AO Linux HOWTO

[pyhispahis]

i can only move in those places decently if i go first person + look at ground only :P

after talking to few people in-game, seems like this is more related to dx10 gfx cards than linux+wine problem.

i guess vista can handle the dx10 cards better since i didnt have these problems with it

[porter]

Maybe not DX10-related... I haven't tested AO on Wine since late last summer / early autumn but I did have a serious drop of FPS with Wine every time I went from ground raid to on board any alien ship, same in LE missions. Graphics card at the time was GF5950. Overall gameplay was smoother in Linux + Wine than in XP but joining alien raids or LE missions was no fun due to the extremely low FPS inside alien ships. I can't really remember if the big transparent window in player shops caused a similar drop in Wine.

[Hacre]

Maybe not DX10-related... I haven't tested AO on Wine since late last summer / early autumn but I did have a serious drop of FPS with Wine every time I went from ground raid to on board any alien ship, same in LE missions. Graphics card at the time was GF5950. Overall gameplay was smoother in Linux + Wine than in XP but joining alien raids or LE missions was no fun due to the extremely low FPS inside alien ships. I can't really remember if the big transparent window in player shops caused a similar drop in Wine.

If I use Wine, AI ship raids are awful. Better in Cedega. I tend to use Wine for day to day stuff, since you can copy/paste from AO to other apps, handy for when people give you urls n stuff or you want to give urls since this doesn't work in cedega. I use cedega for when I need the extra fps horsepower.

Thanks for the patching tips by the way, works a treat. Works for Testlive too.

[xinos1]

Well several months ago I tried to use Wine with AO, but I was having big crashing issues, to the point that I wasn't able to log back in the game, so I moved back to windows. I recently decided to come back and see how AO is performing with Wine these days, and I gladly realized it's much better. No more crashes in the past 2 weeks.
Anyway, the framerate is just worst than it was with previous versions of Wine. Now I'm running Ubuntu 7.10, last version of Wine, and I have a AMD XP64 with Nvidia 6600LE. Oh and yes, I'm playing full screen. Is there anyone who can suggest me some way to increase the framerate? Thank you.

[Hacre]

Well several months ago I tried to use Wine with AO, but I was having big crashing issues, to the point that I wasn't able to log back in the game, so I moved back to windows. I recently decided to come back and see how AO is performing with Wine these days, and I gladly realized it's much better. No more crashes in the past 2 weeks.
Anyway, the framerate is just worst than it was with previous versions of Wine. Now I'm running Ubuntu 7.10, last version of Wine, and I have a AMD XP64 with Nvidia 6600LE. Oh and yes, I'm playing full screen. Is there anyone who can suggest me some way to increase the framerate? Thank you.

Sorry, what processor? Also what desktop are you using, are you using XGL/Compiz etc?

[xinos1]

my processor is AMD Athlon 3200+ and I'm using compiz fusion.

[Hacre]

my processor is AMD Athlon 3200+ and I'm using compiz fusion.

Disable all the fancy desktop stuff (I believe you can switch to your normal window manager) before playing AO.

[xinos1]

Disable all the fancy desktop stuff (I believe you can switch to your normal window manager) before playing AO.

Thank you for the hint; anyway that didn't help (besides I was having the same problem even before installing compiz). Framerate is more 13-16 FPS almost everywhere, the game is playable ofc, I was just wondering if there was a way to increase the performance.

[xinos1]

Ok I've been trying different settings within wine and AO, I've reached 26 FPS (that is, without lowering details or changing resolution). I started to experience anyway some crashes in LE missions, I assume I must live with it, but I wanted to ask you guys what's the performance you're getting in wine nowadays in RK, SL, alien ships (this has always been a serious problem in Wine afaik), BS.
Thanks in advance for the feedback.

[Hacre]

Ok I've been trying different settings within wine and AO, I've reached 26 FPS (that is, without lowering details or changing resolution). I started to experience anyway some crashes in LE missions, I assume I must live with it, but I wanted to ask you guys what's the performance you're getting in wine nowadays in RK, SL, alien ships (this has always been a serious problem in Wine afaik), BS.
Thanks in advance for the feedback.

I don't check my fps number or use it as a statistic since for the longest time it has said 5fps, but there's no way on earth its running that low because it is very smooth.

When I use wine I have issues in LE missions as well, there's something in there that just causes a complete lockup that I don't get anywhere else. Performance on AI ships is also pretty poor.

My Cedega subscription has now expired, but I usually play AO with Cedega 6, as it performs more smoothly with more going on. Wine is good for just running around OA/doing missions/running through inferno etc, but still struggles when there's lots of stuff to render. Cedega doesn't. I've been in Pande with Windows users bitching and I'm smooth as a buttered banister.

Wine does work, I'm looking forward to Wine performance with the new engine. Good thing about Wine is, report the bugs back to Winehq, they're pretty good with that stuff.

But for the moment, for current AO, Cedega > Wine.

[Alexanderw]

been having random crashes in wine

appears to be connected with a fog / nano effect but I have turned off nano effects and still get them.

