[spearfish]

Hey guys,
I'm back once again wondering about my computer

I just bought a StarCraft Battle Chest off Amazon (the douche didn't include the extension disc, but that's another story....), thinking, "Hey! Wine can run that!"

I got it installed easily, running, etc. but the part that concerns me is that it runs extremely slowly. From my experience with the game on other computers, I'd have to say it's running about 1/3 the speed it should be.

I know my processor sucks, 600mhz, but the little info packet says it needs a "90 mhz or better processor". I don't suck that badly.

Just in case you guys aren't aware of this ( :::points at big "Linux software" thread::, I'm running Debian Etch.

~~~

Is there anything I can do to speed up my performance? Is there a way to make sure that Debian is recognizing all my RAM? Hopefully, I'll be able to snag a 933mhz processor off a computer that my brother has lying around. Still, if I have six times as much processing power as I need, why am I running slowly? (Btw, I have 512 mb RAM, shouldn't be a problem.... the game requires 16)

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks
-Spear

[no2pencil]

I've never gotten into Wine, so I can't help you there.

However, I was able to use an engine to play Warcraft 2, on Linux, & they have a StarCraft port as well. Maybe you'll find some luck with that instead of Wine.

[MorphiusFaydal]

It's most likely a settings problem with WINE. I'd hit up a dedicated Linux forum (LinuxQuestions, JustLinux, or the Debian Forums [if they have any]), and ask there... My experience with WINE is *very* limited.

[baavgai]

Wine is good on some, not on others; emulation is emulation. That said, the mostly likely bottleneck for a slow game is in the video card. If the card is an ATI or NVidia, make sure you use their proprietary drivers. Since you're using Debian, it's a guarantee they will NOT be there by default.

If the game has an OpenGL option, use it. Even if doesn't say it explicitly, it may still use OpenGL, so having it setup properly on the computer will do nothing but good. You can just run glxgears to make sure that bit is functioning.

Good luck.

[Tom9729]

Debian has the NVIDIA drivers in the non-free repository I believe.

If lsmod | grep nvidia doesn't return anything, the NVIDIA drivers are not installed (or technically, the NVIDIA module is not loaded).

There's a pretty good open source ATI driver (module name is "radeon" or "ati"), but it doesn't work with all cards and it renders slowly compared to the proprietary one. It should be installed by default, though not necessarily enabled.

The proprietary ATI driver is also in the repositories.

Edit: Check the Wine DB site. It should have entries for the games you want to play, including what version of Wine they work best on, and any little hacks to fix problems people have encountered.

This post has been edited by Tom9729: 24 May 2008 - 08:07 PM