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-The Linux Gamers' HOWTO
-!!!The Linux Gamers' HOWTO
-!Peter Jay Salzman
-
- p@dirac.org
-
-
-
-
-Copyright (c) 2001 by Peter Jay Salzman
-
-
-
-v..9.13, 2002-05-08
-
-
-
-__Abstract__
-
-
-
- The same questions get asked repeatedly on Linux related mailing lists and news
-groups. Many of them arise because people don't know as much as they should about how
-things "work" on Linux, at least, as far as games go. Gaming can be a tough pursuit; it
-requires knowledge from an incredibly vast range of topics from compilers to libraries to
-system administration to networking to XFree86 administration ... you get the picture.
-Every aspect of your computer plays a role in gaming. It's a demanding topic, but this fact
-is shadowed by the primary goal of gaming: to have fun and blow off some steam.
-
-
-
- This document is a stepping stone to get the most common problems resolved and to
-give people the knowledge to begin thinking intelligently about what is going on with their
-games. Just as with anything else on Linux, you need to know a little more about what's
-going on behind the scenes with your system to be able to keep your games healthy or to
-diagnose and fix them when they're not.
-
-----; __Table of Contents__; 1. Administra: ; 1.1. Authorship and Copyright; 1.2. Acknowledgements; 1.3. Latest Version and Translations; 2. Definitions: Types Of Games: ; 2.1. Arcade style; 2.2. Card, logic and board games; 2.3. Text Adventure (aka Interactive Fiction); 2.4. Graphical Adventures; 2.5. Simulation (aka Sims); 2.6. Strategy (aka Strats); 2.7. First Person Shooter (aka FPS); 2.8. Side Scrollers; 2.9. Third Person Shooters; 2.10. Role Playing Game (aka RPG); 3. Libraries: ; 3.1. What is Glide2?; 3.2. What is Glide3?; 3.3. What is OpenGL?; 3.4. What is Mesa?; 3.5. What is DRI?; 3.6. What is GLX?; 3.7. What is Utah GLX?; 3.8. What is xlib?; 3.9. What is SDL (Simple !DirectMedia Layer)?; 3.10. What is GGI?; 3.11. What is SVGAlib? Frame buffer? Console?; 3.12. What is OpenAL?; 3.13. What is DirectX?; 4. Definitions: Video Card and 3D Terminology: ; 4.1. Textures; 4.2. T8L: Transform and Lighting; 4.3. AA: Anti Aliasing; 4.4. FSAA: Full Screen Anti-Aliasing; 4.5. Mip Mapping; 4.6. Texture Filtering; 4.7. Point Sampling Texture Filtering; 4.8. Bilinear Texture Filtering; 4.9. Trilinear Texture Filtering; 4.10. Anisotropic Texture Filtering; 4.11. Z Buffering; 5. XFree86 and You: ; 5.1. Getting information about your X system; 6. Various Topics: ; 6.1. Memory Type Register Ranges; 6.2. Milking performance from your system for all it's worth; 6.3. About libraries on Linux; 7. When Bad Things Happen To Good People: ; 7.1. RTFM!; 7.2. Look For Updates and Patches; 7.3. Newsgroups; 7.4. Google Group Search; 7.5. Debugging: call traces and core files; 7.6. Saved Games; 7.7. What to do when a file or library isn't being found
-(better living through strace); 7.8. Hosed consoles; 8. Hardware: ; 8.1. Which video card is the best?; 8.2. Which sound card is best?; 9. Miscellaneous Problems: ; 9.1. Hardware Acceleration Problems; 9.2. Hardware acceleration works only for the root user; 9.3. Why isn't my sound working?; 10. Emulation and Virtual Machines: ; 10.1. Apple 8-bit; 10.2. DOS; 10.3. Win16; 10.4. Win32; 11. Interpreters: ; 11.1. SCUMM Engine (!LucasArts); 11.2. AGI: Adventure Gaming Interface (Sierra); 11.3. SCI: SCript Interpreter or Sierra Creative Interpreter (Sierra); 11.4. Infocom Adventures (Infocom, Activision); 11.5. Scott Adams Adventures (Adventure International); 11.6. Ultima 7 (Origin, Electronic Arts); 12. Websites: ; 12.1. Meta gaming websites; 12.2. Commercial Linux Game Websites; 12.3. Other Websites Of Note
-!!!1. Administra
-
- If you have ideas, corrections or questions relating to this HOWTO, please email me. By
-receiving feedback on this howto (even if I don't have the time to answer), you make me feel
-like I'm doing something useful. In turn, it motivates me to write more and add to this
-document. You can reach me at `p@dirac.orgb. My web page is www.dirac.org/p and my Linux pages are at www.dirac.org/linux. Please do send comments and suggestions for this
-howto. Even if I don't take your suggestions, your input is graciously received.
-
-
-
- I assume a working knowledge of Linux, so I use some topics like runlevels and modules
-without defining them. If there are enough questions (or even protests!) I'll add more basic
-information to this document.
-
-----
-!!1.1. Authorship and Copyright
-
- This document is copyright (c) 2001 Peter Jay Salzman, `p@dirac.orgb.
-Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of
-the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1, except for the provisions I list in the
-next paragraph. I hate HOWTO's that include the license; it's a tree killer. You can
-read the GNU FDL at www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html.
-
-
-
-
- If you want to create a derivative work or publish this HOWTO for commercial
-purposes, contact me first. This will give me a chance to give you the most recent
-version. I'd also appreciate either a copy of whatever it is you're doing or a
-spinach, garlic, mushroom, feta cheese and artichoke heart pizza.
-
-----
-!!1.2. Acknowledgements
-
- Thanks to Mike Phillips who commented extensively on the howto. Thanks to Dmitry
-Samoyloff, `dsamoyloff@yandex.rub, for translating this document into Russian.
-It blew my mind when he told me that he was translating my words to Russian.
-
-----
-!!1.3. Latest Version and Translations
-
-The latest version can be found at cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/lgh/LG-HOWTO, but this is my own
-personal working copy. You can get the most recent polished version (whatever that
-means!) from www.linuxdoc.org and www.dirac.org/linux/writing.
-
-
-
- Dmitry Samoyloff, `dsamoyloff@mail.rub, is the maintainer of the
-Russian translation of this HOWTO. The most recent version can be found at linuxgames.hut.ru/data/docs/HOWTO/LG-HOWTO-ru.html.
-
-----
-!!!2. Definitions: Types Of Games
-
- Not everyone knows the different types of games that are out there,
-so in an effort to form a common language that we can all use, I'll run
-through each game type and provide a very brief history.
-
-----
-!!2.1. Arcade style
-
- Although arcade games had their heydey in the 80's, they are nonetheless very
-popular. Nothing will ever replace walking into a dark, crowded and noisy arcade gallery,
-popping a quarter into your favorite machine and playing an old fashioned game of Space
-Invaders. Arcade style games attempt to simulate the arcade games themselves. There is
-such a vast number of these things that it's nearly impossible to enumerate them all, but
-they include clones of Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Missile Command and Galaxian.
-
-
-----
-!!2.2. Card, logic and board games
-
- Computer based card games simulate a card game (poker, solitaire, etc); the type of
-game you'd play on a table top with friends, but the program simulates your opponent(s).
-
-
-
-
- Logic games usually simulate some well known logic puzzle like Master Mind or the
-game where you have put sliding numbered tiles in order inside a box.
-
-
-
- Computer based board games simulate some kind of board game you'd play on a table
-top with friends, like monopoly, Mille Bourne, chess or checkers. The program simulates
-your opponent.
-
-----
-!!2.3. Text Adventure (aka Interactive Fiction)
-
- Once upon a time, when Apple ]
[[, Commodore, and Atari ruled the world, text
-adventures were the game of choice of `intelligent folk'. They were self contained
-executables on disks (even casettes). These days we're a bit more sophisticated than
-that. Now there's usually a data file and an interpreter. The interpreter reads data
-files and provides the gaming interface. The data file is the actual game, and is often
-implemented by a scripting language. So for example, you you could have the two Scott
-Adams datafiles "The Count.dat" and "Voodoo Castle.dat". To
-actually play the games, you'd invoke the scottfree interpreter with the name of the
-datafile you wish to play.
-
-
-
- The first adventure game was Adventure (actually "ADVENT",
-written on a PDP-1 in 1972). You can play adventure yourself (actually, a
-descendent); it comes with "bsd games" on most Linux distros.
-
-
-
- They became popularized by Scott Adams, who is widely considered to be the father
-of text adventuring. You can play Scott Adams adventures using
-scottfree, the game file interpreter written by Alan Cox, and
-the old data files, which are now shareware and can be download from Scott Adams' website.
-
-
-
-
- Text adventures climaxed in the 80's with Infocom. There are many Infocom
-interpreters available for Linux; the most popular one being
-frotz. You still need the data files, and these are all still
-owned and considered commercial property by Activision.
-
-
-
- As computer graphics became easier and more powerful, text adventures gave
-rise to graphic adventures. The death of interactive fiction more or less coincided
-with the bankruptcy of Infocom.
-
-----
-!!2.4. Graphical Adventures
-
- Graphical adventures are, at heart, text adventures on steroids. The degree to
-which they use graphics varies widely. Back in the 80's, they were little more than text
-adventures which showed a screen of static graphics. When you picked up an item, the
-background would be redrawn without the item appearing. The canonical example would be
-the so-called `Hi-Res Adventures' like The Wizard And The Princess. Later on, the
-sophisticated graphical adventures had your character roaming around the screen, and you
-could even use a mouse, but the interface remained purely text.
-
-
-
- Next there are the `point and click adventures' which basically have no text
-interface at all, and often have dynamic graphics, like a cat wandering around the room
-while you're deciding what to do next. In these games, you point at an object (say, a
-book) and can choose from a pull-down list of functions. Kind of like object oriented
-adventuring. :) There aren't many graphical adventures written natively for Linux. The
-only one I can think of is Hopkins FBI (which happens to be my favorite game for Linux).
-
-
-----
-!!2.5. Simulation (aka Sims)
-
- Simulations strive to immerse the player behind the controls of something
-they normally wouldn't have access to. This could be something real like a fighter
-jet or something imaginary like a mechanized warrior combat unit. In either case,
-sims strive for realism.
-
-
-
- Some sims have little or no strategy. They simply put you in a cockpit to give you
-the thrill of piloting a plane. Some of them are considerably more complex, and there's
-often a fine line between sims and strats (see the next section). A good example would be
-Heavy Gear III or Flight Gear. These days sims and strats are nearly indestinguishable,
-but a long time ago, sims were all real time while strats were all turn based. This is
-somewhat awkward for modern day use, since a game like Warcraft which everyone knows as a
-strat, would be a sim by definition.
-
-----
-!!2.6. Strategy (aka Strats)
-
- Strategy games have their roots in old Avalon type board games like Panzer
-Leader and old war strategy games published by SSI. Generally, they simulate some
-kind of scenario. The scenario can be peaceful, like running a successful city or
-illegal drug selling operation (!SimCity or !DrugWars). The scenario can also be
-total all-out war strategy game like Myth II. The types of games usually take a long
-time to complete and require a lot of brainpower.
-
-
-
- Strats can be further divided into two classes: real time and turn based.
-Real time strats are based on the concept of you-snooze-you-lose. For example,
-you're managing a city and a fire erupts somewhere. The more time it takes for you
-mobilize the fire fighters, the more damage the fire does. Turn based strats are
-more like chess---the computer takes a turn and then the player takes a turn.
