Spring RTS Engine

Posted: **10 Dec 2006, 17:03**

I am running Kubuntu Edgy and I had 2 problems with Spring:

- No alt-tab with fullscreen spring
- Unreliable edge map scroll with "fake" fullscreen modes that did allow alt-tab
- Shaky performance with "fake" fullscreen modes

On my wanderings on the internets i was lucky enough to find the idea of running games on a separate x server. It allows you to alternate between your regular desktop (CTRL+ALT+F7) and the other X server with spring (CTRL+ALT+F9 on my setup). This also has the additional effect of backgrounding all your desktop stuff so that it eats less memory and cpu, so you get that extra frame per second and lose the little FPS drops that happen when the cpu scheduler starves spring.

This is my first howto and is mostly a copy of several resources i found online. What was available was outdated and needed some updating, plus i had to deal with some extra problems on my setup.
Original: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=51486

So lets paste:

1. First to allow you to run a new X display you need to:

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-common

Then make sure you change the first option to "Anybody" and hit enter twice.

2. Next we have to set your ~/.Xauthority file up. This may look tricky but it's very straight forward, all you need to do is add a line using a special key we find. So, in a terminal type:

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xauth
list

And you should get an output something like this:

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ananke/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 9fde426e5g03b20f4b7e51cb329d3033
localhost.localdomain/unix:0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 9fde426e5g03b20f4b7e51cb329d3033

Yours WILL be different, thats ok. Now we need to add a new line and then exit to save it. So we type in "add :1.0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1" followed by that long alpha numeric string but remember to use yours. So for me I would type the following:

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add :1.0 MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 9fde426e5g03b20f4b7e51cb329d3033
exit

3. Create the script "spring":

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cd
kate spring

And paste the following:

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#!/bin/bash
xinit /usr/games/_spring $* -- :1

Save it.

4. Now we need to make it executable, rename spring and put this script in its place:

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chmod a+x ./spring
sudo mv /usr/games/spring /usr/games/_spring
sudo mv ./spring /usr/games/spring

5. That's it. Run "spring" in a terminal, Spring should run on a new X server. To access your desktop you need to press CTRL+ALT+F7 and to return to spring use CTRL+ALT+F9.

I tried to make this perfectly compatible with det's HOWTO to use the windows lobby with wine and native spring. It works for me.

PROBLEMS:

1) X crash when returning to main screen (CTRL+ALT+F7) if running beryl.
Workaround: Disable Beryl before running spring by right clicking the beryl-manager icon on the systray and then picking "Select Window Manager" and picking the one that is not beryl (in my case, KWin). Maybe this step could be automated somehow? Help is welcome.

2) If you want to run spring the old way just run "_spring" from a terminal. If you want to revert the renaming and replacing, do:

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sudo mv /usr/games/spring /usr/games/spring.x
sudo mv /usr/games/_spring /usr/games/spring

IDEAS:
- Automate Window Manager switch. Solution in the replies
- Since i'm running a script instead of spring i might as well customize. The TASpring.exe wine process stays at 1% and up to 5% cpu usage at times. I find that unaceptable so i'm thinking of killing the wine process in this script. It will look like you left the lobby as soon as game started, but you will still be in game.
edit: To kill the process, edit your /usr/games/spring script so that it looks like this:

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#!/bin/bash
killall TASClient.exe
xinit /usr/games/_spring $* -- :1.0

Posted: **10 Jan 2007, 21:15**

Just to add smthg about beryl : that's right, you have to disable it before launching another X server. But you can do it automatically, by sending the USR2 signal to the beryl-manager process. Then do it again to activate it back. It will just switch between beryl and the rescue window manager.

killall -USR2 beryl-manager

Posted: **11 Jan 2007, 03:14**

That is very good. The spring script that we create could then instead be:

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#!/bin/bash
killall -USR2 beryl-manager
xinit /usr/games/_spring $* -- :1 
killall -USR2 beryl-manager

Thank you Nonor.

Posted: **22 Apr 2008, 16:55**

Can someone update this a bit for 7.10 and 8.04? The package mentioned in the first step no longer exists and hasn't for a long time. Things have changed quite a bit since edgy.

Edit:
Nm, I've created a new one

Posted: **02 Mar 2014, 22:20**

Works good, but , I had to edit a file casue lack of priviledge on Xserver

http://karuppuswamy.com/wordpress/2010/ ... -aborting/

Also, another question.

Is there possible to run other apps in separate X ? I mean I love music with it.
In init below Graphic I still got it (e.g F6), after I loaded F7

Since I dotn have terminal access in 2nd X server I cannot do anything . Any idea ?

PS: my music player got a GUI. (gbrowser)

Spring RTS Engine

HOWTO: Allow Alt-tab and speed up Spring (separate X server)

HOWTO: Allow Alt-tab and speed up Spring (separate X server)

Re: HOWTO: Allow Alt-tab and speed up Spring (separate X server)

Re: HOWTO: Allow Alt-tab and speed up Spring (separate X ser