The Definitive Linux Gaming Thread

[Kasyx]

I thought I would take the time to create a thread dedicated to Linux Gaming, where people can see just what the Linux gaming market actually consists of. I have seen a lot of people posting things like "Well, Linux looks cool, but it just doesn't look like it can run my games... ", well I have created this thread to assist people who are looking into Linux, and who enjoy gaming. I will probably be updating this post quite often, because (thanks Eskom), I don't have time to write everything down due to my power going out in 20 minutes, so this will look half-finished.

I will try to break this down into "Chapters", if you will.

What you need to know

There are one or two programs I may mention (mostly "Wine" and "Cedega"), these are basically emulators (even though they really aren't, but they achieve emulation) that are able to run Windows software on Linux (although not all software), Wine is generally used for applications (i.e. Photoshop), although WoW works on it as well (as I am sure other games do too). Cedega was originally built off the wine "API", however it includes DirectX integration allowing one to play more "advanced" games on Linux. Cedega, however, comes with a monthly fee (in a sense, you can pay the $5 once off and use Cedega indefinitely, but you will not be entitled to support or updates).

DirectX 10 functionality is not yet available on Linux. Sorry guys, you won't be playing Crysis on full any time soon, but that's just the way life goes, and chances are high that by the time PCs are available that are actually capable of running Crysis on full, DX10 will be out for Linux anyway

DirectX is not the only "graphical software" out there. Few people seem to have heard of OpenGL (Open Graphics Library), which is used to power 3D engines for ID software (Quake series, Doom series, etc.). I will discuss this topic a bit later one.

So why aren't more games made for Linux?

Basically, because Microsoft owns the industry. This is pretty much due to the horrifying concept of Vendor Lock-ins. I would take the time to explain this concept, but isilanes from Handyfloss does it so very well, thus I will quote:

Imagine a country with no bicycles.

One day a guy comes up with the idea of making them, and starts to produce, and sell, bicycles that we shall call of type A. Being an empty market, the A-type bicycles quickly triumph, and the maker makes a lot of money.

But some time later, a second guy devises a better bike design (type B), and decides to produce and sell it. The price and the quality are better, so when people buy a new bike or replace an old one, they tend to buy bikes of type B. Soon enough, the market is dominated by the new, better, bicycle.

Now imagine a country with no cars.

One day a guy comes up with the idea of making cars, and starts to produce and sell cars of type A. As cars need petrol to run, A-type gas stations develop in parallel to car sales. Building gas stations is expensive, but sales are guaranteed, as everyone has or will have A-type cars, and they need A-type petrol: their growth is synergistic.

But some time later, a second guy devises a better car design (type B) and decides to produce and sell it. The price and the quality are better, BUT drivers can not buy B-type cars, because there is no B-type gas station. The problem is that, since noone has a B-type car, making B-type gas stations is doomed to bankrupt. So, no B-type cars are sold, because there are no B-type gas stations, and B-type gas stations will not be made until B-type cars are popular!

The result is a vendor lock-in.

Make sense?

Here is how it pertains to Microsoft/Linux:

* Proprietary communication protocols that will not work with any other OS. This includes modifications on the IE web browser, so that web pages had to be done for it, and then be incompatible with other browsers. Or the MSN protocol, that is kept as closed as possible, to make free clones of the MSN client as little compatible as possible.
* Proprietary file formats that will not be possible to modify with tools other than the “official” MS ones: WMV for video, DOC, XLS, PPT for office documents.
* As much “Windows-only” software as possible, including games. Making games for platforms other than Windows ensues the wrath of MS, something that game makers can not take lightly, since their sales depend on the game actually running under Windows.
* As much “Windows-only” hardware as possible. The first idea that someone gets about an OS is that it is the piece of software that interacts with the hardware. If so, it is astonishing why it is not MS the one incorporating the drivers in the OS, instead of the hardware makers (hardware != software) providing them. We have all grown accustomed to buying printers, mice, external CD/DVD/HDs… with a CD with the “Drivers for Windows 98″ or some such. Why? Windows can not make the drivers out of the blue, true. But the hardware makers can just make the necessary data public, so anyone will be able to make drivers. If the maker keeps these specifications secret, they will simply not sell anything.

