Right click camera control - Linux

[bobbinhoppin]

Hi all, I've been trying to fix this since I started P99 4 months ago, but I finally give up to come ask for help.
I'm running P99 on a Dell Latitude E6410
Operating system is fosspup64 9.5 Linux Kernal 5.4.53 running Xorg 1.20.8
Video card is Nvidia 3100M PCIe 512MB driver is 340.108

Problem is in game, using the right click to change camera angle is choppy. Otherwise I don't get lag usually, but the appearance is similar to lag. With enough bumping, twitching and jerking of the mouse, I can usually get the camera where I want it (yes, the "Mouse Look" button in Options->Mouse is clicked down yellow).

I have tried changing the in game settings every way I can find. Particularly I want to try adjusting the Max. Frames Per Second, but whenever I do, it reverts back to 60. Is this the same as the refresh rate of the screen, which is set to 60 (or 59.99) Hz in the Nvidia control panel?

I have tried WinEQ2 but struggled to get it working in my 64bit Linux running 32bit EQ through the program called wine.

TIA

[loramin]

There's a command you can run, winecfg, which lets you configure WINE. You can set which version of Windows it's trying to emulate, whether it runs EQ in a virtual desktop, etc.

I'd recommend playing around with the Windows versions, and with the options in the Graphics tab (eg. that virtual desktop thing I mentioned), and see if different configurations help. I can't say specifically "use Windows 95, it will fix things", but very often trying different configurations will help.

Also, if you haven't already, make sure you're using the latest graphics drivers ... or at least the latest available for your repo (eg. on Debian/Ubuntu/Mint the latest ones in apt-get).

[K-EAVKR]

Are you playing in a window(full screen window counts as window) or full screen?

Do you experience the same lag and hitching if you keyboard turned?

The in game FPS will top out at whatever your current screen refresh rate is.

[bobbinhoppin]

I will play with winecfg, that is new to me!
I am in windowed mode.
I do not experience the lag/hitching when I move with the keyboard.
It seems I cannot adjust the in game frames per second, it always reverts to 60 after relogging and there is no noticeable effect. My Nvidia control panel only has 2 options, 60 and 40.

[bobbinhoppin]

So I realized Everquest is misidentifying my video card. In game, in Options->Display->Advanced is the wrong video card model listed.

My driver seems up to date in Linux. Maybe Wine needs a Windows video driver? I dont see it in winecfg. Is that a dll? Changing the Windows version did change the video card model identified by Everquest in a couple cases.

[K-EAVKR]

I have never had good luck adjusting the Max FPS in the options under display. Even out of game in the eqclient.ini file if I set something there it'll just ignore it and give me all of the FPS (that my system+screen can handle).

What wine version are you using ?
Do you remember installing directx(d3dx9) at all ?

[bobbinhoppin]

wine-5.9

I do not think directx is installed.

I'm wondering if this is an X server configuration..../shrug

Thx for helping

[K-EAVKR]

There are a few things needed to get Everquest working well on wine. It won't run very well just installing wine and hitting the installer and hoping for the best.

So that being said. There is a website called WineHQ. It collects a database of various games and how well they work on wine and what steps people do to "make it work" if needed. Here is the one for Everquest : link (https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=20308)

Also there is a utility/program that really simplifies the setup and config process for wine called Lutris. They also have their own database of sorts here (https://lutris.net/games). It also has a 'Everquest Project 1999' version installer on this page here (https://lutris.net/games/everquest/)

[loramin]

It won't run very well just installing wine and hitting the installer and hoping for the best.

I think it'd be more accurate to say YMMV (your mileage may vary). For me, with a few-year-old laptop and Linux Mint Mate, I literally can just install WINE, copy my installation over, and everything "just works".

But of course, part of the "fun" of LInux is that different distros, different hardware, etc. all conspire to make it so as I said ... YMMV.

[K-EAVKR]

You're absolutely right. Maybe I was a little harsh in what I wrote. There are many factors to consider from both the user and the system. The process of simply installing the base requirement of Wine can be trivial to some and problematic for others. Sometimes it'll just work as expected and sometimes it needs some tweaking.

[bobbinhoppin]

I had never used Wine before, nor P99, so it did take me quite some time to get things up a running. Mostly the issue I had was finding 32bit packages to support running WINEARCH=win32 on a 64bit machine. But once I saw the EQ installation screen, everything was pretty smooth. I run the middlemand script to filter the server list.
I was actually running EQ for a couple months before I realized the nvidia driver was not installed at all, by seeing heavy processor usage (Intel i7 4 core). The gameplay was pleasant, but installing the nvidia driver made it beautiful. I think the driver being used was Nouveau, which I think is disabled now through the nvidia configuration.
Still not set up correctly.
The GPU usage during idle, quiet area gameplay is 30-60% (Kunark and Velious are higher) and CPU usage of a single core is 40%-60%. I don't lag at all. In a raid, the GPU usage can stick around 100% (really bad lag when 100+ people are in zone), and the CPU core will be 60-100%. It only ever uses 1 core of CPU.
I'm not familiar with GPU modules...maybe something is disabled/enabled that if switched would help. Or a package is missing. I added d3dx9 dll, went through the solutions on WineHQ and Lutris including fiddling with the xinit configurations.
I want to get EQ to recognize the proper card. Or figure out how Wine is misidentifying it. WinEQ2 may help but I don't know how to set that up, I'll go back and try that some. Maybe update to wine-6.0, that must be pretty new.

