Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: tpauIs adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

It's all just code being executed that is proprietary in nature, so if it runs perfectly well, does it matter?
It's not like any of these games are developed with GNU/Linux in mind. They're ported, after being made for Windows. If binaryA runs just as well as binaryB though, with all other things being effectively equal, it's still just a binary black "box" blob for reading user input and painting pixels on the screen.

I personally don't like the idea of Windows wrappers and compatibility layers. I've been hesitant to but feral games in the past because of this and I try to buy and play more indie games but when feral releases a game I've been really wanting to play I'll buy it and play it.

It is, unfortunately, a necessary evil if we want games that are primarily aimed at Windows. Replacing the entire engine and reworking it to fit with a graphics API it was never originally intended to target can be time consuming, error prone, and not really a viable business model.

Indie games of course are more flexible in this regard for a great variety of reasons (there's really too many to mention here), but sometimes it's nice to have something a little grander in scope (not that indie games can't be, but I hope you get the point).

Still hoping for game engines to gradually support GNU/Linux not only as a build target, but as a development platform as well. That will likely only happen once there's enough snowballing to challenge Windows as a gaming platform, and that's not going to happen overnight. Until then, basically have to put up with things as they are.

Besides which, most game engines have their own abstraction layer internally anyway to cover differences between, say, x86_64, playstation, xbox, etc. How much of that gets replaced by a porter depends how easily they can plug into it.

Yeah I get your point about the indie games and I know we don't really get to be picky about our ports right now. If only we had that luxury although there is a certain amount of crap I personally won't put up with. When VP shipped native windows dlls with their saints row port I just refunded it and won't buy their games anymore. The engine situation is getting better and better but the biggest problem I see is a lot of AAA studios either roll their own engine or heavily customize an existing one and generally when they do the customization they only mess with the Windows/D3D backend since that's the only platform they're targeting. That's a problem I'm not sure how to solve. That's what's holding up killing floor 2. They changed the D3D backend for unreal engine and now they have to find someone to port it.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaAlthough Feral does seem to put quite a bit of work into their ports I would like more info on exactly how much wrapping vs porting they're doing.

VP and WINE are doing binary wrapping, while Feral is doing source wrapping. The first runs Windows binaries in Linux, the second creates pure ("native") Linux binaries. Do we need way more information?

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of wrapping in general but all the porting companies do it to a certain extent because it's the only economical way to do it. As a result I try to minimize the games I buy from them which isn't hard. Most of the games feral has ported recently aren't games I'm really into anyway.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: tpauIs adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

It's all just code being executed that is proprietary in nature, so if it runs perfectly well, does it matter?
It's not like any of these games are developed with GNU/Linux in mind. They're ported, after being made for Windows. If binaryA runs just as well as binaryB though, with all other things being effectively equal, it's still just a binary black "box" blob for reading user input and painting pixels on the screen.

I personally don't like the idea of Windows wrappers and compatibility layers. I've been hesitant to but feral games in the past because of this and I try to buy and play more indie games but when feral releases a game I've been really wanting to play I'll buy it and play it.

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Quoting: tpauIs adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

I don't like it either. Although Feral does seem to put quite a bit of work into their ports I would like more info on exactly how much wrapping vs porting they're doing.

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Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: ScooptaI was hoping that they'd also make a Reddit post

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/7sdk98/whats_at_the_top_of_your_wishlist_for_2018/ [External Link]

Yeah someone already sent that to me but thanks.

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Quoting: HamishI will just regurgitate something I posted in another thread, since it is relevant here: It is my love of old games that makes me still lean heavily on WINE these days. I do not buy modern titles that often anymore, and when I do buy them they are always Linux native, but I have been purchasing old titles on GOG.com or from thrift stores to play through WINE. There was a time I would not have done this, at least not through something like GOG.com where sales are still being tracked, but over the past few years the fight against DRM has become more important to me than even something being Linux native, and GOG.com has been doing a great job at pushing the tide back and freeing titles that never were DRM Free in the first place. At this point I would rather play a DRM Free game through WINE than use a native Linux binary tied to Steamworks, such as those from Feral.

I understand perfectly your desire to take a stand Scoopta, but to a certain extent we all must pick our battles. We just drew different lines in the sand for ourselves.

Yeah my personal opinion on DRM is it doesn't bug me for games but it does for streaming video. Simply for the fact that I shouldn't have to run a closed source binary blob on my system to enforce video DRM. Games on the other hand are almost always closed source to begin with so I hardly see a little DRM as a problem provided it's not of the always online variety. Not to mention while Steam does do DRM the DRM they provide is weak and valve has been trying to push Linux gaming. Albeit less than I'd like and less than they seemed to in the past. Wine is a much bigger issue IMO but that's just me. As you said we draw our lines in different places.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ScooptaI'm not sure that's in their hands. If they did DRM free the publishers they work with would probably throw a fit. After all it's not their IP. They're just licensing it for porting purposes.

