Serious Sam 3 - Update 173348 - public beta

[AlenL]

Update 173348 for Serious Sam 3 is now available in beta "publicbeta", which does not require a password.

To install the beta, do this:
- locate the game (Serious Sam 3 in this case) in the Steam's "Library" panel
- right click and invoke "Properties"
- select the "Betas" tab
- choose "publicbeta"

It contains mostly fixes specific to the Linux and OSX versions, but the way fullscreen is handled on multimonitor configurations is changed, and this applies to Windows as well.

- CPU power saving settings are now logged on linux. 
- Total and free ram are now detected on linux. 
- Game will now ask the player to install the xinerama library on Linux if it's missing. 
- Fullscreen can now stretch over multiple monitors in linux. 
- Game window is now minimized on alt-tab when mouse is grabbed in linux. This enables alt-tab to work even with some window managers that refuse to switch apps with mouse pointer grabs. 
- Non-primary monitors now turn back on after exiting from fullscreen with a different resolution. 
- All platforms (instead of just Windows) now reports desktop resolution at gfx startup. 
- Game now fullscreens properly on xfwm4 (xfce's window manager).
- Fixed loss of focus in Steam Big Picture on xfwm4. 
- Resolution is no longer changed on Linux when switching to and from fullscreen if set resolution is equal to desktop resolution.
- Game window is no longer minimized on focus change (e.g. on alt-tab) if there are no resolution changes. 
- Mouse pointer grab now confines the mouse to the game window to fix mouse movement issues on computers with multiple X screens because we cannot receive input events from a mouse on a different X screen. 
- Monitors are now enumerated on Linux.
- Monitor size is no longer assumed to be equal to virtual screen size. 
- Some small imprecisions in some shaders under OpenGL causing some objects to have thin silhouettes.
- Some small optimizations in shaders.
- Added handy cfunc 'prjSaveCVars()' which saves state of console variables to project's .ini file. 
- Added cvar 'prf_tmGraphInterval' which control how often FPS graph is updated. (So cvar 'prf_tmRefreshInterval' no longer affects graph output and can be left alone to control FPS counter and profiler output refresh period.) 
- Application restart didn't work correctly on OSX.
- Synchronizaion of Steam Workshop files on Linux/OSX was looping endlessly (always thought there is more to download). 
- Fixed error message dialogs on Linux sometimes not showing up correctly.
- Fixed some problems with script that automatically installs dependencies under Linux.

[ThOR27]

Thanks for this update! Glad too see xfwm4 and multi monitor improvements! :)

[AlenL]

Any feedback on whether those really do work as advertised on all systems, is welcome. :-)

[muffin]

I love how dedicated you are to your Linux port. I'll be testing some of this later on today.

[bl33ding_silence]

Hello AlenL,

I tested the new publicbeta on my system, but problems specific to my system still remain:

1) Many surfaces are see-through. This includes the floor, ground, some walls, and the helicopter from the initial scene. Here is a screenshot[imgur.com].
2) Sam and his hands are invisibile.
3) The first monster is invisible too. Although I can briefly see it when it dies (when it disintegrates)

I had to turn Depth Prepassing off (through the console) to get to this level, otherwise, I couldn't see anything (almost every surface was black).

Here are the details of my system:
Ubutntu 12.10, 32 bit
Intel Centrino duo 2 GHz processor
Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 (304.64 driver from nvidia; new driver unsupported)
3GB of RAM

I know that this is a really old gig, but it seems that Serious Sam manages to give decent framerate (~20-30fps) even with this config (Thank you guys for that). It's just that invisible surfaces and characters make the game unplayable for me. Any suggestion about how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!

[blackout24]

Originally posted by bl33ding_silence:

Hello AlenL,

I tested the new publicbeta on my system, but problems specific to my system still remain:

1) Many surfaces are see-through. This includes the floor, ground, some walls, and the helicopter from the initial scene. Here is a screenshot[imgur.com].
2) Sam and his hands are invisibile.
3) The first monster is invisible too. Although I can briefly see it when it dies (when it disintegrates)

I had to turn Depth Prepassing off (through the console) to get to this level, otherwise, I couldn't see anything (almost every surface was black).

