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some clarifications with my gaming in 0ad


PieLam
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Hi all,
Just need a little help & some clarifications with my gaming in 0ad...

Background & other useless info: (feel free to skip this paragraph)
A few years back, I enjoyed & played Microsoft's Age Of Empires. I started with AOE I, it was my first exposure to RTS gaming,. I fell in love with it. I eventually acquired the expansion pack for AOE I, then, later, AOE II & its expansion pack. After that & after losing interest in Windows, I migrated to Linux & until I discovered 0ad, I thought my RTS gaming was over. I thought "oh well, Linux is worthy." Eventually, I discovered 0ad on Linux & liked it very much, but my Linux system kept locking-up whenever I would play 0ad, always at random times and only when playing 0ad. I kept looking for upgrades, figuring the lock-ups were occurring because 0ad was still in alpha. After a few months of the lock-ups & waiting for a less buggy version, I decided to try the Windows version of 0ad on another PC that has Win 10 on it. Well, no more lock-ups on the Win version, I was once again hooked! Understandably, my 0ad game playing style, in many ways, mirrors the same style as in AOE...

My main reason for this post:
So that I could learn 0ad better, I began with Sandbox mode, then moved on to Very Easy mode and now I'm trying to learn even more by conquering the Easy mode. There are many things I don't quite understand yet such as territory boundaries. Of course, I understand some of it by now, but I'm sure there are other things about this that I don't know. The thing that bugs me the most though, & I can't find any info on 0ad strategy & game play & the fact that the enemy can & does take ownership/control over my buildings...This occurs more predominately in the Easy mode & not so much in the Very Easy & Sandbox modes. So, I'm pretty sure this phenomenon will escalate in the higher difficulty modes. How does one stop this or prevent this? Is there tips & tricks for 0ad? I'm sure there is, but where?

Comments & other 'fun facts' :) :
I read some of this forum today &  yesterday & learned a few tidbits, can't wait to try some of these techniques. I also read about someone else getting fed-up with Win & going to Linux. I can certainly understand this & I even applaud this too, but as much as going back to Win saddens me, I feel that Linux is more for the more technical savvy folks especially as far as gaming is concerned. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an avid gamer. Merely just a long-time enthusiast with gaming interest. I probably would have become a gamer years ago, but my skill set prevents me from it. In 2002, I had an aneurysm (a type of stroke.) Although I can still use my PC, if barely, my skills have diminished greatly. My biggest obstacle though is with my poor vision. Its my main reason for loving RTS so much. I tried First Person Shooters (FPS) and the like, but I'm way too slow for those types of games anymore, but RTS is more forgiving. Oh well, such is life... I'm over 60  (61, yikes) now & still love PCs. A love affair that began long ago, in my late high school years, circa 1974! (graduated in '76) A LOT has changed since then except my love of PCs...

More thoughts:
There are lots of knowledgeable folks on here! Its the main reason for this post. I used to run Win 7. Thanks to "howtogeek.com", I applied a free upgrade to Win 10 after Microsoft's initial free upgrade offer had expired. I thought my free upgrade option was long gone, but it wasn't thanks to "howtogeek.com"! I was then happy with Linux anyway, so losing the free upgrade option from MS didn't much matter. Still qualified for a free upgrade though? Curiosity got the best of me, I decided to give it a whirl. After applying the free upgrade, I decided to try 0ad for Win. Now, I'm sorta glad I did! Just hate that I had to go back to Win. I'm a big fan of online security even though this post would probably indicate otherwise. :) IMO Win 10's security/privacy leaves a lot to be desired...

Feel free to comment on anything...(I won't be offended)

 

Edited by PieLam
typo & cosmetics
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Glad you like the game @PieLam!

