I already covered this in an unrelated post in the gaming forum and the nuts and bolts of this are all probably in the
linux-gamers.net how to, but I like to keep things local here
Basically the ideas behind this is you run can run your games like Doom 3, Quake, Enemy Territory and pretty much anything in a new X server. The main benifit of this is that your dektop will get backgrounded which should give the game a performance boost and the ability to switch between your fullscreen game and your desktop, for example to check on an irc message.
I found this incredibly useful while clan gaming in the past as people would message me alot in irc while I played and otherwise I had to quit the game to see what it was. And now even though I don't play seriously any more I can't live without it. I will be using Enemy Territory as the example as it's my favorite game
"Enough already, show me the stuff" I hear you say, well ok then here you go:
1. First to allow you to run a new X display you need to edit the "/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config" file:
Code:
sudo cp /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config.custom
sudo md5sum /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config > /var/lib/xfree86/Xwrapper.config.md5sum
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-common
Then make sure you change the first option to "Anybody" and hit enter twice.
2. Create the script "x.et":
And paste the following:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
xinit /usr/local/games/enemy-territory/et $* -- :1
3. Now we need to make it executable and move it to the right place:
Code:
chmod a+x ./x.et
sudo cp ./x.et /usr/local/bin
4. Run "x.et" in a terminal, ET should run on a new X server. To access your desktop you need to press:
5. To go back to ET by pressing:
That's it! Another great benefit to this is that with the "x.et" script you don't even need to be running your desktop to play a game. Meaning if you boot up to "run level 3" or you quit gnome and gdm to get to a command prompt you can run "x.et" and it will still work saving even more resources!
Extra notes:
If like me you use an ~/.Xmodmap file to amend your mouse buttons (I have a Logitech mx510) then you need to add that like to the script aswell so that X server is configured properly like this example of my script:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
xmodmap -display :1 -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 8 9 10 4 5" &
xinit /usr/local/games/enemy-territory/et $* -- :1
Obviously you need to put your own setting in the quotes but it's important you keep the ampersand (&) at the end to background the command or else your game will never run.
If you use the fabulous XQF then you can change the command to run "x.et" instead of just "et", that's a real winning combination!
Hope you like it
Adv Reply
Originally Posted by endy
Except for one thing... I usually run armyops with the aoss option before to have sound... is there a way to do that with xinit? Tried adding aoss before the path to armyops bin but no go...
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