Soldier of Fortune demo

[LinuxLuke]

alright, I've just finished downloading the 90 meg SoF demo on dial up. I installed it, and to my surprise, it ran! slow as hell, probably OpenGL, I've had no good experiences with anything OpenGL, windows or otherwise, if someone coud tell me what I need to do to configure OGL properly I'd very much appreciate it

-Luke

[fancypiper]

You will have better speed if you patch your kernel with the preempt patch.

Linux kernel preemption project (http://kpreempt.sourceforge.net/)

[LinuxLuke]

the file i downloaded was 28k, and it opens in a text editor... did I get the right one? if so, what do I do with it? also I'm using kernel version 2.4.13, am I going to have to update my kernel? or can I get an older preemtion patch?

-Luke

[fancypiper]

You don't have specifics in your question and that makes it impossible to give you an answer. The file is a .patch file which is a script to patch your kernel source.

You will need a patch that matches your kernel, yes. The patch and your kernel source versions must match.

Compiling Kernels NHF (http://linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Compiling_Kernels)
Guides to software and installation:
Compiling Software NHF (http://linuxnewbie.org/nhf/Compiling_Kernels/Compiling_Software.html)
LNAG - How do I install a program I downloaded from the Internet? (http://sunsite.dk/linux-newbie/lnag_basics.html#how_do_install)
Rute Guide's software explanation (http://rute.2038bug.com/node27.html.gz)

I can't give much help as my kernel source had the patch applied (I run Gentoo), so I just compiled it.

Google search for "patch kernel" (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=patch+kernel)

[LinuxLuke]

I think the problem is with OpenGL as I said in the original post. I only have an 8 meg video card and I don't think it has very good OGL support, I'm wondering if there is a way to run the game in Direct3D mode or something?

the script file just opens n a text editor, and if use a terminal and try to run it as a script I get a full screen of errors, and nothing happens...

ALSO, I've been running the demo just using the "SoF-bin" file, when i try to run the script I just get this error:"./sof-bin: error loading shared libraries: libesd.so.0: cannot open shared object file: no such file or directory"

I know my hardware isn't so bad that iI should get 1 frame per second, a friend of mine installed the demo, ran it with the ./sof script and it worked fine(other than a few messed graphics, and some clear boxes and doors, but that's because of an old mesa driver, according to the readme) and we have almost the same system other than he has a Radeon 7200 64MB.

-Luke

[DFo3D]

In many cases it is the video hardware or not having the opengl driver installed.

Out of curiosity what hardware do you have?

I think SoF should run fine on anything TNT2 Ultra or later.

[LinuxLuke]

my video card is an ATI Xpert XL (I think) it's 8 megs.
I have a PII 400Mhz and 160 megs of RAM
(I know it's not great, and I don't expect miracles, bt I know it can run better than 1 FPS)

-Luke

[DFo3D]

Actually, I think you're seeing the best the vid card can do...

The Xpert XL's size of RAM is not nearly as much of a bottleneck as the 3D processor.

Plus Soldier of Fortune has alot highlights it's loading on the engine, the XL does not support multitexturing either, and as far as I am aware id nor Raven ever wrote a custom backend for the older ATI boards.....

Sorry to say man, how much system RAM you got too?

I know anything less than 128 makes Soldier of Fortune almost unplayable now matter what vid card you have.

[LinuxLuke]

I have 160 megs of system RAM...
I have a 4 meg Sierra screming 3D card lying around somewhere... any way it could do anything to help the situation?

-Luke

[DFo3D]

Actually SOF wants a card that has 16MB of VRAM and a TNT2 or better graphics card. Rather, a Rage128 or better.

[LinuxLuke]

gotcha, I guess I'll be waiting 19 days... and hoping :P pretty sure I'm either getting a Radeon 7000 32 meg, or the 7500 64 meg.

-Luke

[DFo3D]

I'm pretty sure those will make SOF scream!

The entire Radeon line rips pretty good.

[Maigret]

Check your frame rate with glxgears

You should get 1000 fps +
I dropped my colour depth from 24 bit to 16 bit to get 180 fps to 1250 fps

[mrBen]

Originally posted by DFo3D
Actually SOF wants a card that has 16MB of VRAM and a TNT2 or better graphics card. Rather, a Rage128 or better.

Erm, according the demo download page I found, SoF only requires:

Linux Kernel 2.2.x and glibc-2.1, Pentium II with 3D accelerator card, 640x480, 32MB RAM

I was thinking of giving it a run on my machine - PII 300, 128Mb RAM, Diamond Monster 3d (3dfx Voodoo) - at some point :)

[LinuxLuke]

well, if you have any luck, let me know

-Luke