Tried both 1.04 & 1.05 the game crashes right at start:

USER@USER-laptop:~/eschalon_book_1_demo$ ./eschalon_book_1_demo
Setting sound driver: Default
eschalon_book_1_demo: ../common/dri_bufmgr_fake.c:576: dri_bufmgr_fake_contended_lock_take: Assertion `((&bufmgr_fake->on_hardware)->next == (&bufmgr_fake->on_hardware))' failed.
Aborted

my pc is a thinkpad x60s with intel graphic card

Looks like the same problem as this post. Unfortunately, however, that post doesn't contain any definitive solutions. It might be worth continuing to post there, however, in the interests of keeping handy information in one place.

I've had identical problems on my T60 with the Intel graphics card. Incidentally I have a T61p with a different video subsystem altogether and it works just fine.

I'm afraid it's all in the Intel video driver. Post on the Ubuntu forums...if enough people complain to Ubuntu maybe someone at Intel will take notice that their drivers suck under non Windows OSes.

Actually on the forum no one would have read it, so I posted a bug on launchpad which is much better:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/321401
let's see what happens.

Good move...

Looks like the Ubuntu developers DO care about commercial games and graphics performances after all, go take a look at the response I had on the bug page.

I'm already downloading the daily build, let's see if it works...

No...Freakin...Way!

So how did it work? (I've been kinda lame... my Ubuntu machine has been sittin idle...)

well...BAD. The game runs only in windowed mode and it's slow to the level you cannot even get out of the main menu, even the character creation menu is super slow. I never get to the part where the game starts...

Probably part of it it's because I was running it from a usb-pen live, probably it's because I only have 1g of ram and a weak 945 video card.

Anyway no Eschalon for me on my notebook, until I can get back to my desktop machine with nvidia card.

To be honest, I'm not sure that running off a flash drive should be any slower, as long as it's a decent USB 2.0 drive plugged directly into an appropriate port on the laptop (i.e. not via a slow hub which has forced it back to USB 1.0 speeds). A good flash drive can't manage the same sustained transfer rates as an internal hard disk, but the seek times are much better, and I would have expected that to be the dominant factor in performance in a situation like this where the game needs to load small amounts of data frequently.

Also, my mac mini had 1GB RAM when I first started playing Book I (though I've since done a home upgrade to 2GB), and it's got an Intel GMA950 on-board adapter. However, I suspect the biggest differentiating factors are either the amount of time Apple have spent optimising their graphics drivers (the joys of a closed platform), or potentially the CPU, depending how much of the rendering your drivers are managing to offload to the graphics hardware.

Despite the fact that they are different platforms, however, I'm still rather surprised your experience seems to have been quite so different to mine.

I'm no informatics expert but I think the intel graphic drivers for Linux suck. Badly. They're open source and all that but this is more of an excuse for Intel to not care and let others do the job.

I am afraid it is so, because onestly an nvidia 6100, which is integrated in my old pc's motherboard, can't be MUCH better than this card I have here. That card is very old and has no dedicated memory but what the hell it runs on linux games that I can't even starting to think of running here ! With an old amd processor, one of the first 64 bit as I remember correctly, and no more than 1 giga of ram.

Or maybe it's the game that it's not optimized for Linux, but that is the programmings language fault I guess.

You don't have to be an expert -- I completely agree with you. I have two Lenovo T61 laptops. Both run the same build of Ubuntu 8.10-x64. My T61p with the NVIDIA Quattro FX 570M runs the game just fine. The other POS has the Intel card which is making that sucking noise you all can hear from wherever you are. I throw any Windows OS on there, including a Server OS, and the game runs fine. Hence, anecdotally at least, it must be the video driver.

Oh...and the OpenGL screensavers lock the Intel machine up. Flashing Caps Lock key and all that jazz.

Today i sent an email to the developers at hothead games because also the demo of their games doesn't work on my pc. That's part of the answer:



Could this be one of the reasons NO game seems to work with this freaking video card ???

Wow, that's fairly shocking - although more or less what I've come to expect from Intel over the years.

In this day and age, major hardware vendors either need to develop their own full-featured closed-source drivers for Linux, or at least share all the information required to allow the open source community to do the job.

Well, it's useful for future reference, in any case - mental note, don't buy Intel chipsets for use with Linux.

I did a quick search and it SEEMS that the patent has been filed in 2001, probably I mistook it for another one but maybe it is the one that's embedded in intel's drivers.

Since patents are kept alive for 8 years on average, more for drugs less for technological stuff, if we are lucky 2009 will be the good year for the protection to die. Let's hope.

By the way i filed another bug regarding Eschalon Book I and Jaunty Jackalope (aka 9.04):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/324292