Doom running in software mode and CPU getting hot

[froggit9000]

I thought I would try and get DOOM running on FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE so I did pkg install doomlegacy.

A message I saw when installing was:

=====
Message from sdl-1.2.15_17,2:

--
Your SDL library has been built with libvgl support, which means that you
 can run almost any SDL application straight on your console (VESA 2.0
 compatible videocard is required).

 To do this you have to load the vesa kernel module or enable it in your
 kernel, and set environment variable "SDL_VIDEODRIVER=vgl".
=====

I am using the 'amdgpu' video driver, so can I still get this working so that the game runs with hardware rendering rather than using the CPU to render in software mode?

 

[froggit9000]

I added 'vesa' to the list of kernel modules to load in /etc/rc.conf but it doesn't seem to make any difference - DOOM (/usr/local/bin/doomlegacy) is still doing software rendering.

Any ideas how to get it to do hardware rendering?

root@freebsd:/etc # cat rc.conf | grep vesa
kld_list="amdgpu vesa linux linux64"
root@freebsd:/etc #

 

[Perceval]

vesa(4)() is software only, there's no hardware acceleration.
Can you try to build from ports using
make config ?
You might have an option to build Doom with something else than vesa...?

 

[froggit9000]

I tried removing the 'doomlegacy' package and building the port at /usr/ports/games/doomlegacy but looking at the high CPU temp after playing it for a short time, it looks like it is still not using hardware rendering.

To build I ran make install within that port directory.
I also tried make config but it only offers two options: (1) DOCS (build and/or install documentation) and (2) LIBZIP (Zipped WAD file support using libzip). Both options are selected by default (X) in the selection field.

I didn't see any installed DOCS but maybe I need to hunt around a bit for them if they have been installed somewhere.

The VESA driver seems installed:

root@freebsd:/usr/ports/games/doomlegacy # kldstat | grep vesa
25    1 0xffffffff841f9000     43f0 vesa.ko

I also set the environment variable specified within the notice in the first post:

$ SDL_VIDEODRIVER=vgl
$ export SDL_VIDEODRIVER
$ /usr/local/bin/doomlegacy
 Feb 13 2026             Doom Legacy 1.48.14 (rev 1660)                15:06:17 
Z_Init: Init zone memory allocation daemon. 
System memory 27580 MiB, free 22161 MiB
8 MiB requested for Z_Init.
Initializing SDL...
 Couldn't initialize SDL: No available video device
Shutting down joysticks.
Joystick subsystem closed cleanly.
$

It says it couldn't initialize SDL: No available video device...

 

[froggit9000]

I had a hunt around for the doomlegacy docs and found them so I will have a read through to see how I may be able to get hardware rendering working:

root@freebsd:/usr/ports/games/doomlegacy # find / -name doomlegacy*
/usr/ports/games/doomlegacy
...
/usr/local/bin/doomlegacy
...
/usr/local/share/doc/doomlegacy


root@freebsd:/usr/ports/games/doomlegacy # cd /usr/local/share/doc/doomlegacy
root@freebsd:/usr/local/share/doc/doomlegacy # ls -la
total 512
drwxr-xr-x    5 root wheel     23 Feb 13 15:06 .
drwxr-xr-x  164 root wheel    164 Feb 13 15:06 ..
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel   3499 Dec 28  2023 3dfloors.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  25580 Dec 28  2023 INSTALL.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  18092 Jun  9  2014 LICENSE.txt
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  13392 Sep 20  2016 Make_WIN32.txt
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  14048 Dec 18  2022 README_Compiling.txt
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  99827 Dec 28  2023 boomref.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  96577 Dec 28  2023 console.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  43098 Jun  9  2014 doom_linedefs.ods
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  48567 Dec 28  2023 editing.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  46867 Dec 28  2023 faq.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  34257 Dec 28  2023 fsbasic.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  75833 Dec 28  2023 fsfuncs.html
drwxr-xr-x    3 root wheel     11 Feb 13 15:06 images
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel   3503 Dec 28  2023 index.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel   2845 Jun  9  2014 legacy.css
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  72783 Dec 28  2023 legacy.html
drwxr-xr-x    2 root wheel      6 Feb 13 15:06 res
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel  17714 Dec 28  2023 source.html
drwxr-xr-x    2 root wheel      7 Feb 13 15:06 technical
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel   8421 Dec 28  2023 tutorial.html
-rw-r--r--    1 root wheel 180989 Dec 28  2023 whatsnew.html