This guide by -borg is definitely worth checking out:

 

These Youtube channels by Tom 0ad and ValihrAnt are also full of informative videos with tips and tricks to improve your gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWgSzCK6CoFgSdbPiKGmJ4A/videos

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS-SFei6NFRuGN8CKtAsYrA/videos?fbclid=IwAR2yXRmgeT1EECsHvj5LiU5j5johgrK1wR-vq05BTbdhvTWuRZVFc6YbH0k

 

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16 hours ago, PieLam said:

 

My main reason for this post:
So that I could learn 0ad better, I began with Sandbox mode, then moved on to Very Easy mode and now I'm trying to learn even more by conquering the Easy mode. There are many things I don't quite understand yet such as territory boundaries. Of course, I understand some of it by now, but I'm sure there are other things about this that I don't know. The thing that bugs me the most though, & I can't find any info on 0ad strategy & game play & the fact that the enemy can & does take ownership/control over my buildings...This occurs more predominately in the Easy mode & not so much in the Very Easy & Sandbox modes. So, I'm pretty sure this phenomenon will escalate in the higher difficulty modes. How does one stop this or prevent this? Is there tips & tricks for 0ad? I'm sure there is, but where?

 

 

 

 

You need to garrison units. You can learn more about the 0ad keyboard shortcuts from this link

 

Basically you need your units to occupy the building to prevent it from being captured quickly

 

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/HotKeys

 

" Ctrl + Right Click on a structure with structure(s) selected: Set the rally point for created/ungarrisoned units to garrison inside the structure. "

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15 hours ago, sarcoma said:

0ad should run just as smooth in linux as in windows. It should only hang the computer if you run low on ram and start swapping, less than 4GB ram, such as alt tabbing 2 memory hogs like 0ad and firefox on low ram.

I believe should is the operative word here. Both the Linux PC & the Win PC have 8gb RAM, both have plenty of free drive space.  So I wouldn't think that space would be a problem???

All I know is that 0ad locks-up on my Linux PC & not on my Win PC. Should I have to accommodate  & learn how to manage a swap partition in order to be able to run 0ad on Linux? I don't need to with the Win. version.

I would rather use my Linux PC for  0ad especially since it is slightly faster & has a better monitor, but I don't want to deal with the lock-ups & jump through a bunch of hoops.

Please don't take this the wrong way , I love Linux. I just don't agree with having to jump through hoops when I shouldn't have to... Hello developers! Yes, I'd like my cake & eat it too.  ;)

Edited by PieLam
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22 minutes ago, PieLam said:

I believe should is the operative word here. Both the Linux PC & the Win PC have 8gb RAM, both have plenty of free drive space.  So I wouldn't think that space would be a problem???

All I know is that 0ad locks-up on my Linux PC & not on my Win PC. Should I have to accommodate  & learn how to manage a swap partition in order to be able to run 0ad on Linux? I don't need to with the Win. version.

I would rather use my Linux PC for  0ad especially since it is slightly faster & has a better monitor, but I don't want to deal with the lock-ups & jump through a bunch of hoops.

Please don't take this the wrong way , I love Linux. I just don't agree with having to jump through hoops when I shouldn't have to... Hello developers! Yes, I'd like my cake & eat it too.  ;)

You might be interested by this @tuk0z made some research. It would seem A24 (the dev version) fixes that issue.

 

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14 hours ago, Stan` said:

From what I've seen it's sometimes faster on linux on the same computer specs. Same computer arch vs windows + 15fps

Just sometimes?

My Linux PC CPU is around 200 MHz faster than my Win PC, a slightly bigger but older video card. Overall, a slightly better PC, IMO. Both use 8Gb DDR3 RAM. My Linux PC's motherboard is Asus, the Win PC has Gigabyte. Both boot from SSDs. There are lots of minor differences between the 2 PCs with the Linux PC having slightly better hardware.

That +15fps sounds very interesting!  :o

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I don't use Linux regularly. I'd like to but the time I have to take to set something up kinda discourage me.

I was a Capitole du Libre a french FLOSS event, and two students came with some school provided laptops. One had arch and the other windows. The arch one did perform better.

It's rare to come across to identical computers (Except with Mac) so I didn't have the opportunity to replicate it. I guess I could ask people with thinkpads (A lot of people in the Open Source community have those) to try.

Maybe that was lucky, but I don't think so.

