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Games Entertainment

Linux/Mesa 3D Game Beta 61

Posted by Hemos from the c'mon-and-get-it dept.
Steve Baker writes "Tux-the-Penguin - A Quest for Herring. A full 3D game for Linux/OpenGL (Mesa). Released with full source code under GPL. This is a first public beta and the start of a web-based project to bring this to completion.
What's available now is a couple of playable levels. You *WILL* need a 3D accelerator that Linux can support under OpenGL (that pretty much means a Voodoo-1 or 2 or a RUSH).
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Linux/Mesa 3D Game Beta More

Linux/Mesa 3D Game Beta

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  • No. We really shouldn't merge GGI with anything, because that would totally rule out any kind of portability. Sure you might be able to run GGI on a Sun framebuffer, but installing that probably requires root. This would completely lock out a whole slew of programs from other public workstations running other breeds of UNIX.

  • Re:Or how about software rendering? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hi! (This is Tux-aqfh's author again - I *must*
    sign up for a /. username)

    Software-only OpenGL isn't gonna cut it.

    I might believe that an alternative software
    renderer could get Tux-aqfh working at a
    reasonable speed without 3D hardware...but
    it would be a LOT of work compared to $30
    for an ancient Voodoo card.

  • Re:3d cards question (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, I *developed* Tux-aqfh on a Voodoo-1
    card and it runs at a happy 30Hz. 3D performance
    is as much to do with the CPU as with the
    3D card.

    I have a Voodoo-1 and a 266MHz AMD K6-2 CPU
    and get 30Hz.

    One of my Beta-testers has a Voodoo-2 and a
    133MHz Pentium and only gets 20Hz.

    So, a Voodoo-1 is OK for Tux-aqfh at least.

    (On a $5,000,000 SGI machine we have at work,
    I clocked Tux-aqfh at ~200Hz...but with a
    76Hz monitor that's a bit silly!)

  • Re:Any chance? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 06, 1999 @02:41PM (#1901856)
    Well, (I'm the author BTW) I *do* intend to
    get it going under Windoze. Two reasons:

    1) Tux-aqfh started life as a demo for my
    portable games libraries (PLIB). Portability
    is what it's all about. Why? Because if
    we can convince people that it's as easy
    to write games that are portable as games
    for just one platform, there will be more
    games for Linux and that would be A GOOD
    THING.

    2) I like the irony of Windoze users having
    to watch Tux run around their screens.

  • Re:Any chance? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 06, 1999 @02:45PM (#1901857)
    Yes - I believe that someone *does* have it
    running under Windoze already using CygWin's
    toolset.

    At any rate, the 'PLIB' library certainly runs
    under windows - and that's 15,000 lines of code
    versus only ~7,000 for the game itself. It won't
    be hard to port.

    All the nasty portability issues are buried in
    PLIB anyway. I already have portable sound,
    GUI, Graphics, Windowing and Joystick/Keybd/Mouse
    I/O.

  • I've actually gotten my Voodoo1 (which a good friend gave me) to attain a massive ~37 fps under Quake2 (in certain areas). Of course I tweaked things a bit (both w/ glide and w/ QuakeII).
  • i hit
    slashdot.org/index.pl and it worked fine... (after black screens on the main / page)
  • Bah.. That's no good.. If a broken ad server can prevent me from seeing /., someone has a wacky set of priorities ;-)

    You sure seem to be right. By blocking adfu.blockstackers.com, the page turns black.. I suppose that could have been intentional..
  • By the way, I suggested doing something like this game (I think I called it Tux64) on Slashdot about six months ago. I'm glad you started working on it so promptly you started six months before I even suggested it...:-)
  • cause with unix you leave as much as possible in user space. and up to now it's worked fine, where we ran a trusted server process which could access the graphics card.
    Graphics are Linux's biggest instability. Needing to suid SVGAlib programs to root is insanely insecure. X is a bit more trusted, but running X suid root is, effectively, making X an OS process. Just one that isn't directly included inside the Linux kernel. That's just poor design.

    I don't know how good the KGI design is. From my lay view, it seems to be pretty good. ggilib looks really neat, though I don't know how much it depends on KGI. Anyways, I could be wrong about it all. However, one way or the other graphics definately should be in the kernel. fbcon is a step in the right direction, but not complete.

