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Interview w/ Dave "Zoid" Kirsch about Linux Quake
Dr. Blackwood writes sent us a link to a LinuxPower interview
with Dave "Zoid" Kirsch where he talks about
(big surprise) the Quake 3 for Linux Port. Lots of interesting
bits to read.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
How many people even have a decent 2d let alone 3d card in there box? Sheesh! How many linux boxes do you know of that would be able to run quake 1 at a playable speed? Sounds like a good idea...
I've been running quake 1 on Linux since late '96.
It's been great for me. Diamond Stealth S3-968 on one box, Matrox Millenium on the other. No problems whatever. For internet gaming, I still like good old quake 1 the best. (ctf, rocket arena, teamplay).
Strictly 2d, though. Once 3d support for Linux gets less painful, I'll dive in.
I think it's interesting that he thinks the worst part of porting games to Linux is dealing with sound issues. This should raise a big 'old red flag to people out there working on sound drivers and APIs and whatnot.
I've personally never done sound programming under Linux, so I haven't a clue, but then again, I'm also not trying to port a commercial game software to Linux...
Celeron 300a, 64mb ram
STB LightSpeed 128 (ET 6000), Voodoo 2 8mb
DynaSonix 3D (AMD-Interwave) running with ALSA
Quake 1? Runs like a dream. Can't wait for QIII.
Has Zoid ever said why there will be no joystick support under Q3 on Linux. Especially with the improved joystick driver in the 2.2.x kernels. I can't seem to ween myself from the joystick and onto a keyboard-mouse combo.(aka. I reboot to play).
I know many people with decent 2d and 3d cards in their boxes. I do and all of my friends do :) time to uprade, bud.
Quake1/2 has been avail on Linux forever. Almost every Linux box I've used recently could run quake 1 fine (486/100+) and most could run quake2 fine (p100+).
Several (perhaps 15) could run Quake 3 fine (3dfx).
Quake1/2 has been avail on Linux forever. Almost every Linux box I've used recently could run quake 1 fine (486/100+) and most could run quake2 fine (p100+).
Several that I've recently used (perhaps 15) could run Quake 3 fine (3dfx).
On Solaris, the ownership of the audio device is given to the person logged into the console. Then it's removed when the person logs out. This is a very nice way of giving access only to the one who should have access.
How many years will it be before Linux is *as good as* Windows, when it comes to gaming?
Windows offers very little to game programmers. Get the windsock going, initialize the sound card, and then get the hell out of the way.
The sad thing, is that Linux offers even less.
Sure, Linux works his ass of making a good kernel, but all the bundlers can't pull their heads out long enough to shoot for a common ground.
I guess with Linux, the most apathetic group wins.
BN
Yeah, and while they are writing a port for PPC, maybe they can turn one out for my Sparc-1.
Jesus people... were you born stupid, or did it happen over time?
How far off the beaten path are people supposed to go?
BN
I added some text and then forgot to remove it...
- RF (dfelker@cnu.edu)
I see no obstacles to *nix game coding; it's as straightforward as developing any other sort of software. Whipping up transparent support for X, svgalib (unfortunately many ppl still use it):, fbcon, and libggi is at most a one-day job, and sound is as simple as opening /dev/dsp, sending a few IOCTLs, then writing audio data. Moreover, network coding is clearly simpler than doze, since you don't have the stupid winsock init overhead. Am I missing something?
- RF (dfelker@cnu.edu)
I am surprized he considers the SDL library a
high level library. I think it keeps a fairly
minimal interface but does the important stuff
like color and resolution management.
OpenGL is not a language! It is a 3D programming API. I use it with C and C++, but there are other bindings (e.g. FORTRAN).
Personally, I give /dev/dsp, /dev/audio, and /dev/mixer to the user logged on to console. I also don't let people telnet in... just ssh.
Sounds like you boys need to set up your MTRRs in Linux, and also make sure you're using zoid's openGL minport. This ought to give you performance comparable to windoze....
$ ls -l /dev/dsp* /dev/audio* /dev/audio /dev/audio1 /dev/dsp /dev/dsp1
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 4 May 27 1997
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 20 May 27 1997
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 3 May 27 1997
crw-rw---- 1 root audio 14, 19 May 27 1997
Quake I played fine on my Pentium 90. Of course I was playing at a lower resolution (it was pretty fast at 320x200, of course it looked like crap too but some people out there play it like that)
Quake I was playable at 640x480 on my P-90 but it was also slowed down a *lot* if much happened on the screen. I get 36fps on my Pentium Pro 200 w/ Voodoo2 and lib3dfxgl.so driver @800x600.
Are you using the 3dfx loadable module to enable MTRR support? What GL driver are you using? Use lib3dfxgl.so, don't use any of the Mesa stuff and definitely don't run it under X.
I built a dual celeron 300a @ 450 especially so I can play SMP Quake 3 and now they dissed it :~(. :).
Hrn damm. Oh well maybe some other future games will use it
Peace
The Linux Standard Game Base Project tries to develop and promote a standard that will increase compatibility among Linux systems and enable multimedia applications (eg. games) to run on all compliant systems.
I get 38fps @640x480 on my PPro 200. I was getting 26fps without the MTRR support.
/dev/3dfx device for non-root users but it also enables MTRR support for all users. You can't use Darryl's version, go to news:news.3dfx.com and search for it. There is a patched version somewhere in Europe that works great!
The 3dfx module allows use of the
www.xs4all.nl/~carlo17/3dfx
How good it is to read "We support Linux because it is cool"
Now now troll.
I'll have you know that whenever all the Quakers round this area meet up Linux QuakeWorld is the game of choice. The fact that I can use GLqwcl and run qwsv at the same time on my box without any slowdown on my part or packetloss is a huge plus, as noone wants to have to use their box as a pure dedicated server. You try running qwsv on a 95/98 box and connecting to localhost.