edit: i bet I installed EQ with the noveau driver so all the code compiled for that. I need to update wine, reinstall eq with the correct driver. I'll report back

[Naerron]

I have this problem on a windows 10 machine with a 2060rtx and a i-9750, and when i run EQ on my mac with wine, i don't....

this is a real brain bleeder

[Naerron]

I noticed that when i'm running EQ in window mode with multiple monitors, sometimes right click movement will continue to move my mouse (off screen) and when i release the pointer comes back is on a totally different monitor.

Regardless of the OS/use of wine, I think it more has to do with the following:

1. window mode or not
2. dpi settings on mouse
3. multiple or single monitors
4. background processes
5. limiting fps when not in window

[Izmael]

I used to have choppy mouselook with Wine 4 but Wine 5 fixed that for me.

[K-EAVKR]

I've just made a character in Cabalis, seems like an easy graphically intense starting area. I see spikes of 30% GPU utilization here and there but mostly sits under 10%. Also if I sit and spin my camera until I'm sea sick (using right click hold) my CPU utilization sits around 20% all cores. You've said you only see 1 core being used so thats something to look at. There is a line people have added to eqclient.ini to force the use of 1 core 'CPUAffinity#=-1' (where #=each CPU core and -1 means to not use it). There were bugs in older wine versions with multiple cpu cores and directx9, but I feel like those have been fixed since wine4.0 and up.

You have also said your game detects or at least shows a mislabled video card. It is possible it could be you have a rare video card and its picking one that is generally close in family. (I have seen this in laptop video cards) But it is something to raise an eyebrow at.

What video card does everquest detect for you? In the back of my head when I see nouveau I can't help to think you might have onboard video not fully disabled.(the module needs to be blacklisted , usualy nvidia driver install will do that for you)

Also you said really bad lag with 100+ people, I assume you mean low FPS (also how bad is bad? for me anything under 20 is rough for a non shooter game) which further makes me think you still migth be using nouveau drivers.

I know the game is old. But that video card isn't much better performance wise than a GeForce 7900 from 2005. Definitely woulden't expect amazing FPS all the time.

For a point of reference I am using Wine 6.0 64 bit , Linux 5.11 , nvidia 460.56-6

[K-EAVKR]

... sometimes right click movement will continue to move my mouse (off screen) and when i release the pointer comes back is on a totally different monitor.
...

I don't know if your using wine, but this very thing can happen with applications using wine.

This wine behavior can be "tamed" with the switch 'automatically capture the mouse in full screen windows' in conjunction with 'emulate a virtual desktop' in the winecfg.

It can also be further tamed by ensuring 'Mouse Warp Overide' is set to Enabled(this is usually default anyways)

Lastly, the version of the file 'dinput8.dll' can affect the mouse behavior as well.

[bobbinhoppin]

EQ thinks I'm using a Geforce FX 5800 in game display options. (I actually have an NVS 3100M)

In trying to get Wine 6 compiled on another partition that's otherwise a duplicate of my EQ functioning partition, I figured maybe my problem is that I compiled Wine myself, instead of their binaries. So I started trying to get Debian up and running on another partition. After I install the Nvidia driver, the screen goes black after the system login screen (after showing Nvidia splash screen). So I had to switch back to the Nov driver and haven't gone past there.
Maybe I'll try Ubuntu.

[K-EAVKR]

The NVS 3100M is a 10 year old chip that is based off the GT218 chip which is even older. It is in the same performance bracket as the 18 year old Geforce FX 5800. I would not be surprised if the NVS 3100M in your laptop is just rebranded FX 5800 chips. Which could explain the game picking it up as that.

Black screen after nvidia driver install might be because that NVS3100M is considered by Nvidia as a 'Legacy Device' and as such needs a legacy driver, not the main branch 'nvidia' driver. So now that makes sense why you were seeing nouveau drivers. The auto installer for your distro probably picked that because the normal nvidia driver would have been incompatible and the installer just wanted you to get a display by the end. Looks like you are going to be stuck with the nouveau drivers.

I would definitely suggest using your distros repository to install a precompiled wine rather than building it from source. But don't let me stop you from doing that! check winehq and look at all Test Results for Everquest(Private Server). 'winetricks' will be another thing to grab to help make installing things like d3dx9 and all of the other various things that Everquest might need run on well on wine. 'Lutris' and 'PlayOnLinux' can also help take the edge off installing games under wine on linux for first time users. They both have an extensive game database like winehq.

