http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7334
--- Comment #31 from Alexander Dorofeyev alexd4@inbox.lv 2008-05-13 12:32:27 --- (In reply to comment #29)
Some programs require changing the screen color depth to 16bpp or 8bpp. If you are running a 24bpp X session, like 99.9% of us are, the program in question will probably fail. In the case of the game I've been arguing with, the static 256 color screens work fine, but the direct3d part (the actual game table) fails and triggers the bug. The attempt causes WINE to throw an error to the controlling terminal and the window turns all black when there should be a game screen - this bug is 100% reproducible.
Invalid? Wontfix? Um.. no.
Inability of X server to switch resolutions isn't wine problem, ergo that doesn't make a valid wine bug.
But note that this doesn't prevent wine from emulating e.g. 8bpp mode in directdraw (that's done by inner conversion magic). This is not to say all games will run, there certainly are bugs that affect some games, but this is not at all different from 16bit or 32bit games. Unless there is substantial evidence that multiple games are broken because of a single bug, they probably all deserve proper individual reports, ideally with links to something downloadable that can be tested. The mentioned fixme is NOT such evidence. All 8bpp games will print it on 24bpp desktop, but that says nothing about whether they will work well or not.
This bug isn't good because it confuses newbies into thinking 8bpp mode games don't run in Wine at all (which is wrong) and presents this as some kind of single bug that affects all 8bpp games on all machines. In reality it's many issues affecting specific games. Please open separate entry(s) for specific game(s) that doesn't run. See my previous comment for the kind of info that is helpful for fixing this kind of bugs.
Info that is better suited for wine wiki imported to http://wiki.winehq.org/ColorIndexMode. If you have experience running 8bpp apps and working around related wine bugs, any enhancements to that article would be appreciated.