wanted to install it on my netbook to kill some time in-between my classes at school. I figured it would take a short bit to compile on my little Atom chip, so I run the make command and head off to do some other work for a little while. Ten minutes later I return to my netbook screen to see the compile has failed with several error messages.

Wonderful.

I really just wanted to try the game, see if it was worth even playing. I was at work (where the computer all run Windows Xp) so I decided to download the Windows package for the game on my work system. Download the zip file, extract the folder, double click the jvgs.exe and poof! Lo-and-behold the game just runs. No complaints, no compile errors -

It just works.

Now I am sure I can debug the error the compiler is throwing on my Ubuntu system and get it working eventually - but this is my point:

Why should I have too?

Why should installing/using a piece of open source software be more painful on a open source operating system then it is on a proprietary operating system? Am I asking for too much here to want an equally easy install experience on Linux for FOSS software as I enjoy on Windows? If Linux is ever to gain any sort of real market share in the desktop market I feel this is some thing that must happen.

But maybe I am wrong. What do you think?

~Jeff Hoogland

EDIT:

I'm going to add this on here since it appears many people have missed my main point here which is simply this: Why is it that FOSS developers tend to compile Windows binaries but they rarely (if ever) compile Linux binaries (.rpm, .deb, .bin, I'll take any of the above)? I understand that this is fully the developer's responsibility, but as I said before it seems to be a common trend. Also I'd like to mention I am in no way saying having to compile from source bad I am simply saying it should not be the only install option for Unix operating systems.

Is Cedega Hanging in There?

In one of my past articles I made a bold assessment that it appeared Transgaming might be dropping support for their Cedega Wine software. However it now appears that Cedega might be hanging in there - After more than a year of silence there was finally an update posted in Cedega's "Den" (announcements section). The post promises the certification of two games, Torchlight and Defense Grid: The Awakening, that happen to work well under their "recently" released 7.3.3 engine (The latter of the two pleases me greatly, I had purchased DG on Steam over the holidays and it does not function properly under Wine/CXGames as of yet). Also provided is a very vague "Development Update" that promises better OpenGL performance and mentions that at some point in the near future we should see a more detailed development plan - Alas two weeks later and still nothing.

In the end what does all this mean? Maybe nothing, but then only time will tell. I'm hoping that Transgaming gets around to posting development updates faster than they have been about fixing their application voting system (which has been non-functional for close to two years now). If Transgaming want's to save their Linux product they need to get on the ball - and quick. They are no longer the only big player in the world of commercial "Win-on-Lin" for gaming. Codeweavers has already posted their plans for development in 2010 and since they already support L4D2 (one of the most recently released hit PC titles) Transgaming is going to be hard-pressed to play catch-up.

As I've said in the past: I think Cedega is good software, however there is more to buying software than just the product itself. Here is to hoping Transgaming can get their customer service act together in 2010, because - while I like CXGames, competition is a wonderful driving factor in the business world.

~Jeff Hoogland

Linux in Real Life - Uses Around the World

My little niche here on the internet is largely devoted to talking about various forms of the Linux Operating System. Truth be told, however, I can blog about Linux until my fingers fall off from typing and the vast majority of what I wrote would be meaningless to the average person. Even with its slowly growing popularity, Linux is still a largely unknown thing to many people. Why should Average Joe care about Linux? This alternative operating system doesn't affect his life at all - or does it? The truth of the matter is this: Almost every adult who uses technology in today's world uses or has used something that is Linux powered.

Don't believe me? Lets take a look at some of the places Linux is used around the world today. In the world of retail, Linux is used as the sole operating system of two major clothing retailers:

• Burlington Coat Factory
• The GAP

These companies use Linux both as a server back-end and as a desktop solution.

Now maybe you are like myself and you have never shopped at either of the above listed stores - don't worry there are plenty of other places Linux is hiding in the world around us. If you live in the United States then you should be pleased to know that our government uses Linux is several areas including:

• The Postal Service
• The Federal Courts

The postal service uses Linux clusters to sort bulk mail and the federal court system uses Linux systems for case management, case tracking, accounting, and probation services.