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1 hour ago, PieLam said:

I believe should is the operative word here. Both the Linux PC & the Win PC have 8gb RAM, both have plenty of free drive space.  So I wouldn't think that space would be a problem???

All I know is that 0ad locks-up on my Linux PC & not on my Win PC. Should I have to accommodate  & learn how to manage a swap partition in order to be able to run 0ad on Linux? I don't need to with the Win. version.

My Linux PC CPU is around 200 MHz faster than my Win PC, a slightly bigger but older video card. Overall, a slightly better PC, IMO. Both use 8Gb DDR3 RAM. My Linux PC's motherboard is Asus, the Win PC has Gigabyte. Both boot from SSDs.

Hi PieLam, crazy the way you describes how RTS games fit you better than FPS. I haven't had any stroke (that I know of) but freakin' felt the same right from beginning to now :) Also my biggest box is a 6+ years old Core i3 with 8 GB RAM too. Actually runs *anything* I can throw at it like the wind... until it met long games with 0 A.D. Therefore the little (test, comparison) Stan' mentioned. In short :

1. A24 I can play for 2+ hours and let open my ~100 tabs Firefox; no problem. So, future is better, thanks to a few guys to whom I send them my <3 for their proven capabilities to make the game way more efficient! A23 on the other hand... If Firefox is a memory hog then Chrome is a memory monster and 0 A.D. A23 a black hole.

2. Down to their hearts Linux != Windows and if you feel like you want to make the most out of your physical RAM under any Linux OS, by any mean makes use of its advanced virtual memory mechanisms, of which swap is a mandatory part. Note that there's NO need to dedicate a partition to that swap. Since a few years we can just install systemd-swap (not a systemd thingy but a third-party little too that integrates with any systemd capable OS), comment the line that has 'swap' in it in /etc/fstab and "roule ma poule" (French for "that's it"). I even posted how to do it in this forum but most probably didn't make it short with my err.. "knowledge" of English lol

Edited by tuk0z
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:o

33 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I don't use Linux regularly. I'd like to but the time I have to take to set something up kinda discourage me.

I was a Capitole du Libre a french FLOSS event, and two students came with some school provided laptops. One had arch and the other windows. The arch one did perform better.

It's rare to come across to identical computers (Except with Mac) so I didn't have the opportunity to replicate it. I guess I could ask people with thinkpads (A lot of people in the Open Source community have those) to try.

Maybe that was lucky, but I don't think so.

 

I know what you mean. Time, for me, theses days is a huge factor. I mean, I have tons of medias & miscellaneous outdated hardware from my previous MS years (41+ years of crud). Sure, most of it is obsolete, outdated,  & worthless, but I like to keep it around, if just for grins & giggles, anyway.  I guess even though I need to dump it all and get rid of all this stuff, I just want to hold on to it all. I struggle between the Linux & Win PCs all the time. I remember dreaming/ wishing for the capabilities we have today with PCs.  :victory:

 

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If you want an easy arch, use manjaro or anarchy.  In my opinion 0ad should free all ram allocated once you get out of a game. Right now you need to restart the app. You could be using 100% ram in a multiplayer game (Jebel for example) and you can restart 0ad and rejoin and you would need a third of the ram.

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8 hours ago, sarcoma said:

If you want an easy arch, use manjaro or anarchy.  In my opinion 0ad should free all ram allocated once you get out of a game. Right now you need to restart the app. You could be using 100% ram in a multiplayer game (Jebel for example) and you can restart 0ad and rejoin and you would need a third of the ram.

0ad tries to free what it can. The problem is that when you free allocated memory by calling the system function it doesn't mean that the memory will be returned to the OS (it will be free for the game but unavailable for other applications).

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Personally I've not experienced problems with running 0 A.D. on Linux (currently running four instances of A24 with AI players at 20× speed in the background while writing this; fps is probably horrible, but I'm not watching). I've never tried the game on Windows, so I can't comment on that.

12 hours ago, Stan` said:

I don't use Linux regularly. I'd like to but the time I have to take to set something up kinda discourage me.

