X³: Reunion - Linux support thread

Night Nord · Post by **Night Nord** » Mon, 25. Feb 13, 21:47

They were using Intel and got Intel's people help who said what exactly working bad and why (also, they praised mesa drivers for their openness and ease of debugging). Their initial result was even worse than yours ~ 1%-5% performance of Windows version.

Why not try to contact them? They said that they will be happy to help others follow same path. Probably they may just share with you some gotchas-list they have for sure after that Intel help.

P.S. On modern systems it works just fine and MUCH better than on wine (it was lagging heavily if map is shown, for some reason). So, well, if you are working for community who ever played your games in wine there is no such thing as "low performance".

P.P.S. Initial vacancy said that Ego has plans to port other games - X3:TC and AP on linux too. Does it still holds (I'm not trying to get any ETA or rush or whatever - just curios about how far this initiative goes)? And I'm curios how much work it is, considering well-working X3 port (at some hopefully near future) and "vastly improved rendering" of further games?

PsyBlade · Post by **PsyBlade** » Mon, 25. Feb 13, 22:25

Logitech Inc. WingMan Strike Force 3D
as seen by x3r linux input config

0 - horizontal movement [left, right] - correct
1 - vertical movement [away, toward] - ambiguous naming
2 - twisting the stick [counter clock, clock] - DIFFERENT AXIS#
3 - throttle [full, zero] - DIFFERENT AXIS#
4+ unused

if you can suggest a better sdl test I can provide more info (buttons, hats)

the kde joystick viewer shows them in the same order, but 1-indexed instead of 0-indexed
additionally it has two axes for hat1 (hat2 is buttons 10-17 (u,r,d,l,ur,dr,dl,ul))
5 - hat1 [left, right]
6 - hat1 [up, down]
I don't know where hat1 went in sdl

ChemBro · Post by **ChemBro** » Mon, 25. Feb 13, 23:22

I have the feeling, that the AP Gunner mission is a little bit buggy. If I "seta" into the mission, after the cutscene with his dad, the ship flies out of the tunnel into the nothing and I can see the "outside" of the tunnel.

Also is it normal, that I don't have any HUD in this tunnel sequence?

Using Arch Linux 64bit, AMD Radeon HD 6670, Catalyst 13.2 beta 6.

Night Nord · Post by **Night Nord** » Tue, 26. Feb 13, 11:33

AFAIK it was always like that. That's why SETA is bad - it just fails to properly detect collision allowing you to fall though walls. Worse performance may increase this issue. Just don't use SETA in such "unnatural" environments.

Post by **timon37** » Tue, 26. Feb 13, 16:05

Night Nord wrote:AFAIK it was always like that. That's why SETA is bad - it just fails to properly detect collision allowing you to fall though walls. Worse performance may increase this issue. Just don't use SETA in such "unnatural" environments.

Yeah I recently flew "through" warpgates on seta twice.

Btw Ladies and gentlemen I present you Build 13 a.k.a. the lucky evil one;p
There's a fairly long disclaimer about it in the first post so anyone with time to spare, or experiencing issues should read that first.

Night Nord · Post by **Night Nord** » Tue, 26. Feb 13, 19:48

Very fast test, one sector, simple undocking + flying + shooting around.

Code: Select all

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970]
ati-drivers (fglrx) 13.2_beta3-r200

New version has heavy lighting bugs.
No shuttering, except starred experiment.

		Menu	/ Flight
	Static-Actions	/ Shooting at target-Static flight

N: FP1 FF0	310-410/20-120
N: FP1 FF1	280-300/24-139
N: FP1 FF2	278-300/22-131

O: FP1 FF0	290-300/21-137
O: FP1 FF1	295-310/28-124
O: FP1 FF2	271-310/28-124

O: FP3 FF0	242-268/31-124 *
O: FP3 FF1	250-274/20-133
O: FP3 FF2	230-254/22-130

* - this one got very slight shuttering and weird menu behaviour after re-enter
  - it stuck with 18 FPS.

