Slow Linux client

[Flatlander]

Hi, I just tried the (official) webstart client on my linux box (Ubuntu 9.04 with ATI x550 & open source drivers) and it was veeery veery slow, probably well under 1 fps. Is that a common problem? I was just curious about what might be the problem since other opengl (including lwjgl) apps run just fine.

To be more specific, how is the rendering done (yeah, I could use the source but my Java isn't quite up to the task)? Does the lwjgl backend demand something exotic that could cause the game to fallback to software rendering (it looks like it should run fine on any old opengl capable card with several hundred fps)? Do you use non-power-of-two textures or graphics primitives with smoothing set (both can completely kill performance with some drivers)? Are the tiles rendered in a batch with one GL call from a single texture etc.?

Oh, and thank you for making one very cool (if a bit too addicting) game!

[kaka]

...when it comes to lag, please ensure that you have your video card manufacturer's drivers installed. That goes triple with nVidia cards on Windows 7 and Linux.

Try that and see if it helps.
It ran pretty well on Ubuntu 9.04 for me, but when I upgraded to 9.10 I started getting extreme lag.
Now I run Debian and it runs smooth again. :)

[Chakravanti]

Ubuntu 9.04

I'm the last person to start distro dissing. IMho as long as you are open source you are free! Unfortunately I'm fairly certain this is your problem. All those python scripts weigh you down majorly. I would never dream of even trying to play H&H in Ubuntu. I use Slackware 13 and if you want decent performance, I recommend as much. In wesnoth Ubuntu can take up to 10 minutes to finish AI moves on some maps on my computer in Ubuntu. The same maps take less than 30 seconds to crunch in Slackware, for me. My computer is a bit old but I'm guess yours is about as old as mine maybe a year newer at best given the card you quote.

As kaka mention, switching to debian may work equally as well. You'll still get the functionality of well stocked repositories without all the idiot friendly IU scripts.

[loftar]

Hi, I just tried the (official) webstart client on my linux box (Ubuntu 9.04 with ATI x550 & open source drivers) and it was veeery veery slow, probably well under 1 fps. Is that a common problem?

Unfortunately, my laptop (which is my only computer with an ATi graphics card) is kinda broken and hangs (in hardware) whenever I try to use OpenGL, so I haven't been able to test it with the open source drivers myself.

Does the lwjgl backend demand something exotic that could cause the game to fallback to software rendering (it looks like it should run fine on any old opengl capable card with several hundred fps)? Do you use non-power-of-two textures or graphics primitives with smoothing set (both can completely kill performance with some drivers)? Are the tiles rendered in a batch with one GL call from a single texture etc.?

That would be JOGL rather than lwjgl, but no, I don't think I'm doing anything particularly exotic. You seem more on terms with OpenGL than I am, though, so if there's any chance you could optimize it, I would be very grateful indeed. :) While the client usually runs with a usable framerate, I do think that it reasonably ought to be very much faster than it really is.

As for the specifics, nope; no NPOT textures and no smoothing. The tiles are rendered with one texture per "tileset", so consecutive tiles of one set are rendered from the same texture.

[Flatlander]

As for the specifics, nope; no NPOT textures and no smoothing. The tiles are rendered with one texture per "tileset", so consecutive tiles of one set are rendered from the same texture.

Interesting, in my experience that should be enough to get a very good performance for something like H&H client. Another thing which might help a bit with performance would be a working fullscreen mode, none of the clients I tried work in fullscreen mode either with my Vista or Ubuntu machine (low end ATI cards). Maybe it is some JOGL oddity since I don't have any problems with my other opengl programs.

I'm personally more experienced using OGL with C and Common Lisp but if I get some time off playing this I might see if can make any sense of the Java stuff.