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fats · Aug 2, 2001, 04:25 PM

I posted this here about a month ago and didn't get an answer. I'm damn pissed right about now about the situation and Graeme saying today that 1.29f was all that Mac users are going to get for a long time so I'm taking matters into my own hands. I'm bumping this topic to the top until I get a satisfactory answer. I also posted it in the iBook forum.

I have the latest version of Quake 3 (1.29f) running on 10.0.4. When it runs, it runs fine. It works perfectly on my iMac as well as on a TiBook that I use from time to time. The iBook is one of the new white ones. It has 320 mb of ram, 256 of which is allocated to Quake (using com_hunkmegs 256). I'm mostly using Locki's config but with chunksize set to 2048.

Here's the deal. When I start Quake3 up for the first time it runs perfectly. If I start it a second time it may do a kind of flickering thing with the id logo or it may start perfectly. On occasion it refuses to start. Inevitably, by the third time I start it the screen will do nothing but turn white and never get to playing the little id intro logo. At this point the iBook is supa-froze.

The only work-around I've been able to come up with so far is setting r_fullscreen to 0. This way Quake just runs in a window. I'm kind of impressed by the OpenGL abilities of OS X to do this without any performance hit but, dammit, I want to play fullscreen without having to reboot every second time.

I've looked at the system log and I can't seem to glean any info as to settings I might change that would fix this. I've changed refresh rates in the config file (though I didn't think this would help seeing as a laptop would be using 0, 0) and I've tried switching to 640X480X16 prior to opening Quake rather than letting it do the switch itself (this actually makes it fail the first time and I never get to play).

Have any other iBook users had this problem? If its just me then I guess I can do a clean install but I really don't want to have to do that.

zappy · Aug 3, 2001, 08:14 AM

Same problem but no solution :-(. I see the white screen of death pretty often. I would be happy to get a solution for the problem.

Regards

fats · Aug 3, 2001, 01:05 PM

Are you using an iBook also, Zappy? I haven't seen this problem on other macs yet.

fats · Aug 5, 2001, 08:36 PM

BUMP!

This is important! Why doesn't it work? Somebody must have some idea. Please.

sessamoid · Aug 6, 2001, 05:48 AM

I doubt it's important to many people. I suspect the number of people trying to play q3a on a new ibook running osx is insignificant at best. That's what I have a desktop machine for. That said...

Have you tried starting q3 without the splash screen and id video?

IIRC, you have to add the -nosplash command line option...

zappy · Aug 6, 2001, 06:13 AM

Originally posted by sessamoid:
<STRONG>I doubt it's important to many people. I suspect the number of people trying to play q3a on a new ibook running osx is insignificant at best. </STRONG>

Well I am playing UT and q3a on my iBook. These games (besides the lack of a DVD player application) are the only reason for me to boot back into OS 9. While I do imagine that the number of people with these prerequisites is not very high (but not insignificant by any means), I think the number will steadily grow.

But there is still no solution to the problem, is there?

Regards

Codename · Aug 6, 2001, 03:40 PM

Lower your hunkmegs to 128 and set texture quality to 1/3.

fats · Aug 7, 2001, 12:55 AM

Here's the deal. My texture quality was already at about a third so I didn't change it (unless that was a specific variable I was supposed to set).

I lowered com_hunkmegs to 128. This enabled me to get 6 successive starts and restarts of Quake before the white freeze settled in. I think I might be able to squeeze a few more of those out with, say, 64 megs but perhaps it will be at the expense of performance. I dunno.

I can't get the command line to come up for Quake 3 in OS X. I assume you are talking about the one that you hold down option (in OS 9.1) or shift (OS < 9.1 - don't ask me why this is...) when launching Quake and a command line option window pops up. Is this correct? Anyhow I couldn't get it to come up. Using the console in Quake 3 I put in -nosplash. It didn't give me an error so I assume it recognized it but the next launch the splash and the ID logo still came up. I also tried seta nosplash 1 but that didn't seem to do anything either.

In any case I think the issue is tied to OpenGL engine 0 in OS X on an iBook. When I run in window mode I am using rendering engine 1. There is likely some problem with that engine and it is conflicting with the ram that Quake 3 is wanting to allocate. It gets fouled up and while it doesn't bring the whole system down ( I doubt any memory leak problems could bring X down ) it takes the display down and on a single machine that is good enough. This is idle speculation.

Thanks for your help everybody! I hope someone can prove my theory wrong.

Codename · Aug 7, 2001, 02:39 AM

I'm curious, do you have the option to compress textures enabled(check config file if you're not sure)?

There are issues...

Disable the option if you have it enabled.

fats · Aug 7, 2001, 02:13 PM

Compressed textures is a "0"

Codename · Aug 7, 2001, 06:54 PM

Well, I think we've done everything reasonable, but there's some other people you can ask.

Try Xlr8's forum. Most there are incessant tweakers or hardcore gamers. Either way, they are very knowledgeable.
http://bbs.xlr8yourmac.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: Codename ]

starfleetX · Aug 8, 2001, 02:48 AM

XLR8 is good, but I'd suggest Quake3World's Macintosh forum first:

[ 08-08-2001: Message edited by: starfleetX ]

sessamoid · Aug 9, 2001, 02:05 PM

If all else fails, you can try emailing devine or one of the other guys at id to ask if it's a known problem that's being worked on. IIRC, they're pretty good at replying to emails (not flames/trolls) considering their work schedule. I don't have their emails, but you can find them pretty much anywhere.

Lordie · Aug 9, 2001, 11:54 PM

FWIW, I've got an iBook 500 (Dual USB), and I'm seeing very similar problems.

I've never ran Q3a three times in a row successfully in OS X. I installed it over the weekend. Brand new install of 10.0.4. Default settings, or hunkmegs/chunkmeg bumped up a bit.

What happens is Quake loads, you see the skull splash screen, and the ibook fades to black, then to a solid white screen. Badda-bam. No intro movie, nothing. The game works the first time from a fresh boot. I'm 1 for 4 in getting a second run out of it. Again, never had it run 3 times in a row...and forget about making changes to the renderer and reinitializing it. White Screen almost every time.

I *am* rather impressed at how well it runs in OS X on the iBook however. I'm pulling damn near 30fps average with quite passable graphics settings...but I can't wow the kids at work with my mad laptop skillz if I always have to clandestinely reboot the laptop right before I show them the game.

fats · Aug 10, 2001, 02:53 AM

On one hand I'm kind of glad to hear others can reproduce this problem so I won't feel like I should be formatting my drive and starting fresh, but on the other I think this may be a bug with the was OS X interacts with iBook hardware and we will have to wait and see when something might change to correct it. I don't really feel like sending a feedback on this as I can't figure out how to communicate the issue and how it relates to a bug in OS X to apple.

In any case I emailed Devine and hopefully he will have some ideas.

Aug 10, 2001, 04:44 PM

Quake 3 on 10.0.4 is odd, it doesn't seem to work alot of the time. i would wait till 1.29h and 10.1, with these updates i bet it will be fixed. Also never set com_hunkmegs to more than 1/3 of the allocated memory on your system, it can do bad things to your quake prefromance.