The last two and a half weeks of testing were heavily occupied with attention to World of Tanks and World of Warships.
With
World of Tanks we began by triaging a crash that started with the 9.9
update. We fixed the issue quickly and sent a new build to Wargaming. We
followed this with a fix for a severe drop in frame-rates with the 9.9
update. A fix for the frame-rate issue and a mouse offset issue is on
it's way to Wargaming now. We continue work on a rendering issue that
lights up the garage as though it were decorated with blue LED lights on
Intel based systems.
For World of Warships we spent a majority of the time working with the black screen a user would be met with upon login. The problem is related to Wine Bug number 35397. With more testing and development, we hope to send the fix upstream. This means we fixed it easily for Wargaming but to ensure we don't break other applications in Wine, we need to complete the patch by adding tests and additional cases.
Following that, our normal cycle of testing did not reveal new regressions with the latest version of Wine.
We reproduced a crash reported in our forums with El Capitan and CrossOver 14.1.4. We confirmed the crash in our development branch and opened a bug report with Apple regarding the crash. This crash is caused by an exception in code that only occurs when using El Capitan.
We confirmed that Apple fixed a rendering issue with the release of El Capitan that affects Banished.
We reviewed Wine bug number 34041; we confirmed that Skyrim continues to hang on exit both with CrossOver and the latest version of Wine, 1.7.47.
For CrossOver 14, we tested fixes with Microsoft Office 2010's behavior on dual screen systems. This includes full-screen maximize/minimize behavior of primary and secondary screens on Gnome Classic and Gnome Shell with Metacity and Debian 7. Additional testing was performed on Debian 8 with dual screen systems. This work will be included in CrossOver 15 and any future updates of CrossOver 14. We also retested the behavior of inserting Word and Excel objects in PowerPoint 2007.
For CrossOver 15
Dwrite
has been completely merged into Wine with this update, this means that
more people can now contribute to the work that still needs to be done
for implementation. It also means that we changed how the development of
branch of CrossOver is handled. We now build with dwrite for the first
time in a long time. Unfortunately some titles break with this
configuration, namely Steam.
However, the work to make Steam functional is ongoing and we have
confirmed that if Steam is not functional by the time CrossOver 15 is
released, we can adjust this setting specifically for Steam.
Direct2D implementation was also merged into Wine this week. More people can now contribute to the work that still needs to be done.
As dwrite and direct2d were submitted to Wine, we performed a series of tests to ensure that Office 2013 applications remained as functional as they have been in the past weeks. This means that each application launches in the very least. In some cases that success is short lived as the application crashes quickly. Our developers have a sense of humor with this:
With
World of Tanks we began by triaging a crash that started with the 9.9
update. We fixed the issue quickly and sent a new build to Wargaming. We
followed this with a fix for a severe drop in frame-rates with the 9.9
update. A fix for the frame-rate issue and a mouse offset issue is on
it's way to Wargaming now. We continue work on a rendering issue that
lights up the garage as though it were decorated with blue LED lights on
Intel based systems.For World of Warships we spent a majority of the time working with the black screen a user would be met with upon login. The problem is related to Wine Bug number 35397. With more testing and development, we hope to send the fix upstream. This means we fixed it easily for Wargaming but to ensure we don't break other applications in Wine, we need to complete the patch by adding tests and additional cases.
Following that, our normal cycle of testing did not reveal new regressions with the latest version of Wine.
We reproduced a crash reported in our forums with El Capitan and CrossOver 14.1.4. We confirmed the crash in our development branch and opened a bug report with Apple regarding the crash. This crash is caused by an exception in code that only occurs when using El Capitan.
We confirmed that Apple fixed a rendering issue with the release of El Capitan that affects Banished.
We reviewed Wine bug number 34041; we confirmed that Skyrim continues to hang on exit both with CrossOver and the latest version of Wine, 1.7.47.