I suppose it boils down to what you're used to. For me, the “user-friendly” graphical approach of Apple and Microsoft tend to be more time-consuming and less understandable; besides, it limits what you can do. Things are a lot easier on Linux, where you can do about everything with a text editor and a command-line terminal.

(I also think using LaTeX is faster and easier than Microsoft Word/LibreOffice Writer and Microsoft PowerPoint/LibreOffice Impress, so I probably belong to a small minority.)

12 hours ago, Stan` said:

One had arch and the other windows. The arch one did perform better.

It's rare to come across to identical computers (Except with Mac) so I didn't have the opportunity to replicate it.

You could consider installing Windows and Linux distributions on the same machine (multi-booting).

36 minutes ago, vladislavbelov said:

0ad tries to free what it can. The problem is that when you free allocated memory by calling the system function it doesn't mean that the memory will be returned to the OS (it will be free for the game but unavailable for other applications).

One thing I noticed is that pyrogenesis only uses one processor core, (which one shifts), but always at 100%.

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2 minutes ago, Nescio said:

One thing I noticed is that pyrogenesis only uses one processor core, (which one shifts), but always at 100%.

That should be fixed by D14, which will balance the Pathfinder load over multiple cores.

3 minutes ago, Nescio said:

You could consider installing Windows and Linux distributions on the same machine (multi-booting).

I did but that has caused me a lot of trouble in the past. Ideally I could just switch to one or the other :)

3 minutes ago, Nescio said:

I suppose it boils down to what you're used to. For me, the “user-friendly” graphical approach of Apple and Microsoft tend to be more time-consuming and less understandable; besides, it limits what you can do. Things are a lot easier on Linux, where you can do about everything with a text editor and a command-line terminal.

(I also think using LaTeX is faster and easier than Microsoft Word/LibreOffice Writer and Microsoft PowerPoint/LibreOffice Impress, so I probably belong to a small minority.)

It's more, driver stuff, broken display sometimes when using multiple screens, battery life tweaks to get a fraction of the actual battery life you get on windows, fiddling with package dependencies, that kind of thing. Then when I lost a few dozen hours on that, I start tweaking stuff, and that's usually where it ends :D

I'm more of a markdown guy myself.

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@Stan` The more "out of the box ready" an OS pretends to be, the more hassle, time to configure it takes. Is what 19 years configuring the penguin for various usages taught me. E.g. during the last couple days, 2 Ubuntu based distro (Xubuntu and Bodhi) had me definitively stuck at a) having a working GPU with the appropriate driver and b) installing/compiling a software with the help of the dev and another guy. Arch on the other hand, while it sure took me a handful of hours to get running as I wish 6 years ago, had both a) & b) installed and running in a matter of minutes. This OS also lets free for my use 100% of the CPU and disks + 7.600 MB of my 8.000 MB RAM ;) translating to a bunch of money (and watt/H therefore GES) saved in the long run.

EDIT Oh, and my 10 years old heavily used netbook still has 4 hours battery life with its original 3-cell battery.

Edited by tuk0z
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1 minute ago, tuk0z said:

@Stan` The more "out of the box ready" an OS pretends to be, the more hassle, time to configure it takes. Is what 19 years configuring the penguin for various usages taught me. E.g. during the last couple days, 2 Ubuntu based distro (Xubuntu and Bodhi) had me definitively stuck at a) having a working Steam and b) installing/compiling a software with the help of the dev and another guy. Arch on the other hand, sure took me a handful of hours to get running as I wish 6 years ago, but had a & b installed and running in a matter of minutes. This OS also lets free for my use 100% of the CPU and disks + 7.600 MB of my 8.000 MB RAM ;) translating to a bunch of money (and watt/H therefore GES) saved in the long run.

Maybe I should install arch yes. Last time I tried I lost a few hours to figure out the laptop would not use the network if the cable wasn't plugged at startup. I lost it when I realised there was no gparted to do my dual boot :D

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On 1/11/2020 at 11:30 AM, Nescio said:

You could consider installing Windows and Linux distributions on the same machine (multi-booting).

