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Linux Q3Test 1.07
ozium writes "Q3test 1.07 out for Linux. blah blah get it blah blah lose sleep. www.quake3arena.com " Finally! I've been dying, since all the different Q3's are incompatible.
For the last week or so, Linux users have been unable to play on just about all the public servers out there. I wonder how much faster this one is...
I have SMP code written (and it seems to work well) but there isn't any SMP support in the 1.07 binary.
:)
When adding thread support, linuxquake3 became dependant on libpthreads. I didn't want that dependancy since I found a binary linked with glibc 2.0+libpthreads doesn't run on a glibc2.1 system+libthreads.
The SMP code is still a tad buggy and I need to do more testing on it.
I may distribute a seperate linuxquake3-smp binary in future builds. I'm just worried that I can't build a universal SMP binary that will work on glibc2.0 and 2.1 systems. Bummer.
/// Zoid.
OIC - I read more into your post than I guess you intended, sorry about that.
That is an interesting point, I never noticed that before (quake 2 shipped out at 3.05 if I remember). I assume you are correct that q3 is derived from the same code going all the way back to quake 1, so it probably would make sense.
Except that the average person is not going to
be able to put this together into their own
system. I myself could probably could, but
I'd bet about 95% of the computer users out
there would go out to get some dip for their
new computer chip...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Just what exactly are you getting at? Yeah, so id releases a lot of patches for their games, so what? Since this is a *test* and they are making an effort to get feedback and patch it before its a released game instead of pushing it out the door, maybe we can expect a better product when it ships?
Post-releases are a fact of life, unfortunately. The only games I can think of I've ever bought that didn't have any patches were some of the LucasArts games.
God I bought Unreal almost a year ago and there have been how many patches and its still not as playable as it should be. I think id probably has a better track record than most when it comes to adressing problems after the game is out.
Yeah, it sucked when Q2 had so many patches right after it came out, but it wasn't the end of the world. Q3 will have patches, probably not as many as Q2 did, since they are doing a much more extended 'test'. And hell, we're getting to play the game and give them feedback. How many other game companies do that?
An important thing to know is that the ping time as shown in the game does include your frame rate. If you are getting 20fps, that's 50ms added to the trip time to the server. Add a good 30ms to get over a WAN link and you're sitting at 80ms.
But if you are getting 100fps (not unreasonable, I get 100fps pretty consistently on my Voodoo3 on a P2-450), that's only at most 10ms added to the trip time.
/// Zoid.
thats because Q3s netcode isn't connected to the players framerate. Just use the /rate command to set your proper speed. Typical
/rate 2800 or 3000 /rate 5500 or 6000 /rate 10000 or 12000 /rate figure out your sustained bandwidth & set it up.
33.6 =
isdn 64k =
isdn 128k =
t1/dsl/cable = i think you get the trend on
I haven't downloaded the latest version, but I got 1.0.5 to run on my g200.
/usr/local/games/q3test/libMesaVoodooGL.so.3.1, so that q3 will not try to use it. Now start q3test. It will probably be a bit slow and the sound will not work correctly, so set the detail down in the settings. You should be able to quake now. It is probably best to play around with the settings to find what works best for you.
You will require the matrox glx driver. There are RPMs of it at ftp://ftp.sus.mcgill.ca/pub/glx/. You will then need to add the following to your XF86Config file:
Section "Module"
Load "glx.so"
EndSection
After restarting X, you should have glx working. Now delete or rename
Note that there seems to be a few memory leaks in the GLX driver, so after playing, you might want to get out of X, and maybe even comment out the module section in the XF86Config file.
There is more information about the GLX driver at http://glx.on.openprojects.net/faq.html
BTW, you should also be able to play glquake and quake2 in GL mode with the driver (they both run very smoothly).
One last thing, turn off xscreensaver if you are using it -- it will stuff things up graphics wise if it starts while you are in q3test.
