Non-Windowed OpenGL Sometimes Hangs OS

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Elfcat
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Non-Windowed OpenGL Sometimes Hangs OS

Post by Elfcat »

I still like to run Myth II in non-windowed mode, to fully use my screen. One thing which has happened to me though a couple of times playing the single-player game while waiting for open net games, is the whole thing sometimes freezes, and I can't even get to Force Quit to recover; at that point rebooting is all I can do. I'm not sure, but I suspect since I don't have a n OpenGL specific card in this G4 AGP, that perhaps the OS is choking on the software OpenGL translation. So I'll try the other one. In case I'm insane enough to try looking for a graphics card for a G4 AGP, are there any recommendations?
Myrd
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Post by Myrd »

What is your video card? I was under the impression that machines without an OpenGL card would not give you that choice (indeed, this was the case when I tried Myth on my beige-G3 that I installed OS X on with XpostFacto).

In newer OS X version (starting with Panther or Tiger, I forget), you can hit the Force Quit Combination (Option-Command-Escape) and hit Enter twice to force quit it even if you don't see the dialog.

However, I believe in your case the whole OS is frozen, because Myth II's fullscreen mode isn't really fullscreen. It's a giant window that takes the full resolution (and asks Mac OS to hide the menubar/dock). This is why you can command-tab out and the force quit dialog will be displayed under normal circumstances. Myth III, for example, actually enters true fullscreen mode (locks the screen), so you can't tab out (other games that lock the screen intercept the tab out combination and handle it in a custom manner, so that you still get the behaviour).

So it might be a hardware issue with your machine (overheating?).
Elfcat
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Post by Elfcat »

Myrd wrote:What is your video card? I was under the impression that machines without an OpenGL card would not give you that choice (indeed, this was the case when I tried Myth on my beige-G3 that I installed OS X on with XpostFacto).
Actually, a look at my profiler shows that my G4 AGP has a Rage 128 Pro card in the AGP slot.
In newer OS X version (starting with Panther or Tiger, I forget), you can hit the Force Quit Combination (Option-Command-Escape) and hit Enter twice to force quit it even if you don't see the dialog.
OK, I'll try that if I get it again.
So it might be a hardware issue with your machine (overheating?).
Unlikely, since I have only seen that particular freeze with this program in OpenGL mode and with Google Map 4 which I think also tries to do OpenGL with the card. I've switched to software rendering with Myth II in the full screen mode and haven't yet seen the freeze. This is probably the fake full screen mode you spoke of. When I had the OpenGL set, I saw the screen fade out and fade in, which I recall was how it used to be on Mac OS 9 with the Voodoo cards.
Myrd
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Post by Myrd »

The fading is switching screen bit-depth, which is actually unrelated.

I wasn't referring to software mode. When running in OpenGL, you can still tab-out and such (it's a fullscreen opengl window).

It's possible that your video card is overheating since this only seems to happen with video-intensive apps like Google Maps and Myth (both using OpenGL). Might be a good idea to open the door on your G4 and check if it's not full of dust that's preventing good air flow. (FYI: I've ran Myth in OpenGL just fine on a G3 iMac w/ an 8 meg ATI card and a PowerMac G3 w/ the same ATI 128).
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