Bug screenshots: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... appid=2810
Also, old version also has strange Z-fighting alike bug: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =129681325

Most probably FPS results are not very helpful - they all are the same more or less.

P.S. Running with steam community in-game to make screenshots.

proggy3456 · Post by **proggy3456** » Tue, 26. Feb 13, 20:15

13 is my lucky number.

Below are my test results. Yes, the numbers really didn't differ that much. Not a single stutter was experienced. No graphical issue showed up. FP 3 on the old version slightly worsened performance but it's almost marginal. Interesingly, FF setting did not have any effect on performance. The new build did bring a definite improvement as shader and glow effects are now visible.

Code: Select all

GTX 275, nvidia drivers. Fullscreen @ 1920x1080
texture: high, shader: high, glow enabled, light enabled, aqc disabled, no AA, no AF

Old FP 1   FF 0:   180/79 smooth
Old FP 1   FF 1:   180/79 smooth
Old FP 1   FF 2:   180/79 smooth
Old FP 3   FF 0:   171/76 smooth
Old FP 3   FF 1:   171/76 smooth
Old FP 3   FF 2:   170/76 smooth
New FP 3   FF 0:  180/81 smooth
New FP 3   FF 1:  180/81 smooth
New FP 3   FF 2:  180/81 smooth

Note: in game situation was being docked inside an Argon Trading Station in Argon Prime, which was quite stressing. During flight, fps didn't really get below that.

Full specs: see my previous post

P.S.: Boron and Paranid ships and stations seem to have a ridiculous glow intensity. See Night Nord's screenshots.

Post by **timon37** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 13:05

Night Nord wrote:Very fast test, one sector, simple undocking + flying + shooting around.

Bug screenshots: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/7656 ... appid=2810
Also, old version also has strange Z-fighting alike bug: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =129681325

Most probably FPS results are not very helpful - they all are the same more or less.

P.S. Running with steam community in-game to make screenshots.

That almost looks like ghost ship (I thought it was translucent before zooming;p).

The first one should be fixed now.

The second one was on O: FP1? Then it should be because FP1 is basically broken, it doesn't do correct lighting, which is easiest to spot in the main menu on the upper right "halo support sphere" as I call it;p
Actually can you gimme a screenshot of the main menu so I can check if it's the same as what I see?

etonbears · Post by **etonbears** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 15:09

timon37 wrote:
Night Nord wrote:AFAIK it was always like that. That's why SETA is bad - it just fails to properly detect collision allowing you to fall though walls. Worse performance may increase this issue. Just don't use SETA in such "unnatural" environments.
Yeah I recently flew "through" warpgates on seta twice.

Btw Ladies and gentlemen I present you Build 13 a.k.a. the lucky evil one;p
There's a fairly long disclaimer about it in the first post so anyone with time to spare, or experiencing issues should read that first.

Ah! so that's why I suddenly crash trying to get back into Elysium of light!

This seems to be a regression, as it works fine using X3R_main_old.

I can send you logfile + core dump + savegame to your email if you want?

Otherwise, the new version is generally faster when entering sectors with lots of content, and, as you said, uses only half the memory.

In terms of general performance, everything runs as fast as I'd expect it to, and every slight oddity I have come across is the same in the Windows version. This time around I even participated in the finale of the plot; when I played it on Windows many years ago it ran so slowly that I just got occasional still images and random noises until someone said we'd won!

Also, most of my previous problems were due to a bug in fglrx. I noticed that the catalyst 13.1 windows driver release notes said they had fixed a random crash bug for X79 motherboards, so I manually updated fglrx to catalyst 13.1 ( sadly Ubuntu are not very good at updating to new drivers ) and all the loopiness went away.

etonbears · Post by **etonbears** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 18:33

Here is another set of performance figures

GPU Radeon 5850, catalyst 13.1 driver.
New version works without any graphical issues.

