[Bug 8051] Sims 2 demo exits prematurely

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8051

Abraham  changed:

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--- Comment #109 from Abraham  2011-04-26 06:57:47 CDT ---
(In reply to comment #108)
> (In reply to comment #107)
> > Last I checked, Wine hardcodes the constant instead of actually checking the
> > hardware.
>
> Where would that be? Wined3d reads the constants from the opengl library. It
> subtracts a number of constants from the available ones on certain drivers(e.g.
> fglrx and OSX) where we know that the driver needs some for its own purposes.
> This doesn't change the number of constants that is advertised to the d3d app
> though. The driver reserved constants are there to avoid GLSL compile errors
> with shaders that use indirect addressing(and thus potentially use all
> available constants)
>
> We do limit the hardware shader constants to 256 in d3d9 and d3d8 because there
> are some games that break if more constants are supported.
> d3d9:Set*ShaderConstantF rejects constants >= 256 as well. This seems incorrect
> with software vertex processing and we should probably change the check a bit.
> (e.g. check against the HW capabilities, and if hardware VP is used cap the
> constants at 256, otherwise 8192)
> > But what I've never understood about this bug is, lots of bugs are
> > filed that prevent an application or game from starting, and they might be the
> > only affected app/game, but people pay attention and usually attempt to fix the
> > problem.  This bug for some reason has been demoted its entire life as
> > unimportant.
>
> There are three things in play here: (a) the effort needed for a proper fix,
> (b) the limited effect on other games(we'd probably just fix a single game) and
> (c) that implementing a proper fix requires a lot of knowledge how wined3d
> works.
>
> (a)+(b) prevent the main wined3d developers from working on this bug, (c) makes
> it unlikely that a new volunteer shows up and writes a patch.

I think (B) is not very relevant. There are a lot of fixes made to run a single
piece of software (ex: WOW or Microsoft Word), that probably affects only the
single app or just a simple subset.

I know I'm just voicing my frustration here. There is little save putting a
small reward that I can do to help this bug fix, but is the single bug that
refrains me from migrating my girlfriend's computer to ubuntu, as she is a very
avid sims 2 gamer (and doesn't like sims 3 -too many micropayments, and too
much money invested on previous game-). I can replace office, and teach her to
use shotwell to manage her photo collection, but if she has to reboot to play
the sims 2, is no use.

Many sims 2 players are like my girlfriend, avid fans, but no tech skills (I'm
no programmer myself).

A suggestion... There's any mechanism for offering bounties for bugfixing?
Maybe, while we cannot offer tech expertise, we can offer a monetary
compensation...