Q: I keep getting killed. Why is is so difficult? A: Quitcher whinin', you ninny! It's
supposed to be hard! Seriously, Chromium B.S.U. is intended to be a 15
minute adrenaline rush/mental cleanser. Frequent doses of explosions (even
your own) can be very therapeutic.
Q: Can I listen to my own music? A: Yes! Chromium supports 3 different
types of background music:
default WAV loop
CD tracks. If CDROM playback is enabled, track 1
on the CD will be played for level 1, track 2 for level 2, etc.
User-selectable PlayList (Linux only). Depending
on how the OpenAL library was configured, WAV, MP3 and/or Ogg/Vorbis tracks
can be used for background music.
NOTE: For Playlist and CDROM, you can skip
to the next song during a game by pressing the "N" key.
Q: How well will it work with my video card? A: This is a loaded question, but in
general, Chromium should run well on a wide range of OpenGL hardware. Chromium
is intended to run at 50fps, and has been tested successfully on machines
ranging from a 266MHz laptop with a 4MB RagePro chip to a dual 800 with
a GeForce2.
Q: The game runs very slowly. Why? A: Chromium absolutely requires hardware
acceleration - it will not run at acceptable speeds with software OpenGL.
If the OpenGL 'Vendor' string printed out during start-up is 'Brian Paul',
you're definitely running in software. See question 7.
Q: I have a Voodoo3, and can run Quake, etc.
But Chromium exits with the error message about the X server not being
configured for GLX. Why? A: By default, SDL wants a GLX enabled
X server. Chromium runs fine with the XFree4/DRI Voodoo drivers, but the
old fullscreen Glide/Mesa hack for the XFree3.3.x is not recognized as
valid. Some people have been able to run Chromium with this setup, some
have not. I believe there is a configure option when building SDL that
will allow use of the XFree3.3.x/Glide/Mesa.
Q: How do I set up hardware acceleration
in Linux? A: There are several options, depending
on what video card you have (roughly in order of installation difficulty):
Utah
GLX + XFree3.3.x - ATI RagePro, Matrox G200/400, and some others. Installation
is usually painless.
NVIDIA
GLX + XFree4 - NVIDIA cards. If you follow
the install instructions carefully, you are far less likely
to have problems.
DRI + XFree4
- 3dfx, ATI, Matrox, et. al. Some distributions are shipping DRI enabled
XF4 drivers, so installation is a non-issue. 3dfx also provides fairly
pain-free installation RPMs
for their Voodoo line. However, installing from source is a major ordeal,
so I wouldn't recommend it unless you know what you're doing.
Q: I am using the Linux NVIDIA drivers, but
things aren't working properly. Can you help? A: Most of the problems associated with
the NVIDIA drivers can be attributed to an improper install. Unfortunately,
most distributions are not following the Linux
OpenGL ABI very well (if at all). This makes it virtually impossible
for 3rd party vendors to provide easy-to-install drivers. First, carefully
read the NVIDIA
Linux FAQ, then verify the following:
Do a 'locate libGL.so'. Verify that every libGL.so*
on your system is the NVIDIA lib (in /usr/lib) or a symbolic link to the
NVIDIA lib.
In /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions/, there should
not
be a libGLcore.a or a libglx.a file (although there will be libglx.so*
files)
Mandrake 7.2 has added yet another wrinkle to NVIDIA
installation hassles with their libGLwrapper. Go to /usr/X11R6/lib and
get rid of libGLwrapper.so* (and libGL.so* files if they are there, although
you'll want to leave libGLU.so* alone).
If you are still having problems, disable AGP in
your XF86Config.
This stuff (exept the new Mandrake libGLwrapper)
is all covered in the NVIDIA FAQ.
You can go to the #nvidia channel at irc.openprojects.net
if you need additional help.
Q: Chromium crashes if I try to run it on
Windows NT. Why? A: The Windows OpenAL
implementation still needs a lot of work. At the current time, Windows
NT is not well (if at all) supported by OpenAL, although Windows 95, 98
and 2000 seem to work OK. You can play Chromium on NT with sound disabled
by using the '-na' command line option. (edit the START.BAT file, and add
-na after chromium)
Q: I cannot adjust the music or sound volume
on Windows. Why? A: The Windows OpenAL
implementation still needs a lot of work. Hopefully this will be fixed
in the near future.