Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Starsector on raspberry pi?  (Read 3429 times)

pjodron

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 3
    • View Profile
Starsector on raspberry pi?
« on: March 09, 2019, 12:12:52 AM »

Hello

Finaly got time to fool around with my raspberry pi, and tried to get several games up and running with diffrent degree of success. mostly ending up me cursing at the screen, untill i found steamlink. then started to stream alot of games from my main computer including starsector.
yay it works.... mostly..

Then i remeberd that when i downloaded starsector i saw a linux download as well, great, lets see how much headbaning against the wall i need to do before i can get it up and running on my pi. and after a while i managed to unpack it and tried to run the .sh witch i gather is the exe. (mind you, im a extreme linux noob)

So, after running out of wall to bash my head against (we did not need that wall anyway), i need help. i cant start the /%ยค#& thing up. have others tried this? can the pi handle it, or am i wasting my time? and if anyone managed to get it up and running how did you do it?

side note, trying to make it run on a raspberry pi 3+ with pixel

side note 2 i guess the question will come up why i want to do this, well it is easier to leave/bring a pi in/to your cabin then dragging along your main compuer around, i "could" get a laptop for sure, but why spend money when i have a couple of pi just laying around. (2/3/3+)

side note 3 i know that you need lan to stream over steamlink, was just someting i found while playing around with games.

Anyway, thanks for reading
Bye
Logged

Midnight Kitsune

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 2846
  • Your Friendly Forum Friend
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2019, 05:38:37 AM »

I highly doubt that you could get SS to run on a pi. I had a laptop that had an i3 and an hd3000 gfx chip and it still ran SS poorly...
Logged
Help out MesoTroniK, a modder in need

2021 is 2020 won
2022 is 2020 too

pjodron

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 3
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #2 on: March 09, 2019, 07:42:48 AM »

Oh i doubt it as well, but the little bugger has suprised me before.

I think one problem might be that its on arm instead of x86, i am no programmer but i have been told that it might cause problems? will it disqualify the PI right off?

Logged

LazyWizard

  • Global Moderator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1363
    • View Profile
    • GitHub Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #3 on: March 09, 2019, 10:13:59 AM »

I was able to get Starsector running on a Pi 3b a few years ago, and honestly it's not worth it. The performance in mission refit battles is atrocious (I'm talking multiple seconds per frame on an overclocked Pi), and the Pi's 1GB of RAM (less, actually, due to the GPU memory split) is not enough to load into the campaign without an out of memory crash.

You would also need to recompile the native libraries (JInput, OpenAL, LWJGL) for ARM. Though if you still want to try, I probably have the ARM .so's lying around somewhere and could package them up for you.
Logged

pjodron

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 3
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #4 on: March 09, 2019, 02:34:56 PM »

I was able to get Starsector running on a Pi 3b a few years ago, and honestly it's not worth it. The performance in mission refit battles is atrocious (I'm talking multiple seconds per frame on an overclocked Pi), and the Pi's 1GB of RAM (less, actually, due to the GPU memory split) is not enough to load into the campaign without an out of memory crash.
Guess i have to wait for Pi4 (or 5)  ;D

You would also need to recompile the native libraries (JInput, OpenAL, LWJGL) for ARM. Though if you still want to try, I probably have the ARM .so's lying around somewhere and could package them up for you.

Odear, ehm.... that would take me way into deep water and when it comes to linux im still not comfty even in a puddle with floating utilities. i was hopeing that some one would have a command line for a depository or the like. still tough, thank you for the offer.

seems like i have to put the project on a shelf for a couple of years, i will be back then and in the meanwhile continue to lurk in the forum.

Thanks
Logged

RawCode

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 511
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #5 on: March 09, 2019, 08:37:07 PM »

SS have multiple bottlenecks on memory and processing, it wont run on smart devices, especially with mods
Logged

Margrave

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 8
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2020, 09:25:18 AM »

Bump

Looking to try on a Pi 4.  Guidance, anyone?
Logged

Schwartz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1452
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #7 on: May 25, 2020, 12:23:43 PM »

It's not gonna be playable.
Logged

Harmful Mechanic

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1340
  • On break.
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #8 on: May 25, 2020, 12:26:35 PM »

Your best bet would probably be to create a TC mod that reduces the number of assets in memory and sector size... substantially. Even then, it might not be all that playable, but I'd call that your best shot.
Logged

Eji1700

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 222
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #9 on: May 25, 2020, 03:25:24 PM »

This is somewhat baffling to me as I've got 16gb of Ram and ss is one of the only games I worry about performance on. 

Granted i'm not great at this sort of thing but it seems that, especially modded, SS LOVES to eat ram, so running it on a pi strikes me as a pretty large ask.  Sure it's graphically simple in comparison to a AAA game, but there's a lot going on at any given moment.
Logged

Aereto

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 278
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #10 on: May 26, 2020, 01:42:29 AM »

This is somewhat baffling to me as I've got 16gb of Ram and ss is one of the only games I worry about performance on. 

Granted i'm not great at this sort of thing but it seems that, especially modded, SS LOVES to eat ram, so running it on a pi strikes me as a pretty large ask.  Sure it's graphically simple in comparison to a AAA game, but there's a lot going on at any given moment.
It eats a lot of RAM (namely 1.5GB as default) as it preloads assets and libraries, which is how the game runs seamlessly, leaving the CPU and GPU to work its magic.

Imagine using an APU, where the integrated graphics is given upgrades using similarities with the GPU cores. That being said, AMD's drivers has disadvantages with how it handles its open libraries, and has been a common frame rate drop comment in this forum.

As for the Raspberry Pi, 4th gen is a step up, but again, the RAM is the issue unless someone developed a flash-based RAM attachment (inefficient, but a potential computer science prospect).
Logged

Havoc

  • Commander
  • ***
  • Posts: 109
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #11 on: May 28, 2020, 02:08:43 AM »

there is a 8gb raspi out...since today :D
that could run starsector ;)
Logged

Schwartz

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1452
    • View Profile
Re: Starsector on raspberry pi?
« Reply #12 on: May 28, 2020, 10:07:04 AM »

It's not just the RAM. RAM will get it running, but it's not indicative of what kind of performance you're going to get. Starsector is pretty CPU-heavy, and ARM is not a performance platform. There's a reason why the various SBCs are usually benchmarked against each other, but not x86 CPUs. By all means, run it as an experiment, but you're not going to get any kind of playable performance out of a SBC running Starsector.

The original Pi ran at the speed of a 300MHz Pentium II.
The Pi 3+ runs 10x that speed. An Atom processor is still 60% faster.

Forget it. Don't waste your time.
« Last Edit: May 28, 2020, 10:10:40 AM by Schwartz »
Logged