You can read the full article from which these quotes are taken here

Linux and DirectX

Cedega has managed to "emulate" (or rather incorporate the DirectX API), making most DirectX games playable on Linux. The issue with this, however, is that when a new version of DirectX is released (i.e. DirectX 10), Cedega has to wait for Microsoft to release the DX API to the public before beginning work on it, whereas all other gaming companies locked in with Microsoft have had access to the APIs right through the development of it. This means that games running the new DX version come out too quickly after the release of it (new DX version), that Cedega has not had a chance to incorporate it yet, thus the only way to play games using said DX version is by using Windows.

Linux and OpenGL

You know how sometimes you start dating this relatively pretty girl, and then she invites you over for dinner where you meet her insanely hot step-sister? Well think of DirectX as your date, and OpenGL as her step-sister. So you're sitting there and wondering why you met your date before you met her sister, and then you realise that it's because your date is a total attention whore pretty much being pimped by her father, meanwhile her super hot step-sister is locked in the basement and any guy who wants to get with her better be able to dodge her step-father's shotgun blasts. As you may now have guessed, the father is Microsoft. I may have taken this metaphor a bit too far...

Basically game developers are not using the awesomeness of OpenGL because it would anger Microsoft, and game development companies just can't take that kind of chance because Windows is pretty much 90% of the OS market.
There are, of course, a number of games (and game development companies) who pretty much give Microsoft the middle finger and do whatever the hell they want, which generally includes using OpenGL. Because you are probably too lazy to click on a link, I will list some of these games here:

* America's Army
* Call of Duty
* City of Heroes
* City of Villains
* Counter-Strike
* Doom 3
* Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
* Far Cry – Defaults to D3D
* Half-Life (not Half-Life 2)
* Neverwinter Nights
* Penumbra: Overture
* Prey
* Quake series
* Serious Sam
* Serious Sam 2 – Defaults to D3D
* Starsiege: Tribes
* Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
* The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
* Ultima IX: Ascension
* Unreal series
* Warcraft 3 - Defaults to D3D in Windows
* Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
* World of Warcraft - Defaults to D3D in Windows
* X-Plane

So yes, if you wish to take a moment to recall just how awesome some of those games look, by all means; I'll wait. If you wanna find out about more OpenGL games, check out this Wikipedia article.

 

[Kasyx]

Native Linux Games

There are actually, surprisingly enough, quite a few games that run natively in Linux (either directly, or through being ported from Windows), here are a few:

id Software together with Raven Software ported Doom 3, Quake series, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Bioware released Neverwinter Nights. Epic Games released Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004 and they will port Unreal Tournament 3. Croteam released the Serious Sam series. Introversion released Darwinia, Uplink, and DEFCON. S2games released a Linux client of their title Savage 2 soon after it's launch. Loki Software was the first such company, and between 1998 and 2002 ported Descent³, Heretic II, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Myth II: Soulblighter, Railroad Tycoon II, Rune, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Sim City 3000, Tribes II, and Unreal Tournament. Linux Game Publishing was founded in 2001 in response to the impending demise of Loki, and has brought Cold War, Postal², and X²: The Threat to Linux. icculus.org has ported Aliens versus Predator, Duke Nukem 3D, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and Rise of the Triad.

If you want to find out more about native games, as well as Linux clones, check out this Wikipedia article.

DirectX vs. OpenGL

Right now, the latest version of DirectX is DX10 (as everyone pretty much knows), which is responsible for the sheer face-melting awesomeness of Crysis.

The current stable release of OpenGL is 2.1, which is responsible for the entire Quake series, Doom 3, the Unreal series, and so on.

To give you a comparison:

As you can see, OpenGL2.1 and DirectX 10 are pretty close. However, the OpenGL2.1 images are renders, where as some of the DirectX 10 images are in-game screenshots. So yes, right now, DirectX 10 is better than OpenGL2.1. Don't fret, however, as if you compare OpenGL2.1 to DirectX 9, you can see just how much better OpenGL2.1 is. And yes, OpenGL2.1 was released August 2, 2006 to compete with DirectX 9. So what about an OpenGL competitor to DirectX 10, you ask? Well, look no further, being released later this year in direct competition to DX 10, is OpenGL3
(That video is of id Software's new iTech5 3D engine, built on OpenGL3). If the comparison between OpenGL2.1 and DirectX 9 is anything to go by, OpenGL3 is going to blow DX 10 right out of its vertex-shaded, anti-aliased water.

So how will more games get made for Linux?

