[SOLVED] First person shooters on Mageia

[wilcal]

Just for yuks I've installed from the repo
the following First Person shooters on my
Cauldron test system:

MCC: freedoom
MCC: quake
MCC: smokin ( guns )
MCC: world ( of Padman )
MCC: urban ( terror )

After the install in the launch menu all
the links are created in Games/Arcade.
When quake is initially launched it
requests a HUGE ( 3.5GB ) zip file to
be downloaded which I allowed to happen.
Also when any of the other of these games
is initially launched a huge zip file
is downloaded. When I do all that then
either let the game run or launch it
again I end up at a completely blank
black desktop that seemingly goes
nowhere. I have to do a ctrl/shift/F2
to get Root control and reboot the system
to get back into things. Seems that they
are all reacting the same way so I
suspect that they are all using the
same quake engine.

This morning when I launch quake I get
a brief flash of a terminal then that
goes away.

If anyone has played any of these games
what's the secret sauce to get things
going?

Thanks.

[doktor5000]

I've not played them under Mageia 2, but are you sure your graphics driverissetup correctly and provides hardware acceleration?

Code: Select all

grep -Ri driver /var/log/Xorg.0.log

and

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glxinfo | grep version

will tell you.

[wilcal]

.....are you sure your graphics driverissetup correctly and provides hardware acceleration?....

Thanks, I'll check this out in the next days.
Rebuilt my Cauldron system from ground up this
morning so kinda get'n things back in line.

[doktor5000]

For a cauldron systems IMHO, i don't think it's guaranteed to run properly at the moment, in regards to the UsrMove which happened recently or is still in progress for some bits.

[doktor5000]

.....are you sure your graphics driverissetup correctly and provides hardware acceleration?

Code: Select all

grep -Ri driver /var/log/Xorg.0.log

and

Code: Select all

glxinfo | grep version

will tell you.

Here's the result of those commands:

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[root@localhost Documents]# grep -Ri driver /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[    22.508]    X.Org Video Driver: 12.0
[    22.508]    X.Org XInput driver : 16.0
[    22.557] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/v4l_drv.so
[    22.575]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0
[    22.738] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/intel-common/intel_drv.so
[    22.795]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[    22.795]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 12.0
[    22.795] (II) v4l driver for Video4Linux
[    22.795] (II) intel: Driver for Intel Integrated Graphics Chipsets: i810,
[    22.994] (II) intel(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: i915
[    23.012] (II) UXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations:
[    24.347]    Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
[    24.347]    ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 16.0
[    24.347] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Power Button'
[    24.423] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Power Button'
[    24.424] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard'
[    24.426] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse'
[    24.427] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.

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[root@localhost Documents]# glxinfo | grep version
server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 1.4 Mesa 8.1-devel
[root@localhost Documents]#

----------------

Looks like hardware accel is working.

I haven't tried this on an M2 system yet. I've give that a go.
This is not a critical thing for me. I'll try it again on Cauldron
in a couple months.

[doktor5000]

Shouldn't you know already how to use code tags?
And Mesa as renderer means you're not using hardware acceleration.

[zugunder]

And Mesa as renderer means you're not using hardware acceleration.

May I ask what should be reported for Intel video in case it is actually used for video/3d acceleration?
In my case:

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# glxinfo | grep version
server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.10.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20

and:

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# glxinfo | grep rendering
direct rendering: Yes

I am still on Mageia1 with KDE and Xrender seems to run faster than OpenGL and it consumes less CPU, however, it looks like I can't get any hardware acceleration with Xrender. Many desktop effects can't be activated either...

Thank you.

[wilcal]

I admit to being a little confused over this.
I would expect that during installation that
Mageia would pick hardware acceleration if it
is available and make the necessary driver
installs. I've not delved into this area
so I'm gonna be a bit of a neophyte.

I guess from what doktor5000 has indicated that
a mobo with the Intel i810 really does not
feature "hardware acceleration". This being
found when I ran the two su commands he suggested.

I've run those two commands on my Video Editing
computer and here are the results from that:

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[root@localhost wilcal]# grep -Ri driver /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[    12.387]    X.Org Video Driver: 11.0
[    12.387]    X.Org XInput driver : 13.0
[    12.388] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/v4l_drv.so
[    12.389]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[    12.393] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/nouveau_drv.so
[    12.393]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[    12.393]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[    12.393] (II) v4l driver for Video4Linux
[    12.393] (II) NOUVEAU driver
[    12.393] (II) NOUVEAU driver for NVIDIA chipset families :
[    12.394] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/nouveau_drv.so
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1920x1200": 154.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 74.0 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1600x1200": 162.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 75.0 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1680x1050": 146.2 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 65.3 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1280x1024": 108.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 64.0 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1440x900": 106.5 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 55.9 kHz, 59.9 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1280x960": 108.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 60.0 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1280x800": 83.5 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 49.7 kHz, 59.8 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "1024x768": 65.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 48.4 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "800x600": 40.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 37.9 kHz, 60.3 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "800x600": 36.0 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 35.2 kHz, 56.2 Hz
[    12.623] (**) NOUVEAU(0):  Driver mode "640x480": 25.2 MHz (scaled from 0.0 MHz), 31.5 kHz, 60.0 Hz
[    12.624]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[    12.630] (II) NOUVEAU(0): [DRI2]   DRI driver: nouveau
[    12.630] (II) NOUVEAU(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: nouveau
[    12.634] (II) EXA(0): Driver allocated offscreen pixmaps
[    12.634] (II) EXA(0): Driver registered support for the following operations:
[    12.722]    Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
[    12.722]    ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 13.0
[    12.722] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Power Button'
[    12.739] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Power Button'
[    12.740] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.740] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.741] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.741] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.741] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:1024'
[    12.742] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.742] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:2011'
[    12.743] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.744] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.744] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.744] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.744] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.745] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.745] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    12.745] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[root@localhost wilcal]# glxinfo | grep version                                                                           
server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30


