3.5.2 Linux 32 bit; Random crashing, and mouse not working in fullscreen

[Fourty-one]

So, I downloaded the data and binaries from sourceforge. Everything seems to be normal except that my mouse does not work in full-screen mode. After playing with the settings, I started MegaGlest in windowed mode, and everything went on like normal. After starting a game against CPU, the game crashes if I try to give an order too quickly, it seems. I have been able to play through two tutorials okay(basic2 and Advanced), but when I use Tech or Egypt, the game doesn't seem to co-operate. I have not tried any other factions other than Magic, Indian, Egypt and Tech. I don't get any error messages, and the acts like I hit the close button and closes very nicely. Same thing happens when I use the installer. I'm trying to run this on Linux Mint 10 32 bit, with KDE as my Desktop. I don't think its a hardware issue, but just in case, I have ~2.5 gigs of RAM for the game to use, and I have nVidia GeForce 6300(I think) as my graphics card, with an AMD Athlon II with both cores @ 2.8 GHz. Any ideas?

[titi]

Maybe you have a buggy mouse driver?
Do other 3d games work for you, like nexuiz for example?

And are you shure you use the proprietary nvidia driver for your graphics card?

[tomreyn]

Please run the game from a terminal window to get some error output about the crash.

As a workaround for your mouse issue you can try setting this in ~/.megaglest/glestuser.ini - as documented at https://docs.megaglest.org/MG/INI -:

Code: [Select]

No2DMouseRendering=true

Please don't forget to answer Titi's questions, though.

[Fourty-one]

@Titi: I am definitely sure I have the proprietary drivers, I installed them by hand and made sure they worked with several 3D games(SuperTuxKart and SoulFu). My mouse seems to work in other games, but I haven't played around with it too much like in a first-person shooter. I think the mouse driver is pretty stable, though.

@tom: I'll do my best to replicate it, and I'll try the mouse workaround. Thanks for the help.
 

EDIT: Here's the output:

[2011-05-31 16:17:29] *ERROR* In [game.cpp::mouseDownRight Line: 1216] Error [OpenGL error #1285 [0x505] : [out of memory] at file: [/home/softcoder/Code/megaglest/trunk/source/shared_lib/sources/graphics/gl/model_renderer_gl.cpp], line: 293] x = 153 y = 456
[2011-05-31 16:17:29] *ERROR* In [/home/softcoder/Code/megaglest/trunk/source/glest_game/main/main.cpp::handleRuntimeError Line: 350] [OpenGL error #1285 [0x505] : [out of memory] at file: [/home/softcoder/Code/megaglest/trunk/source/glest_game/graphics/renderer.cpp], line: 4166] gameInitialized = 1, program = 0xa2a8330
[2011-05-31 16:17:31] *ERROR* In [/home/softcoder/Code/megaglest/trunk/source/glest_game/main/main.cpp::handleRuntimeError Line: 441] [OpenGL error #1285 [0x505] : [out of memory] at file: [/home/softcoder/Code/megaglest/trunk/source/glest_game/graphics/renderer.cpp], line: 4166
Stack Trace:
./megaglest:Glest::Game::glestMain(int, char**) address [0x82c8f0b] line: 3021
./megaglest:Glest::Game::glestMainWrapper(int, char**) address [0x82cd6ed] line: 3081
./megaglest:main() address [0x82cd7f6] line: 3101
/lib/libc.so.6:__libc_start_main() address [0x68ace7] line: 0
./megaglest() [0x81b95c1] address [0x81b95c1] line: 0
]
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'std::runtime_error'
  what():  OpenGL error #1285 [0x505] : [out of memory] at file: [/home/softcoder/Code/megaglest/trunk/source/glest_game/graphics/renderer.cpp], line: 1973
Aborted

EDIT 2: It seems to be faction specific, as I've been able to play as the Romans with no errors at all. Tech apparently needs too much memory than my system can handle, and I assume its the same with Egypt and Persia. Kinda sad, as I don't really like Magic or Indians. But I guess that's what the Romans are for. And the mouse workaround fixed my problem in fullscreen. Thanks a million tom!

[tomreyn]

You're welcome.

Now for the OpenGL memory issue: You probably have a graphics card which is supposed to share some RAM with the rest of the computer. You will likely have an option to set a fixed or maximum amount of memory to use for graphics / video processing in your BIOS / CMOS setup utility.

