CodeWeavers Launches CrossOver Games 9.0 for Linux and Mac

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (May 12, 2010) – Despite the massive distraction of this weekend's theatrical release of Iron Man 2, CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announces it has completed the development of CrossOver Games 9.0 for both Mac and Linux.
CrossOver Games allows Windows games to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.
Available beginning today for download at www.codeweavers.com, CrossOver Games 9.0:

• supports the new Steam UI; and,
• StarCraft 2 (beta) and StarTrek Online; and
• enables users to install games from a single screen and a single click on CodeWeavers' compatibility center.

Historically, CodeWeavers programmers complete a software upgrade with a straight 96-hour burn fueled by Red Bull, Twizzlers and vending machine pretzels. The release of CrossOver Games 9.0 marks the first time CodeWeavers launched a new version of its software amidst the release of a blockbuster summer film, which typically grinds production to a halt as CodeWeavers programmers camp outside the theater for three days to secure the best seats on opening night.

"It's corporate policy that we schedule our software releases during weak spots in the movie calendar. Early Fall. Late Winter. Like, when a Meryl Streep film comes out," said Jeremy White, CodeWeavers chief executive officer. "What can I say? I screwed up. I got confused. I forgot about Iron Man 2.
"Hence the anomaly for this week's release of CrossOver Games 9.0, which also enables gamers to download installation 'recipes' directly from the CodeWeavers online Compatibility Database, located at C4.codeweavers.com," White added. "If another CrossOver Games user figures out how to use CrossOver to install a Windows-compatible game, he can upload this installation recipe to our database. For gamers using windows, that means they can switch to Mac or Linux without much worry.
"Our programmers were enraged at the scheduling conflict, though many snuck out late Friday afternoon to catch – spoiler alert here – Iron Man take down Whiplash," White said.
To ensure programmers continued working Saturday and Sunday without break, White created a makeshift "electric whip" to emulate Mickey Rourke's character's weapon of choice.

"Essentially, it was 48 strands of 28-inch stripped coax cables sewn into the fingers of an Ace Hardware work glove," White said. "I walked around cubes in our office screaming 'full Steam ahead, minions!' in a mediocre Russian accent while swinging the whip. It worked, more or less."

"At around 9 a.m. Sunday morning while quietly writing code at my desk, White's whip snagged me just below the groin on my left leg," said Jon Parshall, chief operating officer at CodeWeavers.
"Ugh. Fourteen stitches plus the pitiful sight of a grown man writhing on the floor in his own pool of blood," White said. "Hopefully sales of CrossOver Games 9.0 will help pay his medical bills."
CrossOver Games 9.0 is download-only and can be purchased for $39.95 at www.codeweavers.com. 

About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers focuses on the development of Wine – the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

 

Crossover Games

I own an Imac so that means my gaming choices are limited. Since Apple has switched to Intel chips, it is possible for most games to be ported via a wrapper program that mimics a Windows environment. Yes, of course if gaming is that important to a computer user they could use the Bootcamp program and then load in Windows. And I've thought about doing that, and I may still become a bootcamper. However right now, I don't want to drop upwards of $200 for the Windows system.

On Massively, a commentator mentioned that he/she played Lord of the Rings Online via a wrapper program called Crossover Games. That idea intrigued me so I looked into the software. The Crossover suite of programs are offered by CodeWeavers. These programs mimic Windows using a wrapper based on the open source Wine project.

Crossover games is the "official" version of the Wine opensource project. It is affordable at $39.95 (the fee supports the Wine opensource programmers) and the installation is simple. What isn't simple is getting the subsequent windows games to work properly. Since this option is rather arcane no matter how easy Codeweavers has made it, you will probably need to know a little something about programming to get anything working.

To use Crossover Games, the user must create a mini-windows shell called a bottle. You can pick which flavor of windows you want this bottle to mimic (vista, winxp, 98, 2000). A bottle must be created for each game you want to play. Then you can load the games into the bottle via disc or downloads. Theoretically, it should be easy.

However I could get nothing to work with it. The LOTR instructions were easy however the program doesn't recognize the official game install file. I tried to download the free to play Uru Online. The installation progress was successful. However the site registration is no longer available so I can't log in to the program. As a lark I also tried to install Blue Mars. However there was an error that had something to do with the install aware program. I was at wit's end and wondered if I could use the software for anything. Finally I managed to see the program in action with the game Wizard 101(review later). And I can say that Crossover works very well for what it is.

