This is a draft of the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for gltron.

You can also submit your own questions/answers .

Concerning all platforms

• The camera sucks. Sometimes, I can't see where I'm going
• The game runs too slow.
• I want redistribute GLtron on a CD-ROM for my games collection/magazine
• Where do I subscribe to stay informed about the latest & greatest development news?
• Is there a way to add your own music to the game?
• I made my own custom model using the application XYZ. How do I include it in the game?
• How do you make an artpack?
• Will there be a version that's playable over LAN or even on the Internet?
• How can I convert an mp3/wav to .it format? What is the .it format anyway?
• How can I speed up?
• Why does the game crash when I try to change my Key Settings? I get to the screen with players 1-4, but once I select, the program shuts down. I've tried re-downloading twice. HELP!?

• It crashes on startup. I have no soundcard installed
• I have a voodoo 1/2 card, and the game is VERY slow.
• I have a 3D card, but the game is VERY slow

• How do I install an artpack on OS X?

• I have problems with GLtron and my sound daemon
• I have a 3D card, but the game runs VERY slowly.

Answer: Press F10 to cycle through the different camera modes. Some modes allow you to use the mouse to move the camera around the lightcycle, and automatically keep the camera aligned with the current lightcycle directions. Also, you can use the left & right mouse buttons to zoom in/zoom out.

Answer: The game is really ment to be played with a 3d card. But you can try to start it with 'gltron -gwtbmx1'. That should do it on most systems. Also, I've written a small piece of information about performance of 3D games that you might find very useful.

Answer: Sure, go ahead! GLtron is currently released under the GNU General Public License (should come with the archive). That means you're free to redistribute it, (you can charge money for it, and you can even modify it, as long as you make the modifications available in source form). As for future versions, that's very unlikely to change.

However, it would be nice if you notified me of the distribution, and provide me with a sample CD / magazine issue. My postal address is:

Andreas Umbach
Bitzihofstr. 44
8854 Siebnen
Switzerland

For clarification: The relevant paragraphs from the GPL are:

  3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,
under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

    a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
    source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections
    1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

    b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
    years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
    cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
    machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
    distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
    customarily used for software interchange; or,

    c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer
    to distribute corresponding source code.  (This alternative is
    allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
    received the program in object code or executable form with such
    an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

b) says that you should make a small note that the source-code is available from you on request (you can download the .tar.gz from my website), but I won't sue if you forget that.

I'll probably include the source in future binary distributions to make things even simpler.

Answer: Subscribe to the gltron-announce mailing list. It's very low traffic (only a few mails per year), but you're guaranteed to be informed when a new release comes out.

Answer: Yes, just copy any file you want to play (mp3, ogg vorbis, wav, or one of the various tracker file formats) into the 'music' folder, then start GLtron and select it by pressing left/right/enter on the 'Song' entry in the audio menu.

Answer: It's not possible yet. However, I'm working on it. The best way to speed things up is to send me your model (any format), preferably textured mapped, instead of using material definitions. I'm especially interested in models with high polycounts and/or high quality normal maps.

Answer: Use your favorite image manipulation program to create a set of image files in PNG (.png) format, and name them accordingly. Look at the existing artpacks to see which textures you want to replace. Create a new folder in the GLtron art directory, and put your files there. Then load them in the game as you would load any other artpack. All the textures you didn't replace will be loaded from the default artpack directory.

Answer: Yes, network play is 'under construction'. We're aiming for a release by the end of 2004, and LAN play should be excellent. Internet play is likely limited to very low latency connections (= low ping), due to the nature of the game.

Answer: Short answer: you can't. Long answer: .it is short for ImpulseTracker, which is/was a popular music creation tool in the demo scene (it's similiar to the .s3m format used by Unreal, and the famous 'mod' format). The good thing about all these tracker formats is that the filesize is really small, since you store each instrument once in the file, and then just add a list of notes it plays. Since you cannot really break an mp3 file into individual instruments, conversion is not possible. However, you can just dump .mp3, .ogg or .wav files in GLtron's music folder, and listen to those.

Answer: If you have the 'Booster' game mode enabled (it is per default), just press and hold down the 'Booster' key (default: 'E'). You'll notice an increased pitch of your lightcycles engine noise, and you'll speed up.
Contributed by Kain ( blaher2000 (at) hotmail . com )

Answer: There still seems to be a bug in the .ini file code that sometimes lets the .ini file (which contains the key definitions) get corrupted. I try to include a fix in one of the next versions. In the meantime, delete your gltron.ini (Mac: gltronPrefs.txt, Unix: ~/.gltronrc). Note: On Windows: Uninstalling and re-installing the game has the same effect.
Contributed by Blake Mills ( luggagefish (at) mac . com )

Answer: Start it from the dos-window by typing gltron -s

Answer: Download the Mesa 3dfx dlls and unzip them into the gltron directory.

Answer: Get the latest drivers from the homepage of your graphics cards vendor.

Answer: First make sure you have StuffIt Expander installed, then download the .zip file, and double click it. This will create a new folder with the name of the artpack. Now Click on the GLtron.app icon, while holding down the ctrl key, and choose 'Show package Contents' from the pop-up menu that appears. Then go to the Contents -> Resources -> art folder, and drag the artpack folder their. Start GLtron and choose the new Artpack in the video menu, by pressing 'enter' or left/right on the Artpack entry.

Answer: I got a report that GLtron does not run with the KDE sound daemon. Sound daemons are nice to have if you have a cheap soundcard (good cards (e.g. emu10k1) allow multi-opening of /dev/dsp), since they allow multiple apps to play sound, but some of them introduce a lot of latency, which really kills the game experience. You have two options:

• Kill the sound daemon. You won't here any sounds from your window manager afterwards.
• If you run artsd, run GLtron using the artsdsp wrapper: artsdsp gltron (thanks to SukkoPera for pointing that out to me).

Answer: Either you don't have a 3d-accelerator or it is not supported by your OpenGL libraries. Mesa/3dfx users want to make sure they have set MESA_GLX_FX for 3D-Acceleration by either typing

bash:

MESA_GLX_FX=f; export MESA_GLX_FX

setenv MESA_GLX_FX f

Hosted by Sourceforge