Bug#701561: Please test ioquake3 on PowerPC, particularly without Altivec

[thinkbrown at gmail.com]

I have a few PowerMac machines, both with and without altivec, so I can see
about compiling with this patch. One thing I'd suggest is that altivec is
enabled based on the CPU itself, and not just PPC vs PPC64. I've had issues
like this before, specifically with VLC, and using altivec can result in a
pretty significant speed boost.

Is Rage128 still a supported 3D accelerator? I know it'll be slow as heck,
but it's the only card I have for my PowerMac G3s.

Logan Brown
On Jun 4, 2013 5:51 AM, "Simon McVittie" <smcv at debian.org> wrote:

> Hi debian-powerpc,
> Could someone please test a patched ioquake3 on PowerPC, preferably one
> without Altivec? Please reply to me or to the bug, I'm not subscribed to
> debian-powerpc.
>
> You will need 3D acceleration supported by Linux (which probably means
> some sort of ATI/AMD or nVidia). Testing on any of these platforms is
> welcome, as long as you know which one you're using:
>
> * PowerPC with no Altivec (e.g. Mac G3)
> * PowerPC with Altivec (e.g. Mac G4/G5)
> * powerpcspe with no Altivec
>
> Please test ioquake3 from Debian unstable, with the attached patch applied.
> Testing the unpatched ioquake3 from unstable for comparison would also
> be helpful.
>
> Brief background, from #701561: ioquake3 currently always builds with
> Altivec.
> This causes it to FTBFS on powerpcspe (where Altivec doesn't exist),
> and only work on a subset of supported powerpc machines (since, AIUI,
> Debian still supports G3 Macs and other non-Altivec PowerPCs).
> I would like to fix this, but I don't have a working PowerPC, and
> I'm concerned that the bytecode JIT might have a hidden dependency on
> Altivec.
>
> You can test the engine using either Quake III Arena (non-distributable,
> but somewhat easier) or OpenArena (DFSG-free). Instructions below.
>
> Thanks,
>     S
>
> Testing with Quake III Arena
> ----------------------------
>
> If you have a copy of Quake III Arena for any platform (the only bit you
> actually need from the retail game is baseq3/pak0.pk3), please try with
> Debian's contrib quake3 package. game-data-packager can package the
> necessary non-distributable data to get this working.
>
> Testing with OpenArena
> ----------------------
>
> This is a bit more involved, because the Debian package doesn't normally
> use the bytecode JIT, and that's the part I'm worried about:
>
> * Install Debian's openarena package
>
> * Download http://www.pseudorandom.co.uk/~smcv/oa088upstream/vms.pk3
>   and put it in ~/.openarena/oa088upstream/vms.pk3
>   (it contains bytecode executables for the UI, server-side game and
>   client-side game - we ship that part of OpenArena as native-code in
> Debian
>   because it needs to be compiled with a non-DFSG compiler)
>
> * Start openarena from a terminal
>
> * Go to the Mods menu
>
> * Select "oa088upstream" and click Load
>
> * Open the console (Shift+Escape), you should see messages like this
>   near the end:
>
>   > Loading vm file vm/ui.qvm...
>   > File "vm/ui.qvm" found in "/home/smcv/.openarena/oa088upstream/vms.pk3"
>   > ...which has vmMagic VM_MAGIC_VER2
>
>   If you see something about "DLL files" near the end instead, then the
>   package of bytecode has not worked and I'll have to provide better
>   instructions.
>
> * Close the console (Shift+Escape).
>
> * Start a single-player game and try it.
>
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