Linux and game speed

[brankok]

Hello,

I've just installed SUSE Linux 9.2 on my computer to play OpenTTd without using Windows anymore. But unfortunetaly there is one big problem. The game will not work on a good perfomance. Using a size more then 640 x 480 slows down the speed , the vehicles are stuttering and scrolling through the map will cause a very slow screen refresh.
I'm using an Athlon 700 Mhz with a GeForce 2 MX 400 graphics card.
I've installed the latest Nvidia driver without any effect.
On Windows (98SE) i've never had any problems playing with hundreds of panes, RV and trains on 1600 x 1200 using accelerated game speed.
I know somewhat about Linux, but I'm not an expert at all and so I want to know if this is a known problem with this graphic card ,of the X-Server of Linux, or only my private bad luck, and if there are any solutions for this problem. (if possible non-expert solutions )I don't want to have Windows installed only to play OpenTTd. This would really be a overkill .
I'm grateful for every help

[Darkvater]

Change your desktop colour depth to '8 bit' that will speed up openttd a lot! The current SDL implementation of OTTD is not so good

[ConductorBob]

Nvidia's 3d acceleration software for Linux Suse is pretty terrible, try Mandrake or Slackware and you'll probably get 30 times better results.

[Archonix]

They all use the same drivers.

[ConductorBob]

Suse is independent as it has a different system intirerly for 3d.. Doesn't use the standard XYZ-Sys like other distros.

[Archonix]

By efault, maybe, but it's pretty easy to install better drivers.

[Celestar]

I'm on SuSE and I use exactly the same drivers that I use on other distros.

Celestar

[brankok]

Now I'm a little bit confused .
Darkvater told it's a problem with the SDL implementation, ConductorBob said SUSE and Nvidia 3d acceleration is a mess.(Does OpenTTd use 3D software in any way ???)
The first time I run Openttd with the drivers automaticly installed by SUSE without 3D acceleration. All 3D software didn't run or if,it was very slow.
So I installed the latest nvidia driver and all 3D programmes worked fine.
The game speed of OpenTTD didn't improved.
Only reducing the color depth to 8 BIT (like Darkvater proposed) improved the speed many times and it worked fine in high resolutions too. But don't ask how my desktop looked .

IS it a problem with SDL and if, will there be a better implemantation some day, or have I to reconfigure/change my system/graphics card?

[nzhook]

I know I was having problems with the speed of the fast forward button, becuase of the full detail, and full animation options.

Are you running in fullscreen or window mode?

windowed will mean the graphics have to be converted back from 8 bit to the normal mode (which as you say when its running in 8 bit goes faster, anthing else will take conversion time (not much tho)) whereas full screen should run well on any mode.

[brankok]

There is no diffrerence between full screen mode and windowed mode.
The windowed mode is as slow as the fullscreen mode.

[SergeS]

On Suse you must install nVidia drivers ( if they will work there ) - because there is no 3d implemenation in SuSe ( i seen only one distribution where acceleration is default ). SDL work much wroster without this drivers ( tested on my Linux distribution )

[iain]

Hi,

Try running openttd from a console. Before starting ./openttd or whatever path, (and assuming you are using bash) enter the line :
export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=dga

This proved to be much better on my hardware, but YMMV. It also means that you run openttd and can't task-switch or run in windowed mode.

It it's good for you and you want to have this done automatically, add the export line to your ~/.bashrc file.

[brankok]

That works!
Great!
Many thanks

[brankok]

Some little new problem: Starting the game like described before, I'm not able to use upper case. That's not handy if I want to rename towns, trains a.s.o.
Starting the game "normally" I have no problems -but its soooo slow ...

[hachiman]

I found the same problem at changing from 0.4.7 to 0.4.8[-RC1]
linux, debian, sdl on X11 on framebuffer

it was annoying that the game is stuttering,
so i tried to find the guilty CPU eating code.
The slow code is near./video/sdl_v.c

Code: Select all

                        if (++pal_tick > 4) {
                                CheckPaletteAnim();
                                pal_tick = 1;
                        }

after changing the number 4 to number 100 (or any higher value)
the palette animation slowed down but lagging are more rare.

I think it would be a great feature to create a Patch for it, allowing the user to change palette animation frequency. (on slow machine high value recommended)