Final note, even though it might be a recent-ish laptop, that video chip is going to struggle with most 3D games; even if you used Windows. When you say you get really bad FPS in a huge crowded raid like environment...to me that sounds about par for the course for that type of hardware. Disabling the compositor(all the fancy window effects like dimming, shading wiggling) might buy you a little bit more performance. Try lowering your game resolution and graphics settings as low as you can make them, especially particles.

[bobbinhoppin]

I installed the driver recommended for the card by Nvidia, version 340xx, yes indeed legacy. It worked in my main distro (puppy linux, which does not have a precompiled version of Wine 6) but I haven't gotten it to work in Debian yet.

I am satisfied overall with the performance in EQ - I too do not expect much more in crowded raid-like areas on a budget old laptop, I was just describing that generally the card and graphics seem to be functioning as expected, the only problem is right click camera panning.


How do I disable compositor?

Ty

[pivo]

Off topic, but maybe can be useful for you. I installed P99 on two different Linux Distros, Manjaro and MX Linux. Manjaro (Arch based) install was a little bit easier, per memory I think it ran right away or just little tinkering, for MX Linux (Debian based) I did try few different combinations (Wine, WineHQ...) before I got it working. (Btw, MX has newer Wine & WineHQ versions than most other Debian based distros.)

But even that it took more work, once you figure out all the settings you need, MX Linux has some interesting tool, worth checking it out, when everything works, you only need 3-4 mouse clicks, and your current working install with your game, all the setting and everything, will be converted into ISO file. Which means, if sometime down the road something goes wrong, you just 'burn' your iso on USB stick and you install it again. Or, you can use this USB stick, and install it on another computer, creating exact copy of your system on another hardware. Great stuff. Tool is called: MX Snapshot

[pivo]

How do I disable compositor?


I wouldn't know where you do this in wine/game settings, but on my MX Linux (Xfce) there is a tool called: MX Tweak, where under tab: "Compositor" I have 3 options:

- None
- Xfwm (Xfce) Compositor
- Compton

[K-EAVKR]

I installed the driver recommended for the card by Nvidia, version 340xx, yes indeed legacy. It worked in my main distro (puppy linux, which does not have a precompiled version of Wine 6) but I haven't gotten it to work in Debian yet.

I am satisfied overall with the performance in EQ - I too do not expect much more in crowded raid-like areas on a budget old laptop, I was just describing that generally the card and graphics seem to be functioning as expected, the only problem is right click camera panning.


How do I disable compositor?

Ty

I wasn't sure if the chip would work with the legacy 340 driver as its right on the cutoff area on the 'supported devices list' for xorg. That's great that it does.

For the compositor, it depends on the desktop you're using. I'm using KDE and I can get to the compositor settings screen by going to the 'System Settings' and its under 'Display and Monitor'. I can also use the search bar that KDE has and type in 'compositor' and get right to it there.

I'm going to guess you might be using Gnome right now because you said you might try Ubuntu. I haven't used Gnome in years but I think I remember they disabled the ability to turn off compositing in their new Unity version which is a shame. But you can select what desktop environment you want to use on the login screen. Should be a 2D or classic or something along those lines that will either have compositing disabled or allow you to disable it.

Did a quick look around and I came accross this post (https://askubuntu.com/questions/969073/how-can-i-disable-the-compositor-gnome-shell-mutter-on-fullscreen-windows) on askubuntu regarding performance issues in full screen games with the ubuntu compositor and how to work around it by disabling vsync.

Are you using the onboard trackpad or an external wired or wireless mouse? I just looked more into that particular laptop and there are a surprising number of complaints with the trackpad.

[bobbinhoppin]

Hi sorry for long delay!
I installed Ubuntu 20.04 with included Nvidia 340 driver, then the precompiled winehd package and everything works!

So I don't know what the problem was....likely a poorly compiled Wine but who knows.

Now my question is...How do I diagnose the cause of lag in zone with more than 40 people? I play on an old laptop tethered to a cell phone. Is it the connection, or the machine? If the machine, is it the video card that's limited? It is important to know as I shop for an upgrade...

Thank you!

[loramin]

Now my question is...How do I diagnose the cause of lag in zone with more than 40 people? I play on an old laptop tethered to a cell phone. Is it the connection, or the machine? If the machine, is it the video card that's limited? It is important to know as I shop for an upgrade...

Thank you!

You can't really. All you can do is turn down all your graphics settings in-game, and then turn one on one at a time to see if it causes lag.

[Izmael]

I think this started to be an issue with the classic darkness patch ;(

[_lilit_]

I have a similar issue (ubuntu 22.04). The game runs great. I've found doing winecfg and setting it to windows xp keeps the client from crashing (so far), but when it comes to right click camera control it feels like the client is registering odd events, not so much lagging, more like it feels as though the camera keeps snapping back to center.

I don't suppose anyone found a trick to help fix this?

[_lilit_]

Lastly, the version of the file 'dinput8.dll' can affect the mouse behavior as well.

I don't suppose you know of a 'good' dinput8.dll to try? :D