-
-
-----
-!!2.7. First Person Shooter (aka FPS)
-
- What light through yonder window breaks? It must be the flash of the double
-barreled shotgun! We have a long and twisted history with FPS games which started when id
-Games released the code for Doom. The code base has forked and merged numerous times.
-Other previously closed engines opened up, many engines are playable via emulators, many
-commercial FPS games were released for Linux and there are quite a number of FPS engines
-which started life as open source projects. Although you may not be able to play your
-''favorite'' FPS under Linux (Half-Life plays great under winex) Linux
-definitely has no deficiency here!
-
-
-
- First person shooters are characterized by two things. First, you pretty much blow
-up everything you see. Second, the action takes place in first person. That is, look
-through the eyes of the character who's doing all the shooting. You may even see your
-hands or weapon at the bottom of the screen. Some are set in fantasy (Hexen), others are
-science fiction (Quake II), and some are set in the present day `real world' (Soldier Of
-Fortune).
-
-
-
- Just like text adventures, FPS fit the engine/datafile format. The engine refers to
-the actual game itself (Doom, Quake, Heretic2) and plays out the maps and bad guys
-outlined by the datafile (doom2.wad, pak0.pak, etc). Many FPS games allow people to write
-their own non-commercial datafile. There are hundreds, even thousands of non-commercial
-Doom datafiles that you can download for free off the net. Often, companies discard
-their engines and put them into the open source community so we can hack and improve them.
-However, the original data files are kept proprietary. To this day, you still have to
-purchase doom.wad.
-
-----
-!!2.8. Side Scrollers
-
- Side scrollers are similar to FPS but you view your character as a 2D figure who
-runs around various screens shooting at things or performing tasks. Examples would be
-Abuse for Linux and the original Duke Nukem. They don't necessarily have to be violent,
-like xscavenger, a clone of the old 8-bit game Lode Runner.
-
-
-----
-!!2.9. Third Person Shooters
-
- Similar to FPS, but you view your character in third person and in 3D. On modern
-third person shooters you can usually do some really kick-butt maneuvers like Jackie Chan
-style back flips and side rolls. The canonical example would be Tomb Raider. On the
-Linux platform, we have Heretic 2 and Heavy Metal FAKK.
-
-----
-!!2.10. Role Playing Game (aka RPG)
-
- Anyone who has played games like Dungeons 8 Dragons or Call of Cthulhu knows
-exactly what an RPG is. You play a character, sometimes more than one, characterized by
-traits (eg strength, dexterity), skills (eg explosives, basket weaving, mechanics) and
-properties (levels, cash). As you play, the character becomes more powerful and the game
-adjusts itself accordingly, so instead of fighting orcs, at high levels you start fighting
-black dragons. The rewards increase correspondingly. At low levels you might get some
-gold pieces as a reward for winning a battle. At high levels, you might get a magic sword
-or a kick-butt assault rifle.
-
-
-
- RPG's generally have a quest with a well defined ending. In nethack you need
-to retrieve the amulet of Yendor for your god. In Ultima II, you destroy the evil
-sorceress Minax. At some point, your character becomes powerful enough that you can
-`go for it' and try to complete the quest.
-
-
-
- The canonical RPG on Linux is Rogue (the ncurses library can be traced back to the
-screen handling routines that were written for Rogue!) and its infinite variants like
-Zangband and Nethack (which has infinite variants itself). Some of them are quite
-complicated and are great feats of programming. There seems to be a deficiency of
-commercial RPGs on Linux. If you don't count all the rogue variants, there also seems to
-deficiency of open source RPGs as well.
-
-
-
- While the insanely popular Ultima series, written by Richard Garriot (aka Lord
-British) for Origin, was not the first RPG, it popularized and propelled the RPG genre
-into mainstream. Ultima I was released in 1987 and was the game that launched 9
-(depending on how you want to count them) very popular sequels, finishing with Ultima IX:
-Ascension. You can play Ultima VII under Linux with Exult.
-
-----
-!!!3. Libraries
-
- We'll run through the different gaming libraries you'll see under Linux.
-
-----
-!!3.1. What is Glide2?
-
- Glide2 is an low level graphics API plus driver that accesses 3D hardware accelerated
-functions on 3dfx's Voodoo I, II and III cards, under XFree86 3.*.
-
-
-
- A program can ONLY use the special hardware accelerated features of these cards by
-using the Glide2 library in one of two ways:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
-directly: written natively using Glide2 (Myth II, Descent III)
-
-
-*
-*
-
-indirectly: uses Mesa built with a Glide2 backend to simulate OpenGL
-(Rune, Deux Ex, Unreal Tournament)
-
-
-*
-
- 3dfx opened up the specifications and source code to the open source community.
-This allowed Daryll Strauss to port Glide2 to Linux which enabled XFree86 3.* users to use
-Voodoo I, II and III cards under Linux.
-
-
-
- Since Glide2 accesses the video board directly, applications that use Glide2 will
-either need to be run by root. A way around this was to create the kernel 3dfx module.
-This module (and the corresponding device /dev/3dfx) allows Glide2 hardware acceleration for
-non-root users of non-setuid graphics applications.
-
-
-
- Unfortunately, Glide2 is also a dead issue. It's only used for Voodoo I, II, III
-boards (which are becoming outdated), under XFree86 3.* (most people use XFree86 4.*).
-And since 3dfx is now a defunct company, it's a sure bet that no more work will be done on
-Glide2 and no more games will be written using Glide2.
-
-----
-!!3.2. What is Glide3?
-
- Glide3 is not a direct API used to program a game with, unlike Glide2. It exists
-only to support DRI on Voodoo III, IV and V boards under XFree86 4.*. None of the games
-which use Glide2 will work with Glide3. This shouldn't be a surprise since Glide2 and Glide
-3 support different video boards and different versions of XFree86. The only video card
-that can use both Glide2 (under XFree86 3.*) and Glide3 (under XFree86 4.*) is the Voodoo
-III. It's reported that a Voodoo III using Glide2 will outperform a Voodoo III using
-Glide3.
-
-
-
- When you use a Voodoo III, IV or V under XFree86 4.*, you want to use a version of
-Mesa (see Section 3.4) which was compiled to use Glide3 as a backend to ensure
-hardware accelerated OpenGL on your system.
-
-----
-!!3.3. What is OpenGL?
-
- OpenGL is a high level graphics programming API originally developed by SGI, and it
-became an industry standard for 2D and 3D graphics programming. It is defined and
-maintained by the Architectural Revision Board (ARB), an organization whose include SGI,
-IBM, DEC, and Microsoft. OpenGL provides a powerful, complete and generic feature set for
-2D and 3D graphics operations.
-
-
-
- There are 3 canonical parts to OpenGL:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
- GL: The OpenGL core calls
-
-
-*
-*
-
- GLU: The utility calls
-
-
-*
-*
-
- GLUT: Tools for system independent window event handling (mouse event
-handling, keyboard events, etc.).
-
-
-*
-
- OpenGL is not only an API, it's also an implementation, written by SGI. The
-implementation tries to use hardware acceleration for various graphics operations whenever
-available, which depends on what videocard you have in you computer. If hardware
-acceleration is not possible for a specific task, OpenGL falls back on software rendering.
-This means that when you get OpenGL from SGI, if you want any kind of hardware acceleration
-at all, it must be OpenGL written and compiled specifically for some graphics card.
-Otherwise, all you'll get is software rendering. The same thing is true for OpenGL clones,
-like Mesa.
-
-
-
- OpenGL is the open source equivalent to Direct3D, a component of DirectX (Section 3.13). The important difference being that since OpenGL is open (and DirectX is
-closed), games written in OpenGL are much easier to port to Linux while games written using
-DirectX at this point in time are impossible to port to Linux.
-
-----
-!!3.4. What is Mesa?
-
- Mesa `www.mesa3d.orgb is a free
-implementation of the OpenGL API, designed and written by Brian Paul. While it's not
-officially certified (that would take more money than an open source project has), it's an
-almost fully compliant OpenGL implementation conforming to the ARB specifications. It's
-reported that Mesa is even faster than SGI's own OpenGL implementation.
-
-
-
- Just like OpenGL, Mesa makes use of hardware acceleration whenever possible. When a
-particular graphics task isn't able to be hardware accelerated by the video card, it's
-software rendered; the task is done by your computer's CPU instead. This means that there
-are different builds of Mesa depending on what kind of video card you have. Each build uses
-a different library as a backend renderer. For example, if you have a Voodoo I, II or III
-card under XFree86 3.*, you'd use mesa+glide2 (written by David Bucciarelli) which is the
-Mesa implementation of OpenGL that uses Glide2 as a backend to render for graphical
-operations.
-
-----
-!!3.5. What is DRI?
-
- Graphics rendering has 3 players: the client application (like Quake 3), the X server
-and the hardware (the graphics card). Previously, client applications were prohibited from
-writing directly to hardware, and there was a good reason for this. A program that is
-allowed to directly write to hardware can crash the system in any number of ways. Rather
-than trusting programmers to write totally bug free, cooperative programs that access
-hardware, Linux simply disallowed it. However, that changed with X 4.* with DRI (Direct
-Rendering Infrastructure `www.dri.sourceforge.netb. DRI allows X clients to write 3D
-rendering information directly to the video card in a safe and cooperative manner.
-
-
-
- DRI gets the X server out of the way so the 3D driver (Mesa or OpenGL) can talk
-directly to the hardware. This speeds things up. The 3D rendering information doesn't even
-have to be hardware accelerated. On a technical note, this has a number of virtues.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
- Vertex data doesn't have to be encoded/decoded via GLX.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- Graphics data doesn't have to be sent over a socket to the X server.
-
-
-
-*
-*
-
- On single processor machines the CPU doesn't have to change context
-between X and its client to render the graphics.
-
-
-*----
-!!3.6. What is GLX?
-
- GLX is the X extension used by OpenGL programs, it is the glue between the platform
-independent OpenGL and platform dependent X.
-
-----
-!!3.7. What is Utah GLX?
-
- Utah-GLX is the precursor to DRI. It makes some different design decisions,
-regarding separation of data and methods of accessing the video card. (For instance, it
-relies on root privileges rather than creating the kernel infrastructure necessary for
-secure access). It provides support for (at this time) a couple cards which are not
-well-supported in DRI. Particularly, the ATI Rage Pro family, S3 Virge (although anyone
-using this for gaming is, well, nuts), and an open source TNT/TNT2 driver (which is very
-incomplete). The TNT/TNT2 driver is based on reverse-engineering of the obfuscated source
-code release of the X 3.3 drivers by nVidia. However, they're really incomplete, and
-effectively, unusable.
-
-
-
- As a side note, until the G400 stuff is *really* fixed in DRI, it's also the better
-G400 support-but hopefully that will not be an issue by the time this HOWTO is
-published.
-
-----
-!!3.8. What is xlib?
-
- Every once in awhile you'll see some sicko (said with respect) write a game in xlib.
-It is a set of C libraries which comprise the lowest level programming interface for
-XFree86. Any graphics programming in X ultimately makes use of the xlib library.
-
-
-
- It's not an understatement to say that xlib is arcane and complicated. A program
-that simply connects to an X server, puts up a window and does nothing else could be a
-complicated 40 line program with arcane and very long named functions. Because of this,
-there are lots of libraries which hide the details of xlib programming. Some of these
-libraries focus on drawing in windows (like SDL). Other libraries are more concerned with
-widgets within windows (eg pulldown menus, radio buttons and text boxes); these types of
-libraries are called widget sets. Gtk is the canonical widget set on Linux, but there are
-many others like fltk (a small C++ widget set), Xaw, Qt (the widget set of KDE), and Motif
-(the widget set used by Netscape). Motif used to be king of the Unix world, but was very
-expensive to license. The Open Group opened up Motif's license for non-commercial use, but
-it was too little too late. People now use Lesstif, a Motif clone.
