WINE-based runs not allowed?

2009-04-11 10:28:20 am

Although I am new to the forums, I have looked over the rules for submitting a speedrun, and found one that I find to be (to be to-the point) rather absurd in one part of it. The rule that I'm talking about is

Quote:

Virtualization: We will NOT accept speedruns recorded on emulators (ZSNES, VBA, DOSBox, etc.) or other virtualization software (Wine, VMware, etc.).

Although I have no qualms with not allowing emulators (due to the number of effects that many of them allow), I can't help but wonder why WINE is not acceptable for runs, as it puts a severe restriction on Linux-users' ability to post speed-runs for the most popular games.

There is a rather extensive list of programs (games and more) that have been tested with WINE at the following website: http://appdb.winehq.org

Any more information regarding this situation would be greatly appreciated.

Thread title:

ZenicReverie

2009-04-11 11:08:55 am

Waiting hurts my soul...

My guess is that it's open source, and thus you could mess with the underlying emulation code. Although, not using Wine myself, there might be things like save states that aren't allowed.

Kelvari

2009-04-11 11:16:31 am

Although modification of the source code is possible, WINE is more accurately called "an API translation layer" than a full emulator or vurtualizer. There are no 'save states' beyond whatever exists in the program that you're using through WINE.

nate

2009-04-11 11:59:31 am

yeah strange that we group wine under virtualization there. the reasoning is the same though - i've used wine extensively and i can tell you that the api is not complete, much less fully compatible, so we need to avoid forking competition in that way. unfair [dis]advantage etc etc. it's especially dangerous as windows is used less and less because both runner and verifiers may not even know what is running differently under wine. of course at some point wine may be the only way to run windows programs and at that point we'll need to reevaluate the rule, perhaps prohibiting games from being run under windows instead of wine. but that's probably still a ways off.

Kelvari

2009-04-11 12:22:48 pm

I understand. Perhaps a rule to put a "WINE" tag on any videos submitted in a WINE-based environment would be a better idea? At least then it would provide a way of identifying what's running Windows Native, and what's running in WINE. As an example, I'd like to propose something along the lines of the following for WINE runs:

Quote:

[WINE] Oblivion - Full run (0:08:45)

nate

2009-04-11 12:44:16 pm

yeah, that's what we call separate categories. used to be frowned on a lot more than it is now. now it's really an open question because i have no idea what the other two-thirds of the administration or the other community members would say about this.

this is definitely the time and place to speak up if you are reading this and you have something to say.

Enhasa

Edit history:

Enhasa: 2009-04-11 01:07:42 pm

2009-04-11 12:52:28 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Running games under Wine isn't nearly accurate enough. Even if it was fully accurate for some games, and there were no other issues like easy source code modification, we still wouldn't allow it on a game-by-game basis, because then we would have to make judgment calls with incomplete information about what is "accurate" and we don't want people whining about how such-and-such game is ok but not theirs.

If you are a Linux gamer, you should by now be more than used to the idea of being treated as a second-class citizen. I know it sucks. If it wasn't for the gaming issue, I would have been a Linux-only user for a decade. Just take the plunge and dual-boot just for gaming. If your philosophy doesn't allow for that (there are some hardliners who won't even use Wine, OO, Firefox, etc), then that's too bad and I apologize -- maybe you can support and run games by people who actually develop for Linux like id. But I already feel more sorry for other groups, such as people who want to run DOS games and people who want to run self-published games. You can't run due to OS, but they can't run due to hardware or even the game itself.

BTW there's no use appealing to my personal opinions, since I agree with you. If this was a site I started from day one, even unofficial emulators would be allowed. So this has nothing to do with personal stances.

Edit:

Quote from nate:

yeah, that's what we call separate categories. used to be frowned on a lot more than it is now.

To be honest, we have less separate categories now than we did before. That's what happens when you're more accomodating. For example, there used to be "death warping" because it was frowned on. Now it's not, so no separate category. Consistency is better for fairness anyway.

In that regard, I'm not going to let either the person who asks the request, or my personal opinion, play into anything, because that's not fair. It's not the domain for me or Nate to be changing rules anyway. If we ever do anything like this, it should be sweeping and redesigning SDA from the ground up into something else completely. We're doing pretty well as is, so now's not the time for that, if ever, and doing something like that might be a bad idea anyway.

Running games under Wine isn't nearly accurate enough. Even if it was fully accurate for some games, and there were no other issues like easy source code modification, we still wouldn't allow it on a game-by-game basis, because then we would have to make judgment calls with incomplete information about what is "accurate" and we don't want people whining about how such-and-such game is ok but not theirs.

