Using Wine for unsupported games?

[mala]

A number of currently "unsupported" games work flawlessly in Wine. However, currently in order to do so I need to download them on a Windows computer, then move the files over to my main Linux machine.

This obviously fails for games that require Steam, and doesn't work for a lot of games. Furthermore, different people's installations of Wine have different abilities (i.e. my computer may run something yours won't, and vice versa), BUT if steam could make a very clearly unsupported option to download/install not-yet-ported games via Wine, or even just have a way for non-windows users to download the game files, that'd be absolutely wonderfully fantastically amazing.

<3 u steam.

[Nch]

I wouldn't agree more. Most of the games work just fine and the interface of steam is just flawless on it's classical form, and would be a big improvement to the situation of porting all the games to other OS.
Still this would be an issue to several licences of libraries that are dependencies of Microsoft. If you have the OS, I understand that the usage of those aren't ilegal, but I don't know if otherwise will be the same.

[Leaf [DG]]

You can just download and play games in Steam through Wine. That's my current setup. Two steam installations: one that's Linux native, and one in a virtual drive via PlayOnLinux (Wine).

But I don't think I agree with Steam allowing for windows binaries to be installed or for Wine integration. I'd rather see native Linux ports of the games, and if the developer doesn't want to port it to our platform I can try it with Wine. Wine is an okay fallback plan for me, but it shouldn't be considered as a proper solution, let alone one that should be encouraged by Steam when we have all these game companies considering porting their games to Linux.

[Unknown Zombie]

Originally posted by flame.leaf:

...But I don't think I agree with Steam allowing for windows binaries to be installed or for Wine integration. I'd rather see native Linux ports of the games, and if the developer doesn't want to port it to our platform I can try it with Wine. Wine is an okay fallback plan for me, but it shouldn't be considered as a proper solution, let alone one that should be encouraged by Steam when we have all these game companies considering porting their games to Linux.

Couldn't agree more.

[Helyyx]

The only thing I would want to ask to make the use of wine easier then is some how allowing a secondary login (multiple logins). That could get complicated and maybe threaten DRM/Licensing but you have to admit, it is rather annoying to have to login again and kick yourself off. Maybe allow multiple logins but only one location can play 'a game' at any given time. This wouldn't just benefit Linux users from the burden of constantly having ot login back and forth but also families that have a single Steam account. Little Jonny could be on family desktop playing L4D whilst Little Debbie could be on the tablet playing Plants vs Zombies and Mrs. Jones is sorting a photo album in Camera Bag 2, but never the same game/app running at the same time as another (unless a multiple license could be done)

Now obviously this sound complicated to people and that this wouldn't work. I disagree. It would take a little thinking on how to implement but not impossible nor hard. Simply it would be a "Family Account" with sub users (or maybe a linking of accounts that share?). something to that affect. I do think it's a little ridiculous how the 3 people in my household can watch three different movies/show off Netflix on three different devices yet Steam doesn't have a similar solution for families with children. I know some of you have experienced this when Little Jimmie is on your steam account playing World of Goo and you want to get your CS:GO on.

Okay a little long winded and beyond the point of this forum, but I thought it was a good point to make hitting 2 birds w/ one stone.

[kantlivelong]

i was hoping the same thing.. there would need to be a way to specify the wine prefix for steam and steam on linux could potentially auto detect... obviously some kind of unsupported warning would be necessary.

[ero]

The whole inititive of Steam for Linux was to get away from Windows and encourage developers to starting making things for Linux as well. By having support encorporated into Steam to allow wineprefixing like PlayOnLinux does, that would not encourage the developers one bit to change their ways. Instead it would just make a whole bunch of game developers say to Wine developers to keep on making Linux into Windows. Wine is supposed to be more of a last resort kind of thing for running apps, even more so running apps that are old and no longer have corporate support so they need to be run in something like Windows since there's no one around to port it to Linux. If you want Windows without being Windows, don't encourage Linux to become Windows, go support ReactOS instead. ReactOS is a much better project with the goal of replacing Windows in mind and it needs way more support than what it has.

You can still add games independent of Steam in the Linux version, then you can just set the command to run it in Wine. Alternatively, if you so require achievement and hour tracking of your games, you can run the Windows version of Steam in Wine.

[mala]

How do you download the game files of non-ported games on Linux?

[Cool Chulainn]

This has been discussed to death in the Feature Requests forum. Next time do a search and post on threads that are already discussing your topic instead of making a new thread to re-hash old topics.

[Leaf [DG]]

Originally posted by ojensen5115:

How do you download the game files of non-ported games on Linux?

Install Steam using Wine/PlayOnLinux/Crossover and you can download Windows game files.

[bh]

I think an unsupported console command for manually installing Windows versions of games so people can try to get them to work with Wine would be fantastic.

[niniendowarrior]

Someone needs to merge all these threads into one. Very redundant discussion!

[gognoscranes]

Originally posted by rudeboyskunk:

This has been discussed to death in the Feature Requests forum. Next time do a search and post on threads that are already discussing your topic instead of making a new thread to re-hash old topics.

There is nothing in the forum rules about every topic/discussion being unique. You sure are acting like a back seat moderator telling folk what to do and thats certainly against the rules.

[Cool Chulainn]

Originally posted by gognoscranes:

Originally posted by rudeboyskunk:

This has been discussed to death in the Feature Requests forum. Next time do a search and post on threads that are already discussing your topic instead of making a new thread to re-hash old topics.

There is nothing in the forum rules about every topic/discussion being unique. You sure are acting like a back seat moderator telling folk what to do and thats certainly against the rules.

Could you point out exactly where in the rules it says that?

[Helyyx]

While not technically a rule, it is a urged to search first and contribute to a thread rather than start a new one.

This video about sums up the basic guidelines and was originally made for this forum, but is now archived on albino black sheep.

albino black sheep (dot) com/flash/posting

[ForSpareParts]

An unsupported option is an alright idea, but WINE support doesn't fit with Steam for Linux as a whole. WINE is finicky. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you can fix it when it doesn't work, and sometimes you can't. When you can, it's config files and command-line stuff. I don't exactly mind that, but I use Emacs and install stuff via apt-get and I'm running Chrome inside of XMonad right now. My tolerance for Obtuse Bullsh*t is much higher than that of the average user. I'd be wary of encouraging new Linux users to try things might be broken -- I think games that actually show up in Steam for Linux should be *solid*, and as likely to "just work" as possible. That's part of what makes Steam useful on Windows, and there's no reason it can't do that for Linux users, too.