Smooth Quake in Linux

General

This page contains solutions and tips for various tearing, lagging, jerky and sucky Quake configurations, on Linux.

• If you have low fps, try installing proprietary video drivers.
• Some clients run much better than others under linux. Make sure you try ezQuake, fodQuake and FTE.

Mouse

Change mouse hz to 500

To check current mouse hz, type in console:

cat /sys/module/usbhid/parameters/mousepoll

Using console, open /etc/modules in editor with admin rights:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Add this two lines at the end:

-r usbhid
usbhid mousepoll=x

value "x" can be:

1 = 1000Hz 2 = 500Hz 4 = 250Hz 8 = 125Hz 10 = 100Hz (Default)

for example, to change polling rate to 500Hz, end lines in /etc/modules schould be:

-r usbhid
usbhid mousepoll=2

Save it and reboot.

Warning: change polling rate only if you know that you mice supports higher values!

Other issue can be higher CPU usage.

• Run mouse handling in its own thread in ezQuake with: in_mmt 1
  

EVDEV mouse
Using EVDEV mouse is highly recommended! To get EVDEV mouse working you will have to make /dev/input/device readable, since we now dont know which device is our mouse, we just do "chmod +r -R /dev/input/" which must be run as root.
In ezQuake there is a command to check what event the mouse is on, check by typing: in_evdevlist
Set in_mouse 3 and then in_evdevice /dev/input/eventX where X is the number you got from in_evdevlist.
Type in_restart and it should work!

Enable all mouse buttons
TODO

Mouse related tools

• Striders hz checker: source and binary
• Logitech mouseprogram: http://www.lomoco.org/
• Razer mouseprogram: http://www.bu3sch.de/deathadder.php
• Ubuntu enable buttons howto: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ManyButtonsMouseHowto

Screen

Users have reported that running a second x server can give a more responsive quake LINK
Excerpt/Conclusion from the above link:

• To run your engine in a second X server (which might help on various occasions) on virtual terminal 12 (you could switch between regular X and 2nd one by pressing ctl+alt+f7 and ctr+alt+f12):

xinit /path/to/your/executable_or_script -- :1 vt12

• If you want you can also create a new xorg.conf for this new X server and specify it via attaching "-config xorg_qw.conf" in the command line.

xinit /path/to/your/executable_or_script -- :1 -config xorg_qw.conf

• You can also simply type xinit -- :1 to get an console where you then start the game.

Sound

ezQuake 2.1 new soundcode:
ezQuake 2.1 has new soundcode for ALSA/OSS/Pulseaudio ported from FodQuake. This will allow you to have other sound sources than only ezQuake.

• Choose sound driver with s_driver alsa/oss/pulse
  
• If you are running on a system without pulseaudio and got problems with new ALSA code, you can first try setting s_alsa_noworkaround 1 and do s_restart.
  
• If that doesn't help, you can switch to the old drivers (called legacy) with cl_uselegacydrivers 1 for ALSA/OSS (still chosen by s_driver).
  
• Pulseaudio will need to be set in config files before starting client in order to work. (Pulseaudio code is treated as experimental)
  

Information below is for the old soundcode ONLY:

• Got software mixing and problems with sound in ezquake? SOLUTION: add +set s_device dmix to command line and don't use local .asoundrc
  
• if you don't get sound at all with those settings try doing these things:
  

- add yourself to group 'audio' ($ addgroup username audio) ; then disconnect/reconnect (login)
- $ echo 'ezquake-gl.glx 0 0 direct' > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss (might need to chmod it first)

• If sound doesn't work try oss -noalsa -snddev /dev/dsp (1517) or +set s_noalsa 1 +set s_device /dev/dsp in 1754.
• Very good guide to fix soundproblems http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=205449&highlight=onboard+sound $$$ link

Other Common problems

Missing files error Unlike Windows, Linux is case-sensitive, which means "PaK0.pAk" and "pak0.pak" are different files. If you just copied the Quake directory from your Windows machine, it's possible that there are some files in upper case. Fortunately, that's easy to fix.

