[quake2] Questions about Quake2 and Solaris :-)

[Vincent Cojot]

> 	Yes, I'm running the latest Solaris 8.  Ahh, well, glad my
> hardware's not broke or something ;-)  Just got this machine after all
> :-D And yes, the problem is with ioctl, so I think you've hit the nail
> on the head. :-)

Well, at least your problem is consistent with a known problem (I noticed
that sound broke when I upgraded from 01/01 to 02/02 and I still haven't
tracked the origin but I have at least two different workarounds: 1) use
sdlquake2 instead of quake2 and 2) wait for the new sound routines borrowed
from another solaris quake2 project) and it's not a new problem.. :)

>
>> 	Also, if you have an Elite3D M4, it's still not enough to get
>> decent GLX performance.. You need an Expert3D (-NOT- the lite
>> version).. (that's what the SUN people said.. Since I only have an
>> Ultra2 at 300Mhz with a Creator3D, I have not been able to verify that
>> statement).
>
> 	Aww, so sad :-(  No hardware accelerated goodies for me :-(

Well, wait a minute.. an Elite3D m4 isn't all that bad.. on my SBUS 300mHz
single-cpu Ultra2 with a Creator3d, I was able to get about 10fps in GLX
mode at 512x384 res.. With your hardware, I bet it goes up to at least 20fps
with the same settings.. that might be useable for gaming. What I recommend
though, for people with non-accelerated HW, is to use "sdlquake2" with
"ref_xil.so" (the DGA in XIL makes it much more interesting than plain
X11, as you have already noticed).

> 	What do you run for optimal Sun quake happiness as far as
> mode/resolution/etc.?  It seems like XIL using the
> "xil_set_window_size" command is where the winning is for me.  I can
> crank it up to any size and it works pretty well -- it looks a little
> "muddy" the higher it goes since it's expanding a 320x240 window, but
> it's okay.  It's a little jerky, but I think that's a mouse problem ;-P
>  Never realised how nice the USB mouse is til now, heehee.

Well.. on my current H/W, I'll run 320x240 if I want fps' or 400x300 if
I want pixels.. :) Sun in sweden promised to let borrow a Blade 1000 with
GXVR-1000 graphics but I haven't heard from them in several months so I
guess I'll never play with that dream machine.. for those of you who
don't know, the GXVR-1000 is that dual-slot card with 384MB RAM from SUN..
It's a monster but yet its performance is perhaps not above that of an
Nvidia Quadro4 card...

>
> 	Do you think getting a 64 bit compile would make the thing run any
> better?  I honestly have very little idea as to what good a 64 bit
> program will do when a program's written with all 32 bit data though.

I don't think it it would get us anything at all.. if you have a sparcv9
cpu, OpenGL is already using the sparcv9/VIS enhanced OpenGL libs through
GLX anyway.. And moreover, moving to a 64bit compile of quake2
might require a lot of code rewrite and better performance is usually
not the reason behind a 64bit port.. I doubt that quake2 will ever require
over 4GB of ram anytime soon anyway.. :)


> 	I've temporarily nailed the problem by disabling audio on the
> command line with commands someone else posted.  I don't have speakers
> on the sun machine yet, so I'm happy with the sound off :-)  I
> definitely appreciate your eagerness to provide the goodies though! :-)

Could you try the sdlquake2 binary just to tell me if it works for you?
I'm pretty sure it does but I'd like to verify that.. Also, please tell
me if it works and with what version of the SDL library.. I'm using SDL-1.2
but I'm pretty sure it will work/compile with SDL-1.1 since that's what
I was using before (yes, SDL works fine on SUN's and it's even provided by
SUN on the "Software Companion" CD that comes with Solaris 8 goodies).


> 	No problem.  And if you want me to test, I'm always happy to help.
> I've got a decent amount of sun hardware lying around here.
>
>
> I appreciate your help,

Thanks for the e-mail.. I was starting to think I was the only one playing
around with Q2 under Solaris. :)

Vincent

> Steve