Please modify your OpenGL using games to use opengl-games-utils

[Hans de Goede]

Hi All,

In preperation for the Games Live DVD, I've created a small bash script which 
resides in opengl-games-utils, which is meant to be used as a wrapper around 
OpenGL games. If DRI is available this wrapper does nothing, if it isn't it 
will show an error dialog, explaining about Free Software and 3D drivers and 
then exit.

The idea here is that an error dialog is better then trying to click the quit 
menu option while the mouse is jumping from the right edge of the screen to the 
left edge (mouse navigation is anything but easy at 3 fps).

This is esp. important for the Games Live DVD, as there people will not have 
those other <beep> drivers available.

I've already added usage of this wrapper to all my games that are in the 
kickstart file for the Live DVD, and I will file bugs for this against a couple 
of the most highprofile games also in the kickstart, in the mean time everyone 
please check all your games for OpenGL usage and necessary add the wrapper.

Adding the wrapper is _really_ easy:

Add: "Requires: opengl-games-utils"
Add to %install:
"ln -s opengl-game-wrapper.sh $RPM_BUILD_ROOT%{_bindir}/%{name}-wrapper"
Add "%{_bindir}/%{name}-wrapper" to files
Change the .desktop file Exec entry from "%{name}" to "%{name}-wrapper"
Done!

This all assumes your main binary name == %{name}, otherwise adapt as necessary.

If you already have a wrapper script for one reason or the other, you can 
incorperate the checkDriOk function directly into your wrapper, no need todo a 
wrapper wrapper, see vegastrike's vegastrike-wrapper.sh CVS file as example.

Regards,

Hans

[Alexander Boström]

On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 13:50 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> The idea here is that an error dialog is better then trying to click the quit 
> menu option while the mouse is jumping from the right edge of the screen to the 
> left edge (mouse navigation is anything but easy at 3 fps).

Actually, I would consider that a bug in the application/game. If it's
unable to render quickly enough to be usable it should either figure
that out before putting the user in such a position or exit gracefully
before the user gets frustrated and forces a hard reboot. A proper
explanation of what happened is good, of course.

/abo

[Matthew Miller]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 03:44:44PM +0200, Alexander Boström wrote:
> Actually, I would consider that a bug in the application/game. If it's

Yeah, but since there's thousands of programs with that "bug", the wrapper
is a nicer solution.