Oolite Bulletins

Hi, I'm new here.
I'm having pretty major issues with oolite 1.73.3. 1.65 (from the Ubuntu repositories) worked fine, but I wanted to upgrade because I like pretty textures and having the latest version of things. Initially, I had to upgrade gnustep-base-runtime, among other things, from the jaunty repositories, because 1.73.3 apparently needs a newer version than that in the intrepid repositories.

Anyway, once the dependencies were satisfied, I downloaded and installed 1.73.2 (didn't work), upgraded to 1.73.3 when it became available, and itt still doesn't work.

The symptoms: the splash-screen loads, but sometimes it just flashes and goes blank. The start screen with the hud and the ship/station demo display thing loads, but in the same dodgy way, and there is no text whatsoever.

This complete lack of text leaves me in the dark, but I think all the menu options and suchlike still work.

Any idea what's going on?

Hi MoonShadow, and welcome to the Friendliest Board this side of Riedquat(tm).

If you could post the contents of your Latest.log file that might assist. It sounds like it might be a graphics drivers issue though. Have you upgraded to the newest drivers for your machine?

Cheers,
- Micha.

Here is my Latest.log:

[log.header]: Opening log for Oolite version 1.73.3 (x86-32 test release) under Linux at 2009-09-17 20:44:39 +1000.
2 processors detected.
Oolite Options: [Procedural Planets] [Docking Clearance] [Wormhole Scanner] [Target Incoming Missiles]

Note that the contents of the log file can be adjusted by editing logcontrol.plist.

[joystickHandler.init]: Number of joysticks detected: 0
[display.mode.list.native]: X11 native resolution detected: 1024 x 600
[rendering.opengl.version]: OpenGL renderer version: 1.4.0 ("1.4 Mesa 7.2")
Vendor: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel(R) 945GME 20061102 x86/MMX/SSE2
[rendering.opengl.extensions]: OpenGL extensions (81):
GL_ARB_depth_texture GL_ARB_fragment_program GL_ARB_multisample GL_ARB_multitexture GL_ARB_point_parameters GL_ARB_shadow GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp GL_ARB_texture_compression GL_ARB_texture_cube_map GL_ARB_texture_env_add GL_ARB_texture_env_combine GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3 GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two GL_ARB_texture_rectangle GL_ARB_transpose_matrix GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_window_pos GL_EXT_abgr GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_blend_color GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate GL_EXT_blend_func_separate GL_EXT_blend_logic_op GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_blend_subtract GL_EXT_clip_volume_hint GL_EXT_cull_vertex GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array GL_EXT_copy_texture GL_EXT_draw_range_elements GL_EXT_fog_coord GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays GL_EXT_packed_depth_stencil GL_EXT_packed_pixels GL_EXT_point_parameters GL_EXT_polygon_offset GL_EXT_rescale_normal GL_EXT_secondary_color GL_EXT_separate_specular_color GL_EXT_shadow_funcs GL_EXT_stencil_wrap GL_EXT_subtexture GL_EXT_texture GL_EXT_texture3D GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp GL_EXT_texture_env_add GL_EXT_texture_env_combine GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3 GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias GL_EXT_texture_object GL_EXT_texture_rectangle GL_EXT_vertex_array GL_3DFX_texture_compression_FXT1 GL_APPLE_client_storage GL_APPLE_packed_pixels GL_ATI_blend_equation_separate GL_ATI_separate_stencil GL_IBM_rasterpos_clip GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat GL_INGR_blend_func_separate GL_MESA_pack_invert GL_MESA_ycbcr_texture GL_MESA_window_pos GL_NV_blend_square GL_NV_light_max_exponent GL_NV_point_sprite GL_NV_texture_rectangle GL_NV_texgen_reflection GL_NV_vertex_program GL_NV_vertex_program1_1 GL_OES_read_format GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp GL_SGIS_texture_lod GL_SGIX_depth_texture GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays
[rendering.opengl.shader.support]: Shaders will not be used (OpenGL extension GL_ARB_shading_language_100 is not available).
[searchPaths.dumpAll]: ---> OXP search paths:
("/usr/lib/GNUstep/Applications/oolite.app/Resources", AddOns, "/home/brendan/.Oolite/AddOns")
[dataCache.upToDate]: Data cache is up to date.
[script.load.world.listAll]: Loaded 5 world scripts: "oolite-cloaking-device" 1.73.3, "oolite-constrictor-hunt" 1.73.3, "oolite-nova" 1.73.3, "oolite-thargoid-plans" 1.73.3, "oolite-trumbles" 1.73.3
[dataCache.willWrite]: About to write data cache.
[dataCache.write.success]: Wrote data cache.
[gameController.exitApp]: .GNUstepDefaults synchronized.

