Show Linux Wine compatibility for older Win games that wouldn't run in newer Windows. Possible dosbox too.

[Nightwalker]

There are A LOT of older Windows games on steam which do not work on the latest versions of Windows, however *they do* work flawlessly in Wine (or with a few tricks).Wine on Linux can even run 16-bit windows programs (there were a few kernel versions in ubuntu 14.04 that broke this, but it was later fixed).

Please add an icon for games that are known to work in Wine on Linux, or with a few wine tricks, and integrate Wine support into Steam on Linux which can auto-setup the proper Wine environment to run older and newer Windows games.

This could further be expanded to include a doxbox mode to run even older games (which could easily be integrated into a Windows and Mac release). Some older games already ship with dosbox pre-packaged, so why not drop this requirement and provide direct dosbox support within steam?

[Gwarsbane]

Its not up to steam to figure out if older games or even new games are compatible with linux wine or dosbox.

That is all up to the developers/publishers of the games, you would need to go ask them.

[Satoru]

Steam doesn't support wine

It's not their responsibility to show compatibility for a platform they don't support

Talk to the wine repo to do that

[wekateka]

just make a user/greasemonkey script that checks WineHQ for the store page you're currently viewing, and adds results to the page. Shouldn't cost you more than a few hours, way less if you're experienced...

[Nightwalker]

You are all totally missing what I'm getting at here. It'll be up to the game devs to determine compatibility (they're the ones that add the linux/mac/win icons). The point here is to allow steam to directly support launching a game in an emmulator or container enviromnent. The configuration of that emmulator/configuration enviorment would be up to those who want to keep selling their games.

[Satoru]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Nightwalker:

You are all totally missing what I'm getting at here. It'll be up to the game devs to determine compatibility (they're the ones that add the linux/mac/win icons). The point here is to allow steam to directly support launching a game in an emmulator or container enviromnent. The configuration of that emmulator/configuration enviorment would be up to those who want to keep selling their games.

Why would devs bother if they're already not making a linux build? Youre' magically expecting a dev who already has no desire to make a linux build, to magically test their game in Wine? Sometihng most seasoned linux users would rather shoot themselves in the face than install and try to get working

[Nightwalker]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Satoru:

Why would devs bother if they're already not making a linux build?

You obviously can't read. There are plenty of windows games being sold on steam now that will not run on Windows 10, or even Windows 8 for that matter. They can, however, be run without any issues on Linux under Wine. With 30% of users now on Windows 10, there are plenty of games in people's libraries they'll find they can't play anymore.

Game developers could spend months working to patch their game to work on the latest version of Windows, or they could spend 10 minutes, or a few hours, creating a setting file so that their game can be run on a modern operating system that happens to have Wine. Now their fans can continue to play their old games on new computer hardware.

[wekateka]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Nightwalker:

...

You obviously can't read. There are plenty of windows games being sold on steam now that will not run on Windows 10, or even Windows 8 for that matter. They can, however, be run without any issues on Linux under Wine. With 30% of users now on Windows 10, there are plenty of games in people's libraries they'll find they can't play anymore.

Game developers could spend months working to patch their game to work on the latest version of Windows, or they could spend 10 minutes, or a few hours, creating a setting file so that their game can be run on a modern operating system that happens to have Wine. Now their fans can continue to play their old games on new computer hardware.

Or they could not do anything, given that they promised to sell a game that works on XP/Vista/7 and delivered. No need for them to lose time/money because of Microsoft's sad attempts at creating a tablet/desktop OS, breaking what little good they had in the progress.

I am sure there will be enough awesome devs that (try to) port their games to Win8/10, and I for one will vote with my wallet to reward those. However the harsh truth is that this does not bring in much money for the devs. Most games that need such a port are way past the prime of their sales, and devs would rather focus on their next project (which is fun, and profitable) than port one of their old projects (which is boring, and less profitable).