Would this platform feature "hardware acceleration" as the only video
frame buffer is a Nvidia GeForce GT 440 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit? Or is it
really just using the speed of the i7 processor to render the video.

Maybe these games will only work with something like ATI or Nvidia
graphics cards ( hardware acceleration )?

Thanks all.

[zugunder]

If I am not mistaken, you have active a Nuveau free driver for nVidia cards, so I guess it will not give you many FPS in any game (in case the game starts at all ).
Not sure about video editing, probably Nuveau has included some support for certain functions, but the games are almost out of question...

[wilcal]

If I am not mistaken, you have active a Nuveau free driver for nVidia cards, so I guess it will not give you many FPS in any game (in case the game starts at all ).
Not sure about video editing, probably Nuveau has included some support for certain functions

I can edit 1920x1024 MOV videos directly in OpenShot and view dissolve transitions,
in the editor, with no problem at all. The load on the i7 8-threads is very low, even
during the transitions.

[wilcal]

Do note I have more then enough flexability
in my video editing platform to A<=>B hard
drives and Mageia ( driver ) installs.
That to try different drivers and to see
if these first person shooters work. But,
do note that when you first run one they
download about 3.5GB of compressed data
file. While I have a very high data cap
doing it a dozen or so times can add up.

[wilcal]

but the games are almost out of question...

Then how and what driver would you install to support these games?

[zugunder]

I am NOT a big specialist in that since I have only Intel graphics on my rather old laptop, but AFAIK if you have a nVidia card and want to play 3D shooters etc, you need a proprietary driver from nVidia - and I am sure they are available in Mageia's repos.
One more problem (I am not sure if it already fixed or not) is switching between embedded Intel and external nVidia graphics. If you do not need to switch between them on the fly, you could probably manage them via bios settings during boot. If you need to save battery - google for "bumblebee" driver for Linux, maybe it is available for Mageia... In MS it works via "Optimus" (just FYI).

[wilcal]

I am a big specialist in that since I have only Intel graphics on my rather old laptop, but AFAIK if you have a nVidia card and want to play 3D shooters etc, you need a proprietary driver from nVidia - and I am sure they are available in Mageia's repos.

In the M2 repo now is:

x11-driver-video-nvidia-current
Version: 295.49-2.mga2.nonfree

What looks to get installed innitially is:

x11-driver-video-nouveau
Version: 0.0.16-0.20120322.1.mga2

Lemme poke around with this a little

Thanks

[zugunder]

So it looks like that by default Mageia chooses a free driver to install (Nuveau in case of nVidia card).

[wilcal]

So it looks like that by default Mageia chooses a free driver to install (Nuveau in case of nVidia card).

It seems to be the case at least on my system.
Anyway, I'm gonna poke around in this for awhile.
Maybe Doktor500 can point us to a explaination
for this somewhere. It may just be a case of documentation.
The Nuveau driver gets installed automatically if an Nvidia
frame buffer is sensed and it does this and not that.
After you can install the Nvidia driver and the reason
for doing that is xx ( 1st person shooter games? ).

I did try Flightgear a couple times on my i7/Nvidia
platform and I was suprised that it didn't perform
very well. Maybe I've got to switch to the Nvidia
driver for that too.

[Ken-Bergen]

So it looks like that by default Mageia chooses a free driver to install (Nuveau in case of nVidia card).

It seems to be the case at least on my system.
Anyway, I'm gonna poke around in this for awhile.
Maybe Doktor500 can point us to a explaination
for this somewhere.

If you installed from anything but the Live CD that's to be expected as only the Live CD has propitiatory drivers.

If you enable the Nonfree repositories then run

Code: Select all

drakx11

and except the default you should get a prompt that a propitiatory drive is available and if you say Yes to installing it everything should be done for you.

[zugunder]

BTW, what is your "Video Editing" computer? If it is a laptop (I do not know if they install GT440 into them, but still...) with i7 and Optimus, then most likely only Intel graphics is active by default.
What driver(s) is loaded in your system? Check

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$ lsmod | grep nouveau

And you also may take a look at what KInfoCenter tells you in Graphical Information - OpenGL. If there are no traces of nVidia, then, very likely, only Intel graphics is active.

