Linux performance issues

[elias4444]

I know you guys are probably getting tired of the American who keeps asking all the questions here (I couldn't help but notice I'm one of the few, if any)
but...

My game seems to run fine on Windows machines, but Linux does have a few issues. Primarily, it seems to take a while before the game starts playing smooth. I noticed that Cas' SuperDudester (great game BTW) seems to run fine however. So, Cas, what did you do?

I tried running the game in it's own thread, with it set at Max Priority, but that only killed the Keyboard input (keyboard input lagged about 10 seconds behind on Linux and Windows both that way - I'm guessing it spawns it's own thread).

Maybe something to do with the texture caching perhaps? I noticed that the hard-drive seems very "tied" to the game while under Linux (if the the hard-drive starts going, the game slows down in sync with it).

Any ideas/experiences would be greatly appreciated. I know I've been asking a ton of questions lately, but I truly appreciate everyone's help with this.

[princec]

I truly didn't do anything special at all. In fact I've never even seen it running on Linux.

Cas

[elias4444]

You just gotta despise geniuses.  

I've been fiddling around some more with it. It looks like the issue isn't perhaps linux, as much as it is KDE. The KDE mouse cursor animations stay on top of the program for the first minute or so (and since I don't use the mouse, I'm not redrawing it or anything). Once the KDE animation goes away, the game picks up speed.

The solution? I tried XFCE4 instead of KDE, and everything worked flawlessly. Which, I guess, is ok since I'm not currently a KDE fan anyway.   :roll:

One more thing for you though Cas... I just learned that your games run in 800x600 resolution... how do you make the graphics look so clean?!?!? I'm amazed by that!

[princec]

A combination of running at a flat 60Hz and Chaz's graphics genius. The single worst thing you can do for any game is not running at 60Hz. (Well, 50 is just fine too, but any less than that and it looks shit).

Cas

[elias4444]

Out of curiosity, how do you handle the business side with the graphics? Does your graphic artist get a portion of the profits? Or do you pay him on a graphic-by-graphic basis?

[princec]

Chaz works for a share of the profits, just like me.

Cas