UT2003 LiveCD

ztc writes "Gentoo has added a Unreal Tournament 2003 demo to a version of their Linux-based LiveCD. It has up-to-date nvidia graphics drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, etc. on the CD ready-to-play. LiveCDs have always been a great way to sway potential Linux-converts, but this should really impress them! You can download the iso here." A sneaky way to promote Gentoo. I like it.

Comments

UT2k3 - linux impressions

[Merlin42]

I downloaded and installed UT2k3 demo on both my linux partition (up to date gentoo) and my W2k partition. I am running an admitidly unbalanced celeron333a w/ 192mb ram and a gf4ti4200-64mb.
Under linux I get very choppy sound and an almost-kinda-sorta-playable slideshow after setting all the options to their min (ok I left the res at 800x600 ... 320x240 was in the list!).
While w2k gives me a reasonably playable game ... heck its not completly unplayable at 1600x1200.

Re:UT2k3 - linux impressions

[AlgUSF]

Yeah I hate when people use the nv driver, and complain about choppy video. The nv driver isn't even good enough to play tuxracer.

When I bought my GeForce4 card and ran tux racer it was choppy and unplayable, I downloaded the drivers from nVidia, and now I can play UR2003, and the graphics are smooth as silk!

Re:UT2k3 - linux impressions

[dcstimm]

You might have forgot to disable arts or esd sound servers, you might have forgotten to disable AGPGART and enable NVGART, you might have forgotten to run hdparm to tweak your harddrives. Maybe your kernel is not set up correctly. Maybe your using a slow distro. Maybe you dont know anything about Linux. Maybe your SDL is not configured correctly. Maybe your using a old kernel? Maybe you forgot to enable your nvidia drivers. Maybe you have alot of stuff running in the background. try ps aux. Maybe the harddrive your using for linux is slower than the windows harddrive.

Im sure your doing something wrong.

try these commands

hdparm -t /dev/hdx (to bench mark)
hdparm -d1 -c1 -X69 /dev/hdx (I use this to turn on dma, 32bit IO, and udma5.
do cat /proc/driver/nvidia/agp/status

make sure AGPGART is disabled and its running NVIDIA for the driver.

try enabling SBA and FW, the drivers disable them by default.

Can your board suppport AGP 4x? try turning that on in the drivers also.

You are probably doing something seriously wrong. Linux is faster than windows, and you should get better FPS in linux.

good luck and Next time dont post something like that with out trying everything.

Re:WOW!

[Merlin42]

Normal Person: "Er.. OK. Show me The Sims next!"

Sure!! Right here.

Question

[Winterblink]

What the hell is LiveCD? :)

FTP mirrors

[mortis_aeturnus]

Gatech Sunsite.dk Norweigen Mirror Another Norweigen Mirror

Re:FTP mirrors

[ananke]

Just because it's a slow day at work... I mirrored it too

Answer

[Mustang Matt]

LiveCD is a standalone bootable CD that you can pop in most newer computers, boot up and play the game.

ATI Cards

[solarce]

I have not seen this mentioned yet, but I think it should be noted that it is not Gentoo's fault that the UT2003 LiveCD does not run on ATI cards. Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo and it has nothing to do with Gentoo or the fact that XFree86 has less than ample support for the newer Radeon card line.

Re:ATI Cards

[jvmatthe]

Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo

This is false. To cut down on traffic over the AGP bus, Epic used texture compression. Specifically, they used S3TC/DXTC, which is supported by every major, modern 3D video driver on Windows (i.e. their target audience). This extension is currently supported by only two drivers on Linux: the ones from NVIDIA and the ones from Xi Graphics. The XiG drivers support the Radeon cards, but are pay-to-use drivers. However a time-limited demo is available for free. (The server must be restarted every 25-30 minutes or so, in the demo, as I understand it. Buy the real thing, and you get unlimited use, naturally.)

Epic has also said they're working with ATI and PowerVR (makers of the Kyro cards) to improve the binary-only drivers that each of those companies provides for their cards under Linux. If and when these drivers are released, they will be free-as-in-beer.

Again: it is the failing of the drivers under Linux to support a required extension, not Epic. Without that extension, performance would be terrible, so it isn't an option of just turning it off.

Re:ATI Cards

[jvmatthe]

Not being a programmer, I can't speak with complete authority, but I can tell you what I know. The full game has an amount of textures measured in gigabytes. (Not on a single level, naturally, but this gives an idea of just how much data we're talking about.) The beta build I've played with was a bigger than 2Gb, of which a big chunk was those textures. They shipped lower resolution textures with the demo and it was still 100Mb compressed. I don't know the size of an individual, high-resolution texture, but I imagine that the S3TC/DXTC is required, given the size of things so far.

Re:Question...

[psypete]

it plays off of the cd right after booting it, autodetecting hardware and setting up XFree86. No need to install anything, just play.

so people ask, "Oh, what's the big deal if i can play it in windows?" well with this disk you can play it anywhere in a matter of minutes. it's there to show what Gentoo is like and how it can be used. and like most of what Gentoo does, it's optimized for the newest and best hardware, so there are many people left out in the cold. they'll be supported later as new versions come out, but that's not why it was made. it was made to show linux's potential.

Re:Linux vs Windows gaming performance

[Anonymous Coward]

With NVIDIAs hardware, Linux is actually faster than Windows in lower resolution and only slightly slower at 1600x1200. Quake3 benchmarks are here.

Since UT2003 is pretty CPU intensive game, I would except that Linux will be faster than Windows XP. However this only applies to NVIDIAs hardware. Other GPU manufacturers haven't released decent Linux drivers.