A few notes about the Linux and Mac releases

[TTimo]

We are pretty happy about getting Mac and GNU/Linux versions of QuakeLive out to the public around here. Several of us use Macs (including Marty and me), and I'm using Linux pretty much exclusively otherwise.

Forest has done a great job helping us get those builds out, and I wanted to go over a few things to complete the release announcements:

First off, this release marks the beginning of Mac/Linux support. Our build, test and release architecture now supports three platforms, which means we'll be able to update all versions at the same time as we move forward.

We have started watching the forums and identifying some of the main issues with this release. We will be working to address those problems.

QuakeLive does a lot of things with the browser that haven't been done before. We were never 100% sure that we could even do the things we are doing on Windows on the other platforms. After a few months we are happy to confirm that the core features are indeed possible on Mac and Linux too.

Things were easiest on Linux. We only had FireFox to worry about, although we would like to support any NPAPI/.xpi friendly browser eventually. We only support Alsa for the sound backend, adding OSS (/dev/dsp) is also on the list.

As far as mouse input we're not really happy though. This is not new to QuakeLive, but more noticeable for me this time around as I've been playing on Windows with some pretty good hardware before trying out the Linux builds, and there is definitely some input lag.

I am using the DGA mouse path (in_dgamouse 1), which is pretty good, but roughly comparable to in_mouse 1 (DirectInput) on Windows and not as good as in_mouse 2 (raw USB device polling). I am curious if anyone has evdev setup and can toggle between evdev and no evdev to check if evdev is better (despite evdev having a poor reputation for reliability and scalability).

Onto the Mac now: we managed to uncover a bug with our Mac FireFox support at the last minute, and had to disable it in this release. We are working with the Mozilla organization to address things.

Browser+OSX+Cocoa is a bit of a death triangle though. We don't have "true" embedding of the game window into the browser like we do on Windows and Linux yet. But we have Apple's ear on a few of those things and we will make sure to turn a great Mac gaming experience into an awesome one.

Far as mouse input on Mac, it suffers from the same input lag problems than Linux and DirectInput on Windows do. There are new APIs in OS X 10.5 that should give us a bump in input quality, so watch out for that in future releases.

Happy fragging.

[qqargs]

neat

[nkjoep]

nice to hear these!

i'm a mac user and QuakeLive goes so fast i'm fraggin with Safari 4.0.3 and osx 10.5.8.

I noticed that consoled doesn't work, maybe the key "\" is death and also leaving a match causes a Safari crash.

But that's a great work!

[3TATUK]

Cool. Thanks. First thing I noticed is that either sensitivity/accel seem different in one way or another. (Than Q3A) Either Q3 took into account a DE/OS setting (which I doubt), and QL doesn't.. or Q3 didn't and QL does.. or QL uses some different accel alg (i know there are new settings but I'm talking about just the default: cl_mouseAccelStyle 0; Don't know what this cl_mouseAccelOffset junk is)

[teject]

Great game and all working very well just when sometime you exit the game Safari will crash other then that I'm happy to see Quake back!!!

[mephist0666]

Thanks so much for linux support
For me its working very well under linux. I only Played 2 games 2 days ago. And it felt very good

Keep up that great work!!!

Nice to see OSS coming. With alsa my mic doesnt work with Intel HD audio. With OSSv4 the mic works

[EDiT]:
I have a evdev and keyboard/mouse driver setup. I will try and post back if there is any difference.

[namerula]

Really cool to see Quake back on mac! (before it was quake3 now QL o//)

problemes I did notice:

- Safari crash at leaving game (when full screen is set to one)
- Mouse 2 doesn't work ... (most amazing **** )
- FPS stuck @ 80
- Console key doesn't work for me, I need to bind it to some other key (like p for exemple)
- Mouse settings are weird, the acceleration sux a little bit, I did use imouse but doesn't help at all, will try again ...
- cfg doesn't keep settings like I change it. It always come back to the previous one. (so i locked the cfg and it work find btw)
- I can't make the flag cap like linkin did on ctf2 .... (but that seems to appends allso on windows :'( so can be that, that's a user problems)

that's it,

tx for the support
br

[3TATUK]

The program 'firefox-bin' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)'.
(Details: serial 180 error_code 2 request_code 135 minor_code 10)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
Locking assertion failure. Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb64b4787]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_lock+0x2e) [0xb64b492e]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 [0xb6b10de9]
#3 /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 [0xb1acda75]
#4 [0xd522c38]
#5 [0xd522c38]
#6 [0xd522c38]
#7 [0xd522c38]
#8 [0xd522c38]
#9 [0xd522c38]
#10 [0xd522c38]
#11 [0xd522c38]
#12 [0xd522c38]
#13 [0xd522c38]
#14 [0xd522c38]
#15 [0xd522c38]
#16 [0xd522c38]
#17 [0xd522c38]
#18 [0xd522c38]
#19 [0xd522c38]

[tAjmer]

Good to finally hear something from you guys about these new releases. Much appreciated!

You missed to comment (or ignored, heh) one of the bigger issues though - whats with the low framerate in both OSX/Linux? I'm assuming this is not a bug, but rather something native to those OS's, but a word on it might put alot of questions/worry to rest. Also the issue with non-working mouse2 on OSX seems to be wide spread. I'm positive this is a bug and will be fixed in a coming release though.

Good to hear you have some possible solutions to the mouse input. Looking forward to coming releases and the day when I can move over to OSX permanently (mouse- and game feeling will be the deciding factor here)

[Joeyray]

I'm on Ubuntu 9.04 with a rather new machine (core 2 duo 3ghz, geforce 8800) and it works perfect for me. Constant 125fps in every situation, mouse seems to work (perhaps there is a small mouse lag, but i haven't felt one by now) and installation went without a problem.

So, for me, no problems at all. Even the config that I used on Windows worked out of the box. Nice!