GRID Forum

Has anyone managed to get this to work? I've been trying but I'm not great at coding tbh.

Hi there,

I'm a bit of a driving/racing sim addict, so I'm downloading the
demo of this title now to have a look at it. I'll post back here
after I give it a try, and let you know how it goes...

Btw, what platform/OS/videocard are you using? My demo test will
be using linux with nvidia videocard and drivers.

Edit: The demo I tried (v 1.1) comes bundled with directx runtime,
which it tries to install/update as part of the installation process,
but which actually fails in the end. This is not immediately apparent,
as the installation seemingly completes without error - a check inside
the bottle directory found the DXERROR.log which tells the tale...the
game will not start/run as a result...

So, you have to install directx runtime modern into the same bottle
using cxinstallwizard, then the game will start and run...rather poorly
to tell the truth. On this rig (AMD64 x2 2.11ghz/4gb ram/nvidia 8400GS)
it was maxing out 1 core and not achieving much more than 10 frames per
second @ 1024x768 with wine in windowed mode. Changing the resolution
and/or lowering the graphics details did not improve/impact on this poor
performance at all -- it kept chugging along at < 10 FPS regardless.

The title uses OpenAL for the audio output driver -- there is sound as
the intro/splash screen happens, but once the main menu is loaded, the
sound disappears altogether, and there was no sound at all in game. I've
a suspicion this audio problem may be related to the poor performance
of the graphics as well.

Keyboard input is lagged -- there was 1+ seconds delay between a keystoke
and the game actually responding...even in the menu screens, which are
just static screens, this lag was evident, and a lot of the time you'd
have to hit enter 2 or 3 times before the menu would actually respond.

Graphics look nice, but gameplay is woeful due to the low FPS and overall
lag in the game itself -- I sort of came away thinking the whole game is
bottle-necked/bogged trying to squeeze the audio out thru something in
wine it's terribly unhappy about. I do know there's been some improvements
made in wine-devel releases wrt openal, so I might try this again later
with wine-1.1.32 and see how that goes...

A final note (as the CodeMasters nag screen kept reminding me), this is
the demo version of the game, and thus might not be indicative of the
actual performance in the final/production release of this game.

Cheers!

With wine-1.1.32 .....

I'll have to recheck the results I obtained from my previous test with COG-8.0 ;
getting it to run in wine-1.1.32 gave me a few more clues about what's going on...

This game is a resource pig ...be well aware of that one -- initially with the
current wine-1.1.32 run, I obtained pretty much the same results ; used winetricks
to install directx9 then the game -- I persevered through the lag and managed to
get it set to 800x600 at the lowest graphics setting possible, restart the game,
and now it starts to run a bit better with sound, and the background voice overs,
and there was even extra bits in the menus I hadn't seen before...

...looking a bit closer at it, even at these lower settings, it was consuming 800mb
of ram and 90%+ of CPU time just sitting there at a menu with the music running. At
simulation load time, the wineserver process was peaking to 40% CPU time, and in game
(depending of what was happening), figures of 100-130% wrt grid.exe (over 2 cores) was
pretty constant. It looks like you will need some serious computing grunt to run
this title at anywhere near what it's capable of....

....it's actually quite deceptive...it doesn't matter what resolution or graphics
setting you choose. grid.exe ram/CPU utilization remains more or less constant all
the time, but the higher the resolution/detail you go, the more it impacts on the
game -- now that I know this, I'll retry with COG-8.0 and see if this holds true
in that situation as well....

Cheers!

With COG-8.0 and linux -- try two ;

Okay...to better isolate where you need hardware performance here, I've
refitted this rig with a nvidia 9400GT/512mb based card ; the rest of the
kit is the same as in the first test of the demo. Going from a 8400GS to
a 9400GT equates to going from 800x600@low_settings, to 1024x768@medium
settings, on the same CPU/ramfield spec. And it was only -just- getting
it done at 1024x768, so it 'feels' like 9400GT is near minimum for adequate
framerates with this title - a huge performance gain none-the-less.