If you do that with Windows 10, make sure it has plenty of disk space. If Windows Upgrade decides that it wants more disk space, it will not recognize your Linux and mercilessly grab whatever it wants, destroying your Linux partition in the process. Luckily, I had a backup of all my important files on Linux...

I now run a Linux as my base system and use Virtualbox for Windows. This also means that I get access to both at the same time if I need it.

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Hi guys!

First of all just a quick thanx for all the provided links & info. Not only is it very appreciated & welcomed, but will be very helpful, thanx again! I've become pleasantly overwhelmed  by all these great contributions...

Now, I have another non-0ad question about this forum. I've noticed a few quoted replies that show the quotes in  sections with your comment below the quote. It  sort of looks like multiple quotes. Anyway, when I tried doing this, my way, it wouldn't work. Can you clue me in as to the proper way?

---

I didn't mean for this thread to become a Linux VS Win thread. Both of these OSes have their merits & their pluses & minuses . I was merely trying to express that while 0ad would lock-up my Linux PC, the Win version of 0ad on my Win PC would not. It may not be be, but I now suspect a swap file issue, maybe not though. I don't know all this deep, to me, technical stuff nor do I have the time anymore needed to learn about these types of things.

I read somewhere that the Linux OS is not solely for the super tech savvy folks. While I'm sure there is some truth to this, I can't say that I agree entirely. I refer to my issue with the Linux version of 0ad. Plain & simple: as much as I hate it, the Linux version of 0ad is not out-of-the-box ready while the Win version is.

 

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PieLam would you mind to specify when does the game locks up on your Linux box? For if right upon starting the game would have a super different cause than, say, upon a 2 hours long match. Also last time I opened a Windows forum some users had various kind of trouble and  other not. May not make a generality of your own case :)

6 hours ago, PieLam said:

I now suspect a swap file issue, maybe not though.

A start would be to copy/paste the output of this command on your Linux OS:

free -m

Oh, and just in case to copy/past just from any termnial, you can select the text with your mouse then go where you want to paste it and just press your mouse third button (the wheel in a 3-buttons mouse). Ubuntu Linux terminal should also allow you to right click » Copy, right clic » Paste but the "third button" for paste works in *every* freakin terminal emulator I know.

To multiquote you can press the [+] icon under each post you want to quote.

Edited by tuk0z
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On 1/13/2020 at 6:29 PM, tuk0z said:

PieLam would you mind to specify when does the game locks up on your Linux box? For if right upon starting the game would have a super different cause than, say, upon a 2 hours long match. Also last time I opened a Windows forum some users had various kind of trouble and  other not. May not make a generality of your own case :)

 

Well, since I've been using mostly the Win version, a lot of time has passed. I'd say several months. If my feeble memory serves though, the lock-ups of 0ad on my Linux PC never occurred at start-up, rather, at seemingly random times during game-play. Sometimes in the early stage of a game. but mostly after 15-20 minutes or so???

During that period of time, I was still new to 0ad and therefore played in the Sandbox mode. I remember the AI attacking me even though I had set the Sandbox mode sometimes. It depended on either the map or the civ I chose.

Yesterday, I  went to my Linux PC and updated 0ad, at least I think, (forgot to note what version the original was).  The version I DL'ed is A23 not A24 like I was hoping for.  :(

I also discovered my speakers stopped working. (they've been on the fritz for a good long while) so I stopped playing after a few minutes. I was wanting to test 0ad's behavior, to see if it would lock-up. Since my speakers stopped working, it  made me realize just how dependent I am in this game's audio. Something else I'll have to deal with now!  :(

On 1/13/2020 at 6:29 PM, tuk0z said:

A start would be to copy/paste the output of this command on your Linux OS:


free -m

OK, here you go:

pie@pie-5:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           7875         740        4918          16        2216        6824
Swap:          2047           0        2047
pie@pie-5:~$

 

Don't think this tells you much, does it? Aside from the computer name, of course.

Sorry this took so long...I'll try to do better...

 

 

Edited by PieLam
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