CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

Shinken

Member

Registered: 2015-05-07

Posts: 3

Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Hi there!

First I want to thank Mr. Rohrer for Pi support in general and for the script included in the source. Some programs demand endless configuring to compile properly on the Pi, but this was nice and easy so even someone new to Linux could probably do it!

Unfortunately I'm not able to play CM. The game starts, but after checking with the server, it says, that I should download the newest version. (Which I hope I did - it's the one from the official download site)

Maybe I am missing something?

I got another question: What is the minimal resolution required for the game? I'm asking because I would like to play the game on my ancient CRT TV which got PAL resolution minus plenty overscan. It couldn't get more occult than that!

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2014-11-20

Posts: 802

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

HOLY CRAP!

I posted the wrong version for every platform right before launch.  That's v12 up there... it should be v23!

Fortunately, the auto-update system was automatically upgrading everyone to v23 seamlessly.

However, for several reasons, the source bundle has no auto-update system.

So, I just fixed the links, and you can go and download v23.

No one else noticed this, so thank you!

Sadly, I abandoned the RPi version once I saw how it rendered.  I think the graphics card doesn't support the ink blending mode that I'm using, and I recall the frame rate being really slow too.  I was hoping to use Pi's in my PAX booth, but I ended up buying miniPCs instead.

Anyway, I'm not sure how playable the game is on the Pi with the weird color rendering...

Our tv set is a CRT here at home, so I get where you're coming from.

Heck, the monitor that I'm typing this on is a CRT.

LCDs suck.  (Provably.  The black levels are horrible.)

Shinken

Member

Registered: 2015-05-07

Posts: 3

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Yes - the rendering is really slow. Maybe it's better with a 2.0 Pi but I don't think so. At least I got to the ingame screen to see it . It was a bit tricky because it rendered no cursor when I started it directly from the terminal without launching X ^_^.

Anyway it's probably for the best! The RPi is my last bastion of productivity where I can't be distracted too much by the lures of web and gaming and CM running on it would have been disastrous in that regard!

The laptop will have to suffice for now although it's significantly less occult

..

Member

Registered: 2014-11-21

Posts: 259

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Damn, someone actually pointed out to me that the download links were wrong and I forgot to tell you.

CM is perfectly playable at 240x240 (normal is 666x666) and looks surprisingly good; I've played it at that resolution on my cellphone. Which also uses OpenGL ES and has a problem with the blending modes. But it's only cosmetic, only affecting the strokes while they're animated in. Jason, are you suggesting you saw more significant blend mode artifacts which would make it hard to understand the board?

I still want to figure out the blending problem. Not that I understand anything yet about Open GL blend modes or how exactly the strokes are blended.

As for the low frame rate, you can reduce the target framerate by editing settings/halfFrameRate.ini: 0 for 60 fps, 1 for 30, 2 for 15 etc. If it can't hit the target framerate then the game doesn't automatically drop frames as you noticed, which is unplayable. But with the target reduced it's perfectly playable even at less than 7 fps like on my cellphone.

I'm using two CRTs right now. One even has no cover, so the huge circuit board with hundreds of components and wires but almost no chips can be admired.

Last edited by .. (2015-05-08 14:50:14)

Cobblestone

Member

Registered: 2015-01-28

Posts: 212

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

As for the low frame rate, you can reduce the target framerate by editing settings/halfFrameRate.ini: 0 for 60 fps, 1 for 30, 2 for 15 etc. If it can't hit the target framerate then the game doesn't automatically drop frames as you noticed, which is unplayable. But with the target reduced it's perfectly playable even at less than 7 fps like on my cellphone.

Thank you so much for this!! I wasn't aware and I've been playing on a laptop that chugs trying to keep up with the framerate!

As for the resolution, I'm not in front of the game now, but I'm guessing there's a setting to reduce it? I tried playing on an old 800x600 tablet and it freaked out because the height of the game was larger than the screen.

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2014-11-20

Posts: 802

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

dot-dot, I didn't remember what the blending artifact looked like.  Just that it was too ugly to show in the PAX booth!

Some of my games obey the screen dimension settings in the settings folder, but I don't think this one does.  I think dot-dot probably modified the source to achieve that.

LiteS

Member

Registered: 2015-01-27

Posts: 82

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

I've altered the default window size in the setting folder of this game, but as far as I can tell it doesn't change the scale of the objects, just the size of the window border and blackspace.

computermouth

Member

Registered: 2014-12-27

Posts: 134

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Heck, the monitor that I'm typing this on is a CRT.

LCDs suck.  (Provably.  The black levels are horrible.)

john carmack's got some old CRT 1080p's you could probably pick up

---

Try Linux, get free. #!++ (CrunchbangPlusPlus) is a stable distribution based on Debian 8. Keep it fast, keep it pretty.

..

Member

Registered: 2014-11-21

Posts: 259

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Hah, that photo's a classic.

Yes, CM doesn't respect the screenWidth/Height.ini files, and the resolution determination is complicated. I made some sdl-android-specific edit to handle it, but might try a more general solution. There were a few improvements I wanted to contribute back. Autoadjusting the framerate is definitely needed for Android, but I didn't get to that.

The blending problem looks like

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2014-11-20

Posts: 802

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Yeah, I think that's what I saw too.  It was a long time ago, though...

Cobblestone

Member

Registered: 2015-01-28

Posts: 212

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Poking this thread out of curiosity, did the RPi end up being a viable system for CM? Also, could it be used as a local server...?

..

Member

Registered: 2014-11-21

Posts: 259

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

The only progress I've made is that I finally figured out how to modify the source to get CM to run at less than 666x666 (the android port was a special case, because SDL-android gives you a screenbuffer larger than the actual screen).

I'm sure the server will run fine on any low end machine. Without databases full of thousands of users and games the only computationally expensive thing will be generating magic squares. On my netbook, with a very slow Atom CPU, that can take over 3 seconds, and I think the 1st gen RPi ARM CPU is even slower. Easy to fix: getMagicSquare6 isn't being compiled with optimisations turned on! Turning them on makes it a non-issue.

Cobblestone

Member

Registered: 2015-01-28

Posts: 212

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Hm! Ok, I think I may have to get a Pi to play around with then. It seems like it might be a good solution for what I'm trying to do.

jasonrohrer

Administrator

Registered: 2014-11-20

Posts: 802

Re: Running CM on the Raspberry Pi

Yeah, it should be fine at running the server.  I'll turn opt on in the compile script for the magic square code.

The client works but has visual artifacts as seen above.  I don't think it's possible to get it looking good on the Pi's graphics chip without a substantial re-write and re-think of how the brush strokes are drawn.  Note that it's only visible when the strokes are fading in, so it doesn't affect the gameplay at all.