Friday, March 28, 2003

Bleh -- 10:40 pm CST, Update by The Master

We're getting a new home network built here, since Eeyore got herself a swanky new PC to play with. We couldn't run standard cabling to her PC, so we fired up a wireless network. This stuff works pretty well, I'm very surprised. I'm wondering what kind of performance Quake 3 will get over wireless :-)

The Master comments: Update! We've been running the new network for two days now. This is awesome. File transfers run local, without transiting to RR's network first, things run REALLY fast. We're getting 11 mb/sec on the wireless, and this router is blocking all of the garbage that used to rain on my PCs like tropical storms in the Gulf. The only things I don't like are the maintenance required to keep a wireless network secure, and ICQ file transfers seem to be really wonky. These are small problems compared to the fun I could have had running cat-5 through this apartment. The day I own a house, that sucker is going to be wired cat-5 EVERYWHERE.

J.t.Qbe comments: One of the first things I did when we moved into our house last summer was to get a run of cat5 between the basement and my upstairs office: I'm not yet sold on the security of wireless. In Qbe news, I got DSL a few weeks ago and it's working out pretty well. We moved from cable TV to satellite and cable modem to DSL, and are saving at least $35 a month over the cable company's continually rising rates.

The Master comments: I'm completely unsold on wireless security, which is why I intend to change settings relatively often to make things difficult. The nicest thing about our wireless is we're in an industrial park area, so there's a ton of wireless in the air that's a lot more attractive than ours. And I'm paranoid in the extreme.

NWN Linux Client: Beta Three -- 5:48 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Bioware has released a third beta of the Neverwinter Nights Linux client. This one contains the following fixes:

• fixes an OpenGL bug
• fixes a crash when putting gold in a container
• fixes middle mouse button camera control

I've been spending far too much time playing that game now that it works in Linux. I'm very pleased with the client so far.

Thursday, March 27, 2003

SDL Workaround -- 8:47 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I also managed to isolate a problem between XFree86 4.3 and libSDL. When I play a game that uses SDL for graphics (such as UT2K3, Neverwinter Nights, LBreakout2) at a resolution other than my desktop resolution, the refresh rate on my monitor would get screwed up. In my case, the refresh rate is too slow. One person on the NWN forums even said that the bug caused the refresh rate to go too high for his monitor, which could damage it. At any rate, the solution is to use ctrl/alt/- to change your desktop resolution to that of the game you are playing. That way, there are no mode changes so the refresh rates don't get messed up. I posted about this on the libSDL list, so hopefully it can get fixed.

At first, some thought this was an NWN bug, but I found the same problem in UT2K3. I narrowed it down to SDL when I discovered that Quake III and Return to Castle Wolfenstein could change resolutions just fine.

WineX Workaround -- 10:51 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

I figured out a way to get Transgaming's WineX to work with Mandrake 9.1's glibc 2.3.1. I registered with Transgaming so I could get Jedi Knight II to work. Whenever I would try to run WineX a second time, it would complain that there was no such file or directory as ~/.transgaming/wineserver-skyron/socket. After testing a few things and perusing Transgaming's forums, I found that if I issue this command before I try to run WineX, it will work:

rm -rf ~/.transgaming/wineserver-skyron/

You will have to replace skyron with whatever your box's host name is. It's a pain, but at least it works. They are aware of the problem and are working on a fix. Crossover is trying to fix their plugin too, but they estimated it will take them over two months! I don't know what glibc 2.3 changed but it had BETTER be worth it since it breaks so much stuff.

No Old News

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