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Dirk 2 Testers needed!

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image
Troy sent me an email asking if I could ask you guys to help trial his latest game Dirk 2, message is below with download link.

QuoteHello, everyone!

Dirk Dashing 2 is almost ready for its pre-order release, and I could
use a little help testing the Linux version!

I'm using a new Linux installer this time around, and I want to make
sure it works. I recently became aware that my Bitrock installers (which
I used for my other games) were crashing on Fedora 15, and although the
latest version of Bitrock fixes the problem, I can't afford to upgrade.
So I've switched to InstallJammer. This is my first installer I've made
with it. I've already found and fixed a lot of initial issues that my
testers found, but now I want to open it up to test on a wider set of
distributions.

In return, you get to play through the demo a week ahead of it's
official pre-order release. Let me know if you find any bugs, and feel
free to comment on the game itself - especially if you like it (I could
use the encouragement)! Suggestions are also welcome, though bear in
mind that any enhancement requests probably won't make it into the
initial beta release.

You can download the demo beta from here:
http://www.mygamecompany.com/downloads/dirkdashing2setup_linux

The game uses OpenGL, and requires the use of accelerated graphics
drivers. It's 32-bit, so if you're using a 64-bit distribution, make
sure you have the 32-bit compatibility package installed. I'm not sure
if some distributions have them by default, or if you have to manually
install them.

Thanks for your help! I hope you enjoy the demo!

Troy Hepfner
My Game Company
http://www.mygamecompany.com
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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MaximB 19 Aug 2011
Troy has contacted me and asked me to post those same news on LGN, I hope you don't mind.
Nemoder 19 Aug 2011
It seems to work fine on Debian-Testing
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
Thanks, Nemoder!

And I don't mind, Maxim! I'm trying to spread the news as far as I can - I appreciate the help!
Liam Dawe 19 Aug 2011
MaximB you know my thoughts on it - if they email you, post it, it doesn't matter if we pick it up too there will be some users who only visit you and vice versa.
Hamish 19 Aug 2011
Mixed results on my test of the game on a fully updated Fedora 13 system using the free R600 classic mesa radeon driver supplied with the system.

[hamish@griffindor ~]$ cd /home/hamish/.games/DirkDashing2Trial
[hamish@griffindor DirkDashing2Trial]$ ./dirkdahsing2
bash: ./dirkdahsing2: No such file or directory
[hamish@griffindor DirkDashing2Trial]$ ./dirkdashing2
./dirkdashing2: error while loading shared libraries: libCommon.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[hamish@griffindor DirkDashing2Trial]$ export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/hamish/.games/DirkDashing2Trial
[hamish@griffindor DirkDashing2Trial]$ ./dirkdashing2dirkdashing2: radeon_texture.c:687: radeon_store_teximage: Assertion `dstRowStride' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)
[hamish@griffindor DirkDashing2Trial]$


The installer worked like a charm, and despite acting and looking like something from Windows 95, got the job done well. I then loaded up a terminal, and changed into the games install directory in order to launch the game and be able to see any messages. I was first greeted with a missing library message, but that library was in the install directory, so I directed the game to it with a quick LD_LIBRARY_PATH command. Once I had done this, the game launched and everything seemed to work fine. The menus worked fine, I had working audio playing, everything seemed great. I clicked new game and read through your cute back-story, and was then greeted with the select chapter screen. After reading the instructions at the bottom of the screen, I selected the first and only available chapter, and was kicked back to desktop.

Upon analysing the terminal output, it seemed to have hit a graphics driver error or bug. Though I am not sure if you are interested in having the game work on the free drivers or are just interested in the vendor supplied blobs (though getting your game to work on Intel GMAs which use the same infrastructure I would think to be important given your target market). As a test I also downloaded the original Dirk Dashing games demo, and other than the same issue with the libraries, it worked fine. Still, given the speed of the free drivers development over the past year, I would not be surprised if it worked without a hitch on a Fedora 15 system with the Gallium3D R600 driver. Unfortunately, I have lost all my Fedora 15 disks, but we are downloading the Fedora 15 LXDE spin as we speak. Once we have that down, I may boot that up on my computer and see if I can get it running from that.

I can assure you however that my current system is quite capable though, as I have played Doom 3, Prey, and Penumbra on it. It does lack support for the external S3TC library as that is only supported by the Gallium3D driver, but if you are using S3TC I would advise against it, especially since your game would most likely not be needing it. However, based on the error message, I doubt that is the problem.

In case it helps, here are my full hardware specs:
Operating System: Fedora 13 Linux
Video Card: ATI Radeon HD 4670
Memory: 4 Gigabytes
Processor: AMD Sempron CPU 2.7 Ghz
Hard drives: 71.6 GB and 35 GB

Hope that is enough detail for you. :D
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
Thanks, Hamish. Sorry, I should have included some instructions. You have to start the game using the "dirk2" script. That will set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and environment for you. Usually, people who get the demo from my download page would see that note. Or if they looked at the readme. I'll see if I can add some text about it right on the final install screen (if InstallJammer will let me do that).

Not sure what would cause the crash. I'm just using very simple OpenGL commands. One difference Dirk 2 has that Dirk 1 didn't have is lighting, which would kick in when you start the first level. But your other OpenGL games have that too, so I don't know what the difference is. I don't believe the game is built against S3TC (I don't even know what that is). I built the game on Ubuntu 9.10, with the mesa-common-dev, freeglut3-dev, libglu1-mesa-dev, and libgl1-mesa-dev packages installed. Basic stuff, really.
Hamish 19 Aug 2011
Hmm... based on that, I think I should get it tested on some of my other computers. Might just be an isolated bug. :confused:

Based on what I got when I put it into Google, it can be a fairly common but still not explained error. At least, I could not find any explanations. I will post again if I make any progress or do further testing.
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
Yeah, I've been googling too. No explanations. Everybody seems to be calling it a driver issue. Funny, though, how other GL games work for you but mine doesn't. :(
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
I've also been googling S3TC. I'm definitely not using that!
Hamish 19 Aug 2011
I just tried it out on our living room computer running Fedora 14 which is also using the free classic mesa radeon driver supplied with the system.