FP 3 FF 0: Old 168/75 smooth : New 168/81 smooth
FP 3 FF 1: Old 156/77 smooth : New 176/81 smooth
FP 3 FF 2: Old 162/75 smooth : New 176/81 smooth

FP 2 FF 0: Old crashes : New 168/82 smooth
FP 2 FF 1: Old crashes : New 176/81 smooth
FP 2 FF 2: Old crashes : New 176/80 smooth

FP 1 FF 0: Old 169/83 smooth : New 168/82 smooth
FP 1 FF 1: Old 163/84 smooth : New 168/82 smooth
FP 1 FF 2: Old 169/83 smooth : New 176/81 smooth

Post by **timon37** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 18:44

etonbears wrote: Ah! so that's why I suddenly crash trying to get back into Elysium of light!

This seems to be a regression, as it works fine using X3R_main_old.

I can send you logfile + core dump + savegame to your email if you want?

Otherwise, the new version is generally faster when entering sectors with lots of content, and, as you said, uses only half the memory.

In terms of general performance, everything runs as fast as I'd expect it to, and every slight oddity I have come across is the same in the Windows version. This time around I even participated in the finale of the plot; when I played it on Windows many years ago it ran so slowly that I just got occasional still images and random noises until someone said we'd won!

Also, most of my previous problems were due to a bug in fglrx. I noticed that the catalyst 13.1 windows driver release notes said they had fixed a random crash bug for X79 motherboards, so I manually updated fglrx to catalyst 13.1 ( sadly Ubuntu are not very good at updating to new drivers ) and all the loopiness went away.

Thanks the savegame was enough. It was the unknown object and I also fixed rendering for it since it was incorrect.
You actually caught an abort I added precisely because I thought something could be using that code and it looked not quite right, but I had no idea if and what could be using it;p

yoyko · Post by **yoyko** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 19:55

There is some libGLEW version mismatch in the current build (at least I hope I have the current one, is there a way to find out in steam or in the gamedir what build I really have, other then just running "Verify integrity of game cache" and hoping that I have the newest one?):

Code: Select all

yoyo@julka X3 - Reunion $ ldd X3R_main | grep GLEW
        libGLEW.so.1.9 => not found
yoyo@julka X3 - Reunion $ ls -l lib/libGLEW.so*
-rwx------ 1 yoyo users 345296 Feb  9 12:25 lib/libGLEW.so
-rwx------ 1 yoyo users 345296 Feb  9 12:25 lib/libGLEW.so.1.6
-rwx------ 1 yoyo users 345296 Feb  9 12:25 lib/libGLEW.so.1.6.0

BTW, there is a bit of waste (well, 20-30MB ;) with all those versioned libs being copies instead of symlinks ;)

etonbears · Post by **etonbears** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 20:30

I also have a weird performance issue ( on my machine anyway ) to report.

If I start a full screen game, then tap the super key or alt key, Ubuntu moves the desktop to the fore to show the unity HUD. After returning to the game using alt-tab or otherwise, performance more often than not is drastically reduced ( down to 5-8 fps ).

I have also had this happening with windowed games, much more rarely, and possibly only if the screen lock has activated. I guess it could be a disagreement with Unity, since that also uses OpenGL.

It's only a minor irritation, but you might want to look into it at some point.

etonbears · Post by **etonbears** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 20:36

etonbears wrote:I also have a weird performance issue ( on my machine anyway ) to report.

If I start a full screen game, then tap the super key or alt key, Ubuntu moves the desktop to the fore to show the unity HUD. After returning to the game using alt-tab or otherwise, performance more often than not is drastically reduced ( down to 5-8 fps ).

I have also had this happening with windowed games, much more rarely, and possibly only if the screen lock has activated. I guess it could be a disagreement with Unity, since that also uses OpenGL.

It's only a minor irritation, but you might want to look into it at some point.

@timon

I have just restarted to pick up your 13.2 build ( thanks for fixing the EoL bug so quickly ) and also got the libglew error, as well. Methinks a 13.3 will be needed

EDIT: It seems you compiled against libGLEW 1.9. The libs are at version 1.6.

