forums.xandros.com

[lpbbear]

Well today I purchased Quake 4 and following is a review of the game.

The game installs easily using the instructions at
http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/quake4/Quake4FrontPage?action=show&redirect=FrontPage

The only differences between their instructions and the way I did it was I copied the files to "/home/yourusername/quake4/q4base".

You must also right click on the downloaded installer and set it executible to get it to install.
Copy the files first and then do the installer.

After the installer finishes you can create an icon by opening the "home/yourusername/quake4/q4icon.bmp" in Gimp and simply save it as a .png file. You can then use that .png version as an icon for a shortcut for your Xandros desktop.

One other tip is that I initially had no sound in the game. This was easily fixed by using the "OpenAl" sound option in the setup options.

I'm not going to spend much time on setup for this post. I will do a complete setup HowTo if someone wishes but if you have used any of my other setup HowTo's, this one was not much different and was basically easy to do.

In short my review of this game goes something like this.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS UNOPTIMIZED PIG!

Now for the longer review..... but not a whole lot longer.

My first clue that this game was going to be a bust for Linux gamers was the icon thing. You have to ask yourself what kind of clueless moron created an installer for Linux that would use a Microsoft .bmp file for an icon rather than something more Linux friendly like a .png or .jpg!
Now before I mention the next part perhaps I should describe my system. I run a Athlon 2400+ with 1 gb of memory and use a GeForce FX 5200 256 mb video card. It may not be the hottest computer on the planet but it is a decent system with a fair amount of horsepower for games. Unfortunately Quake4 makes me feel like I have stepped into a time machine right back to the days of the first Quake release on my old 486 with its generic video card!
Now it would be easy to blame the less mature video drivers for Linux or fall into the trap of saying that Linux just can't run games as fast as Windows etc. I don't think that is the case here.
To get this game to run at any useable speed I am having to run the video at 800x600, in LOW QUALITY! Even at these settings it is still running like a pig. Don't bother going online to compete in a multiplayer game because all you will be is someone's slow moving target.
Actually I think the real issue here is that not enough time and testing were put into this game for Linux as opposed to Windows. While I really appreciate that there was a release at all, I do not appreciate that this release performs so badly on a decent system that plays other games just fine.
I connected to a few multiplayer games and found that even on the lowest ping servers, performance was absolutely awful. Even more telling was that quite often when I would attempt to disconnect I would literally sit there for a good 5 minutes staring at a locked up screen thinking my system had frozen. It hadn't. It just took that long for the game to finally finish disconnecting. (no kidding!)

My advice to you aspiring Linux gamers is to find other ways to support Linux gaming than to waste your hard earned bucks on this game. Perhaps in the future updates will correct the issues in this thing but as it stands right now its not worth buying.
If anyone from Id Software or Raven wanders in and reads this I want to say thanks for....uhhhh....trying...sort of.....kinda.....well whatever you did.

We really deserve MUCH better than this folks.

Now please excuse me while I go delete this money and space wasting piece of crap off my hard drive.

(I will test updates in the future but right now I have better things I could do with the hard drive space)

2 Paws down from the Bear.

[Set]

I will buy Quake 4 soon and then try it in Xandros. I think my hardware is a little bit more in the target area of the DooM 3 engine. You shall know how it runs for me when I've tried it

- Set
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Set has left this forum.

[lpbbear]

[farenheit]

Ipbbear: Please don't take this reply the wrong way but:

The Doom 3 engine is a resource hog: in Windows or Linux. On my now 2+ year old system Doom 3 is just about playable (at 1024 x 768 low quality) and I have a Radeon 9700, 1GB ram and an Athlon 2700+. I fully expect Q4 to run the same if not worse, but then this is a "next generation" engine much like Source Engine, FEAR engine or CryEngine etc. This trend will only continue with newer releases.

Quite frankly a Geforce FX 5200 and Athlon 2400+ just wont cut it for modern games such as Q4, Doom3, HL2 etc. This system is not even considered entry level these days. It is probably high time to think about upgrading: especially if you want to run in resolutions higher than 800 x 600 with some details turned up. I know from my own experiences playing games that my own hardware has reached the end of its life, but I don't blame the game companies.

Game companies can't keep building and designing solely for hardware that is over 2 years old! Games would go nowhere. Progress is a pain in the arse, always has been but it is what is bringing us games like HL2, FEAR, Black and White 2 et al. Yes it is frustrating when you get a new game and it runs like a slide show especially on hardware that you consider to be "decent".

I know upgrading may not be an option nor what you want to hear, but honestly if you want to run modern games under any OS (regardless of it being windows or linux), you're only real path is to seriously consider investing in a Socket 939 Athlon 64 (probably a 3500+, I dont rate P4s at all for gaming, too expensive, too hot, draw too much power) and either a nVidia 6600GT or ATi X800GTO2 depending on if you get PCI-E support or not. That would give you a good mid-range system (and the ATi X800GTO2 can be soft-modded to unlock all 16 pipes!).

