Portal Forum

Here are a list of a few bugs that I have run into with Portal (installed via Steam)

My system is:
3.0 Ghz Pentium D
2GB ram
GeForce 8600 GTS with Nvidia Driver Version 169.12
2 1680x1050 screens with Xinelarra enabled (using TwinView from the nvidia-settings utility) for a full desktop size of 3200x1050
Gnome desktop environment with Compiz
Operating System: Slackware Linux 12.0 with the 2.6.24.3 kernel

So, on to the bugs:

Incorrect Screen Resolutions:
Portal will only allow 16:9 screen resolutions; even when set to run in Windowed mode. I worked around this by entering the Wine configuration and setting the win2000 bottle to run applications inside of a virtual desktop with a resolution of 1024x768. I had to start and stop portal and set it to run in full screen with this setting on, then restart portal, then go in and I was able to change the resolution to 4:3 1024x768 full screen.

Some missing text and graphics:
Some text (text on the main screen, as well as some text in game) doesn't appear. Instead, I just see black boxes. I also see two black boxes instead of the crosshair icons for the Portal gun.

Uneven performance:
The framerate while playing is erratic. Although I did not have the fps display enabled, the framerate will occasionally noticeably drop. A few months ago I had been running Portal under vanilla wine, on this rig, also with compiz enabled. Because of this, I don't think that it is a problem with compiz and my system not keeping up, although it's not exactly the same setup software-wise as I had when running under vanilla wine, so it might be a problem somewhere else.

Anyway, great job overall on Crossover games. I've been looking for a long time for a way to ditch Cedega, since their customer support is absolutely abysmal, looks like I'll be saving $5/month from now on.

Tim Skinner wrote:

3200x1050
Gnome desktop environment with Compiz

This often causes issues

Tim Skinner wrote:

3200x1050
Incorrect Screen Resolutions:
Portal will only allow 16:9 screen resolutions; even when set to run
in Windowed mode. I worked around this by entering the Wine
configuration and setting the win2000 bottle to run applications
inside of a virtual desktop with a resolution of 1024x768. I had to
start and stop portal and set it to run in full screen with this
setting on, then restart portal, then go in and I was able to change
the resolution to 4:3 1024x768 full screen.

It's not a bug in CrossOver, but rather a side effect of your dual monitor setup.

HL2 based games offer only the fullscreen resolutions available on the system when in Windowed mode. On Linux this means that every mode you want to be available has to be available in your X11 setup. In dual monitor setups often only one res is available.

A workaround is what you did, or to start up the game with -window -width 1024 -height 768

Tim Skinner wrote:

3200x1050
Some missing text and graphics:
Some text (text on the main screen, as well as some text in game)
doesn't appear. Instead, I just see black boxes. I also see two
black boxes instead of the crosshair icons for the Portal gun.

That sounds like a genuine bug to me though

Tim Skinner wrote:

3200x1050
Uneven performance:
The framerate while playing is erratic. Although I did not have the
fps display enabled, the framerate will occasionally noticeably
drop. A few months ago I had been running Portal under vanilla
wine, on this rig, also with compiz enabled. Because of this, I
don't think that it is a problem with compiz and my system not
keeping up, although it's not exactly the same setup software-wise
as I had when running under vanilla wine, so it might be a problem
somewhere else.

Could this be the difference of dxlevel 95 and dxlevel 81? Also Compiz doesn't help performance...

Tim Skinner wrote:

Anyway, great job overall on Crossover games.

Thanks 😊

I'll try running the game this evening with Compiz disabled to see if that helps performance. I also seem to recall that you can pass in an option to set the Direct X level, if I can find that flag I'll try running with a lower Direct X version as well to see if that helps matters.

Thanks for the reply

Tim Skinner wrote:

GeForce 8600 GTS with Nvidia Driver Version 169.12

Some missing text and graphics:
Some text (text on the main screen, as well as some text in game)
doesn't appear. Instead, I just see black boxes. I also see two
black boxes instead of the crosshair icons for the Portal gun.

I have the same hardware/driver (only one screen connected) and have this problem too.
In addition, the title screen sometimes flickers (a green wireframe replaces the rendered scene as it rotates)

using "-dxlevel 80" corrects all of these problems on my system.

For the green flicker, disable HDR in the game. We added a startup parameter to do this, maybe it got lost on your installation for some reason

I was actually running the portal demo ('the first slice') previously. After I bought the full version, the +novid and hdr disable options were present, and those make the game work properly without dxlevel.

Ah, I guess we should set them for the portal demo as well. Do you know which game number it uses? (As in steam --applaunch XXX).

Tim Skinner wrote:

Some missing text and graphics:
Some text (text on the main screen, as well as some text in game)
doesn't appear. Instead, I just see black boxes. I also see two
black boxes instead of the crosshair icons for the Portal gun.
This has happened me on Windows and Crossover. I believe it to be caused by Steam not installing the game properly. Try verifying the integrity of the files in steam.

Tim Skinner wrote:

Uneven performance:
The framerate while playing is erratic. Although I did not have the
fps display enabled, the framerate will occasionally noticeably
drop. A few months ago I had been running Portal under vanilla
wine, on this rig, also with compiz enabled. Because of this, I
don't think that it is a problem with compiz and my system not
keeping up, although it's not exactly the same setup software-wise
as I had when running under vanilla wine, so it might be a problem
somewhere else.
I'm not experiencing this issue, but I don't use desktop effect enhancers like compiz.

(My system runs Kubuntu Hardy, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400M GS (rev a1), nvidia proprietary driver v169.12)

Stefan Dösinger wrote:

Ah, I guess we should set them for the portal demo as well. Do you
know which game number it uses? (As in steam --applaunch XXX).

applaunch 400 (might be wrong but should be correct)