coregamingSpec

Summary

Create a separate team within Ubuntu that creates a list of commercial Windows games they support and makes sure that those games work well with Ubuntu.

Release Note

The Ubuntu Core Gaming Team helps users to get windows games from a list of supported games running with wine and acts as the team which is responsible to handle compatibility bugs.

Rationale

For many users windows games are a killer application and the most important reason to stick with windows although they would prefer to use Ubuntu.

It's been possible to run windows games with wine for a long time now but most of the time it's a hassle and there have been lots of regressions in the past. So even if you get your favourite game to work on Ubuntu there is no guarantee that it will still run with the next release. And if something breaks down you have to fix it yourself since the wine developers value correctness of their implementation higher than application compatability (for which they have good reasons) and unfortunately there is no one who feels responsible for such problems.

And those problems can even happen if you try to play a game as old and popular as StarCraft where you think it should be running flawlessly after all this time. But even with such old games you see regressions from time to time and such problems kill all the fun in gaming on ubuntu and leave windows as the only way to just enjoy your game and leaving all those hassles behind you.

Since native linux gaming is going nowhere (this became painfully obvious with id softwares retreat from the linux market) there doesn't seem to be another option than to support windows games on Ubuntu as well as we can.

But this doesn't have to be the end of the world. It rather is an opportunity to improve the Ubuntu gaming experience through wine and if this succeeds and we can deliver a usable and fun gaming platform this could also open the door to cooperation with game vendors and maybe even build a critical mass of hardcore gamers running Ubuntu.

User stories

Assumptions

Design

Implementation

UI Changes

Code Changes

Application specific bugfixes for Wine. Maybe maintain a separate wine package with gaming related patches.

Migration

Test/Demo Plan

Unresolved issues

Decide what is the best way to aid the users in installing windows games and the necessary patches for those games and automatically configuring wine with the best parameters for the game in question. Possible solutions are:

  • Ubuntu package for each supported game
  • Separate GUI program that supports installing those games
  • Automatically detect supported games upon insert of the CD/DVD and modify wine to use the appropriate configuration for each game automatically

BoF agenda and discussion

CategorySpec

coregamingSpec (last edited 2009-07-27 21:43:03 by f053211160)