-
-----
-!!3.9. What is SDL (Simple !DirectMedia Layer)?
-
- SDL `www.libsdl.orgb is a library by Loki
-Software's Sam Lantiga (graduate of UCD, yeah!). It's actually a meta-library, meaning that
-not only is it a graphics library which hides the details of xlib programming, it provides
-an easy interface for sound, music and event handling. It's LGPL'd and provides joystick
-and OpenGL support as well. The 40 line arcane program I mentioned in the xlib section can
-easily be written in 6 lines of straightforward code using SDL.
-
-
-
- The most striking part of SDL is that it's a cross platform library. Except for a
-few details about header files and compiling, a program written in SDL will compile under
-Linux, MS Windows, BeOS, MacOS, MacOS X, Solaris, IRIX, FreeBSD, QNX and OSF. There are SDL
-extentions written by various people to do things like handle any graphics format you care
-to mention, play mpegs, display truetype fonts, sprite handling and just about everything
-under the sun. SDL is an example of what all graphics libraries should strive for.
-
-
-
-
- Sam had an ulterior motive for writing such a cool library. He's was the lead
-programmer for Loki Software, which used SDL in all of its games except for Quake3.
-
-----
-!!3.10. What is GGI?
-
- GGI `www.ggi-project.orgb is a project which
-aims to implement the graphics abstraction layer in lower level code, putting graphics hardware
-support in one place, bringing higher stability and portability to graphics applications and
-replacing SVGAlib, fb, and X servers dealing directly with hardware. Judging from their
-screenshots, this is quite a powerful library.
-
-
-
- GGI was supposed to have a kernel module inserted into the Linux source code but
-Linus thought their code wasn't ready for production kernels. There was brief talk about
-making *BSD their main platform. I'm not sure if they ever went through with this.
-
-----
-!!3.11. What is SVGAlib? Frame buffer? Console?
-
- The console is the dark non-graphical screen you look at when your computer first
-boots up (and you don't have have xdm or
-gdm running). This is opposed to the X environment which has all
-sorts of GUI things like xterms. It's a common misconception that X means graphics and
-console means no graphics. There are certainly graphics on the console-we will
-discuss the two most common ways to achieve this.
-
-
-
- SVGAlib is a graphics library that lets you draw graphics on the the console. There
-are many graphical applications and games that use SVGAlib like
-zgv (a console graphical image viewer),
-prboom and hhexen. I happen to be a
-fan of this library and of graphical console games in general; they are extremely fast,
-fullscreen and compelling. There are three downsides to SVGAlib. First, SVGAlib
-executables need to be run by root or be setuid root, however, the library releases root
-status immediately after the executable begins to run. Secondly, SVGAlib is video card
-dependent-if your video card isn't supported by SVGAlib, you're out of luck. Third,
-SVGAlib is Linux only. Games written in SVGAlib will only work on Linux.
-
-
-
- Frame buffers are consoles implemented by a graphics mode rather than a BIOS text
-mode. Why would you want to simulate text mode from a graphical environment? This allows
-us to run graphical things in console, like allowing us to choose what font we want the
-console to display (which is normally determined by BIOS). Imagine having a console font of
-Comic Sans MS? There's a good Frame Buffer howto available from LDP.
-
-----
-!!3.12. What is OpenAL?
-
- OpenAL `www.openal.orgb aims to be for
-sound what OpenGL is for graphics. Jointly developed by Loki Software and Creative Labs, it
-sets out to be a vendor neutral and cross platform API for audio. It is licensed LGPL and
-the specs can be had for free from the OpenAL website. OpenAL is fully functional, but now
-that Loki Software is no more its future development is questionable.
-
-----
-!!3.13. What is DirectX?
-
- DirectX is a collection of closed source and proprietary multimedia API's, first
-developed by Microsoft in 1995, for its various Windows OS's. It would be a mistake to
-say something like "DirectX is like OpenGL" or "DirectX is like SDL", as is commonly said in
-DirectX tutorials and books. Multimedia API's are more centralized on Windows than they are on
-Linux. A more accurate statement would be something like "DirectX is like DRI, OpenGL and SDL
-combined". As of February 2002, the most recent version of DirectX is 8.1. The components of
-DirectX are:
-
-
-
-
-
-; !DirectDraw:
-
- !DirectDraw gives direct access to video memory, like DRI, so you can directly
-blit 2D graphics to the video card rather than blitting the 2D graphics to main memory and
-then blitting from main memory to the video card. !DirectDraw is kind of like the graphical
-component of SDL, but direct access to video card memory is done by DRI rather than SDL. This
-is why a game can easily take out a Windows system but should never take out a Linux system.
-
-
-; Direct3D (D3D):
-
- Direct3D, like OpenGL, provides a 3D graphics API. Whereas OpenGL is open
-source, lower level and compiles under a multitude of operating systems, D3D is proprietary,
-higher level and only compiles on Windows. Unfortunately, most Windows game programmers
-choose D3D over OpenGL and D3D is poorly supported by API translators, like wine, and
-practically unsupported by virtual machines, like vmware, under Linux. D3D first appeared in
-DirectX 2, released in 1996.
-
-; DirectXAudio:
-
- Direct Audio is a combination of 2 audio API's, !DirectSound and !DirectMusic,
-which allows direct access to the sound card for sound and music playback.
-
-; !DirectInput:
-
- !DirectInput gives support for gaming input devices such as joysticks.
-
-; !DirectPlay:
-
- !DirectPlay gives support for simplified networking for multiplayer gaming.
-
-; !DirectShow:
-
- !DirectShow provides support for movie files like AVI and MPG. It was a
-separate API from DirectX, but was integrated with DirectX 8.
-
-; !DirectSetup:
-
- This API provides a way to install DirectX from within an application. It
-was designed to simplify game installation.
-
-
-
- DirectX is "kind of" supported by winex (Section 10.4.3), poorly supported by
-wine (Section 10.4.1), barely supported by vmware (Section 10.4.5) and
-unsupported by Win4Lin (Section 10.4.4).
-
-
-
- One comment about portability. Each component of DirectX has multiple corresponding
-library on Linux. Moreover, a game writer which uses libraries like OpenGL, GGI or SDL will
-write a game which will trivially compile on Windows, Linux and a multitude of other OS's. Yet
-game companies persist using DirectX and therefore limit their audience to Windows users only.
-If you're a game writer, please consider using cross platform libraries and stay away from
-DirectX.
-
-
-
- A company named realtechVR started an open source project called the "DirectX Port"
-`http://www.v3x.net/directxb which, like wine, provides
-a Direct3D emulation layer that implements Direct3D calls. The project was focused on the BeOS
-platform, but is now focused on MacOS and Linux. The DirectX Port is open source and you can
-get their latest cvs from their sourceforge page at `http://sourceforge.net/projects/dxglwrapb.
-
-----
-!!!4. Definitions: Video Card and 3D Terminology
-
- We'll cover videocard and 3D graphics terminology. This stuff isn't crucial to actually
-getting a game working, but may help in deciding what hardware and software options are best for
-you.
-
-----
-!!4.1. Textures
-
- A rendered scene is basically made up of polygons and lines. A texture is a 2D image
-(usually a bitmap) covering the polygons of a 3D world. Think of it as a coat of paint for
-the polygons.
-
-----
-!!4.2. T8L: Transform and Lighting
-
- The T8L is the process of translating all the 3D world information (position,
-distance, and light sources) into the 2D image that is actually displayed on screen.
-
-----
-!!4.3. AA: Anti Aliasing
-
- Anti aliasing is the smoothing of jagged edges along a rendered curve or polygon.
-Pixels are square objects, so drawing an angled line or curve with them results in a `stair
-step' effect, also called the jaggies. This is when pixels make, what should be a smooth
-curve or line, jagged. AA uses CPU intensive filtering to smooth out these
-jagged edges. This improves a game's visuals, but can also dramatically degrade
-performance.
-
-
-
- AA is used in a number of situations. For instance, when you magnify a picture,
-you'll notice lines that were once smooth are now jagged (try it with The Gimp). Font
-rendering is another big application for AA.
-
-
-
- AA can be done either by the application itself (as with The Gimp or the XFree86 font
-system) or by hardware, if your video card supports it. Since AA is CPU intensive, it's
-more desirable to perform it in hardware, but if we're talking about semi-static
-applications, like The Gimp, this really isn't an issue. For dynamic situations, like
-games, doing AA in hardware can be crucial.
-
-----
-!!4.4. FSAA: Full Screen Anti-Aliasing
-
- FSAA usually involves drawing a magnified version of the entire screen in a separate
-framebuffer, performing AA on the entire image and rescaling it back to the normal
-resolution. As you can imagine, this is extremely CPU intensive. You will never see non
-hardware accelerated FSAA.
-
-----
-!!4.5. Mip Mapping
-
- Mip mapping is a technique where several scaled copies of the same
-texture are stored in the video card memory to represent the texture at
-different distances. When the texture is far away a smaller version of
-the texture (mip map) is used. When the texture is near, a bigger one is
-used. Mip mapping can be used regardless of filtering method (see
-below). Mip mapping reduces memory bandwidth requirements since the
-images are in hardware, but it also offers better quality in the rendered
-image.
-
-----
-!!4.6. Texture Filtering
-
- Texture filtering is the fundamental feature required to present sweet 3D graphics.
-It's used for a number of purposes, like making adjacent textures blend smoothly and making
-textures viewed from an angle (think of looking at a billboard from an extreme angle) look
-realistic. There are several common texture filtering techniques including point-sampling,
-bilinear, trilinear and anisotropic filtering.
-
-
-
- One thing to keep in mind is that when I talk about `performance hits', the
-performance hit depends on what resolution you're running at. For instance, at a low
-resolution you may get only a very slight hit by using trilinear filtering instead of
-bilinear filtering. But at high resolutions, the performance hit may be enormous. Also,
-I'm not aware of any card that uses anisotropic texture filtering. TNT drivers claim they
-do, but I've read that these drivers still use trilinear filtering when actually rendering
-an image to the screen.
-
-----
-!!4.7. Point Sampling Texture Filtering
-
- Point sampling is rare these days, but if you run a game with `software rendering'
-(which you'd need to do if you run a 3D accelerated game without a 3D accelerated board)
-you're likely to see it used.
-
-----
-!!4.8. Bilinear Texture Filtering
-
- Bilinear filtering is a computationally cheap but low quality texture filtering. It
-approximates the gaps between textures by sampling the color of the four closest (above,
-below, left and right) texels. All modern 3D accelerated video cards can do bilinear
-filtering in hardware with no performance hit.
-
-----
-!!4.9. Trilinear Texture Filtering
-
- Trilinear filtering is a high quality bilinear filter which uses the four closest
-pixels in the second most suitable mip map to produce smoother transitions between mip map
-levels. Trilinear filtering samples eight pixels and interpolates these before rendering,
-twice as much as bi-linear does. Trilinear filtering always uses mip mapping. Trilinear
-filtering eliminates the banding effect that appears between adjacent MIP map levels. Most
-modern 3D accelerated video cards can do trilinear filtering in hardware with no performance
-hit.
-
-----
-!!4.10. Anisotropic Texture Filtering
-
- Anisotropic filtering is the best but most CPU intensive of the three common texture
-filtering methods. Trilinear filtering is capable of producing fine visuals, but it only
-samples from a square area which in some cases is not the ideal way. Anisotropic (meaning
-`from any direction') samples from more than 8 pixels. The number of sampled pixels and
-which sampled pixels it uses depends on the viewing angle of the surface relative to your
-screen. It shines when viewing alphanumeric characters at an angle.
