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Return of the Tentacle

Sequel to the Point&Click-Adventure "Day of the Tentacle" · By catmic, pepper-mint-audio

Feedback on Linux version

A topic by FriendlyStreet6220 created Jul 29, 2018 Views: 674 Replies: 5
Viewing posts 1 to 3

Hi,

Just finished playing the Linux version of this game (x86_64 on Debian Jessie), really a beautiful game. Well done!

However, I noticed two minor issues (they also appear on the 32-bit version):

  • During the very first screen before the main menu comes, it always triggers GNOME's message "Return of the Tentacle not responding". I always have to click "wait" in order to continue. I don't know what the issue could be since such messages are supposed to appear only if a window is actually not responding for several seconds. But in this case, it appears immediately after the Unity logo was presented.
  • The mouse pointer is always visible as a little white rectangle when it's supposed to be hidden (in cutscenes or if an action is in progress). In any other cases, the pointer is displayed as supposed. This was tested using the radeon graphics driver with and without compositor, not sure if this also happens with other graphics drivers.

PS: I also tried both Windows versions via wine, it works flawlessly without these two issues. As a side note, in wine you have to force OpenGL, otherwise you'll have minor graphical glitches caused by wine's DirectX implementation.

Anyway, I'm looking forward for more of this game :-)

Developer

Thank you so much for your feedback! :)

Concerning the white rectangle issue, we identified the problem and are testing a fix right now. In case we don't encounter any major issues with this, it will be fixed with the next update.

The problem with the "not responding"-dialogue can be worked around by starting the game in fullscreen. However, you have to make a task switch out and back into the game, so it can register your mouse clicks properly. This seems to be a bug reoccuring in a lot of unity engine versions and we just reported it again to the developers, hoping to get a fix for the LTS stream.

Thank you for your reply, I'm glad to read that you found the white rectangular culprit :-)

Regarding the "not responding" dialog: I'm afraid starting the game in fullscreen doesn't help, I already start it in fullscreen. Switching to windowed mode just puts the game into a window, but the dialog still appears at the beginning. At the positive side, I never have to switch out of the game, the mouse works perfectly fine.

I just noticed that the game always makes full use of one of my 8 cores after the Unity logo disappeared and before the menu slides in. It's just for 1 or 2 seconds, but that's around the time where the dialog appears.

If you need any further information, just let me know.

Developer

We had a look into the "not responding" issue, but are unable to reproduce this on our Ubuntu machines. We think it is caused by the game loading the necessary resources at startup and some Linux distributions triggering this dialogue very aggressively. We already do the loading asynchronously, so we don't really know why Linux thinks it is not responding.

Thanks for looking into this.

After doing some further research: It appears to be a common issue in GNOME that this dialog shows up if an application is busy for some seconds and does not respond quickly enough. Since there are several complains, this may subject to change in other versions of GNOME.

If you're interested, you could reproduce this using a Debian live image in the GNOME flavor and start RotT in there. However, I wouldn't care too much if this doesn't affect a majority of Linux users.

(1 edit)

Hallo, 

zuerst mal: 
Vielen Dank für das hervorragende Spiel und die ganze Arbeit, die dafür investiert wurde! Ich habe den Prolog gestern Nacht auf meiner Linux-Maschine ohne Bugs durchgespielt. Ich bin selbst Softwareentwickler und ehemaliger Game-Tester und weiß wie viel Arbeit hinter solchen Projekten steckt (nebenher muss ja meist noch der Hauptjob oder Studium  und evtl. die Familie am Laufen gehalten werden^^).

Jedenfalls:
Eigentlich wollte ich an dieser Stelle eine Donation/Spende anbieten aber mir ist noch was Besseres eingefallen.
Ich weiß nicht ob ihr Unterstützung wollt oder braucht, aber falls eine Umsetzung des restlichen Teils von RotT stattfindet, würde ich dafür meine Hilfe anbieten. Ich weiß, dass das sicher viele dahersagen, aber ich glaube, ich habe zumindest ein paar Punkte die für mich sprechen:

  • Berufstätig als Softwareentwickler im Bereich Java Backend (Abschluss: M.Sc. Informatik)
  • Erfahrung mit Unity und C#-Scripting aus Studienprojekten
    • 2D-RPG-Prototyp im Stile der 90er (Chrono Trigger, Terranigma)
    • 3D-Abbild von Meister Kaios Planet aus DBZ (1stPerson)
  • Erfahrung als ehemaliger Game-Tester bei Daedalic Entertainment GmbH
    • u.a. als Tester von: Pillars of the Earth, Candle, Shadow Tactics, Deponia, Blackguards 2
  • Fundierte Kenntnisse im Bereich Video-/Computerspiele
    • Videospiel-Liebhaber und Gamer mit wachsender (~500) Sammlung klassischer und moderner Titel
    • Besonderer Faible für Adventures (insb. Point-and-Click), Rollenspiele (westlich und JRPGs), Survival Horror und Walking Sims
    • Vertraut (gespielt) mit allen relevanten Point-and-Click Adventures von Lucas Arts, Adventure Soft, Sierra und Daedalic Entertainment

Ihr könnt das ja mal im Hinterkopf behalten. würde mich freuen mit euch in Kontakt zu kommen, selbst wenn es nur privat zum Austausch über Games etc. ist.