Amnesia - The Decent running very choppy

Creddeus · Post by **Creddeus** » Mon Nov 07, 2011 9:56 pm

Hey. I'm new to Linux based operating systems. A friend of mine introduced me a year ago and I finally decided to try it so try to bear with me here.

The problem I've been having is that I've managed to get Amnesia to work under the latest Wine version (1.3.31) but the game is really choppy. I've tried messing with the Wine configuration and the in-game configuration but it hasn't helped anything. I have noticed that it's not choppy when I open the menu so that makes me think that it might have something to do with three dimensional stuff in-game.

It might also be valuable to let you know that I've gotten a game called The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind to work properly under the same version of wine when I had choppy gameplay. I just had to disable pixel shading.

I'm running:
Ubuntu (32-bit by the way)
Release 11.04 (natty)
Kernel Linux 2.6.38-8-generic
GNOME 2.32.1

Hardware
Memory: 1.7 GiB
Processor: AMD Sempron(tm) 145 Processor

I'm also using an NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series graphics card.

Thanks a bunch, guys. Totally appreciate the help.

sgsdxzy · Post by **sgsdxzy** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 8:45 am

Can you run it smoothly under Windows? It may be that your hardware is not so up-to-date.
BTW, the game does have a Linux version. You can try the demo and compare the speed.

Creddeus · Post by **Creddeus** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 8:26 pm

Yeah. It runs fine on Windows.

I suppose it could be that my graphics driver isn't configured correctly. When my friend was helping me try to get it working he ran into the problem that the driver we got from NVIDIA's website was installed but I guess it wasn't being used. I think he fixed that but I'm not sure. He said it probably had to do with hardware acceleration or something with 3D rendering or 3D support or something.

Also, if I could get the Linux version I would totally go for it but I don't really have the money to buy another copy of the game. That's why I'm trying to run it on Wine. In the mean time though, I'll download the demo and try it out.

Creddeus · Post by **Creddeus** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 9:06 pm

Alright. I tried out the demo and it was just as choppy trying to run it on Wine. I tried messing with the graphical options and the one thing that really made a big difference was turning off SSAO. I'm not sure what that is but it lessened the choppiness from ridiculously unbearable to close to playable. Haha. Also when I hit the "detect" button under the general tab it said "card is not listed, assuming medium settings." The other graphical options I tried made it run a little faster but it was still just as choppy.

Based on that, I'd assume that it has to do with Ubuntu not recognizing my graphics card. I'm not sure. What do you think?

sgsdxzy · Post by **sgsdxzy** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:12 am

Your system says that it doesn't recognize your video card. It's a bit odd since Nvidia is generally well supported. What's the specific version of your card and driver? I have a Nvidia 8400M GS card and it was recognized, giving me good performance playing Silent Hunter III when I used Ubuntu. Now I have turned to archlinux, and wine behaves well as archlinux provides the latest packages. Maybe you should update your driver. And I wonder How do you install the driver? You run the .sh downloaded from official site?

sgsdxzy · Post by **sgsdxzy** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:17 am

I mean, how do you configure your video settings? Is the Nvidia control panel working? You can try setting the brightness and if it works, your card and driver should be working.

you can try the following command in a terminal: lsmod
and see whether your kernel has load the nvidia module( if so, you can find a module named Nvidia taking about 10MB RAM)

Creddeus · Post by **Creddeus** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 3:44 pm

I tried lsmod and NVIDIA was listed there and I tried the NVIDIA control panel and that worked.

GeForce 6150SE nForce 430

I'm not sure what my driver is but I looked up configuration for NVIDIA graphics cards on Ubuntu documentation (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Binar ... wto/Nvidia) and it said:

"By default Ubuntu will use the open source video driver called Nouveau for your NVIDIA graphics card. This driver lacks support for 3D acceleration and may not work with the very latest video cards or technologies from NVIDIA.
An alternative to Nouveau is to use the closed source unified NVIDIA drivers which are being provided by NVIDIA themselves. This driver provides excellent 3D acceleration and video card support."

I followed the instructions it gave but when I went back into additional drivers it said: "This driver is activated but not currently in use"
That's the problem we had before and I think it is because Ubuntu wants to use Nouveau instead of the other driver.

garpu · Post by **garpu** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 10:32 pm

I've had no problems with Amnesia, but I'm using the Nvidia drivers for my card. I've yet to have any game run well using FOSS video card drivers.

sgsdxzy · Post by **sgsdxzy** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:27 am

As nouvean is in conflict with Nvidia kernel module, once nvidia is loaded, your system can't use nouvean. No worry about that. When I used Ubuntu, I manually installed Nvidia drivers myself and it worked out of the box.
Does your computer have an integrated video card? If so, you may need to disable the integrated one in BIOS settings as linux has difficulty handling card switch and may always use the integrated one, leading to performance problems.
You can try downloading and installing the latest driver. It should be 285.05.09 now.
And try running glxgears and get your FPS. I can get approximately 3000FPS.

Post by **dimesio** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:37 am

Creddeus wrote: I followed the instructions it gave but when I went back into additional drivers it said: "This driver is activated but not currently in use"
That's the problem we had before and I think it is because Ubuntu wants to use Nouveau instead of the other driver.

On openSUSE, you have to blacklist or uninstall the nouveau driver to get the proprietary nvidia driver to work; you may be looking at a similar situation. But you really need to ask this on the Ubuntu forum.

Creddeus · Post by **Creddeus** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 5:20 pm

How do you disable integrated graphics? I googled around a bunch but I couldn't find anything. I opened my bios and I did find integrated peripherals and I turned off SATA but then my computer told me to select the proper boot device so I had to turn it back on. I also tried to change the primary video settings to PCIE instead of onboard but that didn't work either.

Is there a different setting I'm missing?

vitamin · Post by **vitamin** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 12:39 pm

Creddeus wrote:How do you disable integrated graphics?

This is not a hardware forum. Contact your PC manufacturer support or distro forum.

sgsdxzy · Post by **sgsdxzy** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 9:44 pm

Try glxgears. If you get less than 1000 FPS, it's your hard/software problem.
If you get decent FPS, it's the Game's fault--it doesn't support linux well.
Now that the problem has nothing to do with wine, you'd better ask the Ubuntu Forum or your hardware provider.

Creddeus · Post by **Creddeus** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 3:51 pm

Okay. I got about 980 - 1000 FPS. I'll try asking on a different forum. Thanks a lot for your help though.

blaiseg07 · Post by **blaiseg07** » Tue Nov 15, 2011 11:48 pm

"I'm also using an NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series graphics card."

Upgrade.