Low Quality Sound and Video settings in TF2

[Sleaka J]

I have managed to get TF2 working at an acceptable framerate under Wine. However 3 problems arise when playing it.

When I run the game, it always sets my texture detail level to "Low" when I can run at "High" or "Very High" with very little performance loss, but no matter what I do, whenever I exit and restart the game, it reverts the texture detail level back to "Low". I don't seem to be able to keep it at "Very High".

Secondly, when I start at the menu, the sound is high quality. As soon as I get into a game, the sound quality is quite obviously low and scratchy. I've got winecfg using ALSA as the sound engine and I've tried OSS (no difference) and Esound (sound skips badly, and still low quality).

Thirdly, the speaker configuration is reset when I restart the game. I have a set of headphones that I use and would like to keep the settings to "Headphones", but when I restart the game, it always goes back to "2 Speakers".

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 and Wine 0.9.60 with the nVidia 169.12 drivers. I know there's nothing wrong with my video drivers as glxgears works perfectly and I have the Linux client of ET:QW installed and that runs just as well as my Windows ET:QW install does.

If I haven't given enough info, just ask more questions and I'll be happy to answer them.

[vitamin]

I have managed to get TF2 working at an acceptable framerate under Wine. However 3 problems arise when playing it.

When I run the game, it always sets my texture detail level to "Low" when I can run at "High" or "Very High" with very little performance loss, but no matter what I do, whenever I exit and restart the game, it reverts the texture detail level back to "Low". I don't seem to be able to keep it at "Very High".

Have you set amount of memory your video card has? If not set:

Code: Select all

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]
VideoMemorySize

To the size of your video memory in megabytes.

Secondly, when I start at the menu, the sound is high quality. As soon as I get into a game, the sound quality is quite obviously low and scratchy. I've got winecfg using ALSA as the sound engine and I've tried OSS (no difference) and Esound (sound skips badly, and still low quality).

Thirdly, the speaker configuration is reset when I restart the game. I have a set of headphones that I use and would like to keep the settings to "Headphones", but when I restart the game, it always goes back to "2 Speakers".

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 and Wine 0.9.60 with the nVidia 169.12 drivers. I know there's nothing wrong with my video drivers as glxgears works perfectly and I have the Linux client of ET:QW installed and that runs just as well as my Windows ET:QW install does.

If I haven't given enough info, just ask more questions and I'll be happy to answer them.

Did you kill pulseaudio before running Wine? It conflicts with Wine.

[Sleaka J]

Have you set amount of memory your video card has? If not set:

Code: Select all

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine\Direct3D]
VideoMemorySize

To the size of your video memory in megabytes.

Didn't have that, But tried that and set the amount to 256 (which is what my video card has) went into the game, set the Texture Detail to "Very High", started a game, saw that the detail was "Very High", quit TF2, went back in and Texture Detail was set back at "Low" (which is the recommended value). In my Windows install the recommended value is "High", I've set it to "Very High" there at it stays there. Doesn't want to do it here.

Did you kill pulseaudio before running Wine? It conflicts with Wine.

Killed the process, but it didn't make any difference to the sound quality. Is there a way to stop the process from loading on boot?

I'd also like to mention that my Desktop resolution is set to 1280x960x85Hz. I run the game at 1024x768 (Because I get pretty good performance at that level). When I exit the game, the desktop resolution is set to 1024x768x60Hz (exactly the same as the game). Is that normal?

[vitamin]

What video card and video drivers?

[Sleaka J]

What video card and video drivers?

nVidia GeForce 7600GS with the 169.12 drivers. I used EnvyNG to install them. glxgears reports approx 4200fps.

Sound card is an Creative Audigy (Thought that may help).

[Sleaka J]

Any other suggestions?

[Sleaka J]

Ok, I'm now in a worse position than before.

I completely reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04, Envy and Wine (started off as 0.9.59, but upgraded to 0.9.61). Using the 169.12 nVidia drivers again. I've disabled Desktop Effects and added the VideoMemorySize key (set to 256 as that's how much memory my video card has).

Now every time I start Team Fortress 2, after the Valve and Source movie logo show, I just get a black screen. No sound, the game doesn't even load, no mouse movement, alt-tab just gives me Steam or TF2 of which neither work and won't switch. The only thing I can do is Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X.

Tried -dxlevel 80, -dxlevel 81, -autoconfig. Same thing. glxgears now reports 5600fps (possibly due to compiz being disabled).

EDIT: After trying -window, that worked. Would like to get it fullscreen though.

[vitamin]

Ok, I'm now in a worse position than before.

I completely reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04, Envy and Wine (started off as 0.9.59, but upgraded to 0.9.61). Using the 169.12 nVidia drivers again. I've disabled Desktop Effects and added the VideoMemorySize key (set to 256 as that's how much memory my video card has).

Now every time I start Team Fortress 2, after the Valve and Source movie logo show, I just get a black screen. No sound, the game doesn't even load, no mouse movement, alt-tab just gives me Steam or TF2 of which neither work and won't switch. The only thing I can do is Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X.

Tried -dxlevel 80, -dxlevel 81, -autoconfig. Same thing. glxgears now reports 5600fps (possibly due to compiz being disabled).

Have you followed the HOWTO for installing Steam? Did you killed pulseaudio before starting Wine? Have you disabled "in-game steam community"?

[Sleaka J]

Have you followed the HOWTO for installing Steam? Did you killed pulseaudio before starting Wine? Have you disabled "in-game steam community"?

Yes, Steam works as well as it does under Wine.
Yes, I kill the pulseaudio process everytime I restart the X server.
Yes, In-Game Community Overlay is disabled.
I've been to the AppDB many times. I'm well aware of the issues.

While I've got it working in a window (see the edit from my previous post), the low sound quality is still around. It sounds normal when I start the game, even the clicking sounds when the mouse moves over the menu items. The sound quality decreases every time I join a server or create my own. If I go to the options and change the sound from "2 Speakers" to "Headphones" it remains at high quality until either a map change or I join/create a new server.

Edit: After some further playing around, it only seems to be low quality when I start a listen server of my own. If I join an internet server it stays at the normal high quality and if I join another internet server, it stays that way. But as soon as I start a listen server, the sound quality drops. Very strange. Might be some TF2 config file somewhere. Whether or not I kill the pulseaudio process doesn't seem to have any effect to the sound quality in TF2 if I only connect to internet servers.

Edit2: Also, I may have figured out why I was getting a black screen on fullscreen startup. Seems whenever I start the game fullscreen with a -dxlevel or -autoconfig it wants to turn on FSAA. I'm not 100% sure yet (still playing around), but if I disable FSAA in-game and start the game fullscreen, it works.