Talked about it with a GM he said contact support .... been 6mths now and still no response not even a automated response so I've given up on them and make a point to tell GMs that tell me to talk to support that support never gets back (sorry end rant)

found the problem happens less if I open from terminal using 'wine anarchy.exe' command.
also found that the common error I'm seeing on crash is
fixme:d3d_draw:drawPrimitive Using software emulation because manual fog
coordinates are provided

was looking for some more info or input

[Hacre]

been having random crashes in wine

appears to be connected with a fog / nano effect but I have turned off nano effects and still get them.

Talked about it with a GM he said contact support .... been 6mths now and still no response not even a automated response so I've given up on them and make a point to tell GMs that tell me to talk to support that support never gets back (sorry end rant)

found the problem happens less if I open from terminal using 'wine anarchy.exe' command.
also found that the common error I'm seeing on crash is
fixme:d3d_draw:drawPrimitive Using software emulation because manual fog
coordinates are provided

was looking for some more info or input

That message happens regardless.

What version of wine are you running? I managed to get Wine to a state where it would very rarely crash anywhere other than LE missions, where you'd be pretty much guaranteed to crash horribly.

Funcom don't support Linux/Wine, suprised a GM even sent you to support. Cedega is still the most stable platform for AO on Linux.

[Alexanderw]

I run the most up to date version 0.9.57 I believe (checks winecfg) yup that's the one.

also know Cedega works better but can never get the build to work well with ubuntu
(tho have not tried for a while) so don' want to bother with a sub for it until I know I can get it to work.

I thin alot of my problems come form the old graphics engine and I may just wait it out till it is upgraded but it's a bother when I'm trying to help a org mate or do some fun RP and BAM crash and can't log that toon in again for another 2-3 hrs

[xinos1]

Well after Hacre's useful feedback I decided to give Cedega a try, and guess what, he was right

The performance I get with cedega so far is way better than wine. I still have to try every playfield (i.e. Alien ships) but RK and SL work just great.

I'm just having a weird bug, in which on the bottom-left of the screen my creds are displayed in an odd way: instead of being written as 3.500.000 they're like 3.5.0.0.0.0.0.0 :-\. Did anyone else ever get that bug?

Thank you.

[Hacre]

Well after Hacre's useful feedback I decided to give Cedega a try, and guess what, he was right

The performance I get with cedega so far is way better than wine. I still have to try every playfield (i.e. Alien ships) but RK and SL work just great.

I'm just having a weird bug, in which on the bottom-left of the screen my creds are displayed in an odd way: instead of being written as 3.500.000 they're like 3.5.0.0.0.0.0.0 :-\. Did anyone else ever get that bug?

Thank you.

In my experience AI ships perform -much- better with cedega than Wine.

The only dislike I have with cedega is the inability to copy/paste from game to desktop.

I haven't seen that bug, it could be a font issue or an issue with a custom gui?

[xinos1]

I was running the standard clean GUI, anyway I tried to download it again but I still have that problem. I tried also a custom GUI for a change, but no success either. I mean, I can play it's not a so serious thing, but it's annoying.

@ Alexanderw:

also know Cedega works better but can never get the build to work well with ubuntu
(tho have not tried for a while) so don' want to bother with a sub for it until I know I can get it to work.

I just subscribed to Cedega and I'm using Ubuntu 7.10: I had nothing special to do but to download the package, and install it, the pinngouin took care of the rest
When I was using Wine I had random crashes as well, and in previous versions of wine they could even result in an endless crash loop (to the point that I had to switch back to windows to log in). Anyway, I know that some people have no crashes at all so it may just depend on your hardware config.

[Stormgiver]

I'm just having a weird bug, in which on the bottom-left of the screen my creds are displayed in an odd way: instead of being written as 3.500.000 they're like 3.5.0.0.0.0.0.0 :-\. Did anyone else ever get that bug?

I have this bug too. Seems to be Cedega-related.

Btw, you can boost the performance of Cedega quite a bit by disabling the Pixel Shaders and GL Shading Language in Cedega's "Graphics Settings".
AO doesn't use any shaders...

[Alexanderw]

I just subscribed to Cedega and I'm using Ubuntu 7.10: I had nothing special to do but to download the package, and install it, the pinngouin took care of the rest
When I was using Wine I had random crashes as well, and in previous versions of wine they could even result in an endless crash loop (to the point that I had to switch back to windows to log in). Anyway, I know that some people have no crashes at all so it may just depend on your hardware config.

well that's good to hear last time I tried I had issues with libaries and such.

now need to find a way to get the sub with out a credit card (don't have one most likely never will)

[haide]

Hum i am trying to toss out win here and switch to Ubuntu (8.04) & Wine and ofc i whant to play AO :=) Seams to be working but i have the hardest time figuring out why i cant inspect items using shift+click any suggestions ?

PS
Ausus Maximus Motherboard & Nvidia 8800GT
Ubuntu 8.04
Wine 0.9.59
DS

[falixmonia]

It's fixed in .60, was a regression introduced by some other fixes. Using right shift works though.