Post by **timon37** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 22:00

yoyko wrote:There is some libGLEW version mismatch in the current build (at least I hope I have the current one, is there a way to find out in steam or in the gamedir what build I really have, other then just running "Verify integrity of game cache" and hoping that I have the newest one?):
Code: Select all
yoyo@julka X3 - Reunion $ ldd X3R_main | grep GLEW
        libGLEW.so.1.9 => not found
yoyo@julka X3 - Reunion $ ls -l lib/libGLEW.so*
-rwx------ 1 yoyo users 345296 Feb  9 12:25 lib/libGLEW.so
-rwx------ 1 yoyo users 345296 Feb  9 12:25 lib/libGLEW.so.1.6
-rwx------ 1 yoyo users 345296 Feb  9 12:25 lib/libGLEW.so.1.6.0
BTW, there is a bit of waste (well, 20-30MB with all those versioned libs being copies instead of symlinks

Argh this just isn't my day... And I almost forgot to update the link test binaries... but it should be ok now.

Unfortunately the steam management software doesn't run on linux so I have to copy the files to windows and upload from there, which is pretty painful. Of course I'm using a separate machine and stuff like vnc/synergy/nfs/samba but it's still annoying (too bad a virtual machine causes some weird timeouts as that would have been a bit less of a hassle).

etonbears · Post by **etonbears** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 22:17

@timon

Sorry mate, now it want libXmu.so.6

Edit: Strike that, it works fine from the steam start button, but running from a terminal doesn't work.

Post by **timon37** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 22:24

etonbears wrote:@timon

Sorry mate, now it want libXmu.so.6

Edit: Strike that, it works fine from the steam start button, but running from a terminal doesn't work.

Hmm which distro are you on? Including xorg libs doesn't sound like the best idea, honestly I'm not sure if including glew is a good idea.

Try to install whatever the distro has, I'm guessing it's 64bit since otherwise you'd probably already have it?

etonbears · Post by **etonbears** » Wed, 27. Feb 13, 22:48

@timon

Yes, of course, its a 32 bit game isn't it. I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit which is recently multi-arch, so there are probably lots of 32bit libs missing ( and not all libs support multi-arch anyway).

X3R_config now complains about missing libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
and X3R_main complains about missing libXmu.so.6

I can always add them, but I'm just wondering why they are suddenly needed. Have you changed any of your direct library dependencies in the last build?

I quite like GLEW, but I tend to compile it in directly rather than use a library - seems more reliable that way.

CrunchyMachine · Post by **CrunchyMachine** » Thu, 28. Feb 13, 03:16

Radeon 7770, catalyst driver 13.1. New version works without any graphical issues.

Code: Select all

Explanation    : menu / busy part of sector / quiet part of sector

Old FP 1       : doesn't work

Old FP 2       : doesn't work

Old FP 3   FF 0: 140/25/60
Old FP 3   FF 1: 136/22/56
Old FP 3   FF 2: 136/23/57

New        FF 0: 158/26/61
New        FF 1: 154/25/60
New        FF 2: 155/25/61

I could repeat the test with the catalyst 13.2 beta if you're interested.

KayEss · Post by **KayEss** » Thu, 28. Feb 13, 03:41

etonbears wrote:I also have a weird performance issue ( on my machine anyway ) to report.

If I start a full screen game, then tap the super key or alt key, Ubuntu moves the desktop to the fore to show the unity HUD. After returning to the game using alt-tab or otherwise, performance more often than not is drastically reduced ( down to 5-8 fps ).

I have also had this happening with windowed games, much more rarely, and possibly only if the screen lock has activated. I guess it could be a disagreement with Unity, since that also uses OpenGL.

You should try to turn off compositing whilst you play games. Unity probably has some logic to try to work out when to turn it off for you, but it may get easily confused. With desktop compositing off then the game will be the only thing trying to do 3D.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

X³: Reunion - Linux support thread