This solution is very ad hoc and is in no way a substitute for Mac Bootcamp. But if you can't afford to spring for the Windows software at the moment, this program will do for the time being. I recommend it.

Codeweavers CrossOver Mac Run Windows apps minus Windows

By Cliff Joseph

Like many Mac users, I use Apples Boot Camp to switch between the Mac OS and Windows as required. However, I also usevirtualization tools - Parallels Desktop and VMWare Fusion - which have the added convenience of allowing you to run Mac and Windows programs side-by-side.

 

Codeweavers CrossOver: run PC games on a Mac

The only drawback with virtualization technology is that it cant provide the same performance as running Windows software natively, as Boot Camp does. This is especially important when it comes to demanding programs such as 3D games. And, of course, the dual-boot and virtualisation approaches both require you to install a full copy of Windows.
Codeweavers CrossOver now provides a third alternative for running Windows software on a Mac – and one that doesnt require a copy of Windows. CrossOver is actually a paid-for version of the open-source Wine project, which provides technical support and a new graphical interface in return for the £26 licence fee.
There are two versions of CrossOver available. CrossOver Mac is designed for running general productivity apps such as Microsoft Office, while CrossOver Games focuses on running entertainment software.

There are separate versions of general apps (left) and games

I asked Codeweavers for more detailed information about the differences between the two versions, and its illuminating response was: “CrossOver Mac runs Windows applications while CrossOver Games runs Windows games."
Regardless of finer technical details, the two versions work in a very similar fashion. To install the program you simply download the CrossOver disk image file from the Codeweavers web site, open it, and then drag and drop the CrossOver application onto your hard disk.

Prime CrossOver with the name of the app you want to install

When you launch CrossOver it presents you with a simple Welcome screen that prompts you to insert the installer disk for the Windows program that you want to install. Its also possible to install software that youve downloaded from the Internet as long as youve got the full installer required for that piece of software.
Rather than simply copying the program files onto your Macs hard disk, CrossOver creates a "bottle" – a file that Codeweavers describes as a "virtual Windows environment" – and then installs the program into it. The bottle contains elements – such as a virtual Windows registry – that, in effect, fool the program into thinking that its running on Windows.
This approach can be very effective – but only if CrossOver is compatible with the specific Windows programs that you want to use. Codeweavers maintains a compatibility database that rates hundreds of Windows apps according to a rather convoluted system of "medals". For instance, my copy of Microsoft Publisher 2003 gets a gold medal rating, which means that it should run well enough for everyday use.

 

Check for app compatibility first

However, Word 2003 and Excel 2003 only get a silver medal - more or less OK, but there may be occasional bugs - while the more recent Microsoft Office 2007 just gets a bronze. The database also lists a large number of programs as "untested" or "known not to work".
I tested the Office 2003 and Office 2007 suites, and those programs did run well – more smoothly, in fact, than using either Parallels or Fusion. CrossOver even makes Windows programs look a bit more Mac-like by adding a new title bar complete with the Macs candy-coloured control buttons.

 

Windows apps get it little of the OS X look & feel

However, the situation wasn’t quite so rosy when I tried CrossOver Games. I normally test PCs by checking their performance with Far Cry 2, but that falls into the doesnt work category. My current favourite game is Dragon Age: Origins - it gets a silver medal for compatibility, but I repeatedly got an error message when attempting to install it from disk. I found a fellow sufferer on the Codeweaver support forums who had encountered the same error message, but theres no word of a solution yet.
Another old favourite is Guild Wars, which also gets a silver rating. This installed easily and was quite playable on a MacBook, although the frame rate under CrossOver was only about half of what we got when running the same game under Boot Camp.

