Wizardry 8

When there are monsters or good NPCs about, things get really choppy for some reason. For instance, Arnika is almost constantly choppy. Trynton is choppy only when there are NPCs about though. This is with Ubuntu 10.10 and Wine 1.2 on a ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 and a Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition, etc. This is very abnormal, in other words.

I tried switching between D3D and OGL. Both do exactly the same thing. I tried disabling debugging to see if there was a speed issue associated with that by using "WINEDEBUG="-all" wine Wiz8.EXE" but got the same results again. I tried adjusting resolutions and sound options. I tried disabling and enabling Compiz. Nothing effects this issue.

Anyone else finding this slowdown issue?

By the way, the audio problem preventing Wiz8 from exiting properly is still there in Wine 1.2. Use the Miles Fast audio setting to circumvent.

By the way, I don't think these are the same slowdowns I've experienced earlier. I'm using completely different hardware than I was earlier.

The following debugging note is the only info I get while playing during the slowdowns so it seems to be related:

fixme:d3d:buffer_PreLoad Too many full buffer conversions, stopping converting

FYI I failed to reproduce slowdowns on nVidia hardware.

You probably need to set the cpu affinity. The game doesn't work too well on multicore processors, so you have to tell the kernel to keep it on one cpu.

After you start the game switch to a tty terminal. I use top to find the pid of wizardry, then run

taskset -pc 1, [pid]

Where [pid] is the pid you got from top. 1 is for the cpu you want to run it on.

You will probably also need to disable CPU throttling, as it messes with the timing in the game engine. I know there is a command for it, google it or someone else might respond. Since I run MATE, I've added CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor to the panel and lock it to 2GHz when I start games whose engines can't handle the CPU changing frequencies on it.

Too bad you can't make changes to your test results. I just wanted to add that I was wrong about the slowdown. It has nothing to do with the playback of sounds it seems and still happens in different areas at different times with me. Am using an older ATI graphics card though (9600).

Anyone else experiencing the slowdowns? They don't seem to be graphics related either because you can still look around during the slowdowns. The only effect seems to be the game clock speed slows, so your *movement* through the world as well as the movement of others is all slowed down, but you can still look around quickly and it doesn't slow anything else down. Perhaps it's a regression with some game timer thing or something? I never remember experiencing this problem in Wizardry 8 on older Wine versions.

You can post new test result with the same configuration instead of changing the old one.

I was enjoying Wiz8 on Wine 1.1.8 with no slowdowns.
I'll retest in 1.1.9 this Sunday and report back.

Oh cool, thank you for the info! ^^ When I upgrade in a few months I'll try it again to check for the slowdowns, really strange.

allo
I've tested right now using Wine 1.1.9 and experienced no slowdowns. Cheers :)

Its definitely a game timer issue. CPU throttling wasn't used yet and the game doesn't know how to handle the CPU changing frequencies. You have to change the CPU governor settings. I know there is a command line program that can accomplish this, but looking for it today, I couldn't find it.

So if you are running GNOME2 or MATE like I am, add CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor to your panel and change it to anything but ondemand, and the game's timing problems should be resolved.

Hi,

I managed get wizardry 8 run on my ubuntu 7.10 machine, I am using wine 0.9.56 on a ATI Radeon 9550 video card. Almost every thing is fine, it runs smoothly in 1024*768 resolution with openGL video driver. There is only one thing bothered me, that even the in game 3d graphics are all perfect, but the 2d panels and the game menu have thin crossing black lines, 4 vertical and 3 horizontal, split the screen into small squares. I've tried using Direct3D 7 drivers by 3Dsetup.exe, it worked, without black lines, but the graphic and speed was totally un-comparable to openGL, so I chose to stand the the lines.

Is it because of my video card? Why didn't I see any comments about the same problem here?

Hi, I've experienced the similar problem back in Windows when the game used SW rendering.
This may be videocard/driver related issue.
I have nVidia card and I don't see the problem in 0.9.57.

My laptop does that in Windows (although it doesn't have that card). I'm voting for a hardware issue.

You need to use the Wiz8 OpenGL patch, it is on several Wizardry 8 sites.

If you have an Nvidia card, those lines are in there because of how Nvidia drivers work now. You will have the same problem running older games like wizardry on Windows as well.

To fix, you have to change a driver setting through the Nvidia X Server Settings control app. Under OpenGL Settings, there is a check box for Use Conformant Texture Clamping. Make sure its on checked and try running Wizardry. I sometimes have to do it a couple times for the setting to stick, but the line annoyance should be gone.

Hi,
I ran into a crash that occured in Arnika. Every time the crashed ship gets into view Wizardry 8 crashes (more exactly Wizardry stops responding and uses 100% CPU resources). I started the game in XP to verify that my installation is OK and I could walk around the crashed ship without problems. Can anyone confirm this?
Here is the console output:
fixme:mixer:ALSA_MixerInit No master control found on USB Device 0x471:0x311
fixme:d3d:IWineD3DImpl_FillGLCaps OpenGL implementation supports 32 vertex s
fixme:d3d:IWineD3DImpl_FillGLCaps Expected vertex samplers + MAX_TEXTURES(=8
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x34f884,0x00000000), stub!
err:wgl:X11DRV_GetPixelFormat Unable to find a WineGLPixelFormat for iPixelF
fixme:xrandr:X11DRV_XRandR_SetCurrentMode Cannot change screen BPP from 32 t
Killed

P.S.: I already tried D3D, openGL, win XP, win 98 and win ME setup

Sorry I can't reproduce your crash using Wine 0.9.54 on Ubuntu using native nVidia drivers on GeForce 7600GT.

Thanks for your reply.
I use Ubuntu 7.10 with GeForce 8600 GT and up to date nvidia drivers (169.09). I recently upgraded wine to 0.9.54 but the freeze persists. Maybe this is a problem with the nvidia drivers or the graphics card?! Wouldn't be the first problem I had with the 8600...
Btw, Bug 8272 is fixed in wine 0.9.54 - keep up the good work.

Sorry, I can reproduce the bug in 0.9.54.
You have to enter the game and play for a while.
Only entering menu is not enough to expose the bug.

Ah, sorry. You are right. I was a little bit too hasty. To atone I do vote for this bug.

Thanks a lot :-) It would be nice to get addressed.

Finally - the new nvidia driver:
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-173.14.05-pkg1
fixed that crash.
Cheers