[wilcal]

OK so I did it this way

MCC -> Hardware -> Set up the graphical server ->

That displayed the Nvidia 400 board and clicking
on that bar, after a bit, brought up the notice
that there was a proprietary driver available.
So I let that install.

Here's the result of Doktor5000's code:

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[root@localhost wilcal]# grep -Ri driver /var/log/Xorg.0.log
[    30.916]    X.Org Video Driver: 11.0
[    30.916]    X.Org XInput driver : 13.0
[    30.961] (II) Loading /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/drivers/v4l_drv.so
[    30.961]    ABI class: X.Org Video Driver, version 11.0
[    32.299]    Module class: X.Org Video Driver
[    32.315] (II) v4l driver for Video4Linux
[    32.315] (II) NVIDIA dlloader X Driver  295.49  Mon Apr 30 23:48:24 PDT 2012
[    32.315] (II) NVIDIA Unified Driver for all Supported NVIDIA GPUs
[    33.470] (II) NVIDIA(0): [DRI2]   VDPAU driver: nvidia
[    33.651]    Module class: X.Org XInput Driver
[    33.651]    ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 13.0
[    33.651] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Power Button'
[    33.670] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Power Button'
[    33.671] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.671] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.671] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.671] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.672] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:1024'
[    33.673] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.673] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'Logitech Unifying Device. Wireless PID:2011'
[    33.674] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.674] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.674] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.675] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.675] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.675] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.675] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[    33.676] (II) No input driver specified, ignoring this device.
[root@localhost wilcal]# glxinfo | grep version
server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 4.2.0 NVIDIA 295.49
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.20 NVIDIA via Cg compiler


so that changed a lot. I once again tried the previously sluggish
Flightgear, it was get'n maybe 15 frames a sec at best. With the
Nvidia driver there were times Flightgear was reporting over 120
frames per second. Never less then 60 even with complex scenery.

So that made a big difference. So I'll try the first person shooters
again in the next days.

[zugunder]

So the things you reported in your last post are from your video editing machine or the other one you mentioned in the very beginning of the thread? What is exactly the hardware you tested?

Thank you.

[wilcal]

So the things you reported in your last post are from your video editing machine or the other one you mentioned in the very beginning of the thread? What is exactly the hardware you tested?

Here's the hardware on the video editing machine:

SandyBridge - Video editing machine
-----------------------------------
Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz overclocked to 3.8GHz LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GV-N440D3-1GI GeForce GT 440 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
RTL8111/8168B PCI Express 1Gbit Ethernet
CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III ( all Mageia 2 OS )
Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7260S-0B
Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition with Docking Station
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
Kingwin KF-91-BK SATA Mobile Rack
Kingwin KF-91-T-BK SATA Mobile Rack Tray
Logitech K520 Wireless USB Keyboard & Mouse

So when I loaded up Mageia 2 to this thing it worked
so well I just decided to leave things alone. Why
change something that runs like lightning. A few
months ago I tinkered with Flightgear and on the
above platform it worked, but, poorly. Maybe 6 -> 12
frames a second. I didn't put much effort into
trying to find out why.

So then a couple weeks ago I thought I try a
couple of the 1st person shooters on it and
ran into a blank screen. That's when I opened
this thread.

I don't think there's a strong enough statement
in the Mageia documentation stating that games
like Fightgear and First Person shooters won't
work very well, or not at all, without a
specific proprietary driver like the Nvidia
driver.

I've since installed the Nvidia driver on a
Mageia 2 install ( removable hard drive )
on the above machine. And to that install I
installed Flightgear. It it now runs sometimes
as fast as 130 frames per second. Pretty
impressive. It's just like flying an
airplane.

I'll be installing the Nvidia driver on
the Mageia 2 install on the OCZ Vertex 4
SSD drive in the next days and see how
that goes. Should be fun.

I've tried Flightgear and First Person shooters
on a couple of my older machines ( Intel HD
video on MoBo ) and that does not seem to
work very well at all.

Thanks for the help.

[zugunder]

Thanks for the info.
The outcome is somewhat predictable - proprietary nVidia driver works faster (actually, much faster) than a free one, and Intel graphics can't be compared to an external video card... And I do not know if the things are better now with intel drivers, but OpenGL support by intel drivers on my machine with Mageia1 is pretty bad, so that the desktop effects (that are available) run noticeably faster with Xrender.

[wilcal]

Thanks for the info.

Opps one other piece of important hardware info
that I am using. I am using a 26in Samsung T260
26in monitor. It's got some years on it but it's
still pretty good by todays standards. The
screen resolution is 1920x1200. Mageia 1, 2
and Cauldron deal with this monitor wonderfully
well. I do have the monitor connected to other
lower video capable computers, two or which
are running Mageia 2, and they deal with it
wonderfully well.

[wilcal]

OK I've tagged this one {SOLVED} as with the Nvidia driver
installed I was able to at least start urbanterror. I'm not
gonna put time into figuring out how this works for now.

FlightGear is much more fun for me