FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Hello, Minetest forum users.

I recently downloaded the most recent version of minetest after playing a 3 year old version for a long time and i
noticed a severe drop in performance. Comparing it on ubuntu linux and then windows XP on a machine with opengl
3.3.0 and a 2.80ghz dual core, i visually could see the following problems

On ubuntu : the visual world gets rendered but it starts to do following :

1 - the visual world is constantly re-built. the blocks fade away into mist and then the entire visual plane
is being re-rendered. During this process you basicly look at nothing but air and very distant blocks.

I think the reason of the entire slow-down in rendering speeds for everybody is related to what i
could see on ubuntu.

On XP : the entire game is many times slower :

1 - i can see visual artifacts between cracks and blocks which seem to be related to the rebuilding problem
of the entire world, like seen, and much clearer on ubuntu.

2 - older versions run like a charm, i have played many hours on an older version.

3 - irritating and uncomfortable amounts of stutter, even when all graphics are on its lowest possible.

I do not feel like diving into codes and debug reports and stuff, but if realy needed i could post some results
of something or other to help the devs.

Duxi wrote:On XP : the entire game is many times slower :

Me too. I'm always get this message:

Please note that Microsoft Windows XP has reached end-of-life status according to Microsoft, and will no longer be supported.

srifqi, can you post more details on your error?

hoodedice wrote:srifqi, can you post more details on your error?

This happends mostly without any errors.
I think it's releated to the CPU / RAM usage: The client has too much work and can not send anything - > times out

As already said on the previous topic about the performance drops, I can not detect any big change in the speed on my Windows XP. Sure, newer Minetest versions have much more features than 0.3.?, but also more performance fixes.

..or I'm just not enough long here to notice a change. 0.4.10 runs ~ as fast as 0.4.7, maybe I need a 0.3.? version to compare it.

To make it clear that it is not about 0.3 or near arcane versions ;

minetest-0.4.6-2 -
works without problems.

minetest-0.4.10
is one hundred percent unusable because the rendering goes down the drain
on Ubuntu and XP.

Duxi wrote:To make it clear that it is not about 0.3 or near arcane versions ;

minetest-0.4.6-2 -
works without problems.

minetest-0.4.10
is one hundred percent unusable because the rendering goes down the drain
on Ubuntu and XP.

Which Irrlicht versions do those use?

I use windows XPSP3 (modified with nLited) on a 2009 Asus eeepc with 1gb ram
I thought the actual minetest gui was much more responsive and acts the way I would expect in this latest version (minetest-0.4.10-win32-msvc).
With Minetest 049 I would always have to kill the processes with Taskmanager to exit.
Also in the 049 version when I selected to "exit to Menu" it would say shutting things down and then just hangs there
again I had to manually kill the processes.
None of this happens with the latest release.

The only problems I have had are when testing the minetest-0.4.10-win32-mingw version,
here there is no sound at all and game performance is very slow and weird things happen
when I bust blocks (they reappear for maybe a second then disappear).


These are the only errors I get now in the debug log:
Irrlicht log: PNG warning: Interlace handling should be turned on when using png_read_image
Irrlicht log: PNG warning: Interlace handling should be turned on when using png_read_image
Irrlicht log: Could not open file of texture:
Irrlicht log: Could not open file of texture:
Irrlicht log: Could not open file of texture:
Font size: 8 17
Irrlicht log: Could not open file of texture: character.png

Thank you very much for reporting that Nappi, it will go a long way in helping us fix the MinGW version of the game.

Nappi, are you playing singleplayer, or multiplayer?

Also, just like I've said before, Windows XP is no longer supported by us. If you do no use that eeepc for work, we can help you install a very light Linux distro on it for you, which I believe, will work wonders on it.

Napiophelios wrote:...Also in the 049 version when I selected to "exit to Menu" it would say shutting things down and then just hangs there
again I had to manually kill the processes...

That might have been issue 1080 or maybe related to issue 1146. Or maybe it was the same as this issue 1450 ?

Napiophelios wrote:...The only problems I have had are when testing the minetest-0.4.10-win32-mingw version,
here there is no sound at all ...

That may be related to this. So try a Blockmen version and see if you have sound then. You could test all new builds on your system and report which work and which do not, and since when if you still have old builds installed.

I primarily play single-player cuz I am addicted to creating tunnels and underground mazes and connecting molding the caverns I dont think I have built anything above ground yet.Except to test out how lava works
I have tried to enter Xanadu but its always full / also tried HAFland but didnt really have time to much more than look around.

Thats too bad about not supporting XP anymore,
alot of people still use it cuz its so easy to customize and modify.

I tried ElementaryOS (about 6months ago) and thought it was great
but I couldnt get minetest (045?maybe) to work on it.
ElementaryOS worked very nice though on this little computer :)
I will probably switch back to it eventually.

twoelk wrote:So try a Blockmen version and see if you have sound then. You could test all new builds on your system and report which work and which do not, and since when if you still have old builds installed.

I have tested all of Blockman's and sfan5's dev releases (049)
all of sfan5's have no audio for me.other than that they all share in the problems
I had with the official 049 builds.Exiting the program being the biggest problem
or what I would call a problem.

All of the version 049 builds gave me lots of errors in the debug text, but I have been testing every mod and mini/subgame /world available here and messing with the config during the process so the old debug text are not reliable due to my tampering.
Now I have a small collection of my favorite mods (5 total) and use Misa texture pack (slightly tweaked) and my default config file has been ironed out...and voila no more user errors (hopefully)

Of all the releases, mingw versions are consistantly the worst as far as game performance
I personally prefer version 046 as far as performance goes but I like this latest version when considering
how the minetest interface behaves...if that makes any sense at all I will be suprised

Napiophelios wrote:Thats too bad about not supporting XP anymore,
alot of people still use it cuz its so easy to customize and modify.

All of the version 049 builds gave me lots of errors in the debug text, but I have been testing every mod and mini/subgame /world available here and messing with the config during the process so the old debug text are not reliable due to my tampering.

I use this - works so far

Very good, debug is always helpful, please post a new issue there: (After testing a 0.4.10 build)
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues

Krock wrote:I use this - works so far

Very good, debug is always helpful, please post a new issue there: (After testing a 0.4.10 build)
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues

Yeah but the updates arent really meant for XP they are for Windows 2000...I think.
They are similar but not the same.You may run into some problems

Thanks for the link for posting new issues :)

Napiophelios wrote:

Krock wrote:I use this - works so far
Yeah but the updates arent really meant for XP they are for Windows 2000...I think.
They are similar but not the same.You may run into some problems

They are for Windows Embedded POSReady, which is basically a stripped-down version of Windows XP. I can see it breaking things that are in XP but not POSReady if it replaces a file with a stripped-down version.