Fedora 3 (64) & Doom3 ?

[chadauld]

Anyone have a working installation of Doom3 on Fedora Core 3 yet?

I have FC3 with all the latest updates. I installed the latest Nvidia driver. I installed Doom3 as instructed on this site: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/doom/

The install seemed to work fine, but when I try to launch the game with "doom3" it doesn't work. It looks as if it starts to load, it then changes the size my display to something really huge, and everything freezes. I have to CTRL+ALT+F1 to close X before I can get it back to normal.

My Specs:

Athlon 64 3000+
ASUS N78-Deluxe w/ Nforce3 chipset
Chaintech Geforce FX 5700LE w/256mb
1.5 gig RAM

Does anyone have any suggestions? :confused: I'm dying to play Doom! Thanks.

[SuperNu]

I have doom 3 running on my fedora core 3 install, but I have a 32 bit cpu where you have a 64 bit cpu. Do you have the 32 bit compatible libraries installed on your system? Do any other opengl apps work such as tux racer or bzflag? Do you have the Nvidia drivers installed? Are they the linux amd64 drivers or the linux ia32?

--SN

[chadauld]

I tried TuxRacer and it works great. I do have the nvidia drivers installed, but they are the 64 bit versions. Perhaps I need the 32 bit ones? I did see a message the very first time I tried doom that said incompatible drivers, but now every time I try it the screen gets huge and freezes befiore I can try anything else.

I'll give the 32 bit drivers a shot. Do I need to uninstall the 64 bit ones first or will the 32 bit install overwrite them? What's the best way to uninstall if I need to do that first? Thanks for your help!

[JLF_65]

I run DOOM3 on FC3 for AMD64 without trouble. You must use the 64bit video drivers on the 64bit OS. 32bit drivers are for the 32bit OS only. Did you remember to get rid of xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL? Both copies (32 and 64bit)?

rpm -e --nodeps --allmatches xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL

The only problem with DOOM3 I've seen is that the audio doesn't work. DOOM3 uses really bad OSS sound code - it expects to be able to take over the sound device via OSS. The only way to get sound working on many distros is to run DOOM3 on top of the arts or esound emulation.

artsdsp -m doom3

Even doing this isn't a cure-all as the sound lags considerably behind the game (huge latency), and consumes a heck of a lot of CPU time (slower game play). id needs to get off their butt and add some decent ALSA code with Surround support. DOOM3 for Linux with the 6629 nVidia drivers is superior to Windows except for the sound. Even when it works, it's just stereo.

Considering that DOOM3 uses OpenGL for the video, I don't see why they don't use OpenAL for the audio. OpenAL is part of most modern distros and runs on either OSS or ALSA.

[marcus-cat]

Ugh, that is horrible that they are using the outdated OSS system. Doom3 I heard is a sleeper anyway. Halflife 2.0 will be the one to one this year.

[chadauld]

Hey JLF_65 - thanks for the info. I'll give that a shot. That's a real shame about the sound.

I'd love to play HL2 on linux as well. I'd love to see some Linux support from Sierra on this!

[JLF_65]

Actually, after a lot more googling, I did find a way to make the sound work. The first thing you need to do is the same as all previous id games, like Quake (2):
echo "doom.x86 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

You'll probably have to be in superuser mode to do this, and you need to do it everytime you reboot unless you add that line to a boot init file like /etc/rc.local.

That directs the ALSA OSS emulation layer to give the specified app direct access to the device. That gets most people going. If your system is like mine, it's not enough. At this point, /dev/dsp opens, but now DOOM3 complains that it can't set the frequency to 44100 Hz. Many AC97 sound systems are hardwired to 48000 Hz and cannot be changed. The ALSA software resamples sound to that sample rate if needed. SInce DOOM3 is not using ALSA, that doesn't work too well. You could use artsdsp like I said before, but it wastes power and doesn't really work due to latency.

So, what to do... the next best thing to do is to hack doom.x86 to not fail when it can't change the sample rate. Use a hexeditor to change the file after backing it up. I used ghex, but any hexeditor will do. If you are hacking the full game, the byte to change is at offset 0x1bed1b, and in the demo at 0x1be3fb. The byte there will be 0x74. Change it to 0xeb. Save the file and DOOM3 will no longer fail if it can't change the sample rate.

How well does it work? My AC97 is hardwired to 48000, almost 10% faster than the nominal sample rate. Sounds are noticably higher pitched. In cut scenes, the speakers get ahead of their mouths a little. It's definitely noticable, but far better than the latency and loss of performance if you use arts or esound. You really won't even notice most of the time unless someone is talking.

So, until id does another update of DOOM3, that gets you playing with sound in the fastest method possible. And believe me, you need every ounce of speed you can squeeze from your system. :)

[delt0r]

Now there is a updated linux binary with ALSA support.

I only have earphones --so it works great in stero anyway, and full suround in theroy.

I have a amd64 +3000 1 gig ram nForce3 motherboad SATA HDD and a PixelView nVidia 6600GT AGPx8 128Meg vid card.

It plays Doom3 really nicely. BUT...

every time i reboot and then start X windows not as root... It changes the /dev/nvidia* permissions.

NO MATTER what i do to the /etc/secruty/console.perms file!!!....

I want others to use the machine -- i don't want them all needing the root passwd.. !!!

I still can play --but i either need to be root or chmod 0666 /dev/nvidia* (as root) after starting X.

greg

[Maners]

every time i reboot and then start X windows not as root... It changes the /dev/nvidia* permissions.

NO MATTER what i do to the /etc/secruty/console.perms file!!!....

Solution from NvNews forum:

/etc/udev/permissions.d/50-udev.permissions

and make the nvidia line look like this:

nvidia*:root:root:0666

[delt0r]

Ok --so i've been playing doom3.....

Plays really well --get all the FPS you could want. (60+). Sound is great, and it only uses 20-30% cpu!!...

Great game. Just got the Doom pack as well -- so now i can play the hole lot. I still have the 486 that i installed doom2 on way back when i was ---- young...

As for the permissions..I had lots of probs, and this fixed them. Thanks.