Doom 3 threading and black screen issues [SOLVED]

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

Ok all. It seems I'm the only person having this problem.

Doom 3 intro and menu system load just fine. Sound and opengl initialize just fine. I can play around in the menu as long as I want, and when I select New Game the intro movie starts up just fine as well. But, as soon as the realtime 3d stuff starts...BAM...nothing happens. I'm left with a black screen.

Now, here is the funny part. If I press ctrl+alt+F2 and go back to the standard old console at this point what happens is real quick just before the switch to the console is made I see a frame of the 3d goodness and the sound starts playing just fine like I was in the game. So at this point i'm back sitting at the console and in the background doom 3 is running just fine.

I can't ctrl+alt+F7 back to it or all hell breaks. So I am forced to kill the process, kill X, and restart X. This seems to me to be some kind of threading problem. Like d3 is waiting for some opengl lock that it can't get because X or openbox or something else has it. Now I did run just plain old X with a single Xterm and the same exact thing happens.

Also, by looking at doom3 output everything looks fine, and all my other 3d apps run just fine. I'm at a loss, I don't have a clue what to do at this point. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP! haha no...seriously.

If I get some interesting logs I'll post them, but all the logs look fine right now...go figure.

THE SPECS
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AMD Athlon XP 3200+
Asus A7V880 mobo (POS)
eVGA nvidia 6800 ultra
1gig RAM
gentoo-dev-source 2.6.8-r3
xorg 6.7.0-r2
nvidia 6111

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

Ok so the following popped up on the Doom 3 linux FAQ :lol:

I tried the LD_PRELOAD and that didn't fix it, but i'm re-emerging glibc and xorg-x11 with nptl support. I didn't know what nptl was so I looked it up and low and behold!!! It's the Native Posix Thread Library! The threading problem was just a guess on my part, but that's what it looked like. Man, I hope this works, I really want to play D3. I'll update when it's all done.

http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/

beastmaster · Apprentice Joined: 24 May 2004 Posts: 230

I got this blank screen issue like you described too.

dunno what's wrong with it.

Any idea anyone?

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

update
--------

I re-emerge xorg-x11 and glibc with 'nptl' added to my USE flags...no go. Nothing changed. I still get the same black screen and the same results when I ctrl+atl+F2 out. Now i'm really at a loss.

I can run a strace if someone doesn't mind helping me decode it.

ballero · n00b Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 62

No idea what's wrong there.
"ntpl" from stage1 with gcc3.4.2 and nvidia 6111, D3 works like a charm.

John5788 · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:36 pm Post subject:

im using nptl enabled glibc and it works fine. i dont think xorg-x11 has a nptl useflag
_________________
John5788

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

So let me ask you this...I have a non-nptl system. All I did was add nptl to my use flags and re-emerge xorg-x11, glibc, nvidia-kernel, and nvidia-glx. Is there anything else I need to do in order to get a full nptl system running correctly?

I read some stuff about the headers. Currently I have the 2.4 linux-headers emerged in, but I read that should be fine and I don't require the linux26-headers. Am I correct in saying this?

Thanks for all your feedback so far.

Oh, and another thing. When I run D3 and redirect output like this

reaver · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 9:18 pm Post subject:

Dunno, USE= "nptl" emerge -e world?

John5788 · Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 10:37 pm Post subject:

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

Mine looks the same. You know, my problem might very well be a hardware issue with the 6800 ultra and my Asus APG chipset (Via KT880). I don't recommended Asus for linux use. I originally had problems with it on both my linux and windows boots, until I found some beta windows drivers and did some linux tweaking. I can stick in an older GF Ti4 card and see if that runs, but that's a lot of work

Ryle · Apprentice Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Posts: 204

I ran into a very similar problem when I was running Doom 3 through Cedega. Try playing with your r_renderer value in the Doom 3 config file. I believe by default its set to "best" which for me used the nv20 renderer. When I changed the renderer to nv10 the problem went away. Try out the different renders and see which works best.

If that doesn't help you can try turning off agp and seeing if that makes a difference. Its not really a solution but it can at least identify the problem. My old mobo had issues with rendering certain games when agp was enabled (the mobo had horrible agp support).

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

Ryle,
The nv10 options didn't solve the problem. But i'd like to try disabling agp as you said b/c my mobo also has terrible agp support. How do I go about doing this? And what does disabling agp do? Can I still use my agp slot/card or does this mean I need to get a pci card? I'm a little confused.

Thanks for your input.

BonesToo · Apprentice Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Posts: 153

w00t! A VERY VERY BIG W00T!!!

I got it. Worked my A$& off too. The problem was what I should have known all along...my POS asus mobo. The problem was with the agp chipset driver used by agpgart. Ryle, I own you many many thanks! :lol:

Because of you I turned off agp support and turned on nVidia's internal agp support and now it works like a charm! I reset the r_renderer flag back to "best" as well. Not a single problem. Granted, I now have a nptl version of glibc too...so that's cool.

I also dropped my bios down to AGP 4x instead of 8x. I don't think that had anything to do with it though. I'm gonna reboot now and turn it back to 8x. Then it's time to PLAY :twisted:

Thanks to all who gave a little of their time to help me out. The best thing about Gentoo is the community.