For CrossOver 14, we tested fixes with Microsoft Office 2010's behavior on dual screen systems. This includes full-screen maximize/minimize behavior of primary and secondary screens on Gnome Classic and Gnome Shell with Metacity and Debian 7. Additional testing was performed on Debian 8 with dual screen systems. This work will be included in CrossOver 15 and any future updates of CrossOver 14. We also retested the behavior of inserting Word and Excel objects in PowerPoint 2007.
For CrossOver 15
- We confirmed a fix for Microsoft Office 2007 & 2010 installs where the contents and control panel would scan forever and never load.
- We confirmed a fix for a bad case on bottle renaming where pressing ESC would rename the bottle in the GUI but not the system. Pressing ESC now completely cancels the bottle renaming process.
- We confirmed a fix for a bad behavior when CrossOver was minimized to the OSX dock. It now maximizes with a single click, the same behavior as native applications.
- We confirmed a fix where CrossOver could not download specific files based on a feature in the Mac frameworks via the user agent string. CrossOver on OSX now uses the same method as Linux for downloads.
- We confirmed a fix for PokeXGames where a proper username is now used in the registry setting so the game can rely on it.
Dwrite
has been completely merged into Wine with this update, this means that
more people can now contribute to the work that still needs to be done
for implementation. It also means that we changed how the development of
branch of CrossOver is handled. We now build with dwrite for the first
time in a long time. Unfortunately some titles break with this
configuration, namely Steam.
However, the work to make Steam functional is ongoing and we have
confirmed that if Steam is not functional by the time CrossOver 15 is
released, we can adjust this setting specifically for Steam.Direct2D implementation was also merged into Wine this week. More people can now contribute to the work that still needs to be done.
As dwrite and direct2d were submitted to Wine, we performed a series of tests to ensure that Office 2013 applications remained as functional as they have been in the past weeks. This means that each application launches in the very least. In some cases that success is short lived as the application crashes quickly. Our developers have a sense of humor with this:
With extreme caution, testing of Office 2013 can now take place with
Wine and with development builds of CrossOver. Many installers do not
yet work, patience.
Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.
In rather major news, we ran our first successful tests of Microsoft Office 2013!
The most interesting part is that this series of testing was done with
Wine and not CrossOver. While the code that allows for this testing to
be completed is not yet in Wine, our developers believe their patches
are relatively clean and they are upstreaming each patch as soon as it
is ready. The Wine community should see this work begin trickling into
the main Wine tree on a daily and weekly basis. As our work is
completed, Microsoft Office 2013 will come closer and closer to
installing on Mac and Linux systems with mainstream Wine and its
derivatives.
Word 2013
launches but typing is invisible. The document portion of Word appears
blank though text is being typed. (Marketing jokes that invisible text
may not actually be all that big a deal; but Testing thinks that it is.)
Two weeks ago we welcomed a new MacBook Pro into our mix. This dual GPU updates our spread of hardware for game testing and brings the AMD Radeon R9 370M to our capable hands and allows us to continue our testing on the Intel Iris. We said goodbye to our Nvidia GeForce GTX 750M and sent it live out its years with our Support Ninjas at the 
people
from around the world in a variety of combat situations / simulations.
Games are more about 'team sport' and 'high performance' than about
solving riddles or achieving simple goals. And gamers are taking this
'team thing' seriously as there is now a Professional Gaming League
for most of these games. If your parents ever told you that you
couldn't make a living playing video games, THEY LIED TO YOU. The top
gamers now make six figure incomes playing games and are treated like
'rock stars' at these events. 
However, you might still be able to play these titles on your Mac or
Linux computer when they are released later this year using 
earning
victory usually requires practice. PRACTICE??? Who's got time for
practice? I'm lucky with my schedule that I even get to play games at
this stage of my life (husband, father, suburbs, three dogs). So, I'll
be sticking to random teams – for now. I just wish that the time I
spent in my youth on Atari 2600 and Nintendo wasn't so largely wasted leaving me unprepared for today's gaming. 