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Linux/Mesa 3D Game Beta
Steve Baker writes "Tux-the-Penguin - A Quest for Herring.
A full 3D game for Linux/OpenGL (Mesa). Released
with full source code under GPL. This is a first
public beta and the start of a web-based project
to bring this to completion.
What's available now is a couple of playable
levels. You *WILL* need a 3D accelerator that
Linux can support under OpenGL (that pretty
much means a Voodoo-1 or 2 or a RUSH).
Hi! (This is Tux-aqfh's author again - I *must* /. username)
sign up for a
Software-only OpenGL isn't gonna cut it.
I might believe that an alternative software
renderer could get Tux-aqfh working at a
reasonable speed without 3D hardware...but
it would be a LOT of work compared to $30
for an ancient Voodoo card.
Well, I *developed* Tux-aqfh on a Voodoo-1
card and it runs at a happy 30Hz. 3D performance
is as much to do with the CPU as with the
3D card.
I have a Voodoo-1 and a 266MHz AMD K6-2 CPU
and get 30Hz.
One of my Beta-testers has a Voodoo-2 and a
133MHz Pentium and only gets 20Hz.
So, a Voodoo-1 is OK for Tux-aqfh at least.
(On a $5,000,000 SGI machine we have at work,
I clocked Tux-aqfh at ~200Hz...but with a
76Hz monitor that's a bit silly!)
Well, (I'm the author BTW) I *do* intend to
get it going under Windoze. Two reasons:
1) Tux-aqfh started life as a demo for my
portable games libraries (PLIB). Portability
is what it's all about. Why? Because if
we can convince people that it's as easy
to write games that are portable as games
for just one platform, there will be more
games for Linux and that would be A GOOD
THING.
2) I like the irony of Windoze users having
to watch Tux run around their screens.
Yes - I believe that someone *does* have it
running under Windoze already using CygWin's
toolset.
At any rate, the 'PLIB' library certainly runs
under windows - and that's 15,000 lines of code
versus only ~7,000 for the game itself. It won't
be hard to port.
All the nasty portability issues are buried in
PLIB anyway. I already have portable sound,
GUI, Graphics, Windowing and Joystick/Keybd/Mouse
I/O.
Voodoo (you know where to get it)
Rigth now there are two companies which has pledged their alligance to Linux and given specs to their 3d/2d hardware.
Matrox G200 - OpenSource project.
lists.openprojects.net/mail man/listinfo/g200-dev
3dlabs Permdai2 - See link above and Simon's page on Suse
In other news, 3dlabs said they would be giving full specs to permedia3 for developers. This includes both 2d and 3d specs. Currently both pm2 and matrox g200 can play q3a with hardware acceleation.
--
It depends on what you mean by "support." You can throw in the Marox G200, if you're lenient. The driver is so alpha it's just CVS right now, but it works pretty well considering how young it is. To give you an idea, people are getting ~5-10fps in Q3Test, which is very little, I know, but much better than the 2spf that you get with software.
Well, it varies greatly. It's leaps and bounds above Software, that's for sure, but it's not up to 3dfx performance yet. Part of that has to do with Matrox not releasing quite all of the specs. They left out something called "Warp" which is their triangle setup engine (I believe; I don't really know anything about this; this is just from the mailing list). People seem optimistic that Matrox may eventually release that too. Another thing to wait for is the direct rendering (i.e., not through X) protoctol that Precision Insight is working on and won't release until June. It's very good progress so far, and the people on the list seem very intelligent--not that I know anything about this stuff, but when Carmack himself has looked at the code and said "I don't see anything blatantly wrong" I take that as meaning these people know what they're doing!
I just downloaded it and got it to compile (I had to comment out a line calling XMesaSetFXmode to fullscreen to get it to compile, but it did eventually, and this is an amazing game! It's not really much of a game yet. You just walk around and eat fish, but Tux can jump and dive and burp like he never could before! Don't try it on software Mesa, though. It's SLOW. I was getting about 5 seconds per frame. But I did get it to work with the in-development G200 driver, and it was more than playable (except that there's not much of a point to the game yet). It's far from finished, from the looks of it, but the graphics engine is very impressive. I can see the game ending up with great appeal for kids.
Are those ratty voodoo 1 cards on pricewatch for 30$ worth it? Would it allow ~15 fps on quake3 or whatnot? I really want a 3dcard (just for the 3d tracert tool) but I don't got oodles of cash.
As for slashdot wierdness, let it give you the black screen, then click reload, wait and press escape before it finishes.
when Push Comes to Shove