Linux Intel demo has major problem

[Johan K]

I'm truly baffeled. Our Version is a .tbz file which unpacks into a dominions2demo directory. It also has the proper permissions set and it doesn't crash.

I have no idea why the downloadable Version isn't the same one, but I'll try to figure out what has went wrong.

No promises about the no crash though. Non root Linux programs aren't supposed to crash that hard even if you want them to.

[Leif_-]

Originally posted by Johan K:
No promises about the no crash though. Non root Linux programs aren't supposed to crash that hard even if you want them to. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Eh, it does happen. It's usually not much of a problem, since you can normally telnet or ssh into the machine and kill the process (or the X Server.) It's typically graphic intensive programs that does it, and as far as I know (which isn't very far) it's usually related to bugs or problems in the graphics drivers for X.

[Richard]

Johan,

I sent you a PM on this, can you get back with me. Thanks.

[Richard]

The Linux and Sparc demos have been pulled. We will have new ones up this morning.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Richard:
The Linux and Sparc demos have been pulled. We will have new ones up this morning. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">For the whole evening, I've been trying to download the linux (Intel) demo, and the download keeps failing at somewhere between 30% and 80%. I've got the Windows demo OK, but still...

(For a time the file simply wouldn't start downloading, but since it seems to be back Online, I thought I'd try again...)

[Johan K]

I tried to download it to and got the same behaviour http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[Richard]

We could be getting hammered.

However how long did it go before the timeout? If your on a slow connection it may be our settings for keep alives on the web server. How long did it go (tota) in minutes before timing out. You might also want to try a download manager.

[Leif_-]

(Added) Actually, belay this post. I just noticed that the download of the .tgz seemed to have failed at 99%. This might be caused by a corrupted download. I'll check the matter.

(Added) Tried again with a fresh, successfully completed download, and got the same result. The problem is real.


I've just downloaded the demo and tried to get it running. First a couple of annoances. The .tgz file didn't contain a dedicated directory, which is a bit annoying as I ended up unpacking the contents all over my home directory. Secondly, the dom2demo didn't have the executable bit set - which makes it difficult for inexperienced Users to get anything running at all.

That fixed, I got it running and managed to create a pretender and set up a game. I then started the game I'd created, selected my turn and read the two introductory Messages (well, glanced at them - impatient, you know.) When I then tried to press "OK" to go into my turn proper, the game froze the console - even blocking the usual "Alt+F1 to text-console and kill the blocking program" route. Music was still playing though. Since I didn't have any way to log into my machine remotly, I was forced to power-cycle it - which is rather annoying as I have several large EXT2 partitions on it.

I tried three times, twice in a window with music and once in full-screen without music ("dom2demo -u -s") with the same result every time. My system is a IBM Thinkpad T30, running Mandrake 9 and using the (ATI) "Radeon" graphics driver for X-window.

[ October 27, 2003, 12:50: Message edited by: Leif_- ]

[Kristoffer O]

JK is checking it. Our Version seems fine, but the downloadable Version seems strange. We'll be back with more info.

[Leif_-]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
JK is checking it. Our Version seems fine, but the downloadable Version seems strange. We'll be back with more info. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks for the immediate reply. :-)

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Richard:
We could be getting hammered.

However how long did it go before the timeout? If your on a slow connection it may be our settings for keep alives on the web server. How long did it go (tota) in minutes before timing out. You might also want to try a download manager. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, I've downloaded larger files before.

I'm on an ADSL line, and the Last two times I tried downloading the file, it stopped after about 58 MB, with a "cannot read the file" error. This is both with Mozilla under Linux, or Internet Explorer under Windows Me; the download speed varied between 30 KB/s and 62 KB/s, so it's clearly not a time issue since.

Has anybody managed to fully download the linux (x86) Version recently? I alone must account for almost 10 of these 200 downloads of it... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ October 28, 2003, 08:12: Message edited by: PhilD ]

[PhilD]

More precisely: I just tried downloading the linux (intel) demo, and here is how it failed (with the Mozilla downloader):

The download stopped with 58112KB downloaded, at 61.9KB/s and with 3:42 minutes supposedly left. I'm pretty sure that most of my download failures ended at the same 58112KB.

[Johan K]

Tried it again today. I got much better download speed, but the download still stopped early. Got to download more bytes than yesterday though. Stopped at 56360960 bytes today.

On the second try I got this size: 56594936 bytes. It certainly seems abit too strange to be a coincidence. And it quit after 15 minutes and 56 seconds.

The complete download is supposed to take about 21 minutes for me.

[Hurmio]

I got the timeout error with the windows demo yesterday. I don't know any specifics since it was my girlfriend who did the downloading. She just mentioned that there was somekind of timeout error and that she had to start the downloading again. The second try worked fine.

I don't know if this has anything to do with your problems, thought just that i should mention this.

Matti

[Stavetor]

Tried the Mac OS Version a few times, and that didn't work. The first 2 times I tried with a download manager- it reported download speeds of up to 120k/second, which is a bit suspect on a 56k modem. When the download completed, I got errors unzipping it- it would stop the unzipping process about halfway through, telling me something about "unknown compression method". I'm using the latest Version of StuffIt, which should have no trouble unzipping a .tar.gz file.

Tried the 3rd time just using my browser, and it just kept downloading, even after it should have had the whole thing. I eventually stopped it once it downloaded 74 out of 70.3 Megs. Same unzipping problems.

Thought it was worth mentioning. It's rather frustrating, especially on a 56k connection where 70 megs takes about 4 hours to complete.

[PhilD]

New update: I tried another download, and it stopped at 58034KB. So it's not always the same spot, like Johan said, but it's disturbingly similar from one attempt to the next.

Edit: Another attempt, this time I monitored the time elapsed while the download went on. It stopped at 16:01, so it might be that there's a timeout at 16 minutes somewhere.

16 minutes for a 71 MB download is just a little over what one can expect, on a quiet day, on an ADSL link... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

[ October 28, 2003, 14:15: Message edited by: PhilD ]

[Johan K]

Here is an alternative link for those that have no luck with the original one:

http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/dom2demo_linux_x86.tgz

I hope it works ok! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[PhilD]

Download complete! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Thanks a lot, Johan.

[PhilD]

OK, so now I have the Linux demo. Cool. Except I get unplayable performance (under 1fps at lowest quality setting, 800x600), whereas the Windows Version on the same machine runs very smoothly at the next-to-best quality setting.

I've got an Nvidia GeForce 4200 as a video card, and they normally do a good job of providing their drivers for Linux; so I'll install their latest drivers and just hope it makes a significant difference... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Edit: Yes, it does make a difference. The game plays about the same under both OSes, like it should.

[ October 28, 2003, 20:53: Message edited by: PhilD ]