Quake 3 is not over this curve; I've got a 200MHZ machine with 64 megs RAM and a TNT card with 16megs video ram and a 56k modem; sure, I'm not getting 2 ms pings (more like 200-300) and frame rates are in the 20s, not 100s, but *IT IS STILL QUITE PLAYABLE*. The same goes with games like Half-Life and Unreal.
However, as game designers continue to want to add more features, I'm concerned that they are going to forget that they actually have to make a sale to a consumer, and are hurting themselves in the end. While Unreal, for example, is playable on my system above, and given that only recently has the support for TNT cards been added, it's still well known that the game plays several magnitudes better with one of their suggested configurations: a Voodoo2 board with a 300MHZ PII processor and 128Megs of ram. Unreal came out just more than a year ago, and yet, I doubt that this configuraion can be claimed as average by consumers.
Maybe the increasing requirements for hardware are why games like Q2 (nicely playable on a low end pentium machine) are more popular for netplay than these new breads.
And what also gets me is that these game programs are getting more out of control of than more useful programs: the OS, office applications, and such. I would not be surprised to see some game in months to come to require more from the hardware than what Win2000 will require.... which really hasn't been the case until now.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
No, it is not faster that I have seen (timedemo is broken in 1.05) but for some reason it *looks* a whole lot better on my machine in linux.
I have a PII-333 running a V2 - dual booting W98 and RH 6 with kernel patched to 2.2.10
Both OS seem to give me the same framerates (> 40 on average it seems), but the real difference seems to be in how it looks (subjective, for sure). I can't explain it but it seems clearer and crisper running under Linux.
My brother has a nearly identical box to mine running NT, and he agreed when he came over and played both that the Linux game seemed to just *feel* better. I know this may not help much, there's no way to measure this - just my $.02
The q2test RPM contains a copy of mesa compiled for the 3dfx cards, and hence requires the 3dfx glide library (I can't remember where to find it -- try searching for it with rpmfind or gnorpm).
/usr/local/games/q3test, so that the correct libGL is used.
If you have an alternative video card, such as a TNT one or a G200 and have glx drivers or a mesa port for your card installed on your system, it should be safe to use the --nodeps flag to install the RPM. After installation, delete or rename the mesa shared libary from
If you do not have a 3d accelerator with linux support, don't even bother downloading the linux q3test.
I have it on my lan Party server at
http://www.aeigames.com/party/
It's on our T1 here at work, so be nice. (I know the server is NT, I don't have a choice in the matter, it's at work.)
matguy
Net. Admin.
matguy(.com)
I was mistaken about glquake. I had not actually tested it out. Quake 2 with GL works fine.
:)
On closer inspection of the glquake executable, you are indeed correct about the fxMesa stuff. To get it to work correctly, you would probably need a combination of LD_PRELOADing some special libraries, and creating a few dummy ones to satisfy some dependencies ("gcc -shared -o libglide2x.so -Wl,-soname,libglide2x.so" is a start).
One preload library would have to convert the fxMesa* calls to the equivalent glX* calls. You would also need a replacement for libvga.so that uses X for input (it would probably also have to create the window for the game as well). Some of the GGI source code may be useful here.
Of course, this is a lot of work just to get one game to work on other video cards -- it may just be easier to wait for id to release the quake source, or write one of those illegal glide wrappers that map to opengl/glx
I'm reasonably sure that it is supported now.
I have a dual PII-333 at home, and as of this morning, with Q3Test 1.07 it was running both CPU's at max. I was averaging somewhere around 30fps on 800x600 with alot of detail.
However.. I could be wrong.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
Right, I know about the ps2rate issue. In fact, I got a USB mouse to solve the 40hz sampling issue b4 the ps2rate program became well known. I went back to a PS/2 mouse after I installed ps2rate so I wouldn't have to swap mice back and forth when booting between linux and windows. (wanna buy a used USB intellimouse?)
Funny thing is that Quake2 plays and feels almost identical between the two OSes. Its Q3Test where I see a big difference. It has gotten better in windows with the 1.06 and 1.07 versions, but it still just looks better in Linux for some reason.