Here are the details of my system:
Ubutntu 12.10, 32 bit
Intel Centrino duo 2 GHz processor
Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 (304.64 driver from nvidia; new driver unsupported)
3GB of RAM

I know that this is a really old gig, but it seems that Serious Sam manages to give decent framerate (~20-30fps) even with this config (Thank you guys for that). It's just that invisible surfaces and characters make the game unplayable for me. Any suggestion about how to fix this would be greatly appreciated!

Could you try a slightly older driver? I have a laptop which has a 6000 series nvidia GPU and the latest legacy driver is just horrible. I get charset corruption if I use the laptop for longer and experience GPU lockups indicated by NVRAM: Xid Kernel Messages 10 times a day. I already reported it to nvidia. Now I use 304.50 which is far more stable. So I think that there are some regressions in the 304.64 driver which might also cause your problems. It seems to me like the worst driver nvidia has ever put out. I have never had so many problems with their drivers before.

[Earl of Lemongrab]

Originally posted by Muffinabus:

I love how dedicated you are to your Linux port. I'll be testing some of this later on today.

I second that. You're doing an awesome job AlenL! Cheers.

[d10sfan]

Nice to see more updates. I'm still getting the black screen problem though (black screen after loading a map, can see the hud). Here's the log; http://pastebin.com/Tjet5vDe

[c☢re meltd☢wn]

Multi monotor support has improved a lot with the beta, I'm really happy to see this working. It sucks to actually play with the crosshair right inbetween monitors, so I can't actually play fullscreen on two monitors. But it still is a great improvement of the experience, as I no longer need to disable one of the monitors.

Originally posted by bl33ding_silence:

1) Many surfaces are see-through.
[...]
Nvidia Geforce Go 7400 (304.64 driver from nvidia; new driver unsupported)

I experienced very similar problems (but worse, all surfaces invisible) with the 304 driver. 310 works fine though.

[johndrinkwater]

Alt-tabbing is much better, thank you!

Originally posted by GNU/Leenooks:

Originally posted by Muffinabus:

I love how dedicated you are to your Linux port.

I second that. You're doing an awesome job AlenL! Cheers.

Thirded. :)

[AlenL]

Thanks everyone for support!

Unfortunately, 310 is minimum required. :( This was the first driver where NVidia has fixed the most basic problems we had on our developer machines. Without it - it doesn't really work in most cases, as you can see. I don't know how to help with that.

d10sfan, I replied to your own thread.

[Rain Shinobi]

Once my money transfers from my bank account to Paypal today, I will finally get to purchasing the game and try it out! :) Will let you know any issues.

[Chris]

AlenL ,

sadly fullscreen mode is still causing the same graphical issues as before :(..
windowed mode is ok with the limitations as before ..

i noticed another guy in the closed forum has a very similar issue too ..

thanks
Christian

[~{TR}~ | R3VO :D]

I found un issue, there is a compatibility problem between the game and X Window System and more precisely the ubuntu - unity desktop environment

This problem applies to most of the games that have been ported to Linux like TF2 when switching from the game to desktop when the Super button [] is pressed.

[keks]

Originally posted by christian.frank.uwb:

AlenL ,

sadly fullscreen mode is still causing the same graphical issues as before :(..
windowed mode is ok with the limitations as before ..

i noticed another guy in the closed forum has a very similar issue too ..

thanks
Christian

What kind of graphical issues? Sorry, I don't remember your original post.

[ThOR27]

Hi, I don't have alt+tab graphical issues anymore, neither any problem that I had with xfwm4.

The only problem I have now is that when I try to take a screenshot with F12 the game freezes. Nothing is printed to the log. I don't know if this started to happened since this update or before.