Wine is not the most stable of a target, and adding it as an option will just cause users to spam community discussions with requests to get Game X working on wine, or reports that Game X is not running on their specific wine setup.

Steam won't add it, because it will generate more problems and strife than money, plus is hard to check/regulate.

(most) Devs don't want it, because it will cause a vocal minority to occupy their support with hard to solve questions.

Most of the userbase doesn't care about Linux/wine (yet, I hope).

I love Linux, and I like that a lot of games run under wine. However, in my opinion, wine should be an emulator (I know what the acronym stands for, apologies) for Windows binaries, not a separate platform to target. For gaming I mostly just dual boot into Win7, as it supports almost every game I wanted to run so far and with some configuring is not even that annoying.

Adding an optional way for a dev to upload some kind of recommended configuration for wine, or a PlayOnLinux script would be great though. It's just that adding wine as a new "target platform" seems a bit unfeasible to me...

[Satoru]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Nightwalker:

There are plenty of windows games being sold on steam now that will not run on Windows 10, or even Windows 8 for that matter.

This is patently false. Almost all games work fine on later versions of Windows. Nearly all games work fine simply by setting various compatiblity settings on the exe.

the ones that do not work at all have esoteric DRM that the OS itself no longer supports. Something Wine is not going to magically fix.

They can, however, be run without any issues on Linux under Wine. With 30% of users now on Windows 10, there are plenty of games in people's libraries they'll find they can't play anymore.

So the 'solution' to a Windows user who wants to play an 'old' Windows game is to install Linux and run Wine? Lets remember that nearly all games run on Windows 8 and Windows 10. And that Wine doesn't fix the DRM issues in games like Sims3:Medieval. That's like fixing a pimple by getting you face run over by a dump truck.

Game developers could spend months working to patch their game to work on the latest version of Windows, or they could spend 10 minutes, or a few hours, creating a setting file so that their game can be run on a modern operating system that happens to have Wine. Now their fans can continue to play their old games on new computer hardware.

So you think certifying the settings for Wine is just something they do for giggles? This is a dev that already doesn't want to do a Linux build. YOu're asking them to install Linux, then download wine, then go through Wine's esoteric documentation and then figure out if their game works on Wine? And now you're asking publishers to do this because this is supposedly for 'old' games and the developers likely no longer exist. So now exactly WHO is supposed to do this magical 'few minutes of work' (which is a fallacy in itself) considering for 'old games' they likely no longer exist.

Or you can just run Windows and run the game in compatiblity mode.

This is a 'solution' to a problem that doesn't exist.

[ChrisRevocateur]

Us Linux users are just gonna be looking games we want up on winehq or playonlinux anyway.

Yes, it would be nice if Steam and devs made things easier on those of us that want to run a game on a system that it was never meant to be played on. It could even be used to expand the number of easily installable Linux games, expanding the back catalog of games for those SteamOS users that just want a "console experience." Similar to the fact that WiiU has the virtual console for all the old Nintendo systems, or the XBox marketplace where you can get original Xbox and 360 games for your One. The issue there is that console gamers pretty much look forward, and the only reason the back catalog works with those consoles is because those console gamers have a nostalgia for their old consoles. Console gamers have no real connection to PC gaming's past, so why would they want to play "that game with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ graphics?"

Those of us that are regular Linux (or even normal Windows PC) gamers are already going to look up if the game works, or what tweaks we need to make it work, buy it, download it, and do what needs to be done to be able to play it anyway, and those console style gamers just getting into PC gaming through SteamOS aren't gonna want to buy them even if they were easy to install. Thus doing this work to make test if a game works in wine, and adding wine support to the Steam client, will result in very close to 0 extra sales of the game. It's a nice idea, and maybe as SteamOS grows, it might become a more viable idea, but right now there's no extra money to be made, and those that want the game to run through wine right now are gonna do it themselves, so you're not really giving better support (in fact because of the issues raised by others in this thread, you're giving WORSE support by doing this).

So yeah, nice idea, but not worth it to anyone (not even the customer).