Spring RTS Engine

Neddie wrote:I thought you were only away for three years or so...

That's pretty much how I feel.
Though I abandoned my first decent job some 2 years ago, it had lasted 3.5 years and I had already abandoned Spring before that (not sure how much time), so the math (>>5 years) doesn't add up at all to what I feel. Damn, how old is this game anyway!?

Cheesecan wrote:[...] Mobility Radeon cards series 3x and 4x, they are pure shit. [...] random reboots when they overheated

Same here.
Yet .. I recently bought a new laptop with a powerfull Nvidia 650m and integrated Intel gfx, which means it had Optimus technology, which has zero support under Linux and means you only have access to the Intel 4000 (managed to work around it with some very ugly work-arounding, which broke shortly after).
Returned it and vowed to not buy Nvidia again for a very long time. So I guess I'm out of options other than ATI as far as gfx goes for Linux.

Cheesecan wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote:No offense, but what are you guys thinking trying to play games on these piles of crap?

Hum well I was a broke ass student for one thing. I also moved around a lot, so having a stationary PC wasn't practical.
[...]

FLOZi wrote:Belongs in ZK forum? engine is not responsible for expensive lua graphics and their toggle-ability.

Not likely. That happens in BA as well. Haven't tried other mods other than BA and Zero-K, though.
Guess I'll give a try some other mod. Which mods do you think should be the lighter?

What's this? Integrated gfx with shared mem? Is this a problem, or OK?

Have no idea what that means. Are you saying that means that I'm using shared RAM instead of GFX's dedicated memory?

BA uses LUPS, too.

Try setting LuaShaders=0 in your spring settings

The solution seems clear enough, install Windows on dual boot and use the Nvidia 650m.

Alternative solution: My laptop had Integrated Intel combined with Mobility Radeon. There was a BIOS setting to disable OS switching. You could then set it to always use the discrete card. Might work the same way with Nvidia Optimus. You could try updating your BIOS too, to see if that setting appears.

By the way, historically Nvidia has had the better Linux support.

oh wow, blast from the past. hey man, nice to see you alive and what not.

What was bad about the nvidia?

I am running an alienware with an nividia and it seems to do around the same fps with my pc.

Cheesecan wrote:The solution seems clear enough, install Windows on dual boot and use the Nvidia 650m.

Check http://bumblebee-project.org/
"The Bumblebee Project, a project aiming to support NVIDIA Optimus technology under Linux."

Xubuntu 13.04 here and works perfect (with spring too )

Guess I'll give a try some other mod. Which mods do you think should be the lighter?

BA is lighter than zeroK. xta inbetween maybe.

I notice that even though I've set the settings to the lowest possible settings, I see some extremely(!!!) expensive graphical goodnesses going on - the distortion effect of the exhaust's pipe of a plane passing by. In other games (ex: Starcrap 2), when that effect comes up, performance goes down the drain. Also, I see shadows and the planes' flaming trails (all quite unneeded).

How did you set settings? (via a lobby or settingsfile or something else) Because if you set it to lowest possible but still see shadows, that failed.
Find your settings file (hints for finding it:
http://springrts.com/wiki/Springsettings.cfg )
and set
shadows=0
advmapshading=0
advunitshading=0
water=0
luashaders=0
logflush=0
and maybe some more, someone should make a "low settings" list..

ingame you can type /luaui disable
If that did not improve fps, dont bother with next step.
If it did, find out which widgets you can activate while still keeping good fps:
Type /luaui reload
Press f11 and start clicking around in the menu until you find a trade-off between "nice interface and graphics" and "good fps" ...or until everything is totally messed up \o/

But fps depend very much on playercount and the map.

knorke wrote:[...] set
shadows=0
advmapshading=0
advunitshading=0
water=0
luashaders=0
logflush=0
and maybe some more, someone should make a "low settings" list..

ingame you can type /luaui disable
[...]

Super thanks! Performance is back to what I'd expect (mostly with the LuaUI thing) - 70~90 FPS at game start spectating Altored Divide in a 8v8, and slowing down to 5~10 FPS when game evolves into a mess of units.

Still need to get me self a new computer, though!

smoth wrote:oh wow, blast from the past. hey man, nice to see you alive and what not.
[...]

Glad to be back, even though memory is very sweet but somewhat sour (I remember Spring having taken over my life and me playing 5~10 hours every single day).

And I'm glad to see quite a few old-timers still around. I still remember when some of the now old-timers were just kids or young men. Good old Spring - after so many years, I'm still to to find a better alternative even with it's small community and lack of polishment... Mega Kudos for the mighty crazy swedish SY that started it all and to all those who perpetuated the game (developers and others).