If you are a Linux gamer, you should by now be more than used to the idea of being treated as a second-class citizen. I know it sucks. If it wasn't for the gaming issue, I would have been a Linux-only user for a decade. Just take the plunge and dual-boot just for gaming. If your philosophy doesn't allow for that (there are some hardliners who won't even use Wine, OO, Firefox, etc), then that's too bad and I apologize -- maybe you can support and run games by people who actually develop for Linux like id. But I already feel more sorry for other groups, such as people who want to run DOS games and people who want to run self-published games. You can't run due to OS, but they can't run due to hardware or even the game itself.

BTW there's no use appealing to my personal opinions, since I agree with you. If this was a site I started from day one, even unofficial emulators would be allowed. So this has nothing to do with personal stances.

Edit:
[quote="nate"]
yeah, that's what we call separate categories. used to be frowned on a lot more than it is now.[/quote]
To be honest, we have less separate categories now than we did before. That's what happens when you're more accomodating. For example, there used to be "death warping" because it was frowned on. Now it's not, so no separate category. Consistency is better for fairness anyway.

In that regard, I'm not going to let either the person who asks the request, or my personal opinion, play into anything, because that's not fair. It's not the domain for me or Nate to be changing rules anyway. If we ever do anything like this, it should be sweeping and redesigning SDA from the ground up into something else completely. We're doing pretty well as is, so now's not the time for that, if ever, and doing something like that might be a bad idea anyway.

Kelvari

2009-04-11 01:00:04 pm

I can understand where you're coming from, Enhasa. Honestly, I doubt that source-code modding would be that big of an issue, since WINE has apparently taken over 10 years to even hit version 1.0. With how quickly the new 'testing' releases are coming out, too, I can also see where that could pose a problem (new version every 2 weeks, may cause some stuff to break along with everything else that it fixes). The main reasons that I don't run Windows any more are because of viruses and that the OS requires so much maintenance to keep running smoothly.

Enhasa

2009-04-11 01:36:30 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Yeah, it would be nice if this robustness issue didn't exist, but it's pretty much unworkable.

Also, viruses and maintenance aren't issues if you only use Windows to game though. Who cares if your Windows environment gets messed up then? System restore also allows you to take a totally nonchalant attitude.

Rest is off-topic, you can skip.

Personally, I don't really care what OS I'm using. In the last 5 years I've had to use Windows, Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and Solaris at home or in different labs (I like SUSE, sue me!). They all have bash and GNU toolchain and rsync and they all have emacs (I live in emacs, for example I use it for file management instead of the terrible Windows Explorer), and most aspects like look-and-feel have pretty much converged in recent years, so other than gaming I don't really mind where I am. BTW the cost of personal maintenance for Windows I think is really overstated. I don't run a firewall, a virus scanner, malware scanner, really anything. I never update any of my software, and I don't even get system updates. Sometimes I wonder why I've never had any problems to be honest, but since this is faster and easier I stick with it. Tongue

Just like I use Windows for software, I use Linux for software, and I never spend any time maintaining that either. I "save" so much time over other people by not watching TV anymore, playing poker or fantasy sports or other luck-heavy entertainment, not maintaining my comp, not following the Internet (besides SDA heh), etc... then I just "waste" it all on playing games and SDA. Lips Sealed

Yeah, it would be nice if this robustness issue didn't exist, but it's pretty much unworkable.

Also, viruses and maintenance aren't issues if you only use Windows to game though. Who cares if your Windows environment gets messed up then? System restore also allows you to take a totally nonchalant attitude.

Rest is off-topic, you can skip.

Personally, I don't really care what OS I'm using. In the last 5 years I've had to use Windows, Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and Solaris at home or in different labs (I like SUSE, sue me!). They all have bash and GNU toolchain and rsync and they all have emacs (I live in emacs, for example I use it for file management instead of the terrible Windows Explorer), and most aspects like look-and-feel have pretty much converged in recent years, so other than gaming I don't really mind where I am. BTW the cost of personal maintenance for Windows I think is really overstated. I don't run a firewall, a virus scanner, malware scanner, really anything. I never update any of my software, and I don't even get system updates. Sometimes I wonder why I've never had any problems to be honest, but since this is faster and easier I stick with it. :P

Just like I use Windows for software, I use Linux for software, and I never spend any time maintaining that either. I "save" so much time over other people by not watching TV anymore, playing poker or fantasy sports or other luck-heavy entertainment, not maintaining my comp, not following the Internet (besides SDA heh), etc... then I just "waste" it all on playing games and SDA. :-X

nate

2009-04-11 04:55:32 pm

just curious - what web browser(s) do you use in windows?

personally i'm waiting for access to 3d hardware in virtualization to get good enough to drop the dual boot and system restore entirely and just wipe the whole vm if something breaks heh. or have one vm for each game with mutually exclusive requirements etc.