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Bug Reports & Support / Requesting help with some Linux version issues
« on: November 23, 2021, 09:51:12 PM »
I went through the settings.json of the main game and tweaked things more to my liking (For the record, I've been doing this for years in Windows versions already, so by now I know how to avoid blowing things up). I switched to Linux (Ubuntu) a while back and, while Starsector still runs, I've noticed a number of issues.
1) Game drops into slow motion when entering or exiting star systems, or to put it more specifically whenever that fogging fade in/fade out effect kicks in. Now I know that yammering about "I've got 8 cores, wtf" is pointless because we all know that 99.9% of programs out there still all run on only a single core. But hey, it's a Java game, one should still be enough, especially with a rockin' video card, right? Changing the uiFadeSpeedMult has no effect.
2) Massive slowdown when fighter swarms come into play. I mention this because, after getting the whole 8-core/turbo video computer but before switching to Linux I could throw 200+ fighters into play at once with zero slowdown. Now it's like I'm back to running my old 2-core from the year 2000 again. I don't get it? How is that getting a better system results in the game running slower when under load?
3) Most eyebrow raising of all is the settings.json thing I mentioned at the start. It seems like half the stuff in it works and the other half the game just completely ignores. For example I can change the values of sensors per ship, and the number of ships that contribute. I can change the speed of ships per thrust point no problem. I can change the limits on the number of hull mods per ship no problem.
However the lines that control how much memory the game can use? Completely ignored. I've got 16gigs of RAM yet I can load the game stuck vanilla with no mods and within 2 minutes I'm getting a Low RAM Warning. I went and cranked that limit up to 8gb in the config - which worked in Windows - but now it does nothing. Controlling AA sampling? No longer does anything. Change the fleet point limit per battle? No effect in game. Camera pan and zoom limits? No longer functional. Change fleet size limits? Nope.
And it seems completely random. Sometimes the game is clearly reading the settings.json and doing what it is told, and sometimes the game apparently doesn't care what the file says and just does its own thing - and badly. I have no idea as to why the game seems to only be reading half the file.
Now my best guess is that a lot of these lines were just copy/pasted from the Windows version and their functionality either isn't supported under Linux or need to be executed in some other way & just hoping it reads from the settings.json file isn't it. Maybe Ubuntu has its own memory thing for Java that overwrites what the game says. Maybe something in the graphics language doesn't translate the fade effect properly. Maybe the game was actually running on more than one core before (a miracle, I know) but now it isn't anymore.
Anyway, I'm just confused and if anyone has any insight then please share. Thanks!
1) Game drops into slow motion when entering or exiting star systems, or to put it more specifically whenever that fogging fade in/fade out effect kicks in. Now I know that yammering about "I've got 8 cores, wtf" is pointless because we all know that 99.9% of programs out there still all run on only a single core. But hey, it's a Java game, one should still be enough, especially with a rockin' video card, right? Changing the uiFadeSpeedMult has no effect.
2) Massive slowdown when fighter swarms come into play. I mention this because, after getting the whole 8-core/turbo video computer but before switching to Linux I could throw 200+ fighters into play at once with zero slowdown. Now it's like I'm back to running my old 2-core from the year 2000 again. I don't get it? How is that getting a better system results in the game running slower when under load?
3) Most eyebrow raising of all is the settings.json thing I mentioned at the start. It seems like half the stuff in it works and the other half the game just completely ignores. For example I can change the values of sensors per ship, and the number of ships that contribute. I can change the speed of ships per thrust point no problem. I can change the limits on the number of hull mods per ship no problem.
However the lines that control how much memory the game can use? Completely ignored. I've got 16gigs of RAM yet I can load the game stuck vanilla with no mods and within 2 minutes I'm getting a Low RAM Warning. I went and cranked that limit up to 8gb in the config - which worked in Windows - but now it does nothing. Controlling AA sampling? No longer does anything. Change the fleet point limit per battle? No effect in game. Camera pan and zoom limits? No longer functional. Change fleet size limits? Nope.
And it seems completely random. Sometimes the game is clearly reading the settings.json and doing what it is told, and sometimes the game apparently doesn't care what the file says and just does its own thing - and badly. I have no idea as to why the game seems to only be reading half the file.
Now my best guess is that a lot of these lines were just copy/pasted from the Windows version and their functionality either isn't supported under Linux or need to be executed in some other way & just hoping it reads from the settings.json file isn't it. Maybe Ubuntu has its own memory thing for Java that overwrites what the game says. Maybe something in the graphics language doesn't translate the fade effect properly. Maybe the game was actually running on more than one core before (a miracle, I know) but now it isn't anymore.
Anyway, I'm just confused and if anyone has any insight then please share. Thanks!