That said, the game isn't running properly with COG-8.0 as the lack of
sound is still evident. Unlike the experience using wine-1.1.32, wherein
lowering the game graphics settings appeared to get the sound working,
with COG-8.0 and the game in 800x600@low_settings and having no trouble
pushing 'good' framerates', there was still no sound - that probably looks
like a wine bug, which I think was fixed in the wine-1.1.30 release..iirc.

I'll post a ticket on this one, if after retesting the demo with wine-1.1.32
and the gf9 based card, it's apparent the sound is working there.

Cheers!

With wine-1.1.32 ..... try two;

Same improvement wrt to graphic performance/screenrates, and
sound is working...however...not initially. Went into options
->sound settings, changed it to medium...game restarted with
sound....

Installation creates a ~/CodeMasters directory to keep user
save/settings data in -- I have not been removing this dir
between the COG-8.0 and wine-1.1.32 -- I noticed in the latter
case, the game complains about corrupt saved data at some stage,
which is a bit strange (you'd think running the title with
the crossover wine and wine-devel branches would result in the
same...and valid...settings data being recorded to disk)...

So...I'm probably happy to declare this working in wine-1.1.32
with the major caveat being hardware requirements - based on
my observations, a gf8 videocard + 2.11ghz dual core + 2gb ram
or better is minimum spec for 800x600 and realistically speaking,
probably 9600/9800GT + 2.11ghz dual core + 2gb ram or better is
minimum spec for 1024x768 or bigger (a faster CPU is going to
also help here).....

Dum-de-dum...back to one last check with COG-8.0, just to make
sure it isn't gurging any settings files at installation time...

Noted Variable: It appears like the winetricks installer uses
a different directx sdk compared to what we're currently using
with COG-8.0 - might be significant, might well not be, but it
should be noted...

With COG-8.0 and linux -- try three ;

Here ends the sojourn -- sound with this title is definitely broken in
COG-8.0 ; OpenAl support -was- added to wine-1.1.30 (indeed, codeweavers
dev Ken Thomases contributed the Mac portion of the openal support), and
I'm very sure the current COG-8.0 wine build is based on a wine-1.1.2x
fork, and so probably missed out on this improvement. I figure the lack
of openal support in COG-8.0 is probably responsible for the corrupt
settings file.

So there's the picture...runs without sound in COG-8.0 ; we'll need to
look forward to OpenAL support in COG-9.0 or beyond -- I'll hoist a support
ticket on this forthwith, so we all know the state of play here....

Edit: The ticket is submitted;

http://www.codeweavers.com/support/tickets/browse/?ticket_id=767581

If you want to add to that ticket saying you also want the openal stuff
looked at, please do so - the more talk, the more the devs are likely to
consider the issue and look into it.

Cheers!

Hey don, sorry I haven't replied sooner I've been trying (and failing) to use wine. I'm running mac OS X Leopard with an NVidia 9400M. COG 8.0 doesn't like it though and only launches the game in Steam, nothing else happens. Any advice?

Thanks very much for your help so far.

Hi, no worries...you didn't actually need to reply to my postings
regarding the in-depth breakdown of what the (demo) of GRID is
doing with COG-8.0, Wine and linux -- you asked a questiom, I'm
a 'petrol-head', the demo didn't work 'out of the box' and I
wanted to know why...(I linked this thread back to the support
ticket so the codeweavers devs have some background on the reason
I've raised the ticket ;)

Unfortunately, I can't speak to the Mac situation...nor to the
case of running it via Steam -- I don't use either sorry. Apart
from the need to have directx runtime installed in COG-8.0, the
demo of GRID didn't seem to require anything else. (demo
is highlighted, because it might not be indicative of the software
content/structure/workings of the final/release versions of the game)

I have overlooked mentioning that my testing was done with 'Emulate
a virtual desktop' set ON using winecfg -- you might try this if
you haven't already, as sometimes this seems a remedy to get things
running. Of course, you won't get sound in COG-8.0 obviously..and
that being the case, if I was to give you any advice, it would be
'wait for the next releases of crossover-games' ;) With any luck,
my ticket may be in time to have openal support included in the
upcoming Zombie Mallard release of COG..we will have to wait&see.

Of course, if you have any other questions, be sure to ask ;)

Cheers!

PS: I've edited the subject line of this thread so it's more descriptive
of the thread_content