Laptop Issues
by Stuart Campbell · in Torque Game Engine · 08/18/2002 (7:44 pm) · 15 replies
Hello all,
Recently i needed to take the code ive been working on from my desktop machine to my laptop. To my dismay this was less functional than i had hoped. The game loads (a few graphic glitches here and there) and then after about 5 secs it crashes.
I was just wondering if this is a common problem or an issue specific to my laptop. Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-Stuart
Recently i needed to take the code ive been working on from my desktop machine to my laptop. To my dismay this was less functional than i had hoped. The game loads (a few graphic glitches here and there) and then after about 5 secs it crashes.
I was just wondering if this is a common problem or an issue specific to my laptop. Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
-Stuart
#2
If the laptop has the gfx card and CPU to handle it, it ought to run your game. Laptops are usually lower power but aren't fundamentally different from desktop systems.
Things that could be causing your problem:
1. Laptops often have weird, non-standard drivers. Talk to other people with the same kind of laptop, and see what problems they've had. Sometimes there are fixes.
2. Laptops often have weird, non-standard hardware. See above. This is more of a problem in older laptops. More recent laptops usually repackage hardware instead of custom design it.
3. The laptop doesn't have enough power to handle the game. Does it meet the minimum requirements for your game?
4. Anything that might be causing the problem on a desktop.
I'd put my money on some weird driver/hardware interaction. :-/
08/18/2002 (9:57 pm)
Probably depends on your laptop. What sort do you have?If the laptop has the gfx card and CPU to handle it, it ought to run your game. Laptops are usually lower power but aren't fundamentally different from desktop systems.
Things that could be causing your problem:
1. Laptops often have weird, non-standard drivers. Talk to other people with the same kind of laptop, and see what problems they've had. Sometimes there are fixes.
2. Laptops often have weird, non-standard hardware. See above. This is more of a problem in older laptops. More recent laptops usually repackage hardware instead of custom design it.
3. The laptop doesn't have enough power to handle the game. Does it meet the minimum requirements for your game?
4. Anything that might be causing the problem on a desktop.
I'd put my money on some weird driver/hardware interaction. :-/
#3
Compaq Presario
PIII 800
128meg
8meg ATI Rage Mobility P/M AGP x 2
It runs UO fine, so the 2D capabilites are all good. It runs quake3, however the graphics are a little 'crappyfied' ;) but it still runs.
As far as i can tell my laptop hardware SHOULD be able to run torque. Im not looking for blistering performance, simply being able to connect for testing purposes would be nice :)
08/19/2002 (11:35 pm)
Here are the specs,Compaq Presario
PIII 800
128meg
8meg ATI Rage Mobility P/M AGP x 2
It runs UO fine, so the 2D capabilites are all good. It runs quake3, however the graphics are a little 'crappyfied' ;) but it still runs.
As far as i can tell my laptop hardware SHOULD be able to run torque. Im not looking for blistering performance, simply being able to connect for testing purposes would be nice :)
#4
8meg ATI Rage Mobility P/M AGP x 2
I have the same thing and get the same result, the only mission I can play is the test one. All the others crash in the ATI code somehwre, all I see is assembly when I hop in debug mode to nab the crash.
08/20/2002 (6:49 am)
You problem lies within the vid card8meg ATI Rage Mobility P/M AGP x 2
I have the same thing and get the same result, the only mission I can play is the test one. All the others crash in the ATI code somehwre, all I see is assembly when I hop in debug mode to nab the crash.
#5
And re: Nathan: you can get Laptop's now with Geforce4s, and the architecture is getting more like desktops all the time. IMO the statement "don't try to run x on a laptop" is now out of date.
Ian
08/20/2002 (6:57 am)
I also have a laptop with the 8 meg Mobility in it, and it won't run T2 on the latest patch. I haven't tried it with Torque though.And re: Nathan: you can get Laptop's now with Geforce4s, and the architecture is getting more like desktops all the time. IMO the statement "don't try to run x on a laptop" is now out of date.
Ian
#6
I agree 100% with you their, I have ordered a nifty AlienWare laptop that will come stocked with RAM (512MB), a Gforce4, Intel 2GHZ and a bunch of other spiffy features.
Will that be able to run T2/Torque? hrmmm HELL YEAH ;)
freedom from being stuck at a desk all day :) now I can take the kids to the park and still code away ;)
08/20/2002 (7:09 am)
Lan,I agree 100% with you their, I have ordered a nifty AlienWare laptop that will come stocked with RAM (512MB), a Gforce4, Intel 2GHZ and a bunch of other spiffy features.
Will that be able to run T2/Torque? hrmmm HELL YEAH ;)
freedom from being stuck at a desk all day :) now I can take the kids to the park and still code away ;)
#7
08/20/2002 (2:31 pm)
You ordered for an AlienWare product? How sick... They sell nothing more then overpriced hardware which is evil. ;p
#8
I did some prety extensive research and they (alienware) blew the leading competitors out of the water *shrug*
08/20/2002 (3:37 pm)
to each their own :) I have 2 alien boxes and love them to death. I did some prety extensive research and they (alienware) blew the leading competitors out of the water *shrug*
#9
I went and bought a Toshiba with a 16 meg trident card. Works fine :)
Under 1k. Best I could do with the 8 meg card was compile, and occasionally run one of the missions, most of the time it just UE'd on me.
