Re: Problem with InstallShield (Was Re: [Bug 629] Changed - Problemwith InstallShield: ole:CoTreatAsClass(stub), ole:CoGetClassObject)

On Fri, 10 May 2002 17:53, Francois Gouget wrote:

> On Fri, 10 May 2002, Sean C. Farley wrote:
> [...]
> > I just thought of a very big point in why WINE game development may
> > have stopped:  Loki.  Why run a game through WINE when you can have
> > a native binary for Linux (or FreeBSD :))?  People were buying the
> > Linux binary to show support for Loki's efforts.
> >
> > I think WINE will start seeing more gaming interest now that Loki is
> > defunct (isn't it?).
>
> Yes it is. Apparently things ended very badly too. this is pretty sad.
> And articles like the following make me think that Loki is not the
> reason behind the drop in gaming related patches for Wine.
>
> http://www.linuxandmain.com/features/lokistory.html

These problems were not apparent to the Linux community until close to
Loki's demise.  All that people knew was that a company was porting
games to Linux.

If the perceived thought of existing code for WINE for running games
turns developers away, just imagine the effect of the existance of
actual games on developers and even users.

If Transgaming was hurting WINE development, then Loki was slaughtering
it.

> Besides, Loki was far from supporting most of the Windows games. so
> why did no-one try to run the others using Wine?

They did not need to port all of the games.  They did port a few of the
popular games.

I tried to run a game or two under WINE.  It locked up my system.  As I
do not have a lot of experience with DLL's and graphics systems, I was
unable to even slightly grasp what was choking.  The developers you need
to deal with DLL's and graphics are not that easy to find in the UNIX
world as compared to the Windows world.

> Here are some primitive statistics that you should take with a big
> grain of salt. If someone wants to spend the time required for a
> better analysis (e.g. look at actually number of lines of patches per
> contributor) I would be interested in the results.  However I think it
> gives an idea of what is meant by 'a drop of interest in gaming
> patches':
>
> cd dlls/ddraw
> cvs log -d"2000/04/01<2000/12/31" 2>/dev/null | grep "@" | sort >log2000.txt
> cvs log -d"2001/01/01<2002/02/27" 2>/dev/null | grep "@" | sort >log2001.txt
>
> Note that the first one is for a period of 9 months while the second
> one is for a period of 14 months. Then count the number of times you
> see people actually working on DirectDraw and Direct3D:
>
>             | 2000 | 2001
> ------------+------+-----
> Marcus      |  103 |   25
> Lionel      |   58 |    4
> Transgaming |    4 |   91
> ------------+------+-----
> Total       |  165 |  120
>
>
> Non Transgaming development on DirectDraw and Direct3D seem to have
> simply dried up.

You must be psychic; I was about to ask you the number of developers and
what they contributed to WINE.  :)

Are they developers or maintainers (checking others code in)?

If they are developers, it shows that there were only two major
developers on WINE for both time periods not counting Transgaming.  It
does not show why they slowed down.  Did they get tired of it?  Did they
have a new family to take their time?

It is hard to base anything off of these numbers.  Maybe this just shows
that Transgaming was forced by the downturn in development from others
to provide their own patches.  Isn't statics wonderful?  :)

With so few developers on this portion of WINE, it is impossible to say
that Transgaming caused the slow down.  I see a drop in productivity by
Marcus and Lionel, but the number of developers stayed the same.

Sean
--------------
[email protected]