# windows games, linux, emulation



## xaqintosh (Nov 19, 2002)

Since Linux is able to play a few windows games (with WINE or something) and OS X is based off BSD, which is kinda like linux, would it be so hard to port windows games from linux to OS X? I really don't know which is why I'm asking. Perhaps this requires an X86 chip...


----------



## cbaron (Nov 22, 2002)

> _Originally posted by xaqintosh _
> *Since Linux is able to play a few windows games (with WINE or something) and OS X is based off BSD, which is kinda like linux, would it be so hard to port windows games from linux to OS X? I really don't know which is why I'm asking. Perhaps this requires an X86 chip... *



Well, you have to implement x86 emulation directly in WINE... It's feasible but quite hard work.


----------



## tosk (Nov 28, 2002)

I've been working on porting WINE to OS X/Darwin. You would, like our friend said, have to implement x86 emulation, which isn't hard since Bochs was ported to OS X.


----------



## xaqintosh (Nov 29, 2002)

cool! keep us updated


----------



## cbaron (Dec 3, 2002)

tosk, is there a website for that interesting stuff? Windows apps without windows bugs seems quite attractive, even more on a PPC platform!


----------



## bbloke (May 11, 2003)

This may be of interest:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/darwine/


----------



## binaryDigit (May 11, 2003)

One thing to keep in mind is that the whole reason that you can use wine to run some of these windows games and have it be usuable is that it is intended to run on an x86.  The playability of a game that was forced to do x86 emulation _and_ go through wine would render many if not most games unplayable (at least on anything but the latest and greatest hardware, even then).

cbaron, remember that many "windows" bugs are actually windows application bugs, so running buggy software on a different platform still leads to a less than satisfactory experience.  And that's assuming that Wine is rock solid.

If you're really interested in playing your favorite games on the Mac, be sure to let the manuf. of that game know it, as the best experience will only be had by having a native version of the game.  Remember, decent emulation is a double edged sword, if the game. manuf. can say "why bother porting, they can run it emulated", then that is a net loss for the Mac community.


----------

