Games on AIX

[Shiunbird]

20fps on a POWER5?? Something's really wrong. My Quad G5 in software mode runs Quake at a ripping pace, so CPU rendering should not be the limiting factor. What does xdpyinfo say? Is the MIT-SHM extension installed? Is this xquake or quake.sw?

So, I get fluid gameplay, but only at 320x200 (that's the standard resolution), anything up from there slows down REALLY fast. At 640x400 it's a slideshow. I can see the frames redrawing from top down.
Resizing is interesting, though. Resizing is content-aware. The health bar on the bottom remains the same size (it's probably a bitmap) whilst the rest of the render area increases.

Answering your questions:
- According to X Display Info, I have MIT-SHM installed and more other 16 extensions: BIG-REQUESTS, DAMAGE, LBX, RECORD, SCREEN-SAVER, SECURITY, SHAPE, XC-APPGROUP, XC-MISC, XFILES, XInputExtension, XTEST, XTestExtension1, aixCursorExtension, xColormapExtension, xDirectAccessExtension.
- I'm running quake.sw.wimp. Quake.sw exits with the error we discussed previously: UMSobj.dll could not be loaded.

[ClassicHasClass]

I wonder if it's some difference between AIX 4 and AIX 5.

[Shiunbird]

I wonder if it's some difference between AIX 4 and AIX 5.

It's possible, since it doesn't run at all under AIX 7.1. But hey, the multiplayer TCP/IP stack seems to work, so I still think we should play.

I'm keeping an eye on the Interwebs for a better graphics card to try Quake 2.

[Shiunbird]

Hey guys, this gentleman just posted Quake II on a IntelliStation 275.

[ibmfiles]

We could still play! Come on!
Don't worry, Quake runs horribly on my POWER5 as well. I get 20ish fps at 320x240 and if I make the screen bigger it runs at 1 fps and the mouse cursor freezes. It's more of a science experiment than anything else. =) And that's on 5L. On 7 it doesn't run.

But it would be a world's first for sure. =)))

Well I know immediately three other guys who have ThinkPad 850s. It would be hilarious if we all banded together for some AIX multiplayer gaming; although not sure how permissible that is with time zones and the fact not all the 'TP 850 guys' would be interested.

[Shiunbird]

I'm still in.

[ibmfiles]

I'm still in.

I just remembered... getting Ethernet (or even Token Ring) working on a ThinkPad 850 requires a *specific* PCMCIA card which I don't have.

Doubt a parallel to ethernet adapter would work either.

Hmmmmm. Well guess it's time to see if I can find any of those uncommon PCMCIA adapters. My best chance is probably with the token ring one, so I'll also need a token ring bridge.

[ClassicHasClass]

I actually have both the token ring and the Ethernet card. They're not actually that hard to find on ePay. The Ethernet card worked pretty much out of the box once I had the right smit sets installed.

[ClassicHasClass]

It's here! It's queer! It doesn't want any more bears!

http://www.floodgap.com/iv/3426

Yes, this is Quake running on an Apple Network Server 500 with AIX 4.1.5. I dug out a new drive since this is going to be a demo unit at VCF and put a vanilla install of Harpoon AIX on, and here we are.

Allegedly the later releases of AIXquake include a binary which will run without UMS (Harpoon AIX does not have UMS), but fortunately the UMS smit packages that I installed on my ThinkPad 800 also work on the ANS. This game run is using UMS, with the original 0.92 build. A couple of the file sets failed to install but if you have the CD I used (LCD4-0254-02) it should just work if you install everything and let it fail the filesets it doesn't want.

With a 200MHz 604e in 640x480 with pixel doubling, game performance is acceptable, certainly much better than the poor 66MHz 603 in the TP800.

Unfortunately audio doesn't work. There is no /dev/baud0 and lsdev -C and lsdev -P don't display any audio devices. The failed sets don't seem to have had anything to do with sound.

I'll try the subsequent AIXquake builds later. Gotta try Abuse next.

[ClassicHasClass]

Let's have some Abuse.

http://www.floodgap.com/iv/3427

Oddly, go_abuse does not work, but running xabuse manually does. It does not need the UMS runner, but it does use UMS, and that all works fine (except no sound, of course).

[ClassicHasClass]

Last but not least, I tried the later AIXquake versions. These require replacing the libXext.a that comes with Harpoon with the one in the package, which to my relief didn't cause any problems. quake.sw.wimp is just a teensy bit faster than quake.sw, but both run at a pretty decent pace and certainly faster than the 0.92 AIXquake. I had to keep the PAKs separate though: the later quake.sw binaries won't run with the pak0.pak from 0.92.