-
-----
-!!4.11. Z Buffering
-
- A Z buffer is a portion of RAM which represents the distance between the viewer (you)
-and each pixel of an object. Many modern 3D accelerated cards have a Z buffer in their
-video RAM, which speeds things up considerably, but Z buffering can also be done by the
-application's rendering engine.
-
-
-
- Every object has a stacking order, like a deck of cards. When objects are rendered
-into a 2D frame buffer, the rendering engine removes hidden surfaces by using the Z buffer.
-There are two approaches to this. Dumb engines draw far objects first and close objects
-last, obscuring objects below them in the Z buffer. Smart engines calculate what portions
-of objects will be obscured by objects above them and simply not render the portions that
-you won't see anyhow. For complicated textures this is a huge savings in processor work.
-
-
-----
-!!!5. XFree86 and You
-
- If you're going to game under X, it's crucial that you know a bit about X. The "X
-Window User HOWTO", and especially "man XF86Config" are ''required'' reading.
-Don't short change yourself; read them. They have an extremely high "information to space"
-ratio. Many problems can be fixed easily if you know your way around
-XF86Config (or XF86Config-4).
-
-----
-!!5.1. Getting information about your X system
-!5.1.1. Probeonly
-
- One of the best diagnostic tools and sources of information about your X system is
-__probeonly__ output. To use it, kill X if it's already running and from a
-console, type:
-
-
- X -probeonly 2b X.out
-
-
- Yes, that's a single dash; so much for standards. The output of X goes to stderr,
-so we have to redirect stderr with "2b" to a file named X.out. This file will have almost
-everything there is to know about your X system. It's crucial that you know the
-difference between the various markers you'll see in probeonly output:
-
-
- (--) probed (**) from config file (==) default setting
-(++) from command line (!!) notice (II) informational
-(WW) warning (EE) error (??) unknown.
-
-
- Here's an example of some information I gleaned from my output:
-
-
-
-I'm running at 16 bpp color:
-
-
- (**) TDFX(): Depth 16, (--) framebuffer bpp 16
-
-
-X has detected what my videocard chipset and videoram are:
-
-
- (--) Chipset 3dfx Voodoo5 found
-(--) TDFX(): VideoRAM: 32768 kByte Mapping 65536 kByte
-----
-!5.1.2. Getting info about your setup: xvidtune
-
- xvidtune is your friend when your X screen is shifted a
-little bit too far to the right, or if the vertical length is too small to fit on your
-monitor. However, it's a great diagnostic tool also. It'll give you:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
-the hsync/vsync range specified in your XF86Config file
-
-
-
-*
-*
-
-the 4 horizontal and 4 vertical numbers which defines
-your videomode (the 1st horizontal/vertical numbers gives the screen
-resolution). These 8 numbers will tell you which modeline your X
-uses. See the XFree86 Video Modetiming Howto for more
-information.
-
-
-*
-*
-
-the "dot clock" your videocard is running at.
-
-
-*----
-!5.1.3. Getting info about your setup: xwininfo
-
- xwininfo tells you all sorts of information about X windows.
-And actually, your "background" or "root" window is considered a window
-too. So when xwininfo asks you to click on the window you want the
-information on, click on your background. It'll tell you things like:
-
-
-
-
-__: __Screen resolution
-
-
-
-__: __Width and Height
-
-
-
-__: __color bpp
-
-
-
-__: __Depth
-
-
-
- and a few other things which are interesting but not immediately
-relevent to our subject, like "Window Gravity State" which tells where
-new windows tend to be placed by the window manager.
-
-----
-!5.1.4. Other sources of information
-
- __xdpyinfo__ gives cool stuff, like X version and
-loaded extensions (invaluable when trying to see what's missing, like
-GLX, DRI, XFree86-!VidMode, etc.).
-
-----
-!5.1.5. Getting information about your 3D system
-
- glxinfo gives lots of useful information about OpenGL (whether
-direct rendering is being used or not, the currently installed versions
-of glx and mesa), vendor/renderer strings, the GL library files being
-used and more.
-
-----
-!!!6. Various Topics
-!!6.1. Memory Type Register Ranges
-
- Starting with Pentium class processors and including Athlon, K6-2
-and other CPUs, there are Memory Type Register Ranges (MTRR) which
-control how the processor accesses ranges of memory locations.
-Basically, it turns many smaller separate writes to the video card into a
-single write (a burst). This increases efficiency in writing to the
-video card and can speed up your graphics by 250% or more.
-
-
-
- See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/mtrr.txt for details. Note that
-since this file was written, XFree86 has been patched to automatically
-detect your video RAM base address and size and set up the MTRRs.
-
-
-----
-!!6.2. Milking performance from your system for all it's worth
-
-
-
-
-*
-
-If for some reason you're using X 3.3, follow the instructions
-given by mtrr.txt (see section 5.1) to set up your MTRRs. X 4.0 does this
-automatically for you.
-
-
-*
-*
-
-Don't run a window manager (wm). Some wm's like twm don't
-take up much CPU cycles, but still rob you of performance. Some window managers
-like enlightenment will definitely produce a noticeable slow down. To run a game
-without a wm, you modify .xinitrc in your home directory. Here is what my .xinitrc
-looks like:
-
-
- #quake3 +set r_gldriver libGR.so.1
-#/usr/local/games/!SinDemo/Sin
-#exec ut
-#lsdldoom -server 2
-#exec tribes2
-exec /usr/bin/enlightenment
-
-
- This file tells X what client to run upon starting. Usually this is your wm,
-and/or a desktop manager (GNOME or KDE). Comment out the lines containing a wm and
-desktop manager with a pound sign (#) and place your game on a new line with any
-command line arguments you want to pass. If the game is not located in your $PATH,
-give its full path name. Note that this is for people who use `startx' to start X.
-
-
-
-
- I never use things like gdm or run-level 5 (so I'm not positive here), but I
-suspect that if you do, you'll need to do things a bit differently. My best guess is
-to go to single user mode (run-level 1) by:
-
-
- # telinit 1
-
-
- then edit .xinitrc, then go back to run-level 5 by
-
-
- # telinit 5
-
-
- Then when you stop playing, go to run-level 1, modify .xinitrc then go back to
-run-level 5. I don't use this stuff, so I'm not sure, but you may need to kill gdm.
-I'd appreciate some feedback on this.
-
-
-
-Kill all not-essential processes. Of course you'll have to do this as root. A
-better way to do this than typing "ps ax", getting ntpd's pid, and sending it a
-SIGKILL (with kill -9) is to make use of pidof:
-
-
- # kill -9 `pidof ntpd`
-
-
- However, an even better alternative is to use the startup scripts on your
-system. On Debian, the startup scripts for run-level 2 are located in /etc/rc2.d/.
-You can kill a service in an orderly manner by sending its startup scrip the `stop'
-command:
-
-
- # cd /etc/rc2.d
-# ./ntpd stop
-
-
- Another (radical) option is to simply put yourself in single-user mode with
-
-
-
- # telinit 1
-
-
- This will even get rid of getty; your system will be running nothing which is
-absolutely crucial to its operation. You'll have something like 10 processes running.
-The downside is that you'll have to play the game as root. But your process table
-will be a ghost town, and all that extra CPU will go straight to your game.
-
-
-
-*----
-!!6.3. About libraries on Linux
-
- A common problem you'll see in gaming is a library file not being
-found. They're kind of mysterious and have funny names, so we'll go over
-libraries on Linux for a bit. There are two types of libraries, static
-and dynamic. When you compile a program, by default,
-__gcc__ uses dynamic libraries, but you can make
-__gcc__ use static libraries instead by using the
--static switch. Unless you plan on compiling your
-games from source code, you'll mainly be interested in dynamic libraries.
-
-
-----
-!6.3.1. Dynamic libraries
-
- Dynamic libraries, also called a "shared library", provide object
-code for an application while it's running. That is, code gets linked into the
-executable at run time, as opposed to compile time. They're analagous to the
-.dll's used by Windows. The program responsible for linking code
-"on the fly" is called __/etc/ld.so__, and the dynamic
-libraries themselves usually end with .so with a version number,
-like:
-
-
- /usr/lib/libSDL.so
-/lib/libm.so.3
-
-
- When using __gcc__, you refer to these libraries by shaving
-off the strings lib, .so and all version
-numbers. So to use these two libraries, you would pass __gcc__ the
--lSDL -lm options. __gcc__ will then `place a
-memo inside the executable' that says to look at the files /usr/lib/libSDL.so and /lib/libm.so.3 whenever an
-SDL or math function is used.
-
-----
-!6.3.2. Static libraries
-
- In contrast to dynamic libraries which provide code while the application
-runs, static libraries contain code which gets linked (inserted) into the program
-while it's being compiled. No code gets inserted at run time; the code is
-completely self-contained. Static libraries usually end with .a
-followed by a version number, like:
-
-
- /usr/lib/libSDL.a
-/usr/lib/libm.a
-
-
- The .a files are really an archive of a bunch of
-.o (object) files archived together, similar to a tar file. You
-can use the __nm__ to see what functions a static library contains:
-
-
-
- % nm /usr/lib/libm.a
-...
-e_atan2.o:
-00000000 T __ieee754_atan2
-e_atanh.o:
-00000000 T __ieee754_atanh
-00000000 r half
-00000010 r limit
-00000018 r ln2_2
-...
-
-
-When using __gcc__, you refer to these libraries by shaving off
-the strings "lib", ".a" and all version numbers. So to use
-these two libraries, you would pass __gcc__ the -lSDL
--lm options. __gcc__ will then `bolt on' code from
- /usr/lib/SDL.a and /usr/lib/libm.a
-whenever it sees a math function during the compilation process.
-
-----
-!6.3.3. How are library files found
-
- If you compile your own games, your biggest problem with libraries will
-either be that __gcc__ can't find a static library or perhaps the
-library doesn't exist on your system. When playing games from binary, your library
-woes will be either be that __ld.so__ can't find the library or the
-library doesn't exist on your system. So it makes some sense to talk about how
-__gcc__ and __ld.so__ go about finding libraries in
-the first place.
-
-
-
- __gcc__ looks for libraries in the ``standard system
-directories'' plus any directories you specify with the -L
-option. You can find what these standard system directories are with
-__gcc -print-search-dirs__
-
-
-
- __ld.so__ looks to a binary hash contained in a file named
-/etc/ld.so.cache for a list of directories that contain
-available dynamic libraries. Since it contains binary data, you cannot modify this
-file directly. However, the file is generated from a text file
-/etc/ld.so.conf which you can edit. This file contains a list
-of directories that you want __ld.so__ to search for dynamic
-libraries. If you want to start putting dynamic libraries in
-/home/joecool/privatelibs, you'd add this directory to
-/etc/ld.so.conf. Your change doesn't actually make it into
-/etc/ld.so.cache until you run __ldconfig__;
-once it's run, __ld.so__ will begin to look for libraries in your
-private directory.
-
-
-
- Also, even if you just add extra libraries to your system, you must update
-ld.so.cache to reflect the presense of the new libraries.
-
-
-----
-!!!7. When Bad Things Happen To Good People
-
- Of course we can't cover every Bad Thing that happens, but I'll outline some
-items of common sense.
-
-
-
- There are two types of bad things: random and repeatable. It's very difficult
-to diagnose or fix random problems that you don't have any control over when they happen
-or not. However, if the problem is repeatable "it happens when I press the left arrow
-key twice", then you're in business.