• change to your main quake directory

e.g. 'cd /home/joe/quakeworld'

• convert every file in your Quake directory (including all subdirectories) to lowercase, run this little script (by faustov@ryba):

#! /bin/bash
#

Cdir ()
{
for elem in * ; do
        if [[ -d "$elem" ]] ; then 
                mv "$elem" "$(echo $elem | sed -e 's/./\L&/g')" 2> /dev/null
                elem=$(echo $elem | sed -e 's/./\L&/g');
                cd "$elem";
                Cdir;
                cd ..;
        else 
                mv "$elem" "$(echo $elem | sed -e 's/./\L&/g')" 2> /dev/null
        fi;
done;
}

Cdir;

Keyboard issues If you get laggy/skippy input from the keyboard when using high refresh rate mouse polling, you could try switching keyboard drivers if you want to keep the mouse the way it is. My keyboard frequently ignored my commands when using 1000hz evdev+ evdev keyboard, so I switched them to mouse/kbd X11 drivers and things seem okay now.

Launch ezQuake by clicking on qw:// links in your browser

KDE (untested):

[Protocol]
exec=/path/to/qw/ezquake-gl.glx +qwurl '%u'
protocol=qw
input=none
output=none
helper=true
listing=false
reading=false
writing=false
makedir=false
deleting=false
icon=package
Description=qw

• Save this code in ${KDEHOME}/share/services/qw.protocol

Adapted from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?&p=2618481

Gnome (untested):

gconftool-2 -t string -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/qw/command exec /path/to/qw/ezquake-gl.glx +qwurl "%s"
gconftool-2 -t bool -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/qw/enabled true
gconftool-2 -t bool -s /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/qw/needs_terminal false 

Adapted from http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?&p=2618481

Firefox:

Create a new file containing this:

#!/bin/sh
#
# ezquake launcher script for qw:// links
#
exec /path/to/qw/ezquake-gl.glx +qwurl "$@"

• Save it as qwconnect.sh and chmod +x it. Place it in your qw folder.
• In Firefox go to about:config.
• Rightclick, "new" -> "string": "network.protocol-handler.app.qw" "/path/to/qwconnect.sh"
• Rightclick, "new" -> "boolean": "network.protocol-handler.external.qw" "true"
• Rightclick, "new" -> "boolean": "network.protocol-handler.warn-external.qw" "false" (unless you want that "are you sure" box)

Compile ezQuake yourself

You can use GIT to get the latest development sources and compile ezQuake yourself.

Prerequisites

• A working Internet connection
• Installed software
  • git (package git)
  • gcc, make... and a sane buildsystem (mainly build-essential)
  • libraries, see below

Procedure

• change to your home directory

cd ~ 

• checkout the code from git to folder ezquake

git clone git://github.com/ezQuake/ezquake-source ezquake

• install necessary libraries (for Ubuntu)

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libasound2-dev x11proto-xf86dga-dev x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev libxxf86dga-dev libxxf86vm-dev libxext-dev libsvga1-dev libxpm-dev

• for OpenSUSE

sudo zypper install freeglut-devel alsa-devel

• change to libs directory

cd ezquake/libs/linux-x86/ (or linux-x86_64 for 64bit)

• invoke a script downloading precompiled versions

 ./download.sh 

cd ../../

• compile the OpenGL binary

make glx

• (optional) Software version SVGA (32bit only)

make svga

• (optional) Software version X11

make x11

If everything went smoothly, your freshly compiled binary can be found in release-x86/ezquake-gl.glx (or release-x86_64/ dir for 64bit)

Links

• FAQ in Polish by Faustov
  
• xqf is a gamebrowser similar to ASE.
  

Get masterservers from QuakeServers
Modeline generator http://www.sh.nu/nvidia/gtf.php

Other OS

Windows

See Smooth Quake

Macintosh

ezQuake is in general the recomended client, but you can also try fuh if everything fails :P Binary version of Fuhquake > http://dreamolers.binaryriot.org/fuhquake/

* needs clarification >
need to browse through > http://tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Quake-HOWTO/

• http://bu3sch.de/deathadder.php
  Razer DeathAdder Mouse configuration tool

http://quakeworld.nu/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1419 xorg.conf talk. need to wikify
http://quakeworld.nu/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1235 extract info and wikify.

http://woodygates.com/2008/05/get-your-logitech-g5-mouse-to-work-in-ubuntu/