Alrighty - maybe you live outside the United States, meaning you have never used either of the two services listed above. How about this: Do you ever go to the movies? Many companies that produce movies use Linux, including:

• Disney
• Dreamworks

They use Linux based production machines for rendering 2D art work, 3D graphics, and special effects.

Still a few of you out there who think you haven't used Linux yet? Don't worry, I'm not even close to being done yet. Anyone have either of the following two items hiding in their entertainment center:

• TiVo
• Playstation 3

Yep - you guessed it, both are Linux powered devices.

How about mobile devices? The company LG has been powering their cell phones with Linux based technology for several years now. Perhaps you have heard of (or possibly even own) one of these handheld devices:

• Sprint's Palm Pre
• Verizon's "bare knuckled bucket of does" - the Droid
• T-Mobile's G1
• Google's Nexus One
• Nokia's N900
• Amazon's Kindle

Are all high-end devices running various forms of mobile Linux.

Whew! Did you find where you fit into the world of Linux yet? Wait - did I just hear a "no" still? Alright - do you use the internet? (rhetorical question, you are reading a web-blog) Since the answer to my previous question is most obviously yes - I'd be willing to bet you have used one of the following two web pages at some point in time:

• Amazon
• Google

Both companies are largely (or in the case of Amazon - almost entirely) powered by Linux. In addition to these, it relatively safe to say around half the internet runs on Linux powered Apache servers.

I think I've covered just about everyone who uses technology at this point in some form or another. Does anyone still think you haven't used something Linux powered at least once in your life? No? Good. :)

Does anyone else know of some other common places Linux is used by the masses or another large retailer/company that is Linux powered that I missed? If so, please drop a comment to let me know.

Update: Check out this article for a whole pile of places that are running Linux!

~Jeff Hoogland

OpenGL vs DirectX - Benchmark Comparison

I've done a few benchmarks to date and today I am going to add another interesting set of numbers to the list. Unigine is a cross-platform real-time 3D engine, I stumbled across awhile back on some message boards I am a part of. Since it is cross platform it offers the benchmark rendering in both OpenGL and DirectX APIs, as such I was curious as to which of the interfaces that are commonly used for 3D development offered better performance.

The Tests: Unigine offers two free benchmarks - Tropics and Sanctuary. I ran both demos using OpenGL, DirectX 9.1, and DirectX 10.0 under the 1680x1050 resolution.

The Hardware: While my hardware is not fastest in the world it is (as of posting this) relatively new and decently quick. Processor - Intel p9700 2.8ghz Dual Core, RAM - 4gigs of DDR3, Video Card: nVidia 260m with 1gig DDR3 dedicated memory (Running the latest stable nVidia driver 195.62).

The Software: Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit & Unigine Benchmarks

The Results:

Tropics -

• OpenGL - 31.8 fps
• DirectX 9.1 - 34.9 fps
• DirectX 10.0 - 35.8 fps

Sanctuary -

• OpenGL - 36.0 fps
• DirectX 9.1 - 39.7 fps
• DirectX 10.0 - 42.6 fps

Wrapping Up:
Clearly DirectX 10 appears to be the optimum choice performance wise. In the case of the tropics benchmark it scored about 12% higher and for Sanctuary it scored around 16% higher. Worth noting is that while running the benchmarks there really isn't truly much detail difference between the rendering in the three different selections (meaning most people would not be able to tell the difference between which of the three was is use). Also I'd like to mention for any who may not know that OpenGL as the name implies is free open source software and runs fully cross-platform (where is DirectX is locked to the MS Windows and XBox) - so if you want to develop for a wider range the slightly slower OpenGL may be the best choice of the three to use.

~Jeff Hoogland
Please note while these benchmark scores presented are accurate to the best of my abilities, they only represent my personal hardware and software configurations. Your results on your own system(s) may vary (and if they do, please share them!).