-
-----
-!!7.1. RTFM!
-
- Read the friendly manual. The `manual' can take on a few forms. For open source
-games there's the readme files that come with the game. Commercial games will have a
-printed manual and maybe some readme files on the CD the game came on. Don't forget to
-browse the CD your game came on for helpful tips and advice.
-
-
-
- Don't forget the game's website. The game's author has probably seen people with
-your exact same problem many times over and might put information specific to that game
-on the website. A prime example of this is Loki Software's online FAQs located at
-faqs.lokigames.com.
-
-----
-!!7.2. Look For Updates and Patches
-
- If you're playing an open source game that you compiled, make sure you have
-the newest version by checking the game's website. If your game came from a distro
-make sure there's not an update rpm/deb for the game.
-
-
-
- Commercial game companies like Loki release patches for their games. Often a game
-will have MANY patches (Myth2) and some games are unplayable without them (Heretic2).
-Check the game's website for patches whether you have a problem running the game or not;
-there may be an update for a security problem that you may not even be aware of.
-
-
-
- By the way, Loki now has a utility that searches for Loki Software on your hard
-drive and automatically updates them. Check out updates.lokigames.com.
-
-----
-!!7.3. Newsgroups
-
- If you don't know what netnews (Usenet) is, then this is definitely worth 30
-minutes of your time to learn about. Install a newsreader. I prefer console tools more,
-so I use tin, but slrn is also popular. Netscape has a nice graphical "point and click"
-newsreader too.
-
-
-
- For instance, I can browse Loki Software's news server with __tin -g
-news.lokigames.com__. You can also specify which news server to use using the
-$NNTP environment variable or with the file
-/etc/nntpserver.
-
-----
-!!7.4. Google Group Search
-
- Every post made to Usenet gets archived at Google's database at groups.google.com. This archive used to be at www.deja.com, but was bought by Google. Many people still know
-the archive as "deja".
-
-
-
- It's almost certain that whatever problem you have with Linux, gaming related or
-not, has already been asked about and answered on Usenet. Not once, not twice, but many
-times over. If you don't understand the first response you see (or if it doesn't work),
-then try one of the other many replies. If the page is not in a language you can
-understand, there are many translation sites which will convert the text into whatever
-language you like, including www.freetranslation.com
-and translation.lycos.com. My web browser of choice,
-Opera (available at www.opera.com allows you to use
-the right mouse button to select a portion of text and left click the selection to
-translate it into another language. Very useful when a Google group search yields a page
-in German which looks useful and my girlfriend (who reads German well) isn't around.
-
-
-
-
- The Google group search has a basic and advanced search page. Don't bother with
-the simple search. The advanced search is at groups.google.com/advanced_group_search
-
-
-
- It's easy to use. For example, if my problem was that Quake III crashed everytime
-Lucy jumps, I would enter "linux quake3 crash lucy jumps" in the "Find messages with all
-of the words" textbox.
-
-
-
- There are fields for which newsgroup you want to narrow your search to. Take the
-time to read and understand what each field means. I promise you. You won't be
-disappointed with this service. Use it, and you'll be a much happier person. Do note
-that they don't archive private newsgroups, like Loki Software's news server. However,
-so many people use Usenet, it almost doesn't matter.
-
-----
-!!7.5. Debugging: call traces and core files
-
- This is generally not something you'll do for commercial games. For open source
-games, you can help the author by giving a corefile or stack trace. Very quickly, a core
-file (aka core dump) is a file that holds the "state" of the program at the moment it
-crashes. It holds valuable clues for the programmer to the nature of the crash -- what
-caused it and what the program was doing when it happened. If you want to learn more
-about core files, I have a great gdb tutorial at www.dirac.org/linux.
-
-
-
- At the *very* least, the author will be interested in the call stack when the game
-crashed. Here is how you can get the call stack at barf-time:
-
-
-
- Sometimes distros set up their OS so that core files (which are mainly useful to
-programmers) aren't generated. The first step is to make your system allow unlimited
-coresizes:
-
-
- ulimit -c unlimited
-
-
- You will now have to recompile the program and pass the -g option to gcc
-(explaining this is beyond the scope of this document). Now, run the game and do
-whatever you did to crash the program and dump a core again. Run the debugger with the
-core file as the 2nd argument:
-
-
- $ gdb !CoolGameExecutable core
-
-
- And at the (gdb) prompt, type "backtrace". You'll see something like:
-
-
- #0 printf (format=0x80484a4 "z is %d.\n") at printf.c:30
-#1 0x8048431 in display (z=5) at try1.c:11
-#2 0x8048406 in main () at try1.c:6
-
-
- It may be quite long, but use your mouse to cut and paste this information into a
-file. Email the author and tell him:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#
-
-The game's name
-
-
-#
-#
-
-Any error message that appears on the screen when the game
-crashes.
-
-
-#
-#
-
-What causes the crash and whether it's a repeatable crash or
-not.
-
-
-#
-#
-
-The call stack
-
-
-#
-
- If you have good bandwidth, ask the author if he would like the core file that his
-program dumped. If he says yes, then send it. Remember to ask first, because core files
-can get very, very big.
-
-----
-!!7.6. Saved Games
-
- If your game allows for saved games, then sending the author a copy of the saved
-game is useful because it helps the tech reproduce whatever is going wrong. For
-commercial games, this option is more fruitful than sending a core file or call stack
-since commercial games can't be recompiled to include debugging information. You should
-definitely ask before sending a save game file because they tend to get long, but a
-company like Loki Software has lots of bandwidth. Mike Phillips (formerly of Loki
-Software) mentioned that sending in saved games to Loki is definitely a good thing.
-
-
-
-
- Needless to say, this only applies if your game crashes reproducably at a certain
-point. If the game segfaults every time you run it, or is incredibly slow, a saved game
-file won't be of much help.
-
-----
-!!7.7. What to do when a file or library isn't being found
-(better living through strace)
-
- Sometimes you'll see error messages that indicate a file wasn't found. The file
-could be a library:
-
-
- % ./exult
-./exult: error while loading shared libraries: libSDL-1.2.so.: cannot load shared object
-file: No such file or directory
-
-
- or it could be some kind of data file, like a wad or map file:
-
-
- % qf-client-sdl
-IP address 192.168..2:27001 UDP Initialized Error: W_!LoadWadFile: couldn't load gfx.wad
-
-
- Suppose gfx.wad is already on my system, but couldn't be found because it isn't in
-the right directory. Then where IS the right directory? Wouldn't it be helpful to know
-where these programs looked for the missing files?
-
-
-
- This is where strace shines. strace tells you what system calls are being made,
-with what arguments, and what their return values are. In my `Kernel Module Programming
-Guide' (due to be released to LDP soon), I outline everything you may want to know about
-strace. But here's a brief outline using the canonical example of what strace looks
-like. Give the command:
-
-
- strace -o ./LS_LOG /bin/ls
-
-
- The -o option sends strace's output to a file; here, LS_LOG. The last argument to
-strace is the program we're inspecting, here, "ls". Look at the contents of LS_LOG.
-Pretty impressive, eh? Here is a typical line:
-
-
- open(".", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|0x18000) = 4
-
-
- We used the open() system call to open "." with various
-arguments, and "4" is the return value of the call. What does this have to do with
-files not being found?
-
-
-
- Suppose I want to watch the !StateOfMind demo because I can't ever seem to get
-enough of it. One day I try to run it and something bad happens:
-
-
- % ./mind.i86_linux.glibc2.1
-Loading 8 massaging...
-Error:Can't open data file 'mind.dat'.
-
-
- Let's use strace to find out where the program was looking for the data file.
-
-
-
- strace ./mind.i86_linux.glibc2.1 2b ./!StateOfMind_LOG
-
-
- Pulling out vim and searching for all occurances of "mind.dat", I find the
-following lines:
-
-
- open("/usr/share/mind.dat",O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file)
-write(2, "Error:", 6Error:) = 6
-write(2, "Can\'t open data file \'mind.dat\'."..., ) = 33
-
-
- It was looking for mind.dat in only one directory. Clearly,
-mind.dat isn't in /usr/share. Now we can try to locate
-mind.dat and move it into /usr/share, or
-better, create a symbolic link.
-
-
-
- This method works for libraries too. Suppose the library libmp3.so.2 is in
-/usr/local/include but your new game "Kill-Metallica" can't find it. You can use strace
-to determine where Kill-Metallica was looking for the library and make a symlink of
-/usr/local/include/libmp3.so.2 to wherever Kill-Metallica was looking for the library
-file.
-
-
-
- strace is a very powerful utility. When diagnosing why things aren't being found,
-it's your best ally, and is even faster than looking at source code. As a last note, you
-can't look up information in source code of commercial games from Lokisoft or Tribsoft.
-But you can still use strace with them!
-
-----
-!!7.8. Hosed consoles
-
- Sometimes a game will exit abnormally and your console will get `hosed'. There
-are a few definitions of a hosed console. The text characters could look like gibberish.
-Your normally nice black screen could look like a quasi-graphics screen. When you press
-ENTER, a newline doesn't get echo'ed to the screen. Sometimes, certain
-keys of the keyboard won't respond. Logging out and back in won't work, but there are a
-few things that will:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
- At the prompt, type "reset". This should clear up many problems,
-including consoles hosed by an SVGAlib or ncurses based game.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- Try running the game again and normally. Once I had to kill Quake III
-in a hurry, so I gave it the 3 fingered salute. The console was hosed with a
-quasi-graphics screen. Running Quake III and quitting normally fixed the
-problem.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- The commands deallocvt and openvt will work for most of the other
-problems you'll have. __deallocvt N__ kills terminal
-N entirely, so that Alt-FN doesn't even work
-anymore. __openvt -c N__ starts it back up.
-
-
-*
-*
-
-If certain keys on your keyboard don't work, be creative. If you want
-to reboot but the `o' key doesn't work, try using halt. One method I've come up with
-is typing a command at the prompt and using characters on the screen with mouse
-cut/paste. For example, you can type "ps ax", and you're sure to have an `h', `a', `l'
-and a `t' somewhere on the screen. you can use the mouse to cut and paste the word
-"halt".
-
-
-*
-*
-
-The most regrettable option is a reboot. If you can, an orderly
-shutdown is preferable; use "halt" or "shutdown". If you can't, ssh in from a another
-machine. That sometimes works when your console is very badly hosed. In the worst
-case scenario, hit the reset or power switch.
-
-
-*
-
- Note that if you use a journalling filesystem like ext3, reiserfs or xfs, hitting
-the power switch isn't all that bad. You're still supposed to shutdown in an orderly
-fasion, but the filesystem integrity will be maintained. You won't see an fsck for the
-partitions that use the journalling filesystem.
-
-----
-!!!8. Hardware
-
- I'm no Tom's Hardware or Anandtech, and don't have access to all the
-wealth of hardware that's out there. Contributions and information to fill
-out this section would is welcome. This stuff changes very often, and
-peoples' experience with hardware would be useful.
-
-----
-!!8.1. Which video card is the best?
-
- If you're using Linux, you must be smart enough to know that
-there isn't a plain answer to this question. There seem to be 3
-choices for hardware accelerated 3D these days:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#
-
-3dfx: Voodoo cards
-
-
-#
-#
-
-Nvidia: !GeForce
-
-
-#
-#
-
-ATI: Radeon
-
-
-#
-
- According to Tom's Hardware and Anadtech, the Radeon is king
-when playing at very high resolution (as in 1600x1200), at 32bpp, in
-Windows. Otherwise the !GeForce is king. There are two problems with
-this. We don't normally play at 1600x1200/32bb, and we don't play on
-Windows (at least I don't).