But slagging of a game because you couldn't run it and then blaming solely the software with no consideration of what you are trying to run the game on: that is not reviewing - that is venting frustration and it helps no one decide if the game is actually any good or not. Out of interest did you try playing it under Windows at all for a comparison?

Incidentally from friends who have played and finished Quake 4 already, it is supposed to be highly enjoyable and I will be ordering a copy just as soon as the prices drops to a more palatable level.

Regards,
Dave

[davidalun]

I'm not a game player so I guess I have a different perspective. I downloaded Quake3 demo - basically for the hell of it - and it's very impressive in the way it plays fast and smooth on a geforce2 mx200 (all I need to everyday use).

We have all sorts of games machines around here for my grandson - playstations, gameboys - in fact everything but M$ as it happens (and no, that wasn't because I dislike M$ - it just happened that way).

The PC gaming industry is facing major challenges from the dedicated boxes, one of the main ones being the need to upgrade a PC in order to play these games. The fact is that it's cheaper and easier to buy a game for a playstation. If the games are not programmed to play well on a computer that's spec'd for "normal" use, then they're in for an up-hill battle just to survive. The number of people who are prepared to put a lot of money into a PC just to play games (when there's such low-cost alternatives) is diminishing.

If Quake3 plays so well on a low end card and Quake4 is a pig on a better card then there's something wrong. I don't believe the 'upgrade your card' answer is going to hack it for much longer.
_________________
Dave Blythin.
Xandos 1, 2, 3, 4 ... and now PCLOS.

[farenheit]

*Eek!* I am very sorry about the length of this post! I didn't realise it was quite so long.

I can see your point about "upgrading" and fully understand the frustrations that the latest and greatest brings. As I said in my earlier post: I am a victim of being outdated too! And in truth it pisses me off no end!

I am just trying to point out that times change, technology moves on. Whereas with a console you are welded to its spec. the PC is far more versatile, this is both its greatest advantage but also the achilles heal. This makes is very difficult to say what is a "normal" PC now? With emphasis on the word "now". One that you can go pick up from PC World today? Or one from last year? or the year before? Where do you draw the line and say "OK that's the base"? That is what is constantly being battled with by the game developers and is not something I myself would want to try and live with! But on the whole they cope very well and do an excellent job IMHO.

For example: a quick google for the Quake 3 release date puts it as:
Dec 2, 1999 (source: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/quake3arena/)

Making that game almost 6 years old. The top card for Christmas 1999 was the GeForce 256 (http://www.tomshardware.com/archive/9912.html). Quake 3 was optimised for that and the GeForce 2 architecture that followed closely on the heals of the original GeForce. So there should be no surprise that on a machine even 2+ years old that, that game is going to run very, very well. But 6 years is an enternity in the PC industry. Quake 4 is based on a completely different engine, for a completely different generation of systems.

Now think what has come out in the 6 YEARS since Q3A was first released! We have dual core, 64-bit CPUs at over 2GHz, graphics cards that you can link up (OK so 3Dfx was first but not with this kind of power), huge amounts of RAM, 400GB hard disks, 16x DVD burners etc etc.

Yes not everyone has it, yes its expensive, but we have it none-the-less. However: the side effect of all this progress is that high-end components are migrated down the chain. Just think about what a 700quid PC gets you these days. I would say that 700quid (pounds sterling) is around entry-level: even these are coming with GeForce 6600GTs and 17inch TFTs! And a 6600GT will wipe the floor with my Radeon 9700 pro.

So with that in mind: is it really surprising that a game released this week, running an engine that is predominantly designed to use the 6X00 type cards and above (yes the Doom 3 engine ran on the 5X series, but it was really made for the 6X series and above), is difficult to run on older hardware?

Also with reference to the "better card", I would like to point out that the GeForce FX 5200 was the lowest end 5 series card and in some cases was out performed by the previous generation low end cards (e.g. MX480). It was not intended to be a gamers card although it has the 3D features of its more expensive brothers the 5700, 5800 and 5900 (see: http://www.digital-daily.com/video/nvidia-nv34/, http://www.beyond3d.com/reviews/asus/v9520/ and http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=741&redirect=yes).

I should likely add that I am not an avid gamer: used to be, but not anymore. However I do like to play games and I would rather that games move forward and develop than be stuck and not progress or push the realms of interaction etc. Put another way: would we have had Half-life 2 the way it is without all these improvements? How about FEAR? Black and White and any number of other AAA titles of the last 3 years?

[davidalun]

point well taken.

Actually, this machine is only 2 years old, but came with 'on-board' video, sound etc. (and to me that reads winvideo, winsound). I just popped in a pair of mid-range cards.

I guess the bottom line of what I'm trying to say is that the PC gaming industry is fighting an uphill battle, and ignoring the massive inventory of older HW PCs isn't going to help their cause. The latest technologies may give them more tools to make 'better' games, but if it's also shrinking their market at the same time .............
_________________
Dave Blythin.
Xandos 1, 2, 3, 4 ... and now PCLOS.