08/20/2002 (7:17 pm)
I could never get my 8 meg ATI cards to run it.I went and bought a Toshiba with a 16 meg trident card. Works fine :)
Under 1k. Best I could do with the 8 meg card was compile, and occasionally run one of the missions, most of the time it just UE'd on me.
#10
Is there any hope of getting Torque to run in a software-rendering mode? This would be of great help to me.
I'm not expecting to get any kind of frame-rate out of my laptop, but I commute by train, and I am hoping to use the time to do development work.
Thanks.
09/12/2002 (10:17 am)
I am new to the Torque Engine community, and I am also having difficulty running the engine on my laptop. However, my laptop doesn't have any accelerated graphics capability.Is there any hope of getting Torque to run in a software-rendering mode? This would be of great help to me.
I'm not expecting to get any kind of frame-rate out of my laptop, but I commute by train, and I am hoping to use the time to do development work.
Thanks.
#11
I got Torque to work after some (much) fiddling. This site has a wealth of info about these chips. I got the latest driver from here. (The dell driver downloads are old)
www.geocities.com/ziyadhosein/index.html
Under W2K I went
Display properties->settings->advanced->trouble-shooting.
I turned down the hardware acceleration to the 4th setting (disable cursor etc).
I set up Torque as 800x600, full screen and Direct 3D. It works fine, except for the fonts, they are little black blobs, in fact the frame rates are ok. I use the laptop for testing so I'm not too worried about the odd artifact.
James
09/12/2002 (1:02 pm)
I have a dell latitude with the ATI RAGE MOBILITY-M1 AGP 2X chipset, also with 8MB, which runs torque quite well, except for a few artifacts. It is not exactly the same chipset as yours so your milage may vary. But FWIW....I got Torque to work after some (much) fiddling. This site has a wealth of info about these chips. I got the latest driver from here. (The dell driver downloads are old)
www.geocities.com/ziyadhosein/index.html
Under W2K I went
Display properties->settings->advanced->trouble-shooting.
I turned down the hardware acceleration to the 4th setting (disable cursor etc).
I set up Torque as 800x600, full screen and Direct 3D. It works fine, except for the fonts, they are little black blobs, in fact the frame rates are ok. I use the laptop for testing so I'm not too worried about the odd artifact.
James
#12
In case I wanted to do some coding on the beach or something, I decided to try Torque on my fairly obsolete Dell Latitude C300 running Win2k with ATI Mobility M3. This is apparently an ATI Rage 128 chipset with AGP x2 and 8mb. It has the latest driver available for Win2k that I'm aware of, 5.13.1.5023 dated 11/18/02.
When I ran the demo game from the usual shortcut, I got a blue screen core dump. Yoikes!
After a bit of thought, I wondered if the problem was with ATI's OpenGL support. I passed the command-line switch -directX to force d3d graphics on startup, and sure enough, it ran successfully. DirectX 9.0c with no special configuration. So, avoiding OpenGL seems to be a key to success on the ATI Mobility chipsets.
Everything looked decent, although the framerate was somewhat poor at about 5 fps. But at least it does run and I can do prototyping on the road.
--- Kevin
07/01/2005 (12:50 pm)
Follow-up on this:In case I wanted to do some coding on the beach or something, I decided to try Torque on my fairly obsolete Dell Latitude C300 running Win2k with ATI Mobility M3. This is apparently an ATI Rage 128 chipset with AGP x2 and 8mb. It has the latest driver available for Win2k that I'm aware of, 5.13.1.5023 dated 11/18/02.
When I ran the demo game from the usual shortcut, I got a blue screen core dump. Yoikes!
After a bit of thought, I wondered if the problem was with ATI's OpenGL support. I passed the command-line switch -directX to force d3d graphics on startup, and sure enough, it ran successfully. DirectX 9.0c with no special configuration. So, avoiding OpenGL seems to be a key to success on the ATI Mobility chipsets.
Everything looked decent, although the framerate was somewhat poor at about 5 fps. But at least it does run and I can do prototyping on the road.
--- Kevin
#13
07/01/2005 (12:59 pm)
Do a google for Catalyst drivers, there are people out there than hack ATI's drivers so you can update your laptop drivers to the most current. I use this for my averatec which has a ati mobility 9600 64meg and torque runs like a dream on it.
#14
07/01/2005 (1:06 pm)
If you have a ATI Mobility card goto omegadrivers.net and download there catalyst driver setup. Omega has taken the time to reconfigure the drivers to work with all mobility cards (even labtops) so it should eliminate most of the graphical glitchs you are getting. Atleast they did for my ATI Mobility M3 card.
#15
07/01/2005 (1:32 pm)
Hehe yeah omega catalyst had a brainfart for a minute. 
Torque Owner Nathan Martin
TRON 2001 Network
Yeah those recommendations are way higher then from what GG may recommend, but torque is a power hungry game engine and it needs a lot of power. Even sometimes on my PC(1GHz AMD Duron, 448MB Ram, GeForce3 Ti-200 64MB Video, and screen resulotion 1024x768 32bit 60Hz) it lags somewhat from time to time.
So I recommend not targetting/running the game engine on a laptop or any related portable device. There's my two cense. :)