PA is really, really bad on Linux right now

If it wasn't for the UI issue beacuse of Coherent, i'd say the game is fantastic. I played a few ai skirmishes yesterday and things looked great.

Agreed, too bad there is a turd in the punchbowl.

Personally I played 71378 and have 4 UI crashes within game so there might be some improvement, but it's not working.

Okay tried a few more times, and I'm confident now the release build will be good for Linux.

Not perfect for everyone mind you, but considering i've gone from my original post, to now having no UI issues. That's one hell of an improvement.

Did they just push an update?

Talking about their PTE test build that will become the "gold" release.

I'm not showing any improvement...

Same here. I'm still getting the same old problems which makes me wonder if there might be a hardware (Intel, Nvidia, ATI/AMD) or software (open vs closed drivers etc) component that worsens the situation.

At this point we think it is a closed-source middleware problem. Sigh, was there no comparable open-source solution?

Well I just tested the PTE build on my Intel Haswell laptop with HD Graphics 4400 and I managed to get through a short 20 minute AI game. Although I had to use --software-ui though or else I got a black screen when PA started. I might try putting the nouveau driver on my desktop to test that too.

I imagine they could have gotten a lot of similar functionality out of Qt and it's QtWebkit module. It wouldn't have the social integration that Coherent's website touts but I am not sure how much Uber is making use of that outside of Youtube videos. From what I understand Uber has previously been just been a Windows shop and had used Coherent for a previous game or games so it was the path of least resistance.

Poking around the Coherent Labs site I saw they were using screenshots from PA in a few places. Very old looking ones.Uber should send them so new ones to show off how far PA has come from this:


I also found something a bit disappointing.

Come on guys Wine Is Not an Emulator. If you can't get that right it's not surprising their Linux support is shaky. And if you support MacOSX and Linux natively why would you mention Wine and Cider compatibility?

Black screen or Coherent crash? I don't have any problem with black screens on latest Mesa and HD4600.

Though your post make me think why some players here reported better stability, but it's wasn't same for me so I made test. I tried to run game with "--software-ui" and make Coherent crash and wasn't able to do that even if there was errors in log, e.g:

Code:

[03:44:46.233] WARN Unable to find surface that Coherent::UI requested be destroyed.
20470 23:44:46.363217 W | PID: 20482 | 20482 23:44:46.300644 [20482:20482:ERROR:render_widget_host_view_gtk_coherent.cc(289)] Unable to get backing store!
[03:44:46.525] ERROR Could not create shared memory segment.
20470 23:44:46.525472 A | Assert failure: Linux shared memory must be created with the 'shmget' function

There is no UI crashes on fast resize and I didn't have in-game crashes so far.

You likely not game developer. If it's was fast and cheap way to make game UI other developers would use it already.

Coherent (and other Chromium-powered solutions) it's really new way to make UI for game so nobody used it before.

Because not all game developers make native versions.

Without --software-ui if I press F5 and other buttons I can hear the pings sounds from the UI but the screen stays black. I don't see a crash in Coherent_UI.log but I do see lots of this:

Code:

14072 00:09:08.415125 W | PID: 14082 | 14082 00:09:08.404363 [14082:14082:ERROR:(0)] ContextGroup::Initialize failed because too few texture units.
14072 00:09:08.415200 W | PID: 14082 | 14082 00:09:08.404389 [14082:14082:ERROR:(0)] GpuScheduler::InitializeCommon failed because group failed to initialize.

I am on Mesa 10.1.5.

I don't see those or any other big errors in the logs when I use --software-ui.

I should have clarified, I was just trying to answer his question and mention a FOSS technology that could be used to make something like PA's UI. Not that it would be faster or easier to do so.

My mistake then, guess I misread something or another poster was also misinformed.

You won't find "BadAccess" error in any logs, it's only written to console you run PA from because it's not PA or Coherent error.

Oh derp.

Ran it from the console, didn't see a BadAccess error and the shutdown of Coherent_UI is reported at the end.

Oops. If you installed PA via Steam you can't run it from console this way because it's won't use Steam runtime them which going to cause library dependency issues. When you run it via Steam client it's set special environment with own libraries (from Ubuntu 12.04 mainly) and non-Steam version have own copy of runtime.

So you might do few things to get all output:

1. Get non-Steam version and run it.
2. Run steam client from console, then run PA from Steam and watch logs here.
   I'm not totally sure, but likely all output would be here.
3. Manually make Steam version of PA use runtime by setting same environment Steam games use.

You can check Steam environment variables this way:

1. Run Steam client.
2. In Steam set such "launch options" for PA as you set --software-ui:
   
   Code:

   env > /tmp/env.txt && %command%

• Run game.

• Check contents of /tmpo/env.txt

• Export/set same environment variables contents for PATH and LD in your terminal session

• Now just run game with ./PA

As result it's will work exactly like you run it via Steam.

You can run PA with the steam-runtime environment like so:

Code:

~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/run.sh ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Planetary\ Annihilation/PA

Coherent UI for games dates back to 2012 SXX it's hardly new just to clear that little bit up.

Considering 2-3 years it's about minimal time for developing a game it's not a lot. At least there is zero chance that anyone at Uber have finished project that using Coherent.

PS: And when PA was funded and development started Coherent was extremely new middleware.

Right now I'm running (simi-)fine with the '--software-ui' switch in steam running Ubuntu 14.4 LTS.

I can get into the lobby and start a new multiplier game. After about 1-5 mins playing I get total input failure with the mouse. The cursor moves but none of the buttons work so I cant move my view around or select units. It also seems that everything on the keyboard dies with the exception of the arrow keys.

There is still some work to be done on the Linux version of the game but I think they are making progress!

Here are my specs (running Intel Iris Pro 5200 with the 'i915' driver):

Code:

sudo lshw -c video
  *-display          
      description: VGA compatible controller
      product: Crystal Well Integrated Graphics Controller
      vendor: Intel Corporation
      physical id: 2
      bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
      version: 08
      width: 64 bits
      clock: 33MHz
      capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
      configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
      resources: irq:46 memory:f7800000-f7bfffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:f000(size=64)

Are you sure you playing PTE build (71453) and not stable one (70289)?