Cubex wrote:[...]
Check http://bumblebee-project.org/
[...]
Xubuntu 13.04 here and works perfect (with spring too )

Check Primus (can't find the link). It's a .. add-on(?) to Bumblebee that .. it's technical and doesn't matter but gave me a performance improvement of some 10~30%! Instead of running a program with "optirun", I would run it with "primusrun".

That's the ugly work-around I mentioned. It managed me to use the Nvidia GFX for some time (Serious Sam 3 and Team Fortress 2 ) but soon broke down...

Nvidia has, historically, had better support for Linux, which was why I bought the Nvidia 650m. However, currently, Nvidia's stance about Optimus in Linux is: if the BIOS does not have a way to disable the integrated gfx, you have no support and don't plan to ("we don't care").

If I can avoid it to the most, I will continue to use my Ubuntu.
Apart from a recent month of Starcraft 2, I've been having a blast with it over the last years!!! Especially once I found commercial and good quality games on Ubuntu Software Center (World of Goo, Amnesia the Dark Descent, Torchlight, ...).
And now that Steam is available on Linux and a decent range of games is being provided (Counter-Strike, Bastion, Killing Floor, Red Orchestra, Team Fortress 2, Serious Sam 3, etc, etc, etc), it will be very hard for any game to pull me back to using Windows.

PauloMorfeo wrote:if the BIOS does not have a way to disable the integrated gfx, you have no support and don't plan to ("we don't care").

Latest Nvidia drivers HAVE Optimus support, but you also need latest intel mesa drivers + kernel to make it work (basically you can only get it work with Gentoo & Arch atm).

And you could write pages about Optimus/NV & Linux. But as always things aren't simple. At the end it works now.

PauloMorfeo wrote:

knorke wrote:[...] set
shadows=0
advmapshading=0
advunitshading=0
water=0
luashaders=0
logflush=0
and maybe some more, someone should make a "low settings" list..

ingame you can type /luaui disable
[...]

Super thanks! Performance is back to what I'd expect (mostly with the LuaUI thing) - 70~90 FPS at game start spectating Altored Divide in a 8v8, and slowing down to 5~10 FPS when game evolves into a mess of units.

Still need to get me self a new computer, though!

could you test to see which ones give what ranges of fps boost?

Jk: why would luaui take out 70-90 fps?

I think we really miss one big issue here: Gamedev megalomania. Thousands of Units? Thats so 2010 - we need millions of units. We are the morewhores driving the devs up the wall. This wouldnt be a problem, if it was our private hobby, but we had to do it in public, and you had to came, see, and leave with your fps utterly depleated and defeated. So ban them i say, let us find out the hard way, if the wolrd out there has tolerance left for those, who do the hitler-dance every time they get a way to power.

The default settings cause lag and low fps. They are quite terrible.

Replace your springsettings.cfg with one of these beauties: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B25BbZx ... sp=sharing

imo not so good settings in this zip.
"minimal" should have
3DTrees = 0
lower GrassDetail (0 or maybe 1)
lower MaxSounds
LuaShaders = 0
and too many useless entries

Oh nice... Ahm... When you decide on a good "minimal settings" - can those be integrated to be selectable into SL? Is this what SL actually does, when you use it's presets?

smoth wrote:...
could you test to see which ones give what ranges of fps boost?
...

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=30400

Forboding Angel wrote: Replace your springsettings.cfg with one of these beauties: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B25BbZx ... sp=sharing

Tried the minimal. They work ok, even though I haven't really pushed them perf-wise.

There are some things that need changing (for me), though. I "need" health bars, the clock, the FPSs, etc. Also, I don't need to play at the brutal natural resolution (1920x1080). I tried to do some changes to the settings but I messed up and all I got was a green screen and had to shift-q, haha. Guess I'll need to give it a proper look.

and all I got was a green screen

its problem with some widgets/gfx drivers.
http://springrts.com/wiki/FAQ:trouble#I ... on_minimap
Just disable the widget that did it.

PauloMorfeo wrote:

Forboding Angel wrote: Replace your springsettings.cfg with one of these beauties: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B25BbZx ... sp=sharing

Tried the minimal. They work ok, even though I haven't really pushed them perf-wise.

There are some things that need changing (for me), though. I "need" health bars, the clock, the FPSs, etc. Also, I don't need to play at the brutal natural resolution (1920x1080). I tried to do some changes to the settings but I messed up and all I got was a green screen and had to shift-q, haha. Guess I'll need to give it a proper look.

Your res is set by spring with these to your native desktop resolution.


@knorke
Grassdetail is completely irrelevant knorke, because at detail of 3, the grass only renders when it;'s about 10 feet from the camera.

Sounds are handled by different hardware from the GPU.

Minimal is only a term for "lowest". If you want true minimal, then make it yourself. It isn't my fault that you try to run spring on a 486sx at 640x480.