[lpbbear]

[ryno]

i agree with that we are gamers just like M$ users we deserve the right to play all games just the same. this will happen when more people switch to linux and there is more of a demand on getting these games supporting linux. however out of all the companies out there id is the best at supporting linux gamers gotta give em props on that. as for valve with no intentions on supporting linux users i have decided not to buy their products anymore lol. well enough of my little rant.
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Got Root?
Strength in numbers!!

[ZenPirate]

Linux gaming isn't going to get better, it's going to get worse. With Microsoft moving to the same development platform in Windows and Xbox 360 game houses can cut development costs, and staff.

[lpbbear]

[farenheit]

I finally got Q4, playing under XP atm (since Xandros on my main machine has no space for games and I refuse to run a game under Xandros from a FAT32 partition) and it's going great! I can't run it any higher than 1024x768 in low quality and even then I get some slow down but it's otherwise been great.

Installed it on my laptop too (100% Xandros) and it installed fine and plays mostly fine (chipset is Mobility Radeon 9700). I need to play around and optimise it a bit as I have just entered the "trenches" section and that just about killed the frame rate, but I expected that, plus I also had been messing with options and turned on high quality effects. Interior sections were zipping along nicely.

Q4 is a very good game, multiplayer is very fast too. Not a HL2 beater, but it's definitely a lot of fun IMHO

[redrum]

Hey, Thought I'd add my 2 bits, since everyone seems to be having a bit of trouble, I decided to try and make some suggestions...

My system is a 2.4 ghz 533 system with ddr333 ram and an AGP 4X bus... Its okay for the occasional game, but doom3 killed it, and quake4 barely ran.

My videocard is an Nvidia 5900 Ultra 256 card. Nice, but certainly not top shelf these days. So How do we get good framerates with limited hardware?

First, make sure you have a MINIMUM of one gig of system ram... I figured 512 was plenty, but it turns out that that was the biggest performance booster on my system. DDR 400 ram is plentiful these days and cheap... I bought some PNY RAM from best buy the other day for 40 bucks, and it said PC3200 only, but it underclocks fine.

Second, Doom3 and Quake4 use a lot of textures, so if you want textures (and you do) get a card with a fair ammount of onboard memory... I reccomend a 256 mb Nvidia card (5750 or better)..

Third, make sure your AGP apeture size is set to 256 mb (provided you have 1 gb of ram to begin with). You can also set this to 128mb and try it that way too. This allows the game to take advantage of a fair amount of system ram if the textures fill the card up.

Forth, now that you have allocated more memory, edit theQuake4Config.cfg file, located in folder q4base in your .quake4 folder and change the following lines:

seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "128"
seta image_cacheMinK "38"


You can change these higher or lower, depending on what works best for you. This is a ballpark number and works for me at 1024x768 Widescreen with all effects on and 2x antialiasing.

Last, make sure you have the latest pach installed andf the latest video drivers installed. If you're running an ATI, my apologies, but the gameplay will be miserable under linux. This is not a jibe of rivalry, it's simply a fact. Shadows may not display properly, framerates are slow (an ati mobillity 9700 now has the framerate of my Geforce2 GTS 32mb card), and there are other issues with them... I reccomend switching to Nvidia if you are going to upgrade your card soon.


Hope this helps.
_________________


Beware of the man who would deny you access to information,
for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

[linuxchixor]

Ok, lemme wrap this entire thread in one post, as I joined this forum just because of this single thread.
First, I'm a girl, deal with it. Second, my machine specs.

1.8g Applebred Duron
2x512 ddr400 corsair running dual channel
80g sata w/8m cache
20g ata100 maxtor
2x12.5g WD's raid0'd
epox 8rda3pro nforce2 chipset
256m fx5500

Third, onto you guy's obvious lack of knowledge.

I play Quake4 @ 1024x768 on medium settings with absolutely no problems at all, everyhitng is smooth, even when there are 10 guys firing guns and massive explosions from alien ships.

I play Doom3 @ 1024x768 on medium settings, with only small bits of lag here and there.

I play Half Life 2 @ 1024x768 with no lag ever.

I play FarCry with no lag ever.

In summation, if you guys are packing faster processors, the same if not more ram, and the same if not better (ok, one acse worse) video card, and your not able to play these games, theres a few things you should do. First, upgrade all your drivers for all your hardware. Second, get rid of those prebuilt Gateway/Dell/Compaq/E-Machines/Hewlett-Packards and build your own pc with better quality hardware. I have yet to find a game that i can't play with high enough graphics settings that make the game slideshowish, when i do, i'll think about a system upgrade, MAYBE. As for you guys that can't run these games on machines with better specs then me, I'm so sorry you payed high dollar for crappy hardware.
_________________
Insanity is the only true sanity.

[redrum]

No sister, let me wrap up this post by simply stating.... Who the fsck cares about whether you are a girl, whether you are too poor or too cheap to buy a new computer, and whether you are a man-hating lesbian?

None of us care!
_________________


Beware of the man who would deny you access to information,
for in his heart he dreams himself your master.