Windows games. I need advice and your experience ;-)

TobiWan

Hello fellow Gentoo users and less lucky readers :-)

I have recently migrated from Windows 98SE and SuSE 8 to Gentoo and have found Gentoo to be the most impressive distribution I have used so far.

So far I am really impressed with Gentoo's desktop usability and available ebuilds. But I have a whole lot of Windows games that I should like to use under Linux. I have done some basic sniffing around about support for them, but nonetheless it'd be great if you could help me out here:

This is a list of some of the games I own. Just tell me if it's possible to play them under Gentoo

a) native (what do i have to emerge?)
b) using wine (any howtos etc.?)

Running native? If yes: what to emerge? Any other obstacles?

Warcraft 2 (normal Windows CD version)
Descent 2 (original '95 UK CD version) (any chance of playing it hardware accelerated?)
Hexen II (normal Windows CD version) (hardware accelerated?)
The Ultimate Doom "Thy Flesh Consumed" (Win 95 & DOS CD-ROM)
Doom II (normal Windows CD version)
Quake (I have the original 1996 DOS CD and the GLQuake Win95&98 CD & Mission Packs 1&2) (hardware accelerated?)
Quake II (normal Windows CD version)
Maniac Mansion - Day of the Tentacle (original CD version) (Scumm engine?)
Unreal (normal Windows CD version)

WINE etc.?

Halflife+Counterstrike+DayOfDefeat (normal UK CD plus downloadable mods) (I have a link to a howto, any Gentoo specifics?)
Fritz 5.32 (normal CD version)
X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (original US CD version)
Balance of Power (original US CD version)
X-Wing Alliance (normal German CD version)
Jedi Knight II: Outcast (european CD version)
Jazz Jack Rabbit & The Secret Files (best Jump&Run ever

)
Diablo 2 (normal CD version)
Worms United (normal CD version)
Mech Warrior 3 (normal CD version)

thanks in advance for sharing your experience,
Tobias
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scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

As much as I hate Transgaming... you should check them out... they make software called WineX which is specifically made for playing windows games in linux.

www.transgaming.com

They also have a database so that you can check if your games are compatible

TobiWan · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 4:01 pm Post subject: not quite ;-)

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

I only have Wine installed and I have been able to play almost all of my games (over 200 games in my collection)...

Although some I have had to search for binaries and such on google.
Try installing the newest wine and see what kind of luck you have, then post whatever errors you get and people on the forum can help you along.

MadEgg · l33t Joined: 06 Jun 2002 Posts: 678 Location: Netherlands

I am somewhat more positive about transgaming. I recently bought a 3 months-subscription and I am very satisfied about the results, as opposed to the CVS-version which ran almost nothing for me.

I can run any Windows game I own using WineX with the unfortunate exception of Age of Empires II and Age of Mythology. For the rest everything works beautifully.

Anyway, that's just my story.

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TobiWan · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 4:40 pm Post subject:

scriptkiddie · l33t Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 955

its 15$
dont trust just that list.. its only what people have said work.. thats not to say others do not work

MadEgg · l33t Joined: 06 Jun 2002 Posts: 678 Location: Netherlands

The cost is 15$, 5$ a month with a minimum subscription duration of 3 months.

During that period you can download every release of WineX and Point2Play.
You also get to vote on what to work next each month. You can buy additional votes for $5 each month tho I still don't really see the use of doing that.
Finally it gives you the right to request support(doh

)

Point2Play is a very useful(IMHO) tool that allows you to easily separate config-files for all the games you install. You can have a different config-file and virtual C drive for everything, where you had to manually copy over config files before.

There are only 2 games of your non-native list that I've ever seen, and those two also work using WineX. Those are Diablo II and Half-life/Counterstrike.

Those two also worked perfect using the normal Wine version.

Games that WineX allows me to run which Wine didn't include:

SimCity 3000
SimCity 4
Commandos 2
Settlers IV
Baldurs Gate 2
Battlefield 1942

As far as I know JKII uses the Quake3 engine which always seems to work very well using Wine(X). It at least works fine with Soldier of Fortune II, and also works with Quake3 although you won't need that since there's a native version.

The rest of the games I've seriously haven't even heard about before so I can't tell you anything about that. You would just have to try.

That's mainly the reason I decided to buy it; I mean, how much is $15. I didn't go out on the piss for one night and was able to afford it :lol:

_________________
Pentium 4 Prescott 3,2 GHz
Asus P4P800 SE, i865PE chipset
1024 MB PC3200 RAM
AOpen Aeolus GeForce 6800 Ultra 256 MB DDR2
Creative Audigy2 ZS
gentoo-sources-2.6.20-r7
nVidia-drivers version 9755

TobiWan · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 9:42 pm Post subject: thanks so far

That has been interesting information about Transgaming's WineX. I guess I'll invest those 15 bucks when I have the time to play around again and the necessary bandwidth at my disposal.

Concerning those native games and the CDs I own: what packages in the portage tree do I have to emerge? For example Quake or Doom. There are at least three or four different ones for each of them. My preference ofcourse is to play each of those games the way they used to be in Windows or better concerning hardware acceleration if possible.

thanks again and excuse my lazyness of "asking before trying myself" ;-)

_________________
Killing for peace is like fucking for virginity.

sgaap · Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2003 9:43 pm Post subject:

I would only use winex for certain d3d games, opengl games work just as fine with normal wine

my experiences

Hexen II (normal Windows CD version) (hardware accelerated?) played it a long time ago using wine

Quake II (normal Windows CD version) - played it native on linux (long time ago with my v2) (http://www.icculus.org/quake2/)

Unreal (normal Windows CD version) - works fine with wine, sometime ago someone used the ut binaries to run unreal 1 natively on linux, this worked very nice

Halflife+Counterstrike+DayOfDefeat (normal UK CD plus downloadable mods) (I have a link to a howto, any Gentoo specifics?) - works fine with wine

Jedi Knight II: Outcast (european CD version) - worked very nice with wine

The other games on your list i never tried (expect for worms but that refused to work)
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cylgalad · Veteran Joined: 18 Apr 2003 Posts: 1327 Location: France

All Dooms & Quakes are running native (and except quake3, are open-source) under Linux
"Maniac Mansion" & "Day Of The Tentacle" & other Lucasarts old adventure games runs with scummvm (emerge scummvm) and scummvm really runs anywhere, I even tried it on my PS2

For the rest, wine or winex (try with wine 1st before waisting $15 :lol:

) should give some (often poor) results. Btw, maybe in some months, wine will be able to use the directx dlls directly (see http://www.winehq.org/site?issue=185 ).