July Development Status and Voting Report
Summer is finally here and with it, weather so hot it's reminiscent of Scorched Earth. While no one has burst into flames or electrocuted themselves by trying to work in their kiddie pools, we are very grateful for our air conditioning. With cool air wafting through the office, we could forget the heat and really focus on the code. Summer time is light on video game releases but that doesn't mean that we haven't been hard at work. The last month brought Cedega 6.0.2 and a number of other improvements. Read on for the details.
Technology Progress
June saw the release of Cedega 6.0.2. This release provided support for the latest installment of EVE Online. Revelations II is the latest update to the second expansion of EVE Online, which contains new things such as improved performance and better support for Windows Vista. As some of you have no doubt noticed by now, Valve ended Windows 98 support for Steam and, by extension, all Steam-based games at the end of June. One of the main issues with running Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source under Cedega in Windows 2000 or XP compatibility-modes had been the incorrect rendering of many fonts. Cedega 6.0.2 has fixed these font rendering issues and these games should now run well in Windows XP compatibility under Cedega.
Another issue that was fixed in Cedega 6.0.2 was an incompatibility between our GLSL usage and some of the new extensions that are available on GeForce 8000-series card when using the NVIDIA 100.xx Linux drivers. This was particularly a problem for those people who had acquired the new GeForce 8600 and similar cards since these drivers are the first to support these cards under Linux. There are still some FBO issues to be worked out between Cedega and the latest series of drivers, as there appear to be some bugs in the implementation of the EXT_framebuffer_blit extension. We are continuing to look into the remaining issues.
Other important changes that occurred with this release of Cedega were around website integration. These changes were necessary to improve the reliability and availability of our web-dependent subscriber services, such as forums, checking for and downloading updates, etc., when the website is under heavy load. The key item to note about these changes is that the Cedega 6.0.2 GUI is required to be able to continue to receive updates and access the website from the user-interface.
Last, but not least, we've also fixed a regression or two that had managed to slip into our initial release of Cedega 6.0. The issue with intro videos not rendering in games such as Command & Conquer: Generals has been tracked down and resolved. As well, as an unintended side-effect of some other changes, the method of how GDDB files were specified on the command-line had changed in Cedega 6.0. Cedega 6.0.2 returns the previous method of use and provides some other enhancements as well.
In our more forward looking areas, we have continued our quest to eliminate unnecessary graphics overhead, and crush regressions in our latest series of improvements. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, one man's optimization is often another man's regression. We are continuing to sort out one from the other so that the next release of Cedega runs games as efficiently as possible, without breaking our supported titles.
We have also been busy in some of our networking areas. We have added some additional functionality and fixed a number of bugs in the IP Helper API library and contributed these fixes back to WineHQ. We have also implemented portions of the SNMP and Inetmib1 Internet utility libraries.
Part of reaching that vast untapped Linux gaming audience is just being able to communicate, and as such we encourage everyone with the ability to aid us in doing so. Thanks to G. Herrera for providing the updated Spanish translation for Cedega 6.0.2. We are still in need of a number of updated translations for Cedega 6.0.2. If you would like to help with this process, or maybe even create a completely new translation for your favorite language, please visit http://www.cedega.com/i18n/ for directions. It doesn't take very long and gives you something to talk about at your local LUG. Be sure to include your contact information with your translations, so we can give you credit!
Games
Neverwinter Nights 2™: This month we did some further investigation into the installer problems with this title. Unfortunately the installer focus issues appear to stem from a problem with multi-threading and and event handling, and it is not expected to be a trivial problem to solve.
Steam™: Steam is no longer supported on Windows 98 by Valve. Cedega 6.0.2 resolves the fonts issues that were seen in some games seen when running in Windows 2000 or XP compatibility modes, and Steam should be able to run fine in these modes. We have also been continuing to investigate some further mouse input and focus problems, and have improved a number of these issues already. We are also working on adding support for the new Steam installer.
Command and Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars™: C&C 3 is getting closer to being supported in Cedega! We now have copy protection working for this title and are working on adding support for MSI installers, which this game uses.
Ventrilo™: We have not yet had a chance to do an analysis of Ventrilo but will have a look at it when some resources become available.
Voting
The voting results for June are in. Read on to find out what games and technology were top ranked by our subscribers this month.
The Top 5 Game Polls were:
- Neverwinter Nights 2
- Steam
- World of Warcraft
- Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
- Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The Top 5 Technology Polls were:
- MSI: Windows Installer Support
- Make the Cedega Scheduler Multi CPU aware
- Improve 3D Performance
- Support Older Games
- DirectX 10 Support