not so good linux gaming experiences

wilho · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 169

Hi,

I'll have to whine a bit. Try to understand.

I started to build a htpc over a linux. I bought a nice new case for my old machine, which now will retire from active duty and serve as center of entertainment for now on, and Logitechs cordless pad for controlling it. Setting up new gentoo installation and freevo went nice and all. But the games... I have never had a high expectations with games on linux, but...

I thought that old classic PSX games suits fine for rather slow machine, poor TV resolution and pad controlling, so Gran Tourismo it is, that'll I play. But I don't after all; it hangs when intro video should start scrolling. Works well on windoze though. Well, maybe its just this one which won't work.

Now it seems that If I want to try psx games, I'll have to do it with another classic, WipeOut 2097, and since its psx emulation won't work smoothly I heard, it has to be done with its PC port through cedega. At least I don't have to deal with epsxe anymore. Installs fine. Runs...not so fine. It hangs on 1st popup window where I should select resolutions and stuff. Now this isn't very promising anymore.

I have a clue which might be wrong; there's no text in select boxes, so how can I confirm that windows corefonts are installed correctly?

Well, since experiments with emulation seems to be a painfull task, my next pick was Descent3 - that's native, It should work beatifully right? Well not exactly. I won't detect my pad, and it has terrible annoying graphic bugs; I can see through every door with this 'mirror effect', like when watching off the map in CS. At least I'm able to enter the game, playing is another thing.

Which Xorg.conf options there is for radeon (9200) kernel drm driver?

So, I'll stick with watching TV for now on, except if some of you is able to help me. Hopefully. Thanks. And feel free to recommend some games suitable to living room, which actually works.

Wampas · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 48

wilho · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 169

DRI and OpenGL are working (glxinfo says Direct rendering: YES), that shouldn't be a problem. As I said I use kernels direct rendering managers radeon driver, afaik there's no reason to go for binary drivers with radeon 9200.

Wampas · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 48

wilho · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 169

Thank you, that list is something like I looked for, though it's outdated I think - at least there's no "BackingStore" option for whatever it does...

[edit] There's no flag which I think could affect into d3 graphics, except page flipping and maybe fastwrites, but they're both disabled. I unchecked all eyecandy in game, but it won't matter, it still looks like a mess. I'm not even sure if it loads map textures.[/edit]

And Joy problem still exists, it just says "joystic not detected" in ingame menu. While this is quite old game, is there maybe been another device than /dev/input/js* earlier in 2.4 & non-udev systems which it's looking for? /dev/input/js0 spits out crap as it supposed to and joy control in freevo works fine.

There's no anything useful log I can think of, both terminal windows of cedega and epsxe aren't reporting on any errors or anything, games just lock up and that's all.

[edit2]
Here's epsxe console output when I trie to start Gran Tourismo 2, which won't work either. It hangs before I even see sony's legal notes. This shows what plugins I'm using - which won't matter actually, Ive tried them all, at least all that can be found through ngemu.com

* Running ePSXe emulator version 1.6.0.
* Memory handlers init.
* ePSXe: PSX BIOS loaded [/opt/epsxe/bios/scph1001.bin].
* Loading ISO Format [BIN/IMG2352] (+subchannel) ok
* Force NTSC cdrom detected.
* Init gpu[0][libgpuPeteMesaGL.so.1.0.75]
Tungsten Graphics, Inc.
Mesa DRI R200 20030328 AGP 4x x86/MMX+/3DNow!+ TCL
* Open gpu[0]
* Init spu[0][libspuEternal.so.1.41]
* Open spu[0]
* Init pad[0][libpadJoy-0.8.so]
* Open pad[0]
[/edit2)

wilho · Apprentice Joined: 22 Jul 2002 Posts: 169

FYI, I got Descent 3 to run flawlessly.

It was looking for wrong joystick device, so
# ln -s /dev/input/js0 /dev/js0
did the trick.

Textureloading now works fine with ati binary drivers.

Other problems still exists.