Frictional Games Forum

Penumbra overture runs very slow on my computer, I tried resolution 1280x1024 (all other settings default) which is not that high and the game is barely playable (not sure what the FPS is exactly).

Software:

debian unstable
kernel 2.6.18 (using in-kernel alsa)
ATI driver 8.31.5

Hardware:

Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.40GHz
ATI Technologies Inc Radeon R350 [Radeon 9800 Pro]
Creative Labs SB Live! Platinum

E.g. Gish runs at what looks like normal speed, also tried Tremulous (IIRC) and it was running fine.

What does everybody else see?

TIA,

erik

I think that running the game at a high resolution like 1280x1024 on a 9800pro is the cause. Try running at a lower resolution, or turn of/down some detail, for example dynamic shadows.

I can't really find too many comparable games for linux but the ones I tried (gish, tremulous, sauerbraten) all seem to run fine in whatever the highest resolution is they support (1280x1024 or 1600x1200).

Turned off all details, changed resolution to 800x600 and game seems OK, it's still not too snappy but that might be intentional?

It's been quite some time since I heard anybody referring to 1280x1024 as high resolution:-) What hardware is recommended under linux to be able to play penumbra in 1280x1024 or higher resolution? Is 1280x1024 the highest it suports? Is there any way to figure out the framerate?

thanks,

ero

Penumbra, uses a lot more of the fragment and vertex programs on the video card than those games do. Plus Penumbra also does alot of physics calculations as well.
Because of that and the dynamic lighting/shadows a high end video card is required to do a higher resolution.

The Radeon 9800 is on the low end of supported ATI cards and as such you are not going to be able to pull off a high framerate and high resolution. I've been able to run at 1024x768 with most effects on (didn't turn on the antialiasing and the motion blur) on my Nvidia 6600 GTS w/ an Athlon 2100+ without any issues.

any ideas what would a high end card in this case be? i.e. well enough supported linux card that would run penumbra in 1280x1024 resolution, it's hard to figure out how well the given card runs under linux (each of them seems to have different gotchas not mentioned (or not explained well) in reviews)

erik

As I mentioned, I'm running an Nvidia 6600 GTS 256MB card and able to run at 1024x768 without issues.. You should be able to get and 7000 or 8000 series Nvidia card and run at that high resolution given you CPU speed. Also Nvidia cards have much better driver support under linux than ATI.

I am playing Penumbra on a 6600 256mb with an AMD 2500+ with about 27 fps at 1680x1050 with Depth of Field and motion blur turned off

I have AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 1.80GHz, 896 RAM and 256mb video ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 but still work slow, very slow:(:(((

Elaborate on "very slow". Do you mean like 1 or 2 frames per second slow? If so you may not have the ATI binary drivers installed or configured correctly.

You can check this by running
glxinfo | grep direct rendering
direct rendering will be "Yes" if you have the drivers configured correctly.