Hi,
With Dan reporting on the success of Visual C++ 2005, I thought I would post my findings of various casual (and other) games.
In general, my observations are that: 1/ the games themselves tend to work very well (and have done for a long while now thanks to the great work CodeWeavers did in getting DirectDraw and Direct3D working); 2/ the major issues appear to be in the application launchers used by different game providers (most of which are in the current wine implementation of the IE browser ActiveX control); 3/ the success varies from provider to provider, but the same tricks usually work for a given provider; 4/ a game is usually distributed by more than one provider, so you should be able to find a provider that works with wine that distributes the game; 5/ the recent Xrender support has provided major improvements to games (to the point where Azgard Defense is actually playable :D).
Oberon Media
Oberon Media have two versions of their game launcher. The older one renders with the buttons drawn, but the text and links are not functional; installing IE6 causes the text to render and the links to work, but when registering the games, you cannot enter any text in the text fields and there is no visible cursor. The newer launcher (which has a different UI) causes an SEH exception; I suspect that this is due to tightened DRM in the launcher. In addition to this, entering the details directly into the registry doesn't appear to work any more (and in the newer versions of the launcher, a different mechanism is used).
Verdict: Rubbish!
PopCap Games
The PopCap games launcher works without problems out of the box. I haven't tried registering/buying a game through their launcher interface, though.
Verdict: Flawless
Blizzard Entertainment
I have successfully installed and registered Warcraft III (and the expansion), StarCraft and Diablo II using the installer/launcher from the download version. StarCraft and Diablo II work flawlessly; WarCraft III crashes at random points (usually when transitioning between parts of a scenario).
Verdict: Almost-but-not-quite Flawless
Big Fish Games
These use a special downloader client that makes extensive use of IE to provide its functionality. Although this does not currently work with wine out of the box, it works flawlessly in IE6 (using winetricks to install) -- the games download (although the download animation button background does blink), launch and you can successfully register/purchase them from the Big Fish Games UI.
NOTE: Using IE7 results in a crash when starting the Big Fish Games launcher, and I have not yet been able to get IE8 installing/working properly from winetricks (using the IE7 recipe).
Verdict: Excellent
Awem Studios
The Awem Studios game launcher works flawlessly in a clean wine prefix (only gecko is needed). The games launch and you can even register/purchase the games from within the Awem game launcher.
Verdict: Flawless
YoudaGames
The launcher used by YoudaGames does not work in wine out of the box, but requires IE6. I haven't tried registering/purchasing any of their games yet, so I don't know how well this works.
Verdict: Excellent
- Reece
Reece Dunn a écrit :
1/ the games themselves tend to work very well (and have done for a long while now thanks to the great work CodeWeavers did in getting DirectDraw and Direct3D working);
While you are at in, you can also thanks people that worked in this area in their spare time.
A+
2010/1/6 Christian Costa titan.costa@wanadoo.fr:
Reece Dunn a écrit :
1/ the games themselves tend to work very well (and have done for a long while now thanks to the great work CodeWeavers did in getting DirectDraw and Direct3D working);
While you are at in, you can also thanks people that worked in this area in their spare time.
I didn't mean to slight the non-CodeWeavers contributers (like you) to wine and DirectDraw/Direct3D -- everyone has done (and continues to do) amazing work. So thank you all.
Everyone who has worked on wine in one form or other (be it in implementing functionality, fixing bugs, fixing tests, triaging bugs, testing applications and filing useful bug reports, translating, working on the artwork, performing cleanups and simplifying the code, addressing valgrind/coverity issues, ...) have helped to make wine what it is today.
- Reece
Reece Dunn a écrit :
2010/1/6 Christian Costa titan.costa@wanadoo.fr:
Reece Dunn a écrit :
1/ the games themselves tend to work very well (and have done for a long while now thanks to the great work CodeWeavers did in getting DirectDraw and Direct3D working);
While you are at in, you can also thanks people that worked in this area in their spare time.
I didn't mean to slight the non-CodeWeavers contributers (like you) to wine and DirectDraw/Direct3D -- everyone has done (and continues to do) amazing work. So thank you all.
Everyone who has worked on wine in one form or other (be it in implementing functionality, fixing bugs, fixing tests, triaging bugs, testing applications and filing useful bug reports, translating, working on the artwork, performing cleanups and simplifying the code, addressing valgrind/coverity issues, ...) have helped to make wine what it is today.
- Reece
Seems it was misleading. I just wanted to point out that there was a pretty correct implementation of direct3D and ddraw up to d3d8 before CodeWeavers decided to focus on games. That said this is very nice what has been achieved recently in this area by current d3d developpers. But we shouldn't forget either that these are also all small contributions in all different areas that help games work correctly. So thanks to all of you and why I'm at it I wish you a happy new year !
A+ Christian
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Christian Costa -
Reece Dunn