Final Fantasy VIII works, but sound choppy.

[Martin Moeller]

Hey Folks.

I've been playing FF8 in Linux the last few days (Software Rendering). Don't 
think it ever worked accelerated in windows either, though (GeForce card).

The graphics keep a fair pace and everything would be good, if it weren't 
for the choppy sound. It seems to make a smal pause about once a second or 
so (when I'm lucky, the music plays without interruptions for 15-30 
seconds).

If gives a series of outputs like this:
::SmEffectChange(filename=x:\jppc\sound\effect\event\wave\wave0870.dat)
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\A0STG047.X
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\B0WAVE.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\C0M017.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\D9C019.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\D9W037.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\D8C017.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\D8W035.DAT
err:dsound:DSOUND_MixOne underrun on sound buffer 0x4c6d2d14
err:dsound:DSOUND_MixOne underrun on sound buffer 0x4c6d2d14
fixme:dsound:DSOUND_MixCancel prebuffer cancel not implemented yet
fixme:dsound:DSOUND_MixCancel prebuffer cancel not implemented yet
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\MAG184_D.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\MAG184_E.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\MAG184_F.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\MAG184_G.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\MAG184_H.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\MAG184_I.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\A8DEF.TIM
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\D8C017.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\D8W035.DAT
smPcRead::\ff8\data\eng\battle\R0WIN.DAT

In the FullMotionVideos, the whole thing moves in chunks. It works well for 
around 5 seconds, then it halts, then it goes on again... Otherwise the 
graphics is great. No anomalies in the FMV's and very few in the usual 
gameplay.

This is with UseDGA=N (when I tried UseDGA=Y my machine became inoperable).
I haven't tried any 'hacks' to make wine not output all this information 
(mostly because I've forgotten what those were ;)) - But overall I'm 
impressed to see this work so well. Battled several Bosses and changed disc 
(umounting and mounting in a console session as i do not have an automated 
method running currently). I've tried it without have GNOME running (bare-
bones X-Server + xterm) and with GNOME running, the choppy factor seems to 
be about the same.

Are there some particular parameters I should try to make a meaningful 
report?

This is posted from a Windows News Reader running under Wine as well ;).
XNews -- Quite good actually, when Pan is missing a feature, such as 
composing a message (not quite the latest version, but thereabout).

Anyway -- Congratulations to all who have worked on making Wine what it is. 
It seems we're getting close to actually running the games I really care 
about ;)

Regards,

/Martin Moeller.