-
-
-
- There aren't many recent video card benchmarks out for Linux. The most recent one
-I've seen is from March 2001 at www.linuxhardware.org/features/01/03/19/0357219.shtml.
-Considering the dearth of benchmarks out there, this needs to be taken as a canonical
-benchmark, so I simply quote their conclusion:
-
-
-
- At this point the performance numbers tell a pretty simple story, if
-it's raw speed you are looking for, the !GeForce 2 is your choice. There is very little
-performance drawback to running your favorite games in Linux instead of Windows with this
-card. It provides a truly impressive performace across the board. The Radeon's performance
-will almost definitely improve as the DRI drivers mature, but for now, especially for the
-impatient, it is simply not a good choice for the hard core 3d gamer.
-
-
-
- If, however, you are a graphics designer, and want a card with
-impeccable 2d image quality, with 3d graphics only a secondary
-priority, the Radeon is your best bet. The DRI drivers, even in their
-current state, are quite usable. For 2d only users, XFree86 4..2
-provides production quality 2d drivers. The !GeForce thoroughly trounced
-the Radeon in the Xmark performance test, so if you aren't running at a
-ultra high resolution, or aren't that picky, the !GeForce is once again
-a better pick.
-
-
-
- Now for my own input. The Radeon is a pretty amazing card. It's what I use, and I
-have yet to see a game that needs more power than the Radeon is able to provide. However,
-the OpenGL renderer for the Radeon is buggy, although the only games I've seen that suffer
-greatly are Loki Software's Heavy Metal (which is, regrettably, unplayable) and Soldier Of
-Fortune. Hopefully the people doing Mesa for the Radeon will fix this very soon since the
-Radeon is the best option for people who don't want to rely on the closed source,
-proprietary !GeForce.
-
-
-
- Now about the Voodoo cards. Unfortunately, 3dfx was bought out by nVidia, so these
-cards are a dead end market. If you're out to play the bleeding edge games like Rune or
-Tribes2, you'll want the Voodoo 3, 4 or 5. Preferably the 4 or 5. I think the Voodoo 5
-is basically a Voodoo 4 with a second processer. However, this processor is not utilized
-by the Linux driver, and rumor says that the Linux 3dfx driver will never support it. So
-as far as Linux is concerned, the Voodoo 4 and 5 are the same card. All the drivers,
-Glide2 library and OpenGL renderers for the Voodoo cards were open sourced by 3dfx before
-they when under. It is an embarrasment to the Linux and open source community in general
-that this company failed.
-
-----
-!!8.2. Which sound card is best?
-
- Now that Linux is beginning to mature, this question isn't as important as it used
-to be. Once upon a time, soundcards without onboard MIDI chips (most PCI sound cards)
-didn't do MIDI. This was mostly a problem for things like xdoom or lxdoom using musserv.
-These days we have MIDI emulators like Timidity and libraries like SDL which don't require
-hardware MIDI support. Frankly, I've had many cards and I can't tell the difference
-between any of them for gaming. If you want to do things like convert a record LP to
-digital format, then your choice of a soundcard with a professional grade A/D converter is
-absolutely crucial. For this HOWTO, we'll assume that you're more of a gamer than a
-studio recording engineer.
-
-
-
- Your decision should be based on what will be the easiest to configure. If you
-already have a card and it works well, that's good enough. If you're in the market to buy
-a sound card, get something that will take you a second to configure. PCI cards are much
-easier to deal with than ISA since you don't need to tell their drivers about which system
-resources (IRQ, DMA, I/O addresses) to use. Some ISA cards ARE plug-n-play, like the
-Creative AWE-64, and the Linux kernel has come a long way in auto configuring them.
-
-
-
-
- My personal recommendation is any card which has the es1370 or es1371 chip, which
-uses the es1370 and es1371 sound drivers on Linux. These cards include the older Ensoniq
-es1370 and newer Creative PCI-128. These cards are extremely cheap and trivial to get
-working under Linux.
-
-
-
- I used to be quite a big fan of the Creative Soundblaster AWE 32, AWE 64 and AWE 64
-gold soundcards. They are ISA, but are plug-n-play. A couple of issues to note. First,
-the Creative AWE HOWTO is very out of date. Second, AFAIK, Creative never released a
-Linux driver that uses the AWE 64's extra 32 voices (and they never released programming
-information for it either). So to a Linux users, the AWE 64 and 32 are nearly identical
-sound cards. If anyone has more information about the differences that a Linux user would
-see between the AWE 64 and 32, I'd like to hear from you.
-
-
-
- The Creative Soundblaster Live! is an extremely popular PCI sound card these days.
-I've never owned one, so I cannot comment here. However, there have been numerous reports
-about serious problems with the Live! and AMD motherboards that use the 686b southbridge.
-A google search should turn up alot of information on this problem.
-
-
-
- A more relevent issue is speakers, but even here the difference isn't huge. I've
-had expensive Altec Lansing speakers perform only slightly better than el-cheapo speakers.
-You get what you pay for with speakers, but don't expect a huge difference. You'll want
-to get something with a separate sub-woofer; this does make a difference at a cost of
-extra power and connector wires.
-
-----
-!!!9. Miscellaneous Problems
-!!9.1. Hardware Acceleration Problems
-
- XFree86 4.0 provides a more centralized and self-contained approach
-to video. Much of the funkyness like kernel modules for non-root access of
-video boards is, thankfully, gone.
-
-----
-!9.1.1. Hardware acceleration isn't working at all
-
- If you're getting like 1 fps, then your system isn't using
-hardware 3D acceleration. There's one of two things that can be going
-on.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#
-
-Your 3D system is misconfigured (more likely)
-
-
-#
-#
-
-Game X is misconfigured (less likely)
-
-
-#
-
- The first step is to figure out which one is happening.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#
-
-If you have X 4.0 (X 3.* users procede to step 2), look at
-the the output of __X -probeonly__. You'll see:
-
-
- (II) XXXXXX: direct rendering enabled
-
- or
-
-
- (II) XXXXXX: direct rendering disabled
-
- Where XXXXXXX depends on which video card you have. If direct rendering is
-disabled, then your X configuration is definitely faulty. Your game is not at fault. You
-need to figure out why DRI is disabled. The most important tool for you to use at this
-point is the `DRI Users Guide'. It is an excellently written document that gives you step
-by step information on how to get DRI set up correctly on your machine. A copy is kept at
-www.xfree86.org/4./DRI.html.
-
-
-
- Note that if you pass this test, your system is CAPABLE of
-direct rendering. Your libraries can still be wrong. So procede to
-step 2.
-
-
-#
-#
-
- There is a program called gears which comes with the
-"mesademos" package. You can get mesademos with Debian (__ apt-get install mesademos__) or you can hunt for the rpm on
-rpmfind.net. You can also download and compile the source yourself from
-the mesa homepage.
-
-
-
- Running gears will show some gears turning. The xterm from
-which you run gears will read "X frames in Y seconds = X/Y FPS". You
-can compare your system to the list of benchmarks below.
-
-
- CPU TYPE VIDEO CARD X VERSION AVERAGE FPS
-
-
- Compiling Mesa and DRI modules yourself can increase your FPS by
-15 FPS; quite a performance boost! So if your number is, say, about 20
-FPS slower than a comparable machine, chances are that gears is falling
-back on software rendering. In other words, your graphics card isn't
-3D accelerating graphics.
-
-
-
-More important than FPS is having a constant FPS for small and
-large windows. If hardware acceleration is working, the FPS for gears
-should be nearly independent of window size. If it's not, then you're
-not getting hardware acceleration.
-
-
-#----
-!!9.2. Hardware acceleration works only for the root user
-!9.2.1. XFree86 4.*
-
- If the following lines aren't present in your XF86Config file,
-put them in:
-
-
- Section "DRI"
-Mode 0666
-!EndSection
-
-
- This allows all non-root users to use DRI. For the paranoid,
-it's possible to restrict DRI to only a few non-root users. See the
-DRI User Guide.
-
-----
-!9.2.2. XFree86 3.*__9.2.2.1. Voodoo cards__
-
-Voodoo card hardware acceleration only takes place ONLY at
-16bpp color and fails silently when starting X in another color depth.
-
-
-
-
- Also, Voodoo cards need the 3dfx.o kernel
-module and a /dev/3dfx device file (major 107,
-minor ) for non-root hardware acceleration. Neither the module nor
-the device file are used under XFree86 4.*.
-
-----
-!!9.3. Why isn't my sound working?
-
- First of all, it's probably not the game, it's probably your setup.
-AFAIK, there are 3 options to getting a sound card configured under Linux:
-the free OSS sound drivers that come with the Linux kernel, the Alsa
-drivers and the commercial OSS sound drivers. Personally, I prefer the
-free OSS drivers, but many people swear by Alsa. The commercial OSS
-drivers are good when you're having trouble getting your sound card to work
-by free methods. Don't discount them; they're very cheap (like 10 or 20
-bucks), support bleeding edge sound cards and take a lot of guesswork out
-of the configuring process.
-
-
-
- There are 5 things that can go wrong with your sound system:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#
-
-Shared interrupt
-
-
-#
-#
-
-Misconfigured driver
-
-
-#
-#
-
-Something's already accessing the sound card
-
-
-#
-#
-
-You're using the wrong driver
-
-
-#
-#
-
-A permissions problems
-
-
-#----
-!9.3.1. Shared interrupt
-
- The first thing to do is to figure out if you have an IRQ
-conflict. ISA cards can't share interrupts. PCI cards can share
-interrupts, but certain types of high bandwidth cards simply don't like
-to share, including network and sound cards. To find out whether you
-have a conflict, do a "cat /proc/interrupts". Output on my system is:
-
-
-
- # cat /proc/interrupts
-CPU0 CPU1
-: 24185341 0 XT-PIC timer
-1: 224714 0 XT-PIC keyboard
-2: 0 0 XT-PIC cascade
-5: 2478476 0 XT-PIC soundblaster
-5: 325924 0 XT-PIC eth0
-11: 131326 0 XT-PIC aic7xxx
-12: 2457456 0 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
-14: 556955 0 XT-PIC ide0
-NMI: 0
-LOC: 24186046 24186026
-ERR: 1353
-
-
- The second column is there because I have 2 CPU's in this machine;
-if you have one CPU (called UP, or uniprocessor), you'll
-have only 1 CPU column. The numbers on the left are the assigned IRQ's
-and the strings to the right indicate what device was assigned that IRQ.
-You can see I have an IRQ conflict between the soundcard (soundblaster)
-and the network card (eth0). They both share IRQ 5. Actually, I cooked
-this example up because I wanted to show you what an IRQ conflict looks
-like. But if I did have this conflict, neither my network nor my sound
-would work well (or at all!).
-
-
-
- If my sound card is PCI, the preferred way of fixing this would be
-to simply move one of the cards to a different slot and hope the BIOS
-sorts things out. A more advanced way of fixing this would be to go into
-BIOS and assign IRQ's to specific slots. Modern BIOS'es can do this.
-
-
-----
-!9.3.2. Misconfigured driver
-
- Sometimes, a card is hardwired to use a certain IRQ. You'll see
-this on ISA cards only. Alternatively, some ISA cards can be set to use
-a specific IRQ using jumpers on the card itself. With these types of
-cards, you need to pass the correct IRQ and memory access, "I/O port", to
-the driver.
-
-
-
- This is a sound card specific issue, and beyond the scope of this
-HOWTO. (I should write about how to pass info to the driver).