Full Article

Full Steam ahead with CrossOver Games 9.0 beta

From Jeremy White's Blog :
Software guys are often accused of wanting to spend too much time polishing their beloved programs. I'm very guilty of that myself, and that's doubly hard because of our work on Wine. While Wine is amazing, it's not perfect, so there is a challenging balance in deciding that we've made enough progress to justify a release. Of course, if you let us software guys decide, we'll take forever and never ship anything.
Luckily for our gaming customers, Valve has forced our hand. That is, they have released an entirely rewritten version of Steam today. And, unfortunately, it does not work at all in our existing CrossOver Games releases. And since Steam is a large part of what our customers use CrossOver Games for, we've been forced to rush out a release to provide that support. We've been in a mad scramble this past month; Wine did not run the new GUI at all. We finally fixed it last week, just in time for the production launch by Valve.

So I am happy to announce that we're making a beta version of our CrossOver Games 9.0 release available today. We're feeling pretty good about it; it runs the new Steam GUI, and quite a few games work very nicely. However, we really haven't had much time to test it or shake out any problems. So we really recommend it only for customers that need to use the new Steam GUI.
We hope to ship the 'real' 9.0 very quickly; if you're not using Steam, please give us a bit more time for that picky polish.

Cheers,
Jeremy

CodeWeavers Releases Crossover Office 9.0.1 for MAC and Linux

SAINT PAUL, Minn. (April 23, 2010) -- CodeWeavers, Inc., a leading developer of software products that turn Mac OS X and Linux into Windows-compatible operating systems, today announced the release of CrossOver 9.0.1 for both Mac and Linux. CrossOver allows Windows software to be used on Mac and Linux PCs without the need for a Windows operating system license.
About CodeWeavers
Founded in 1996 as a general software consultancy, CodeWeavers focuses on the development of Wine –the core technology found in all of its CrossOver products. The company's goal is to bring expanded market opportunities for Windows software developers by making it easier, faster and more painless to port Windows software to Linux. CodeWeavers is recognized as a leader in open-source Windows porting technology, and maintains development offices in Minnesota, the United Kingdom and elsewhere around the world. The company is privately held. For more information about CodeWeavers, log on to www.codeweavers.com.

Change Log For CrossOver Linux

9.0.1 CrossOver Linux

• CrossOver Changes:
  • Certain bottles never stopped initializing; now they start up properly.
  • Renamed downloaded installer files so that you can tell what they are
  • Fixed demo registration on Mandriva 2010
  • Fixed a bug with accessing very old CrossOver bottles
  • Fixed auto-opening of c4p files (previously the file-type association was broken.)
  • A few minor cosmetic and behavior changes in the CrossOver Installer.
• Application support improvements:
  • Fixed file importation of .qif files into Quicken 2010
  • Fixed serious performance problems for certain large Quicken datafiles
  • Fixed an Outlook during connection to an Exchange server
  • Fixed an Outlook 2003 printing crash
  • Fixed a variety of other Outlook freezes and crashes
  • Improved Office 2003 service pack installation
  • Fixed a crash in Access 2000; this app should be usable again.
  • Fixed HTML editing in Outlook 2003
  • Fixed a crash in IE7 when 'help' was selected
  • Fixed printing in IE7
  • Fixed a crash associated with the JVM in IE6
  • Fixed a crash in Visio 2003 and 2007
  • Fixed server connections in Architecture 7.5 (requires reinstall)

Change Log For CrossOver Mac

9.0.1 CrossOver Mac

• CrossOver Changes:
  • Certain bottles never stopped initializing; now they start up properly.
  • Renamed downloaded installer files so that you can tell what they are
  • Fixed a bug with accessing very old CrossOver bottles
  • Fixed handling of custom c4p files on OSX Tiger
  • Fixed auto-opening of c4p files (previously the file-type association was broken.)
  • A few minor cosmetic and behavior changes in the CrossOver Installer.
• Application support improvements:
  • Fixed file importation of .qif files into Quicken 2010
  • Fixed serious performance problems for certain large Quicken datafiles
  • Fixed an Outlook during connection to an Exchange server
  • Fixed an Outlook 2003 printing crash
  • Fixed a variety of other Outlook freezes and crashes
  • Improved Office 2003 service pack installation
  • Fixed a crash in Access 2000; this app should be usable again.
  • Fixed HTML editing in Outlook 2003
  • Fixed a crash in IE7 when 'help' was selected
  • Fixed printing in IE7
  • Fixed a crash associated with the JVM in IE6
  • Fixed a crash in Visio 2003 and 2007
  • Fixed server connections in Architecture 7.5 (requires reinstall)