On Ubuntu 9.10 Gnome, the system freezes at 99%. On Xfce, it freezes at 100%. Both of these are after I click Play and it loads the textures.

Any clue?

Here's my error log:

[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Found driver: "ALSA driver". Type 1, Version 8.1. Load @0x097b4dd8
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Instantiate address: 0xb7cc1ea0
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Found driver: "Open Sound System driver". Type 1, Version 8.1. Load @0x097b5c70
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Instantiate address: 0xb7bcc6c0
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Found driver: "OpenGL Reference GKGL driver". Type 5, Version 74.0. Load @0x097b5f58
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Instantiate address: 0xb7b9a5e0
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Note: Didn't find exact match for 800x600x32.
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] Here are the available modes:
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] 0) 1280x800x24
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] 1) 1280x720x24
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] 2) 1152x768x24
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] 3) 1024x768x24
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] 4) 800x600x24
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:45 2009] and it picked mode 4
ALSA initialized: 44100Hz, 16bit stereo, 92ms latency (16 periods x 256 samples)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:46 2009] load_sample_ogg: Couldn't open sound/mission.updated.ogg (mission.updated)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:46 2009] load_sample: Couldn't open sound/mission.updated.ogg (mission.updated)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:46 2009] load_sample_ogg: Couldn't open sound/nfz.warning.enter.ogg (nfz.warning.enter)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:46 2009] load_sample: Couldn't open sound/nfz.warning.enter.ogg (nfz.warning.enter)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:46 2009] load_sample_ogg: Couldn't open sound/nfz.warning.leave.ogg (nfz.warning.leave)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:46 2009] load_sample: Couldn't open sound/nfz.warning.leave.ogg (nfz.warning.leave)
/dev/js0: No such file or directory
/dev/input/js0: No such file or directory
/dev/js1: No such file or directory
/dev/input/js1: No such file or directory
/dev/js2: No such file or directory
/dev/input/js2: No such file or directory
/dev/js3: No such file or directory
/dev/input/js3: No such file or directory
Found 0 joystick(s)
[Sat Jul 18 17:39:51 2009] Flight-Assist mode enabled.

try starting the game with "pasuspender vendetta"

Now it fails at 100%, same log (different timestamp).

It appears there are no sound files...

I set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to include ~/.vendetta/drivers to pick up libfmodex.so, which was not being picked up. Again with the suggestion above, freezes at 99%.

[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] Here are the available modes:
[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] 0) 1280x800x24
[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] 1) 1280x720x24
[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] 2) 1152x768x24
[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] 3) 1024x768x24
[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] 4) 800x600x24
[Sat Jul 18 22:33:23 2009] and it picked mode 4

I would like to configure this away...

All the messages in your log are harmless. Everyone gets those.

How could you tell that the game wasn't picking up libfmodex?

What video card do you use?

I'll see if I can get my ubuntu installation uptodate. Maybe they figured out a new way to break the game.

I found that the library was missing by reading another post which suggested:

cd ~/.vendetta
ldd drivers/gkvc.so

The post also suggested setting the LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Man this takes me back to working with Gentoo.

Video card: ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 video card, from a review: "The performance of this solution is comparable with the integrated Intel GMA 950 video chip. So, the Latitude 131L has adequate power for daily office applications. Games are only limited possible, but older games without much 3D demands are yet playable."

That is only needed if you start the game without the updater. It sets up LD_LIBRARY_PATH automatically.

Do other 3D games work? That chipset is not supported anymore by AMD's own driver. But it should work with the open driver that comes with ubuntu.

Think it could be the fact that 9.10 isn't official released yet and that it's just in an alpha stage right now? So, in essence, things are bound to break and not work right.

Well, it works here on ubuntu 9.10, sort of. With acceleration enabled it also hangs at 95% but with software mesa it works ..slowly. I've got a crappy VIA chip in that laptop though that never really worked for 3d anyway, but I used to at least get to the login screen before locking up. So maybe it's really a driver issue.

Does really your whole system freeze or just the game?

Merovech:

Go into your config.ini file (inside .vendetta directory) and manually set most of your options to 0. I had to do this with mine though I use an Intel chipset. The intel driver is notorious for not actually supporting anything it should and trying to enable those options causes problems. Setting almost everything to 0 was enough for me to get into the game and start playing.

Also, try setting it to windowed mode. That way you can avoid trying to switch video modes while loading.

The library path thing is voice-chat related, and should only happen if you don't run the updater (ie. you ran ~/.vendetta/vendetta instead of ~/bin/vendetta or ~/.vendetta/update.rlb), but that's not the cause of the stall out (obviously).

It seems like it's definitely a hardware/driver issue, and you're probably as well off using a bleeding edge distro as a stable one (there's been a lot of ati progress lately). I'd try updating your kernel to the latest rc and trying both the opensource and proprietary drivers; you seem plenty competent for that.