Cedega 4.3 Release Notes

Released March 8, 2005.

Overview

TransGaming is pleased to announce the release of Cedega 4.3, dubbed Stilton, giving TransGamers access to more Windows games in Linux, with greater ease. TransGamers can now download Cedega in RPM, Debian and TGZ formats from the downloads section of TransGaming's website: http://www.transgaming.com/

Cedega 4.3 supports Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life. Included is a preloader which resolves the issues caused by prelinking, exec-shield and the new VA layout in recent 2.6 kernels. Also provided are a number of graphical performance and correctness improvements, some new functionality, and various regression fixes.

New Features

Cedega 4.3

System Requirements

Operating System

Core requirements are:

CPU Type and Speed

Recommended minimum hardware is

Please note: individual requirements may be higher for certain games.

2.6.9, 2.6.10 Kernels and Copy Protection

There is ptrace bug in the 2.6.9 and 2.6.10 kernels that may cause copy protection to fail. At this point there is no known work around, and TransGaming recommends avoiding the use of these kernels at this time. This bug appears to be resolved in the 2.6.11 kernel.

Prelink, Exec-Shield, and VA Layout

As of Cedega 4.3, there are no longer any compatability issues between prelink, exec-shield, the new VA layout and Cedega. These features can be left enabled and will work seamlessly with Cedega.

Exec (error = 21)

The version of mount that comes with some distributions now run with the noexec option unless otherwise specified. Running games from a partition mounted with noexec can cause an error = 21 message.

To fix this issue, edit the /etc/fstab and modify the partition line by removing the noexec option and adding the exec switch to the mount options.

For example:

change

/dev/hda1 / ext3 errors=remount-ro,no-exec,defaults 0 1

to

/dev/hda1 / ext3 errors=remount-ro,exec,defaults 0 1

If neither exec nor no-exec appears in the line it is recommended that you add exec to ensure that the partition can be used by Cedega.

To remount the partition run:

mount -o remount /

Graphics Cards

AGP Memory

It is important to ensure that your system is configured with enough AGP memory, and that Cedega is configured to use it appropriately. The amount of AGP memory available on your system is determined by the AGP Aperture Size setting in your system BIOS, as well as the amount of memory in your system. It is recommended that you set your AGP Aperture Size to at least 128MB. The amount of AGP memory that is used by Cedega is controlled by the AGPVertexRam option in the [x11drv] section of the config file (in Point2Play this option is called AGP Memory Available). A good rule of thumb is to set this value to approximately one-half of the total available AGP memory. It is important that this number be smaller than the total AGP memory because the system also uses AGP memory to transfer texture data. For example: if your AGP Aperture Size is 128MB you should configure Cedega to use 64MB of AGP memory for vertex data.

The previous default value of 16MB for AGPVertexRam, has been increased to 32MB as of Cedega 4.1. PLEASE NOTE THAT AFTER RUNNING CEDEGA 4.1 YOUR CONFIG FILE WILL BE MODIFIED AND THIS SETTING WILL ALSO APPLY TO OLDER VERSIONS OF CEDEGA. It is recommended that you check your BIOS settings and further increase this to value to 64MB or higher, depending on your system settings.

NVIDIA 66.29 drivers and AGP memory

There is a known issue in the 66.29 drivers, where allocating large amounts of AGP memory (used for VAR, a method of accelerating vertex data transfer) will fail. NVIDIA has made a patch available which resolves this issue. The patch and instructions for installing are available in this nV News thread: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=477802&postcount=19

TransGaming strongly recommends that users with the 66.29 drivers apply this patch to maximize their gaming experience.

ATI FireGL drivers

TransGaming has seen some game-stopping instability with ATI cards using FireGL and/or DRI running Cedega. Games of note with issues are Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, Need for Speed Underground and Sacrifice. Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam also have this issue, but there are known work-around listed in their sections below.

The games Hitman Contracts, Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam exhibit graphical corruption caused by a known issue in ARB_vertex_program.

TransGaming is continuing to improve support and we welcome all reports and your votes in the polls.

New Configuration Options

The following are a list of options which are new (or changed) in Cedega 4.3. Under most circumstances you will not need to use these options; they are only provided for completeness and the inquisitive. All options can be overridden on a per executable basis.

[d3dgl] section:

"FragmentOffset" = "Auto"
The semantics of the the FragmentOffset option have changed in Cedega 4.3, with the addition of a new type of offset. Possible values are No, Tex, Auto, and Pos. The default is Auto which automatically selects the correct type of offset depending on the game and your video card. Tex applies the fragment offset to the texture coordinates. Pos applies the fragment offset to the vertex position. No disables the fragment offset.

Known Issues and Comments

Pthread Stack Size

If available, Cedega attempts to make use of pthreads (POSIX threads), instead of LinuxThreads. Some distros which use pthreads only support a maximum stack size of 2MB. This can cause problems with some games which require larger stack sizes. Common symptoms of such problems include (but are not limited to) a crash to desktop when starting a game or when loading or saving a level. If this happens, you can work around it by starting Cedega with pthreads disabled.

To disable pthreads when running from the commandline run with the -use-pthreads no option. If using Point2Play, you can disable pthreads on the per-game configuration as necessary, or for all games by adding the following line to the [transgaming] section of the .point2playrc file.

 pthreads_forced=off

Games with known problems on 2MB stacks include (but are not limited to):

ATI cards and VBO

The graphical acceleration included in Cedega 4.0 and later is of an experimental nature. While it should work for most games, there are still a number of titles which seem to exhibit problems, both in terms of graphical corruption and performance. For these titles you can simply disable the VBO option.

HTML display of license agreements in on-line games

Cedega 4.2 (and later) when used with the Mozilla ActiveX control should now properly display of HTML content in some on-line games. Please ensure you have correctly installed and activated the Mozilla control in order to view this content.

However, in the event that any license agreements displayed by these games are not readable while running with Cedega, TransGaming Technologies Inc. will not be held liable for any failure or breach on your part of any 3rd party license agreement.

You are solely responsible for ensuring that you have read and will abide by any third party license agreements, regardless of the ability of the cedega software to display such license agreements on a linux system.

American McGee's Alice

Anarchy Online

Baldur's Gate 2

Battlefield 1942

Battlefield Vietnam

Bink Movies

Black & White

Call of Duty

City of Heroes

Civilization III

Command and Conquer: Generals

Counter Strike: Condition Zero

Counter Strike: Source

Dark Age of Camelot

Doom 3

Dungeon Siege

Far Cry

Grand Theft Auto 3

Grand Theft Auto Vice City

Half-Life 2

Hitman: Contracts

Homeworld 2

Max Payne 2

Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault

Morrowind: Elder Scrolls III

Need For Speed: Underground

Punkbuster

Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life

SimCity 4

StarCraft

Star Wars Battlefront

Star Wars Galaxies

Star Wars: Jedi Academy

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

Steam

Warcraft III The Frozen Throne

World of Warcraft

Problems?

Please check the Cedega HOWTO for other common problems, installation procedures and additional information. The Cedega HOWTO available from the TransGaming downloads area: http://www.transgaming.com/downloads.php

Let the Games Begin!