Well, this responsibility falls upon you, dear Gamer. If you make the effort to start using Linux to run your games (hell, even dual boot with Vista if you are desperate for some DX10 goodness on occasion), there will be more of a demand for games that run natively on Linux. And if there is one thing I have learned from business strategy it is that demand must be met, and if there are a bunch of gamers whining in forums because the latest Counter Strike: Sandwich-Point Source Pan doesn't run well under Linux, game developers are going to take notice.

Dual Booting, is it worth it?

As much as I would like to say that dual booting is an awesome way to go, I just don't really think it is. See the problems with it is that one should be running Windows for gaming, and then Linux for everything else. But what happens then is that one starts favouring one particular OS over the other, and the effort to boot across into Linux when you can just do the same thing in Windows becomes far too great. So this sort of goes completely against my previous section (how lame is that?), because it's almost a catch-22; Linux needs gamers to use it in order to have games made for it, but gamers will only start using Linux when it has games.

I must be honest, I tried setting up a dual boot system on my home pc just this weekend and it failed miserably. I installed Windows XP to play my games, and then I installed Kubuntu 7.10 to do everything else. However, the next time I attempted to boot into Windows, it bitched about a corrupt/missing file (which was probably due to my partition scheme). See that's the thing; Windows is not the type of kid who will wonder out onto the playground to make friends, but rather sits in the corner of the sandbox eating mud and crying whenever any of the other kids get too close. Windows does not like having friends, especially when they are sharing the same hard drive (yeah, that's not anti-competitive in the least). So my suggestion? Use Windows... On your gaming machine, for everything else; use Linux

After my dual boot fiasco, I just went back to Windows XP SP3 on my main (gaming) pc (which is what I am typing on now). However, I run Linux on my laptop and my work pc. So that right there is my suggestion (obviously I understand if you can't run Linux at work); if you have a laptop or a spare pc that you use, load Linux on that (my suggestion is some flavour of Ubuntu), and keep your main pc on Windows for gaming because yes, right now Windows is still best for gaming, and I don't think anyone can deny that. But that shouldn't stop you from at least trying Linux out. It all depends on the games you play; WoW and Warcraft 3 run on Linux just fine, as does Battlefield 2. So if you are a WoW-addict, give it a try on Linux. Who knows? Your framerate might just be that much higher

Disclaimer: I, by all means, do not know everything to do with this topic and some of the things I have said may be a complete load of crap. However if you feel this is the case, or you want to mention something I neglected to, by all means let me know and I will try add it in when I get a chance in an attempt to make this Linux Gaming thread as useful as possible.

Happy fragging.

(Please attempt to keep this thread free of arguments and debates. This is for people who are new to Linux to find out more about gaming on it. Questions and corrections are welcome, debates are not. Mods, please enforce this?)

 

[Jonny Two Shoes]

I have only recently started using Linux. Thus far I am very impressed with some of it's features but it is no doubt a bit of a challenge for a Windows user.

Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Gutsy (I have still got to find out wth is the diff between Gutsy, Feisty, Hoary etc :/)

My gaming experience on this Linux is limited at the moment but I have been experimenting a bit. So far I have only been able to get Half-Life 2 (Orange Box) to run on Wine 0.9.59 however it is somewhat choppy and lags in places.

The nice thing about the Wine community is that they have this whole database of what games and apps are capable of running on it, see http://appdb.winehq.org/ I intend to contribute some of my gaming experiences on Wine to their community if possible. With this I can see the developers actively building on to Wine adding bug fixes and features and if new versions are anything to go by there is already an announcement of Wine 0.9.60 only weeks after 0.9.59. So there is definately a big drive to get DX running on Linux.

Since I started becoming more involved with Linux I immediately noticed this drive for gaming on the Linux platform. People are definately working together on this and have developed some amazing things.

The demand is there. I believe the second Linux is capable of running the games we all want and love people will flock to Linux faster than SAfricans will run to Neotel if and when it happens.

---FYI I think I will continually edit and list the games I have personally managed to get running on Wine here as they come up, disclaimer -- don't take this as meaning it will run on your systems though---

1. Orange Box steam install + Half-Life 2 (Lags in areas but is playable with some tweaks, not great though)
2. The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion (So far so good - few bugs but still playable)
3. Call of Cthulhu (Ran first time on Wine 0.9.59. - only glitch I have noticed is it lags as people are shot in the beginning for a brief moment)