-
-----
-!9.3.3. Something is already accessing your sound card
-
- Perhaps an application is already accessing your soundcard. For
-example, maybe you have an MP3 player that's paused? If something is
-already accessing your card, other applications won't be able to. Even
-though it was written to share the card between applications, I've
-found that esd (the enlightenment sound daemon) sometimes doesn't work
-correctly. The best tool to use here is lsof, which shows which
-processes are accessing a file. Your sound card is represented by
-/dev/dsp. Right now, I'm listening to an MP3 (not a Metallica MP3, of
-course...) with mp3blaster.
-
-
- # lsof /dev/dsp
-COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
-mp3blaste 1108 p 6w CHR 14,3 662302 /dev/dsp
-
-
- fuser is similar; but it lets you send a signal to any process
-accessing the device file.
-
-
- # fuser -vk /dev/dsp
-USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
-/dev/dsp root 1225 f.... mp3blaster
-root 1282 f.... mp3blaster
-
-
- After issuing this command, mp3blaster was killed with SIGKILL.
-See the man pages for lsof and fuser; they're very useful. Oh, you'll
-want to run them as root since you'll be asking for information from
-processes that may be owned by root.
-
-----
-!9.3.4. You're using the wrong driver (or no driver)
-
- There are only two ways to configure your card:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#
-
- Support must be compiled directly into the kernel
-
-
-
-#
-#
-
- You must have the correct driver loaded into memory
-
-
-
-#
-
- You can find out which driver your sound card is using by doing
-"lsmod" or looking at the output of "dmesg". Since sound is crucial for
-me, I always compile sound into my kernels. If you don't have a driver
-loaded, you need to figure out what's been compiled into your kernel.
-That's not so straight forward. Your best bet is to compile your kernel.
-BTW, let me say that compiling your own kernel is the first step towards
-proficiency with Linux. It's painful the first time you do it, but once
-you do it correctly, it becomes very easy down the right, especially if
-you keep all your old .config files and make use of things like "make
-oldconfig". See the Kernel HOWTO for details.
-
-
-
- If you haven't compiled the kernel yourself, there is an
-overwhelmingly good chance that your system is set up to load sound
-drivers as modules. That's the way distros do things. Have everything
-under the sun compiled as a module and try to load them all. So if you
-don't see your sound card's driver with lsmod, your card probably isn't
-configured yet.
-
-----
-!9.3.5. Permissions Problem
-
-If the sound card works when you're root but not any other user, you prolly have a
-permissions problem. If this is the case, as root, look at the group owner of the sound card
-using ls -l /dev/dsp; it'll prolly be audio. Then, as
-root, add your non-root user to the audio group in /etc/group. For
-example, I added the users p and wellspring to group audio on my system:
-
-
- audio:x:29:p,wellspring
-
-
-Then log out and log back in as the non-root user. Your sound card should work. Thanks
-to James Barton for reminding me to add this to the howto.
-
-----
-!!!10. Emulation and Virtual Machines
-
- Linux gets ragged on alot because we don't have the wealth of games that other
-platforms have. Frankly, there's enough games for me, although it would be really nice to
-have some of the bleeding edge games and classics like Half-life and Carmageddon.
-Fortunately, we have more emulators than you can shake a stick at. Although playing an
-emulated game is not quite as fun as playing it on the native machine, and getting some of
-the emulators to work well can be a difficult task, they're here, and there's alot of them!
-
-
-----
-!!10.1. Apple 8-bit
-
- All the 8-bit Apple
][[ emulators require a copy of the original ROM, for whichever
-system you want to emulate, in a file. If you search hard enough, you can find file
-copies of the ROMs for the Apple ][[, ][[+, ][[e, ][[c and //gs. They are still copyrighted
-by Apple, and you can only use them legally if you actually own one of these computers.
-
-
-----
-!10.1.1. KEGS
-
- KEGS is an Apple II emulator written by Kent Dickey
-`kentd@cup.hp.comb which was originally written for HP-UX, but improved
-and customized for Linux. It runs under X at any color depth, and supports changeable
-memory sizes, joysticks, and sound. KEGS boots all Apple II variants, and supports
-all of the Apple ][['s graphics modes. I can't find a working homepage for this
-application.
-
-----
-!10.1.2. apple2 and xapple2
-
-The SVGAlib based apple2 and X based
-xapple2 can emulate any Apple ][[ variant except for the //gs. The
-interface is a bit funky, but usable. Configuration is also a bit funky, too; this
-emulator would benefit from an SVGA or X based configuration tool. It supports the
-undocumented portion of the 6502 instruction set which some games rely on.
-apple2 is currently being maintained by Michael Deutschmann
-`michael@talamasca.ocis.netb and seems to be developed at a slow but
-constant pace. I don't think this application has a homepage.
-
-----
-!!10.2. DOS
-!10.2.1. dosemu
-
-dosemu `www.dosemu.orgb is the canonical
-DOS emulator on Linux. When you think of DOS, don't think of things like PROCOM PLUS OR
-OTHER PROGRA~1 WHICH HAVE SHORT NAMES AND ARE IN ALL CAPS. There are some real classics
-that were written for DOS like Carmageddon, Redneck Rampage and Tomb Raider. dosemu can
-run these. Unfortunately, it can take alot of effort to get dosemu to work, and of Jan
-2002, the sound code is somewhat broken. Not a big deal when you're trying to run
-Wordperfect or an old database application. It's an absolute show stopper for gaming.
-Getting dosemu to work well is not easy, but unfortunately, for DOS games it's the best
-avenue. Good luck. If you have success using dosemu, I would like to hear from you.
-
-
-----
-!!10.3. Win16
-!10.3.1. Wabi
-
- Wabi is a commercial Win16 emulator. That is, it'll
-run Windows 16-bit applications from a Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11 or Windows for
-Workgroups 3.11 environment. Wabi was originally created
-by SCO Unix a long time ago and then was purchased by Caldera sometime in mid year
-2001.
-
-
-
- Wabi is fast and does a good job for what it does, although I've heard it said that
-wabi for Solaris is more stable than Linux. It might be useful for playing older Win16
-games, but there are three problems:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
- You must have a licensed copy of Windows 3.1/3.11 or WfW 3.11.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- Wabi is awfully expensive for what it does.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- Wabi doesn't work under 32bpp or 24bpp color.
-
-
-*
-
- Wabi does NOT do DOS itself, but it looks like it can use a DOS emulator as a
-backend for running DOS programs. There was talk about Wabi 3.0 which would've done
-Win32 emulation, but AFAIK, this project was shelved indefinitely. I think Wabi
-will run under Linux on all architectures (can someone verify this?)
-
-----
-!!10.4. Win32
-!10.4.1. wine
-
- Wine `www.winehq.comb, which bears the
-GNUish acronym "Wine Is Not An Emulator" is a non-commercial implementation of the Win32
-API. The reason why it's not an emulator is subtle and not of much interest to most non
-computer scientists, so we'll call it an emulator here (it really does run-time
-translation of calls to the Win32 API to POSIX/X11 calls). Wine has come a long way, and
-is capable of emulating many important programs, which is great news for Linux users who
-want this sort of stuff.
-
-
-
- Wine does not provide the DOS API, so you can't use
-it to run DOS applications. For that, you should look at dosemu (Section 10.2.1). Wine has never been too good at implementing DirectX, although a
-number of games are known to work under wine. For gaming you might want to look at winex
-(Section 10.4.3).
-
-
-
- In addition to run-time translation of the Win32 API to POSIX/X11 (it runs Windows
-applications on Linux), wine also does compile-time tranlation of the Win32 API to
-POSIX/X11 (it compiles Windows application source code on Linux). In this sense, wine is
-a Windows-to-Linux porting utility. The x86 architecture isn't required, but is
-recommended since it allows actual x86 binary execuation as well as direct DLL usage).
-
-
-
-
- You can use wine `with Windows', which means that wine uses libraries that actually
-come with Microsoft Windows itself. This is legal only if you own a copy of Windows which
-isn't currently being used on a computer. It's said that wine has the best success when
-run with Windows. You can also run wine without Windows. The people at winehq are
-writing their own set of libraries called libwine which implements the Win32 API with no
-Microsoft code at all.
-
-
-
- Wine was originally licenced under the MIT/X11 license, so it could be used for
-both commercial and non-commercial purposes. In mid 2002, parts of wine were re-licensed
-under the LGPL so that it could only be used for non-commercial puposes. This presents a
-problem for companies like Transgaming (Section 10.4.3) and prompted a fork of
-wine called !ReWind (Section 10.4.2).
-
-----
-!10.4.2. rewind
-
- Rewind `http://rewind.sourceforge.net/b
-was started by Eric Pouech (a wine developer) and Ove Kåven (a winex developer) in
-response to wine's license change (Section 10.4.1). It started out life as a
-snapshot of the last version of wine which was completely licensed under the MIT/X11
-license. The aim is to keep rewind MIT/X11 based so that companies like Transgaming
-can offer wine based products.
-
-----
-!10.4.3. winex
-
- Winex is released by a company called Transgaming `http://www.transgaming.comb. The developers take wine (see Section 10.4.1) and add DirectX / !DirectDraw support. Although winex is commercial, they
-have an interesting business model.
-
-
-
- The end user (you) can download the source code for free. However, for 5 US
-dollars per month, you can become a subscriber of Transgaming. Being a subscriber of
-Transgaming gives three major benefits:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
- Subscribers can download convenient packaged versions of winex in deb,
-rpm or tar.gz format whenever they want, including updates.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- There are monthly polls where subscribed users can take votes on what
-they want winex developers to work on. For instance, they can vote for things like
-"Improve support for copy protected programs", "Better Installshield support" or "Improve
-DirectX 8.0 support". As far as I can see, the developers really do listen to the
-subscriber polls.
-
-
-*
-*
-
-The Transgaming website has a few user support forums. On one hand, they
-use the most godawful, horrible, confusing, wasteful, moronic format I've ever seen and I
-hope to god I never see a forum with a format as bad as Transgaming's. On the other hand,
-you can ask for help and the developers are VERY good about getting around to your answer;
-their vigilance is quite impressive. Non-subscribers can browse the forums, but only
-subscribers can post (and therefore, ask for support).
-
-
-
-*
-
- The developers of winex were going to release their Installshield, DirectX and
-!DirectDraw enhancements to wine "every so often". In return, as wine matured improved,
-the winex developers were going to take the new versions of wine and use them for winex.
-However, since the birth of Transgaming, parts of wine have been re-licensed under the
-more restrictive GNU LGPL license (Section 10.4.1). This basically means that
-versions of wine that are released past the date of the re-licensing can no longer be used
-by winex. Therefore, winex will now be based on rewind (Section 10.4.2).
-
-
-----
-!10.4.4. Win4Lin
-
- Win4Lin `www.netraverse.com/products/win4lin30/b is a commercial product
-by Netraverse. Like vmware (Section 10.4.5) it uses the virtual machine
-approach to running Windows applications, so you'll get a big window from which you can
-boot Windows and run all kinds of Windows applications. Unlike vmware, win4lin only does
-Windows 95/98/ME, but this turns out to be better for gamers. Because win4lin
-concentrates on these operating systems, reports say that it's faster and does a better
-job at running games under these operating system than vmware. It's also much cheaper
-than vmware. The most recent version of Win4Lin as of May 2002 is 4..
-
-
-
-
-
-
-*
-
- It does not support DirectX or !DirectDraw, while vmware has "limited"
-support for DirectX.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- It only supports serial and parallel devices. This is important for
-people who use USB joysticks. Note that vmware supports up to 2 USB devices.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- As of January 2002, expect to pay $80 without printed docs and $90 with
-printed docs. In addition, there isn't an evaluation copy available, although you get
-a 30 day money back guarantee. However, since it's commercial you do get tech support.