Please reboot your computer and enter the BIOS setup utility and check whether you can increase the amount of system RAM dedicated to the GPU / graphics / video processing. If so, set it to the maximum possible (but no more than 512 MB). Normally you will find values which are power of two there, such as 64, 128 and 256 MB.

Once this is done you should have enough graphics memory and this issue should no longer occur.

Please also run this command to identify your video hardware:

Code: [Select]

lspci -knn | fgrep -A3 VGA

[titi]

and ... better buy a new graphics card! Its very old (7 years?) and it was one of the slowest cards which was available on the market!
Is it still AGP?
I mean for 20$ you get something used which is about 100 times faster!

( We have reports about no problems with geforce 6150, so something must be wrong for you )

[softcoder]

My daughter runs an Nvidia 6200 AGP and it works ok.

[Fourty-one]

nVidia GeForce 6150SE nForce 430. I assume the card is PCI, as that is how it was set in my BIOS. I did not see any option in my BIOS to change the amount of dedicated video RAM. I'm using the nVidia-173 drivers for the card currently. Guess I really didn't know my hardware as well as I thought I did.

[titi]

I tested and removed a real crad form one of my boards.
I used the internal 7025 gfx card and it worked! ( linux32bit ubuntu 10.04 )

ok it was slow as hell compared to my normal card, but it worked at 25-35 fps
( by the way, the geforce gts 250 started the same setup with 250 fps :-D in the same computer )

update:
http://cgi.ebay.com/eVGA-GeForce-8600GT-256MB-/320706801326?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item4aab9d6eae
 much faster   and 26$ isn't that much !

[Fourty-one]

If only I had money in my Paypal account... I'm saving up for a cheap android-based tablet. But that's neither here nor there. The thing I don't get is, if the game was reported to work on another machine with the same card, and hopefully, a capable box to run it on, what am I doing wrong?

[tomreyn]

Can you post the output of these commands, please?

Code: [Select]

lspci -knnv | grep -FA10 VGA
free -mt


[titi]

Just an idea, do you have enough swap space? Run MegaGlest in windowed mode and look at its memory consumption.
Another try is to enable texture compression in the options.

( and for the android based tablet, it will be MUCH slower than what you have now ! Nothing has a better power/price ratio than cheap PC with a medium graphics card and ... you already got one of these PCs  )

[Fourty-one]

I don't have any swap space, as I don't have a swap partition or swap file.

Output:

Code: [Select]

williams@linux-mint-Julia ~/Documents/MegaGlest $ lspci -knnv | grep -FA10 VGA
00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: nVidia Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] [10de:03d0] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:2a99]
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 21
        Memory at fa000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        Memory at f9000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at fbec0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: nvidia
        Kernel modules: nvidia-173, nouveau, nvidiafb

williams@linux-mint-Julia ~/Documents/MegaGlest $ free -mt
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2770       1031       1738          0         84        579
-/+ buffers/cache:        367       2402
Swap:            0          0          0
Total:        2770       1031       1738
williams@linux-mint-Julia ~/Documents/MegaGlest $
 

Seeing this makes me worried that I may soon be in need of swap.

[tomreyn]

So you actually had 1.7 GB RAM available (for MegaGlest) when you were running this, not "~2.5 gigs of RAM" but then you may have run 'free -mt' while you had some applications running which you would normally quit before starting MG. This or that way, 1.7 GB should be enough to run MG.

You also have 256 MB + 16 MB memory for graphics processing, which should be fine. So this really must be an issue specific to your hardware / firmware / OS kernel / driver configuration. Can you download an Ubuntu 11.04 live/installation CD, boot off this, install MegaGlest 3.5.2 and see if it works then? Alternatively use a USB key for faster boot + persistent storage.

Regarding swap, you don't really need this unless you intend to dump your physical memory to disk, power off, and resume from HDD later.

[Fourty-one]

Yeah I realized after I ran free -mt that my RAM usage was not what I thought it was, as system monitor on KDE only returns the values for buffers/cache, as well as htop. I need to remember that in the future. And I'll try booting Ubuntu once the download finishes.

[tomreyn]

Did the download finish, yet?

I searched a little bit on the Internet for your error message and hardware, and it seems like they are a common combination. In other words, the problem is likely caused by your hardware. So I'd go with titi's suggestion if you can spend EUR 30,-.