Closing log at 2009-09-17 20:44:53 +1000.


I do actually have a joystick (Microsoft sidewinder precision 2), but it's not plugged in. Since I added the jaunty repositories as well, I'll go and hunt for updated graphics drivers after I see if it works when I kill compiz.

EDIT: Interesting. "metacity --replace" (not entirely sure what I'm doing) causes it to work properly.

MoonShadow wrote:

EDIT: Confused Interesting. "metacity --replace" (not entirely sure what I'm doing) causes it to work properly.

This turns off Compiz. A better way is to do it through the Control Panel and turn of "Special Effects".

Sounds like you might not have enough video memory to run both Compiz and the new Oolite. You may run into this problem again if you load texture-heavy OXPs in.

I'm guessing you've got an onboard video card - can you increase the amount of memory which is shared to it? Probably a BIOS setting.

IMHO it's a good idea to turn Compiz off anyway for day-to-day work unless you're showing your desktop off to someone. I fail to understand why I'd want to buy a faster computer only to enable a 'sleep 10' whenever I minimise a Window or whatnot

Thanks for your help ^__^

That actually makes a lot of sense. I have an eeepc 901, so when I play oolite (or whenever I'm in my room, for that matter), I have an external monitor and a stereo plugged in. I'll check out BIOS settings, but until I work out how to get metacity configured nicely, I'm a little reluctant to get rid of compiz. I had noticed an oddly large amount of "sleep 10"s whenever I looked at the process list for long enough, but never bothered to find out where they were coming from.

*g* Sorry to confuse!

What I meant by the 'sleep 10' was unnecessary slowdown. Ie, when I close a window, I want it closed. Now. I don't want it to show a pretty animation of closing which takes 10 seconds.

In your process list, when you see 'sleep 10' or similar it just means that that particular process is currently 'asleep' - ie, it's not actively using CPU cycles for whatever reason (usually blocked on IO or waiting on some other timer or signal event). This is (almost always) perfectly normal.

Oh, I see
I'm normally a hardware person, so my apologies for not being very familiar with the intricacies of linux.

There appear to be no BIOS settings at all to do with video memory...
Also, priorities. Before I mess around with window/composting managers, I need to upgrade to jaunty. Eeebuntu is annoying like this, however. There's no smooth upgrade path, so it has to be fiddled with, which I can't be bothered doing at the moment, because I'm too busy bounty hunting

MoonShadow wrote:

Eeebuntu is annoying like this, however. There's no smooth upgrade path, so it has to be fiddled with, which I can't be bothered doing at the moment, because I'm too busy bounty hunting

When you update to Jaunty, make sure you pull in all the updates from jaunty-updates too, because the initial release for onboard Intel was appalling. (Not entirely Canonicals fault, Intel drivers were between two worlds at the time of release.)

Or at this late stage you might as well wait for Karmic which is much more netbook-friendly (again because Jaunty came out just as netbooks were getting popular, so a lot was learned very quickly!)

Or, the xorg-edgers repository should work for EEbuntu anyway, it's all fairly self-contained if you are willing to run a later kernel.