-vmware is considerably more expensive.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- Like vmware, you're required to have a licensed copy of Win95 or Win98. Win4Lin
-cannot use an existing Windows installation the way wine can.
-
-
-*
-*
-
- It only runs on x86 architectures.
-
-
-*
-
- If your goal is to run Win95/98/ME applications on Linux, without USB and on the
-x86 architecture, Win4Lin's cost and focus on Win95 type OS's make it a better choice than
-vmware. However, if you must have USB support or run Linux on a platform other than x86,
-vmware is your only option.
-
-
-
- Now if you're goal is to run Win95 type OS games under Linux, Win4Lin almost seems
-better than vmware. The show-stopper is the fact that vmware has limited DirectX support
-while Win4Lin has none. This fact alone makes both Win4Lin and vmware unsuitable for most
-hardcore gaming purposes. But if you're going to give it a try, you're more likely to
-have success with vmware.
-
-----
-!10.4.5. VMWare
-
-
-
-----
-!!!11. Interpreters
-!!11.1. SCUMM Engine (!LucasArts)
-
- Lucasarts wrote an engine for point and click adventures named SCUMM (Script
-Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). They wrote many graphical adventures using SCUMM,
-like their famous Monkey Island series (all three). Ludvig Strigeus
-`strigeus@users.sourceforge.netb was able to reverse engineer the SCUMM
-format and write an interpreter for SCUMM based games that compiles under Linux and Win32
-named scummvm `http://scummvm.sourceforge.net/b.
-Their website is very good, and chock full of any kind of information about SCUMM and
-playing these games under scummvm.
-
-
-
- A compatibility page is maintained at the scummvm website. FWIW, I've been able to
-finish many of the games that are listed as 90% done with no problems. scummvm is rock
-solid, and allows you to purchase SCUMM based Lucas Arts games, copy the data files to
-your hard drive and play them under Linux. As of February 2002, I've been following
-their cvs, and this project is undergoing constant development. Kudos to the scummvm
-team.
-
-----
-!!11.2. AGI: Adventure Gaming Interface (Sierra)
-
- The older Sierra DOS graphical adventure games used a scripting language named AGI
-(Adventure Gaming Interface). Some examples of games written in AGI would be Leisure Suit
-Larry I (EGA), Space Quest I and II, King's Quest II, Mixed-Up Mother Goose and others.
-These games can be played using sarien `sarien.sourceforge.netb, an open source interpreter for AGI
-games.
-
-
-
- Sarien was written in SDL, so it should run on any platform that can compile SDL
-programs. In addition, there are versions for DOS, Strong-Arm based pda's, QNS (holy cow!
-embedded gaming!), MIPS based systems and SH3/4 based Pocket PC's. The developers are
-clearly out of their minds (in a good way!). Sarien also has numerous enhancements not
-found in the original games, like a Quake style pull-down console, picture and dictionary
-viewer, enhanced sound and support for AGDS, a Russian AGI clone. Sarien is under
-development and the developers have been very good about documenting the Sarien internals
-if anyone wants to get involved in hacking it.
-
-----
-!!11.3. SCI: SCript Interpreter or Sierra Creative Interpreter (Sierra)
-
- The newer Sierra graphical adventure games (we're talking about the late 80's here)
-used an interpreter named SCI. There were many versions of SCI since Sierra was
-constantly improving its engine. The original SCI games were DOS based, but Sierra
-eventually started releasing Win32 SCI based games. Some examples of games written with
-SCI are Leisure Suit Larry 1 (VGA), Leisure Suit Larry 2-7, Space Quest 3-6, King's Quest
-4-6, Quest For Glory 1-4 and many others. Compared with AGI games, SCI adventures have
-better music support, a more complex engine and loads of bells and whistles.
-
-
-
- Many SCI based games (games written in SCI0) can be played using
-freesci, available at freesci.linuxgames.com. Like Sarien, FreeSCI has many graphics
-targets including SDL, xlib and GGI, so this game can compile and run under an incredible
-number of platforms. The developers have done a fantastic job of documenting and FAQing
-their application.
-
-----
-!!11.4. Infocom Adventures (Infocom, Activision)
-
- The Z-machine is a well documented `http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/zspec/index.htmlb virtual machine
-designed by Infocom to run their interactive fiction games. This allowed them to write game
-data files in a cross platform manner, since only the engine itself, the Z-machine, would be
-platform dependent. Z-machine went through a number of revisions during the lifetime of
-Infocom, and two further revisions (V7 and V8 created by Graham Nelson) after the Infocom's
-demise. The later versions even supported limited sound and graphics!
-
-
-
-One of the most popular Z-machine interpreters is Frotz `http://www.cs.csubak.edu/~dgriffi/proj/frotz/b. This excellently
-done page has many nice links for interactive fiction fans. Frotz is GPL, runs all versions
-of Z-machine and will compile on most versions of Unix. Frotz has spawned many forks,
-like a version for PalmOS and Linux based PDA's.
-
-
-
- jzip `http://jzip.sourceforge.net/b is
-another very popular Z-machine interpreter that will run V1-V5 and V8 Z-machine data files.
-jzip is very portable; it compiles on all Unices, OS/2, Atari ST and DOS.
-
-
-
-
- There are actually many other Z-machine interpreters like nitfol and rezrov (written in
-Perl!). Each interpreter has its own set of strengths, and you can find links to them on the
-home pages for Frotz and jzip.
-
-----
-!!11.5. Scott Adams Adventures (Adventure International)
-
- Scott Adams is, arguably, the father of interactive fiction. Although he himself was
-inspired by the first piece of interactive fiction, Adventure, Scott brought adventuring to
-the masses. His games were available for Atari, Apple 2, Commodore, Sorcerer, TI, and CPM.
-His company, Adventure International, released a number of much loved games between 1978 and
-1984 before folding. He recently released a new game (a Linux version is not available) but
-since the decline of adventuring, he has pretty much kept out of the gaming industry.
-
-
-
- Alan Cox wrote scottfree, a Scott Adams adventure game file interpreter for Unix.
-Using scottfree and any of the Scott Adams data files which can be downloaded from Scott's
-website `http://www.msadams.com/b you can enjoy these
-classics.
-
-----
-!!11.6. Ultima 7 (Origin, Electronic Arts)
-
- Ultima 7 is actually 2 games: part I (The Black Gate) and part II (Serpent Island)
-which uses a slightly enhanced version of The Black Gate's engine. In addition, an addon
-disk was released to both part I (The Forge Of Virtue) and part II (The Silver Seed).
-
-
-
-
- A team of people developed Exult `http://exult.sourceforge.net/b which is an open source
-interpreter that will run both parts of Ultima 7 and their addon disks. Exult is written
-in C++ using SDL, so it will compile on any platform that can compile SDL programs. It
-also features some enhancements over the original versions of the Ultima VII engine.
-You'll need to purchase a copy of Ultima 7 to play. The developers have no plans on
-extending Exult to interpret the other Ultimas since the engines changed so radically
-between releases.
-
-
-
- The Exult team has also been hard at work creating a map editor, Exult Studio, and
-a script compiler that will let users create their own RPG in the Ultima style.
-
-----
-!!!12. Websites
-!!12.1. Meta gaming websites
-
-
-
-; The Linux Game Tome:
-www.happypenguin.org:
-
- About the games themselves.
-
-; linuxgames:
-www.linuxgames.com:
-
- Linux gaming news
-
-; www.holarse.net:
-
-Linux meta gaming site for German speaking folk.
-
-----
-!!12.2. Commercial Linux Game Websites
-!12.2.1. Where to buy commercial games
-
- ebgames `www.tuxgames.comb no longer
-sells Linux software. They stopped selling Linux games and distributions at around the
-same time Loki Software declared bankruptcy, which is a shame because they had the lowest
-prices on Linux games I've ever seen.
-
-
-
-
-
-; Tux Games:
-www.tuxgames.com:
-
- Your one stop shop for buying any commercial Linux game (software vendors like
-Tribsoft and Loki have online shops at their websites too).
-
-
-----
-!12.2.2. Who Used To Release Games For Linux
-
- These are companies that used to release games for Linux but for whatever reasons
-aren't actively involved in Linux games anymore.
-
-
-
-
-
-; Loki Software: www.lokigames.com:
-
- As the company that brought CTP and Quake3 to Linux, Loki was the
-father of Linux gaming. They were one of the first and had, by far, the most titles
-(I own ALL of them). Loki ported games to Linux, mostly using the SDL library.
-Loki's death in January 2002 was the biggest setback Linux has ever had in its attempt
-to capture the general desktop market. Linuxgames.com has a nice Loki timeline at
-http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/lokitimeline/
-
-
-; Tribsoft: www.tribsoft.com:
-
- Tribsoft released Jagged Alliance 2, an excellent rpg/strat which
-claimed 2+ weeks of my life. There were slated to release Europai Universalis,
-Majesty and Unfinished Business. However, as of 3Jan01, Mathieu Pinard of Tribsoft
-said that he was taking a break and Tribsoft would no longer release games for awhile.
-He'll still support JA2 but don't expect patches or updates.
-
-
-; MP Entertainment: www.hopkinsfbi.com:
-
- MP Entertainment released Hopkins FBI, my favorite game ever released
-for Linux. More violent than Quake. More nudity than Hustler. More camp than
-Liberacce. It's a comic book on your monitor. They were slated to release Hopkins
-FBI II and a few other titles, but it's been a few years since the announcements with
-no sign that the games are coming. They've ignored all my attempts at finding out
-more information, so I have to conclude that MP Entertainment is in the same status as
-Tribsoft. You can still purchase or download a demo of Hopkins FBI from their
-website. If anyone has more information on this company or the author of Hopkins,
-please contact me.
-
-; Phantom EFX: www.phantomefx.com:
-
- They offer Reel Deal Slots, which is very nicely done! I'm not much
-for card/gambling games, but this game is impressive! Because their Linux guy quit the
-company, Reel Deal Slots is their first, and so far, last release for Linux.
-
-----
-!!12.3. Other Websites Of Note
-
- This section has URL's that should be mentioned but didn't have a separate section
-within the howto, so I list them
here as a kind of appendix.
-
-
-
-
-
-; Linux Game Publishing:
-www.linuxgamepublishing.com:
-
- Linux Publishing doesn't sell directly to the public, but provides
-professional game publishing to authors of publishing. I think this means disk copying,
-packaging and selling to retailers.
-
-; XFree86 Homesite:
-www.xfree86.org:
-
- XFree86 home page
-
-----
-!12.3.1. Game Development
-
-
-
-; Linux Game Development Center:
-http://lgdc.sunsite.dk/index.html:
-
- This is the canonical website for people who want to program games
-under Linux. It's a clearing house of information that contains well written
-articles on all aspects of game programming (not necessarily Linux specific), links
-to important game programming resources, interviews, reviews, polls and lots of
-other stuff. It's hard to imagine a better website on the subject.
-
-----
-!12.3.2. Medium Level Libraries
-
-
-
-; Clanlib `www.clanlib.orgb:
-
- !ClanLib is a medium level development kit. At its lowest level, it
-provides a platform independent (as much as that is possible in C++) way of dealing
-with display, sound, input, networking, files, threadding and such. !ClanLib builds
-a generic game development framework, giving you easy handling of resources, network
-object replication, graphical user interfaces (GUI) with theme support, game
-scripting and more
.
+Describe
[HowToLinuxGamersHOWTO
] here.