[hamish@ravenclaw ~]$ cd /home/hamish/DirkDashing2Trial
[hamish@ravenclaw DirkDashing2Trial]$ ./dirk2
dirkdashing2: radeon_texture.c:700: radeon_store_teximage: Assertion `dstRowStride' failed.
./dirk2: line 35: 25194 Aborted (core dumped) ./dirkdashing2
[hamish@ravenclaw DirkDashing2Trial]$


As you can see, I encountered the same error. It is interesting that you mentioned lighting though, as in both Doom3 and Penumbra I had to turn off certain lighting and shadowing related settings, otherwise I would get display distortions. The games would run fine, but would not look quite right. If this is related to the problems with Dirk 2, I am pretty damn sure it would be fixed if I was using Fedora 15. Just have to wait for the disk to come down to make sure though.

Here are the living room computers specs:
Operating System: Fedora 14 Linux
Video Card: ATI Radeon 7500
Memory: 1 Gigabyte
Processor: Intel Celeron 1300 MHz
Hard drive: 250 GB
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
Thanks for the additional information!

Man, I hope I don't have to provide a way to disable lighting. That will really ruin the atmosphere in the game if you're running around in the nighttime levels, and it ruins some lighting puzzles I have planned (including ones I've already implemented in Chapters 1-5 and 2-2).
jose 19 Aug 2011
tested on 32bit arch linux w/ nvidia proprietary drivers. both installation and gameplay went okay.
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
Thanks jose! Much appreciated!
Rustybolts 19 Aug 2011
I also reddited this post and there are a couple of cooments to be seen here http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/jnvys/dirk_2_testers_needed_gaming_on_linux/
MyGameCompany 19 Aug 2011
Ah, thanks!
Eddward 20 Aug 2011
It installed and level 1 worked on my system. It's a 32bit Ubuntu Studio 10.04 with a GeForce 9800 GT and the 275.19 proprietary driver.

I think the controls also felt a little better than in the first dirk.
Liam Dawe 20 Aug 2011
Downloading now to give it a go from the link in rustys news post (i believe same link as the email).

Couple things - allow spacebar as well as enter to get rid of help texts.

Second is a question, when i jump and hold a direction dirk moves in the direction, if i have my finger on up as well why does he suddenly stop mid air and fall - annoying behaviour.

The installer is nice but the text is quite fuzzy?

Ubuntu 11.04 64bit
AMD 6870
4GB RAM
MyGameCompany 20 Aug 2011
Thanks, Eddward!

Good suggestion, Liam. I think the space bar should be ok to hook up. I think most people were accidentally dismissing the text via the arrow and jump keys. Most of those folks, when they reported the problem, suggested using just Enter, and that made sense logically. I didn't even think about the space bar. The space bar is probably a lot easier and quicker to reach than Enter, especially if you're using a joystick/gamepad.

I hadn't noticed anything unusual about the installer text. But I'm running Ubuntu 9.10. Can you e-mail me a screenshot of what the fuzzy text looks like at [email protected]?
MyGameCompany 20 Aug 2011
Hamish, another Linux user ran into the same R600 problem. He managed to launch it via gdb and capture the callstack. The crash appears to be happening when I'm allocating a texture for one of the lit surfaces. It makes a call into /usr/lib32/dri/r600_dri.so, and that's when it crashes.

Here's the code that basically does the texture allocation for a single lit surface. I'm not sure which line it's dying on. (By the way, I stripped out some additional code that helps prevent setting the mode if I've already set it for a previous texture.) I think it's just basic stuff, but maybe you'll see something I shouldn't be doing or am doing wrong.

If nothing else, this helps capture/document where the crash is occurring.

GLuint texture_id;
...
glGenTextures(1, &texture_id);

// Bind it, so we can set texture parameters.
glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, texture_id);

// Set texture parameters.
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_REPEAT);
glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_REPEAT);

glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE, GL_MODULATE);

// Load the texture pixels.
glTexImage2D(
GL_TEXTURE_2D,
0, // mipmap level (n/a - default to 0),
image->getColorDepth()/8,
image->getWidth(),
image->getHeight(),
0,
image->getPixelFormat(),
image->getPixelType(),
image->getPixels());

Edit: Ack, it doesn't seem to want to preserve my indent on my last function call!
KIAaze 21 Aug 2011
Just did an extremely quick test (install, play until dead, exit).
Everything worked well except that when I clicked finish at the end of the install process my gnome panels were gone.
So I force-logged out ("pkill -KILL -u $USER", yes, a bit overkill) and logged in again. After that I started the game using the new desktop icon that was created. New game, quickly went through the intro, played until I got killed, then quit the game. Everything went fine here.
I have the proprietary drivers installed through Ubuntu.
Lighting effects seemed to work and looked really nice. :)
More once I have more time, although I guess that will be after the game is already released.

lspci info:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc RV710 [Radeon HD 4350] [1002:954f] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: PC Partner Limited Device [174b:174b]
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- SERR-          Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 4 bytes
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42
        Region 0: Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Region 2: Memory at fdfe0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Region 4: I/O ports at ee00 [size=256]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at fdf00000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: 
        Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci
        Kernel modules: fglrx, radeon


$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 11.04
Release:        11.04
Codename:      natty
$  uname -a
Linux my-desktop 2.6.38-11-generic #48-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jul 29 19:02:55 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
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