They choose whom they work with. So to rephrase it, they didn't choose to port any DRM-free game so far.

Ok so let's rephrase this. How many Windows exclusive games that we want on Linux are DRM free. I personally don't know of any but maybe I'm in the minority.

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Quoting: burningserenity

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: MintedGamer

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaI'm personally a bit disappointed that wine won. I believe wine is terrible for Linux gaming as a whole and I don't believe it should be used but oh well.

First, I think the project is an amazing feat.

For Linux gaming, I'm not 100% sure. I guess it makes Linux users buy Windows games, which is a bad thing. On the other hand, I've seen people on the forums switching to Linux who asked how they could run the games they own and love, and WINE is the answer to this question.

I don't use WINE for gaming, though.

I am starting to change my mind about WINE, I now think it would be great if someone could switch to Linux and still have easy access to all their Windows games. It would greatly lower the barrier to switching, many of the big developers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision) don't support Linux because the market is too small, if WINE could help the switch in the long term it would increase the viability of native games, which could then in turn cause a sea change of migrations.

I think many people on Windows would be much more inclined to switch the underlying OS to a better one if all their software investment still worked.

So then it's ok for MS to call all the shots across all OSes? If wine was the solution to gaming on Linux then any change MS made to the windows API would have to be mirrored by wine or else it would break compatibility. I personally have a problem with that. That's part of why I'm not a huge fan of the gaming industry moving to C# but ultimately C# is just a language so it's not that big of a deal.

Microsoft is trying to utterly rewrite the Windows API by switching from Win32 to UWP. Did you notice the gnashing of teeth from the industry? It's not easy to just change everything like that, because Microsoft is no longer the only major player in the market, changes have to be done incrementally, which makes it easier for WINE to adapt.

RE it being bad for Linux gaming in general: I for one would never have switched without it. Now, I need it less and less. Furthermore, have any developers gone on record as saying they didn't port because of WINE? What about the games that were ported via a WINE wrapper? I bet most if not all of those games would never have ported otherwise.

I don't exactly get warm fuzzy feelings from wine wrappers and I generally check to see how much windows wrapping is going on and will decide if I want to play/own the game based on that. It's why I refunded saints row. The game still depends on native windows dlls. I refused to support it and as a result I don't buy games "ported" by VP anymore. There's always a certain amount of wrapping that companies like Feral do but at a certain point it's too far. Also while it isn't easy for MS to change stuff that doesn't have anything to do with my point. My point is they're in control regardless of how quickly they can make changes. I don't like Win32 anymore than I like UWP. I don't like Windows at all. Tbh for a long time I had to argue with myself if I wanted to play feral games at all but they seem to be committed to making Linux a better gaming platform so I deal with them when they release games I like but I try to stick largely to games built on engine's that natively run on Linux.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: GuestSomething DRM-free.

Indeed. Not sure what Feral's problem is, but they still didn't release even a single game DRM-free.

I'm not sure that's in their hands. If they did DRM free the publishers they work with would probably throw a fit. After all it's not their IP. They're just licensing it for porting purposes.

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Quoting: MintedGamer

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaI'm personally a bit disappointed that wine won. I believe wine is terrible for Linux gaming as a whole and I don't believe it should be used but oh well.

First, I think the project is an amazing feat.

For Linux gaming, I'm not 100% sure. I guess it makes Linux users buy Windows games, which is a bad thing. On the other hand, I've seen people on the forums switching to Linux who asked how they could run the games they own and love, and WINE is the answer to this question.

I don't use WINE for gaming, though.

I am starting to change my mind about WINE, I now think it would be great if someone could switch to Linux and still have easy access to all their Windows games. It would greatly lower the barrier to switching, many of the big developers (EA, Ubisoft, Activision) don't support Linux because the market is too small, if WINE could help the switch in the long term it would increase the viability of native games, which could then in turn cause a sea change of migrations.

I think many people on Windows would be much more inclined to switch the underlying OS to a better one if all their software investment still worked.

So then it's ok for MS to call all the shots across all OSes? If wine was the solution to gaming on Linux then any change MS made to the windows API would have to be mirrored by wine or else it would break compatibility. I personally have a problem with that. That's part of why I'm not a huge fan of the gaming industry moving to C# but ultimately C# is just a language so it's not that big of a deal.

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