Very poor performance under Linux

[PhilD]

Not sure if this qualifies as a bug, so I'm posting in a new thread...

Today I tried installing Dom3 on my laptop, and since the OS I use 99% of the time with it is Linux, I first installed on Linux.

What I found out was that the graphics were extremely slow - like 1.4 FPS on the lowest setting. And I'm running up to date Linux drivers from the manufacturer (ATI, I believe - I didn't check, but I seem to remember that).

When I switched to Windows (XP), the game ran perfectly fine and fluid.

Did anyone else notice a performance gap between the OSes? (I still have to check on my home desktop, see if it's similar) With Dom2, I never had the same problem - indeed I almost only played Dom2 under Linux.

[PhilD]

I just checked what it does under Linux on my home desktop, and the performance is almost as poor - like 2 FPS on lowest setting. Again, the same machine runs the game just fine under Windows (XP Home).

Also, I experienced something strange with the laptop: the power was off, and suddenly the graphic battles showed the same kind of low FPS that the Linux version did. Could there be some setting of the graphics card that says it should run on some low-consumption mode, and that would be how it typically runs on Linux?

[efelle]

Could it be a driver problem ?
I always have problem between Dominion 2 and the ATI card of my previous machines on Linux and Windows 2000.

[PhilD]

The desktop is Nvidia, and shows the same kind of problem. And the laptop under Windows works fine when its power adaptor is plugged in.

[Leif_-]

Sounds like a problem with your video drivers, really. Do glxgears work?

[Chazar]

I have the same problem with my ATI graphics, see Post#455756 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=455756) for a more detailed description.

In my case, glxgears and other games work fine, but DomIII somehow still uses the wrong software libraries (MESA) and hence is real slow. So it is either the fault of the ATI drivers or the distribution. What Linux distribution are you using? And please post if you find a solution (I have given up for now)!

Interestingly, Dom2 does still runs very fast...

[TheCourtJester]

I just tried the tutorial in Linux yesterday and it ran great. I'm running Ubuntu 6.10 - Edgy-Eft RC, freshly installed last night.

CJ

[PhilD]

glxgears reports between 200 and 300 FPS, depending on whether I'm moving other windows apparently. Works perfectly fine, IMHO.

I haven't tried running Dom2 on this machine (and I lent my copy to a friend, in the not-so-secret hope of converting him into a possible opponent), but it always ran perfectly fine on all machines I installed it on, including a previous laptop.

I'm not sure which distribution I'm running, as it was installed by the sysadmin at work, but it's some version of Red Hat.

[Leif_-]

Could you list the output of the commands "ldd ~/dominions3/dom3" and "ldd `which glxgears`"?

[PhilD]

Sure.

[duchon RandomFPL]$ ldd `which dom3`
linux-gate.so.1 => (0x001eb000)
libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x00278000)
libGLU.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0x00886000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x007f5000)
libSDL-1.2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libSDL-1.2.so.0 (0x0455c000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x005a1000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x006cd000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x006f3000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x007e4000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x00113000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00a0d000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x009da000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00583000)

[duchon RandomFPL]$ ldd `which glxgears`
linux-gate.so.1 => (0x00c1c000)
libGL.so.1 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libGL.so.1 (0x008bf000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libXext.so.6 (0x007e4000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6 (0x0070e000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x007f5000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x006cd000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x005a1000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x006f3000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x00583000)

[Leif_-]

There's your problem. Dominions link to a different version of the OpenGL libraries than GLXgears do. Most likely the version in /usr/lib/ is the Mesa software-based version. I'm not sure how to sort it -- you can try to move all files starting with libGL under /usr/lib to a backup directory and see if that sorts it. It might cause some issues, in which case you'll have to copy the files back again.

I also notice that neither program depends on the libnvidia-tls library, so am I right in assuming that you haven't installed NVidia's own Linux drivers on your system?

[PhilD]

Leif_- said:
There's your problem. Dominions link to a different version of the OpenGL libraries than GLXgears do. Most likely the version in /usr/lib/ is the Mesa software-based version. I'm not sure how to sort it -- you can try to move all files starting with libGL under /usr/lib to a backup directory and see if that sorts it. It might cause some issues, in which case you'll have to copy the files back again.




Will try that. Nice to have an expert on board http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



I also notice that neither program depends on the libnvidia-tls library, so am I right in assuming that you haven't installed NVidia's own Linux drivers on your system?



Well, considering this laptop happens to have an ATI graphic card, this seems reasonable to me...

