Hi everybody.
I am new both to Linux programming and to game programming (though neither to
Linux nor to programming!). I’m writing a simple arcade game - Yet Another
R-TYPE Clone - using SDL. My development platform is Linux (RH 7.3), but I
try to compile the game on Windows (MSVC6) from time to time. On Windows (98,
2000, XP) everything is ok. But on Linux, I get really weird behavior.
1). Performance. I develop the game on Athlon 1.4 GHz + 512MB SDRAM + ATi
Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO. I fixed FPS at 50, but on “complex” (~300-500 sprites)
scenes it slows down to 35-40 FPS? Why??? My system is too slow? Or my
algorithms are too complicated? But on Windows (without double-buffer and FPS
limit) I get 500-1200 FPS! There’s certainly something wrong!
Maybe the trouble is with my video card? I have another machine - Pentium
166MMX + 32MB EDO + S3 Trio64 1 MB. I get about 20 FPS on Linux, and on
Windows about the same. So the difference on Linux is much smaller than I
could expect.
2). Sound sync. All sounds are late for one and even more seconds - on all SDL
games (including Maelstrom, etc.). Maybe I have to tune sound daemon (aRts)?
3). Framebuffer. What I need to do to make my game run on Linux framebuffer? I
guess no OpenGL and “native” (not VESA) framebuffer driver. But my game
either lockups system completely or I get weird display (no transparency,
black stripes - it seems double-buffer doesn’t work), and, say, Maelstrom
runs fine.
I started development on SDL 1.2.3 (included in RH 7.3), on Windows I used old
1.2.0. I downloaded 1.2.5 but it didn’t solve problems.
Even if these are common questions, please help or at least give some links.
– uav