  • My firewall blocks any *ad* and I view /. with no problems.
  • They definitely ARE worth $30, but at the same time will NOT give you 15 fps on quake 2/3. Quake 1 should run fine though.
  • It never got in for a couple reasons, the primary being that (ahem) the GGI DEVELOPERS weren't ready for it to go in. The second being that FB devices made it in. So, gee, now GGI is giving FB devices accelleration. What the hell's wrong with that?
  • Actually, considering that GGI can display onto things like X, and adding other display targets to GGI is not difficult, programs using the API would not be Linux-specific at all.
  • My Netscape 4.05, 4.06, 4.5, and 4.51 all present me with the lovely "Big Black Screen Of Nothingness". I've had to resort to IE4.0 to access /. today.


  • Well, hope I can get it soon - it looked nice. =) Two megs of source and all, and I have no interest in installing the 3dfx devel things yet - are there any pre-built binaries yet?
  • cause with unix you leave as much as possible in user space. and up to now it's worked fine, where we ran a trusted server process which could access the graphics card.

    in future there might need to be a minimal bit of kernel support to get 3d graphics working, ie to support interrupts and copying textures across AGP to the video card.

    GGI as an API is dead. it's too linux-x86 centric. OpenGL/X is portable.
  • no, the idea behind UNIX is to keep things simple.

    There is nothing wrong with allowing a trusted programme access to hardware, with the caveat that you can recover from any mistakes it might make - achievable with linux-framebuffer and a supported card.

    Also, if people start to write app's to things like GGI then we end up with linux-specific programmes. not nice.
  • Of course when you try and get interest in the Windows community with your game don't refer to their OS as Windoze, however tempting it may be. Appear professional at all times. Show them the potential of your libraries and lets hope it gets more games to Linux.
    --
  • $30 is a fair price for what is still an effective, usefull and widely supported product.

    Gopher it!

  • Like Super Smash Bros. for N64? :-)
  • Unfortunately, at this moment in time, the definitive list is:
    • Voodoo
    • Voodoo 2


    --
    Ian Peters
  • This is true, though obviously depends on your CPU as well.

    My P-II 400 with a Voodoo1 gets between 30-40 FPS on Linux (using the 3dfxgl minidriver).
  • Carmack also mentioned that g200 should preform around the same speed as TNT. (see g200 devel list). Thus I have high hopes for g200/g400.

    BTw, 3dlabs would be given out the specs both 2d/3d for pm3 as well. You can play this game under pm2 using the kernel mlx module developed by SUSE.
    --
  • Hi Matt

    Mlx compiles fine for me, but with the cvs drivers i get a green screen of death when ever i run an opengl application. Simon @suse said he would be uploading newer drivers soon.

    Basically read the gettingstarted/Readme and follow those directions there, I have had clean compiles with the cvs and the tar balls on suse. If you need any more help e-mail me at twisted@telbot.com.

    Later.
    --
  • Voodoo (you know where to get it)

    Rigth now there are two companies which has pledged their alligance to Linux and given specs to their 3d/2d hardware.

    Matrox G200 - OpenSource project.
    lists.openprojects.net/mail man/listinfo/g200-dev [slashdot.org]

    3dlabs Permdai2 - See link above and Simon's page on Suse [www.suse.de]

    In other news, 3dlabs said they would be giving full specs to permedia3 for developers. This includes both 2d and 3d specs. Currently both pm2 and matrox g200 can play q3a with hardware acceleation.
    --
  • I've got the game running really quite nicely on a Riva TNT card here.

    Of course, I had to port it to Win98 first; it's not a complicated procedure, though (1.5 hours, and that included setting up the IDE nicely; only about 10 lines of code had to be changed).

    email me for details
  • Possible? Yes,
    Although Mesa itself seems rather slow in software-only rendering.
  • I just saw this one on Freshmeat. It's great that 3D games are coming out for Linux, but I've found that it's really tough to find out which cards have native 3D support. Is there a definitive reference for accelerators under Linux?