[PhilD]

I tried moving the /usr/lib/libGL* files to another directory, and now ldd `which dom3` reports the same libGL.so.1 link as glxgears uses, but dom3 graphics on the title page are still just as slow.

Running the video preferences, the terrain just doesn't show at all (black background), and the FPS are almost as low (9 FPS on lowest setting). The "Benchmark" reports 130 FPS, only I get a (sky-)blue screen.

In other words, it's not much better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Leif_-]

Hmm. Strange. The only other piece of advice I can give you is to try and reinstall the hardware driver for your video card. That sometimes clears up weird bits like that.

[Arralen]

PhilD said:
The "Benchmark" reports 130 FPS, only I get a (sky-)blue screen.



Did you turn off "animated backgrounds" (-a) ?

Though this was fixed, but it is not for the Linux version, somehow..
18th august
* Version 3.00
15th august
* Battle graphics settings screen always runs with background on.

[PhilD]

I tried playing with the command-line switches, and nothing seems to make things better. The -x switch does make graphics faster, but then the terrain doesn't show up at all during battles (I get a few unit sprites on a black background), and main screen display is messed up.

[Jamie]

Has this been resolved? I note this thread is 6 months old. I have the identical to problem to Chazar (above, who happily resolved my dom2 issue).

[hnchrist3]

You do not state your hardware, and "running Linux" is like saying "I have something 'green.'" There are a lot of green things. Be specific about hardware and versions.

I personally have had no trouble at all with Linux.
[I run a dual-processor {which makes no difference to DOM3 as it it is not hyperthreaded} machine at 2 GHz with 1 GB of memory. (Note that I went from 512MB to 1GB and DOM3 did not change.). It is 9 years old and still serves all my needs.]

If I may suggest, your video card is very old and cannot handle the bandwidth.

Send me a personal note [hnc3@wb4me.com] and I will try to resolve your problem. You must include EVERYTHING I need to know, about your hardware, and Linux versions.

[Right now I am running ubuntu 7.04; after switching from Mandrake 2007. Both of those ran DOM3 with no problems or slowdowns.]

[Gandalf Parker]

Ubuntu is "home" to Dom3 if that helps. Thats what its developed on.

[Jamie]

Hi,

Thanks for the offer, I did not provide details as chazar had previously solved this for Dom2 as he exactly the same problem and it is specified in detail on a previous post cross linked from this forum.

In summary, I'm running SUSE Linux 10.1 on an oldish ACER laptop (Travelmate 800) with a ATI radeon 9000. With Dom2 I had erratic errors but chazar sorted this out for me some time back.

See post #459277

He mentioned at that time that this solution did NOT work for Dom3, and since I am considering buying a copy I wanted to know if this was still the case or if a solution had been found.

[Chazar]

Jamie said:He mentioned at that time that this solution did NOT work for Dom3, and since I am considering buying a copy I wanted to know if this was still the case or if a solution had been found.

Uh, that was ages ago, when I shortly wanted to take a peek at the first available Dom3-Demo. Unfortunately I vowed that I won't play Dom3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif (nor any other time-consuming PC-games) until my PhD-Thesis is finished, so I have not tried again since. Sorry for not being able to offer any help, but I know that the ATI Linux drivers have quite improved since (DualHead, Suspend, etc.), so it might be worth to give it another try with the lastest ATI Driver and the lates Dom3-Demo:

Download the ATI unified driver binary executable from the ATI webpage, run, select Distribution Specific RPM Generation and generate appropriate RPM package, install RPM, run aticonfig (IMPORTANT! It is best to use the option which allows it to reinitialize your /etc/X11/xorg.conf entirely from scratch and then manually merge specific settings by hand from the backup of your original xorg.conf. Chose Single-Head setting first, for in earlier times I sometimes had problems with 3D stuff in DualHead mode. aticonfig --help explains quite a lot of stuff. E.g. check with "aticonfig --query-monitor" whether only one head is enabled or whether the VGA-connector is live in clone mode, etc.), restart X-server, check that the commandline tools "fglrxinfo" and "glxinfo" do not print "MESA" anywhere. Rinse and repeat these steps whenever you use Yast-Online-Update updates the kernel. That's all that I can offer right now, sorry. I'll be back to Dom3 in a year, hopefully earlier... /threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif

[Kristoffer O]

> That's all that I can offer right now, sorry. I'll be back to Dom3 in a year, hopefully earlier...

YOu are welcome when you do http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif