Recommendations for gaming on an intel 852GM laptop

w0kKiD · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 59 Location: Netherlands

I recently installed Gentoo on a relatively old Toshiba A15. Now this is no gaming laptop, and it never was. It has a 2.4Ghz Celeron (Northwood), 256MB of RAM and intel 852GM integrated graphics with 32mb of shared memory. However, I'm a bit of a gamer and i run all sorts of games (mainly FPSs) on my main desktop (in windows alas).
I was hoping to be able to get some basic 3d games to be able to play on my laptop for a bit of entertainment when I'm on the move. naturally, i'm not expecting to be playing doom3, but i was hoping there might be some FPSs in portage you could recommend, or any other reasonably 'advanced' games. What I mean is that i'd like something a little more than Bubbles and tetris like games or other things I can play in Flash online.
Sorry if the request is a bit general, but i really don't know where to start!

PS I run the standard i810 drivers that come with Xorg. There isn't anything better for this graphics chip to my knowledge.

Thanks in advance!

roderick · Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:27 am Post subject:

Check out intel's website regarding what the Intel 852 can play. Can't remember the exact link, but they do list compatible games for each card. If you find something interesting listed, and there isn't a native Linux version, you can probably get it running under wine.

The 852 should be able to play some of the more basic games (i.e. without T&L and probably no shaders).
_________________
If God were a pickle, I'd still say "no pickle on my burger".
http://roderick-greening.blogspot.com/

w0kKiD · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 59 Location: Netherlands

thanks for the tip! I didn't realise intel was kind enough to create a game compatibility list. I was hoping some people might still have some suggestions for specific games found in portage? thanks again.

PS Wouldn't games that might run natively in Windows have a possibility of not running in wine (when an ebuild and/or linux version is lacking) because more processing power would be required for the emulation?

roderick · Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 7:39 pm Post subject:

w0kKiD · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 59 Location: Netherlands

I probably won't bother with wine on this laptop seeing as gaming isn't its primary use.
However, i just had a go at installing and playing transfusion (games-fps/transfusion), and i've run into some trouble. when i first opened it, it looked fine, but it was ridiculously choppy, which i realised was because i hadn't gotten direct rendering configured properly. I got that sorted (although there was only 200-300 fps jump in glxgears which is rather poor), but now Transfusion is completely messed up!
The framerate seems fine, but i cant make anything out. Textures are nonexistent, i can just sort of see polygons. In the game menu I also cant see anything but squares and rectangles. However, when I foolishly tried playing UT2003, everything was fine (apart from the framerate ofcourse, which was barely playable on the very lowest settings on the simplest maps), including textures and the like (sound was a bit of an issue, but seeing as the game doesnt really work it doesnt matter). Anyone have any ideas?

PS Seeing as the topic has changed from the original intentions of this thread, should I create a new one?

EDIT: do i have to install any more stuff to get proper opengl support, or is configuring direct rendering enough?

roderick · Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:28 am Post subject:

If installing games from ebuilds, all required deps will be pulled in.

UT2003 has heavy vid card requirements to be playable. It is barely usable (though it runs) on my 945.

I tried the transfusion game, and had some problems launching it myslef (couldn't find map bb1 or something). I suspect your problem though is related to the textures. Since the Intel cards to not have built in support for compressed textures, you need a special package to do this in software (at least I think that may be your problem).

Setup/install layman if you do not have it, and then add the r330-driver overlay (yes - I know you have an Intel, but this overlay has grown beyond the r300-driver and it contains libtxcdxtn which is the package you need). Install libtxcdxtn, and then try transfusion again.
_________________
If God were a pickle, I'd still say "no pickle on my burger".
http://roderick-greening.blogspot.com/

w0kKiD · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 59 Location: Netherlands

I just installed layman, but apparently there is no overlay called r300-driver and when I run 'layman -L' there is nothing similar to it in the list.

EDIT: i have now managed to install the r300 overlay and the libtxdcxtn package, but I still have the same problem. I can make out all the shapes of things, but I guess anywhere where loading a picture onto something is involved (ie textures mainly), it fails and instead displays a solid colour or a random combination. I guess this would also explain the fact that nothing in the menu is visible, because images need to be loaded for it. Is there something extra I have to do apart from just emerging the package?

roderick · Posted: Mon Jun 11, 2007 4:50 am Post subject:

w0kKiD · n00b Joined: 17 Oct 2005 Posts: 59 Location: Netherlands

I've tried forcing s3tc as you said, but the problem remains. However, this only appears to happen in Transfusion and no other game I've tried so I'm not that bothered anymore. I recently installed UT:GOTY which has kept me happy for a while now

If I ever run into similar trouble with another game I'll just make a new thread. I'm sorted for now though. Thanks for all the help anyway! It's been a good learning experience.