Doesnt happen on NT, but really, you ever tried Quakin under NT?
Nick
Nick
The answer to this is simple. If you use a joystick you must be braindead and .'. cant figure out how to use Q3A under Linux anyway.
Get yourself off that stick now, for the good of your frag count! =)
Nick
Nick
It's Zoid's birthday today. Maybe we should all send our greets to him :)
Hrm. I have a 300a @ 450 on an asus P2B and a 12 meg voodoo2, but consistantly get ~37 fps, compared to 67 in windows... Any suggestions?
Hrm. No.. I am running quake 1 on a dx/4 100. runs great, and significantly higher than 10 frames a second.. too bad i don't have time to run a time demo right now.
I have no idea what an MTRR is. just the ref_gl.so files? Thanks.
Posted by OGL:
I'm running a Pentium II 400, 128 megs of RAM, Creative Blaster Voodoo2. 60fps at 800x600 in Quake2, I don't play Quake.
-W.W.
Posted by OGL:
Turn off vsync.
export SSTV2_SWAP_EN_WAIT_ON_VSYNC=0
-W.W.
I wrote an email to John Carmack about PMesa, which speeds up some OpenGL calculations up to 1.8x on SMP hardware. He said this:
Its not going to help bandwidth limited applications. Applications with lots of evaluators and lighting probably show worthwhile speedups, but basic vertex/texcoord/color drawing probably doesn't get helped at all (unless the basic geometry code is very badly implemented).
John Carmack
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Having OpenGL support in the next version of XFree86 will help. Sound is still a problem, tho.
TedC
I'm sure Brian Hook has said the Quake 2 OpenGL renderer has no assembler. It is pure C, and they don't use C++. Perhaps Quake 2 & 3 have no assembly at all.
So you can at least get a server going
dylan_-
--
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
It's not restricted on SGIs... Lots of fun in the office... :)
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
I talked to John Carmack at the past Macworld Expo. He said if we get certain components like OpenGL ported to LinuxPPC, it might be possible.
;)
He's worried that the other smaller Linuxes (SPARC, Alpha) would then start demanding it. That would be the classic "Well if we let the PowerPC people have it, we're going to let the rest of the class have it" argument.
Our next hardware donations are going to be a Blue G3 to the kernel guys to get those running, and a fast Power Mac to a Glide developer to get that ported.
-- haaz.
Take a look at the "GiveConsole" and "TakeConsole" scripts in /etc/X11/xdm - you can do a "chmod o-rwx" on any device like /dev/dsp that you don't want non-console access to, then add lines to these scripts to change the owner of these devices to the current console user.
And if the console user wants to "chmod o+rwx" and let other people decide what he listens too, that's allowed - just make sure that "TakeConsole" sets the permissions back when he's done.
He said you could run a server on one processor and the client on the other... thast ought to give you a nice performance boost!
.
adduser SuperDave audio
That will let SuperDave do audio things with out changing the permissions.
Does Linux support USB mouses? I've heard those are much, much better than the normal mice.
I play quake 2 only with the mouse and the spacebar.
Why do no programs in Linux use a standard sound server? It's a pain in the butt that I have to set all my sound devices to user write/readable or run things as superuser just to use sound. It also makes programming a pain in the ass.
That's my whole point. That's why we should have a semi-standardized sound server, like we have standardized video server (X11).
All this changing of permissions is stupid. What if I want to run multiple programs using the sound, like I use multiple programs displaying on my video screen?
What if every program that printed something had to write directly to the printer rather than sending it to lpd? We'd call that DOS.
Quake 3: Arena on Linux is good and fine, but since it's hardware based, what about all us TNT users who won't be able to play it until someone writes Mesa drivers for our kick-ass cards?
:(
how about you just use Win98 for the ONE thing it *is* good for? Playing games.
I applaud the efforts of those who want to port/write drivers/etc for games on Linux. But I code all day at work. When I get home I just wanna frag some ass and go to bed.
Linux 4 work, win98 4 play. Everything has it's place.
:-)
PII at 300Mhz, 128mb sdram, and
as for video: Matrox G200 8mb SGRAM
I think that it would run fine.
010110000010110101010100011110010111000001100101
PPro 180 MHZ
;-) ) Seems pretty playable to me... of course if you're used to 60+ FPS itmay not seem that way...
:-/
Monster 3D Voodoo 1
Stealth 3d 2000 PRO (S3 ViRGE/DX)
I don't have a problem running GL or Software at 30FPS (as long as I don't push the resolution too high in software
Quake 2 engine games start to slow down though
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
I run a PII 350 with an ATI all in wonder pro(pretty poorly configured for linux at this point) with a Voodoo 2 for 3-d accel, i get better framerates under linux for Quake 1/2 and i have even seen Q1 played well on a 486 linux box
(Im a PenguinPlay dveloper)
I actually think PenguinPlay and that one fit together quite nicely. They are defining a standard client environment (i.e. for people wanting to play games) while PPlay is assembling/defining a suite of game *development* code/tools.
Anyway, well talk with them.
Cu
Christian
PS: Yup, I know that the PPlay homepage looks pretty dead. Our Webmaster disappeared some time ago and the new one starts to completely reorganize it. Will take some time. In the meanwhile the FAQ is really up-to-date. Promise ;)
Its great that there will be a port, but with what language is it going to be written in. OpenGL, C, C++, assembly. Do I have any hope of seeing it on my LinuxPPC box??
I suspect that most of the game is written in optimized C or C++ with the really tight parts written in ASM. A Linux/PPC port should be nontrivial but not difficult. It all depends on if id Software is willing to create and support it.