When Adam Doxtater first contacted me about reviewing TransGaming Technologies Cedega 4.1.1 , I was quite pleased. I'd never used WineX before, and I had many old Windows games I wanted to be able to play on Linux. I keep a Windows 2000 Professional partition around so that I can play the games I somehow got addicted to (Diablo II, namely). I'm sad to say I won't be getting rid of Windows anytime soon, but Cedega is a gift from above.
I know you all came here to read about Cedega and not me, but allow me a brief introduction. My name is Preston St. Pierre, and I've been using GNU/Linux avidly for four years. I'm currently working towards my degree in computer science at the University of the Fraser Valley. I'm sure everyone will question my choice of games in this review, but as you can see, as a student, my funds are limited. Thus, we will discuss the games that I have in my arsenal.
Installing Cedega was a breeze. They have packages in RPM, deb, and tgz format, so no matter what distribution you use the install is fairly simple. They also offer a front-end to Cedega called Point2Play, a GUI that allows you to test your hardware for Cedega compatibility and install, run, and remove programs. A bit of a warning to anyone wanting to install Point2Play: You have to install Cedega through Point2Play for it to work. Any previous installs of Cedega are not usable with Point2Play.
The hardware used for these tests is quite mediocre, but it has served me well. Up until I did this review I had a Radeon 7500LE, but it failed the Point2Play tests and Adam was kind enough to send me another card.
Now, without further ado, I would like to direct your attention to what everyone came here to see: The Results!
Running Cedega
The first game I installed was Warcraft 2 Battle.NET Edition. I also have regular Warcraft 2, and it worked under DosBox, but not as well as Warcraft 2 BNE under Cedega (BNE is the Win32 version which Cedega can run). The install went well, and aside from everything looking a tiny bit off it was pretty much the same as Windows. There was a bit of lag when I had a large number of units on the screen at the same time, but there was no difference in that lag be there one or seven computer opponents. It was entirely playable and the lag didn't bother me all that much considering the first computer I played Warcraft 2 on was a 486 and lagged just as much.
With W2 installed, the next logical step was Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos. The install went fine, as it did with W2, but when I tried to launch the game it claimed my CD wasn't in the drive (which, obviously, it was - and yes, it was mounted). I tried to crack the game, but none of the cracks I found would work properly (some simply didn't work, others crashed Cedega). I never did get W3 running, although I have heard from friends that they had it running perfectly (actually, I recall being pwned at a LAN party by someone with Warcraft 3 running under Cedega). I gave up after about an hour and decided to install my next series of RTS games.
I have loved the Age of Empires series ever since I first saw it being played. I got hooked on it and at one time became one of the top rated players. Then I got a girlfriend, and my playing time went way down... but I digress. I hadn't played AoE in many months before I installed it via Cedega, and I was extremely happy when it worked. It wasn't without issues, though. I couldn't read any of the fonts, and none even showed up during the install ( screenshot ). It was only by my knowledge of the game that I was able to get it working. I also encountered the same no CD problem, but this time I found a crack that worked. There was the usual lag with too much on the screen at one time, but it was certainly playable and no less fun than I remember it being.
Age of Kings, I am sad to report, did not have such a happy outlook. The install went fine, but when I tried to run it I got the same no CD problem. I cracked it, ran it again, and the game told me I had to have DirectX 6.1a or higher installed to run. I ran dxsetup and it told me DirectX was already installed. No amount of fiddling and fooling would get it to start working. I'm disappointed by that, because this was my favorite game.
Taking that into consideration, what happened when I tried to install Age of Mythology should have been pretty predictable. The usual problems: no cd, fonts a bit weird, game crashed when I tried to launch it cracked.
I found a Soldier of Fortune CD sitting in a box of CDs I'd given up for coasters long ago. Amazingly, it still worked. I've never actually played it before, as it was a present and my computer wouldn't run it. By the time I had a good enough computer to run it, I had forgotten about it. In any case, everything went perfectly except for the no CD problem that seemed to plague most games. Once I cracked it, it worked perfectly. I really like it, and I think I'll probably be playing it now that I don't have to restart.
I won't bore you by going through the details of every install I did, but here is a list of the games I tried and how well they worked for me:
Game |
TransGaming Rating |
My Rating |
|---|---|---|
Warcraft II |
4 |
5 |
Warcraft III |
5 |
1 |
Ford Racing 2 |
Not in Database |
1 |
Wild Metal Country |
Not in Database |
1 |
Age of Empires |
4 |
3 |
Age of Kings |
3 |
1 |
Age of Mythology |
0 |
1 |
You Don't Know Jack ( screenshot ) |
3 |
3 |
Soldier of Fortune |
4 |
5 |
Chess Master 5000 ( screenshot ) |
Not in Database |
2 |
Unreal Tournament |
0 |
1 |
Diablo II: LoD |
5 |
1 |
As you can see, the majority of my games weren't playable. To be fair, I didn't expect them to be, either. TransGaming has come a long way with their technology, and I am in awe of how well a few of these games run. Being able to run my previously unused games without having to restart every time saves a lot of trouble through the day.
Having a legitimate TransGaming account gave me access to the forums as well. The support forums are a huge help, and they alone are worth the payment. I have friends (ones who were begging me for my login info) who download Cedega from p2p networks that are considering buying a subscription just for the support.
Cedega is an excellent program for running your Windows games on Linux. Not all games are supported, and people have problems even with those that are fully supported, but if you have some Windows games sitting around like I did and don't want to install Windows, Cedega is a cheaper, easier, and all around better solution to the problem.
Keep up the good work, TransGaming.
This document was written by Preston St. Pierre and may be reproduced under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.