    I'd love to play Tribes under Linux, but it just won't work. :(

  • I have a Canopus Pure3D Voodoo 1. It may not be the best thing in the world, but I'm playing Q3Test, and I am very much liking that :). FPS is good in low res at low detail. Sometimes choppy when there's a lot of action, but I still manage to win a good deal of the time.

  • G200 (Score:2)

    by Fizgig ( 16368 )
    It depends on what you mean by "support." You can throw in the Marox G200, if you're lenient. The driver is so alpha it's just CVS right now, but it works pretty well considering how young it is. To give you an idea, people are getting ~5-10fps in Q3Test, which is very little, I know, but much better than the 2spf that you get with software.
  • Well, it varies greatly. It's leaps and bounds above Software, that's for sure, but it's not up to 3dfx performance yet. Part of that has to do with Matrox not releasing quite all of the specs. They left out something called "Warp" which is their triangle setup engine (I believe; I don't really know anything about this; this is just from the mailing list). People seem optimistic that Matrox may eventually release that too. Another thing to wait for is the direct rendering (i.e., not through X) protoctol that Precision Insight is working on and won't release until June. It's very good progress so far, and the people on the list seem very intelligent--not that I know anything about this stuff, but when Carmack himself has looked at the code and said "I don't see anything blatantly wrong" I take that as meaning these people know what they're doing!

  • Wow, this is a great game! (Score:4)

    by Fizgig ( 16368 ) on Thursday May 06, 1999 @02:09PM (#1901889)
    I just downloaded it and got it to compile (I had to comment out a line calling XMesaSetFXmode to fullscreen to get it to compile, but it did eventually, and this is an amazing game! It's not really much of a game yet. You just walk around and eat fish, but Tux can jump and dive and burp like he never could before! Don't try it on software Mesa, though. It's SLOW. I was getting about 5 seconds per frame. But I did get it to work with the in-development G200 driver, and it was more than playable (except that there's not much of a point to the game yet). It's far from finished, from the looks of it, but the graphics engine is very impressive. I can see the game ending up with great appeal for kids.

  • I don't see a problem with software rendering if the game is optimized and the hardware can handle it. I tested quake2 in 800x600 software and got 28fps and 19fps in 1024x768...
  • Anybody gotten the mlx driver to compile? I spent a few unsuccessful hours with it the other night. There were problems in the header files some of which I fixed and others I have not the faintest idea how to (knowing 0 OpenGL)
  • Of course software rendering is possible. Under SVGALIB, fbcon, GGI, or X11 even. If you want you can try it out using Crystal Space. This engine works on Linux (and on Windows, OS/2, BeOS, DOS, Macintosh, NextStep, ...) and runs with software rendering, OpenGL, Glide, or Direct3D (Direct3D obviously not for Linux :-)

    Have a look at http://crystal.linuxgames.com

    By the way it is Open Source (under the LGPL license).

    Greetings,
  • Hey, maybe people should start calling their game 64 to take advantage of the N64 marketing strategy. Muhahahahaha!


  • Are those ratty voodoo 1 cards on pricewatch for 30$ worth it? Would it allow ~15 fps on quake3 or whatnot? I really want a 3dcard (just for the 3d tracert tool) but I don't got oodles of cash.

    As for slashdot wierdness, let it give you the black screen, then click reload, wait and press escape before it finishes.
  • They are definately worth $30. I just wish GGI/Mesa/X would all finally merge. Actually all we need is KGIcon finished and merged with the kernel proper. The rest will just magically appear.
  • Well, I wouldn't want GGI merged, just KGIcon. Unix abstracts all other hardware, why leave video cards in userspace?
  • My friend and I are working on a project (he'll get annoyed at me writting about it before it's really worth showing the public), but if you want a sneak preview of Xtux go to
    http://www.adelaide.net.au/~philaw/
    Currently you can be Tux or BSD, Gnu comming soon.
    (Copyright with Tux isn't a problem, we're assuming Gnu project wouldn't mind, BSD might sue the pants of us but who knows?)

    Enjoy
  • oooh . . . How does it do that?
  • Heh.. Have you ever seen glquake run with software rendering? A friend of mine messed around with the dlls and got it going. It wasn't pretty. Something like 9 seconds per frame.. Granted, this was on a P133, but you get the idea.

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