Messages

61

Applications and Porting / [GAMES] UT99, UTGOLD, UT2004 on native PPC64LE!

« on: February 23, 2026, 03:16:47 am »

Okay you click and get baited to read this post.

Well you might have heard that OldUnreal community has entered into an agreement with Epic Games to continue the support for these 3 UT games. That means they have gained access to the engine source codes.

I am trying my best to convince the team to add support for PPC64LE at https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004Patches/issues/316

I would really appreciate if more of us POWER-users could chime into the ticket to express our interests

EDIT: UT2004 is now available for ppc64le! https://github.com/OldUnreal/UT2004Patches/releases/tag/3374-preview-17, I've updated https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Games_Compatibility with the details. Gameplay video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hiaiBzoH7U

62

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] Adding support for POWER SIMD in ispc lib

« on: February 19, 2026, 11:02:51 pm »

I'll do my best, though I'm currently in a semi-permanent away job, so I'm not on my POWER9 much for sustained periods (part of why there hasn't been much Talospace content either). Job market isn't so great in my line of work these days.

Family and wellbeing first. If you need anything that I could assist, please do not hesitate to reach out to me

63

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] Adding support for POWER SIMD in ispc lib

« on: February 14, 2026, 05:02:58 pm »

I have added https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Porting/ispc but the unsure how to add that link to https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Category:Ports

64

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Doom 3 BFG bad ass game XD

« on: February 13, 2026, 06:01:22 pm »

Can anyone help review my PRs?

https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG/pull/1073
https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG/pull/1077

Many thanks

65

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Quake 3 source port with Vulkan renderer (vkQuake3)

« on: February 13, 2026, 05:05:17 pm »

It's pretty much straight-forward changes. I would really appreciate if PPC guru members could review and chime in the PR because I know the core team of ioquake3 might not be well versed in PPC so they might be hesitated in merging the changes.

66

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] Adding support for POWER SIMD in ispc lib

« on: February 13, 2026, 05:04:11 pm »

It's nearly there! I hope today I could get the PR polished for merger.

@ClassicHasClass I would really appreciate if I could get your guidance and support as I start adding more PPC-specific features into ispc. Great thanks in advance

67

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Quake 3 source port with Vulkan renderer (vkQuake3)

« on: February 09, 2026, 05:46:33 am »

https://github.com/ioquake/ioq3/pull/860 for supporting LE

@ClassicHasClass @power9mm could you please help review the PR for me? Many thanks

68

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Doom 3 BFG bad ass game XD

« on: February 08, 2026, 05:54:50 pm »

Thanks, that indeed fixes the build issue for me. But I'm still getting the same runtime issue as before - a segfault after loading the first level.

Please run the game with gdb and paste the stacktrace to gist.github.com or pastebin and share the link here

69

Applications and Porting / Re: [DEV] Adding support for POWER SIMD in ispc lib

« on: February 06, 2026, 11:02:21 pm »

Okay I added a basic support PPC64LE

It's pretty much straight forward changes https://github.com/ispc/ispc/pull/3735

at this stage it has no PPC-specific ISPCTarget enum values, no ISA enum entry, no .ll builtin files. I hope this would create the foundation for developers to further extend it.

70

Operating Systems and Porting / [NEWS] Linux 6.18

« on: February 05, 2026, 05:56:16 am »

Well it is not news anymore however this kernel has been quite stable on Fedora.

Full changelog could be found at https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_6.18

71

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Doom 3 BFG bad ass game XD

« on: February 04, 2026, 06:33:34 am »

I built dxc and it seems to be recognized by RBDOOM, but I'm getting a build error:
[ FAIL ] SPIRV builtin/lighting/interactionSM.vs.hlsl {main} {USE_GPU_SKINNING=1 LIGHT_POINT=1 LIGHT_PARALLEL=0 USE_PBR=1 USE_NORMAL_FMT_RGB8=1 USE_SHADOW_ATLAS=1}

I did not run into such issue,

```

# build dxc
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler.git
cd DirectXShaderCompiler
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -C ../cmake/caches/PredefinedParams.cmake
make dxc -j
sudo make install-dxc
# build the shared library
make dxcompiler -j32
# install it
sudo make install-dxcompiler
# then update the library cache:
sudo ldconfig


# build game
git clone https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG.git
cd ./RBDOOM-3-BFG/
git submodule update --init --recursive
mkdir build && cd build
export DXC_CUSTOM_PATH=/usr/local/bin/dxc
../neo/cmake-linux-debug.sh
cd ../build
make -j32
```

72

Applications and Porting / Re: [GAMES] Doom 3 BFG bad ass game XD

« on: January 24, 2026, 05:50:59 pm »

It looks like the newest version requires Microsoft's DXC which doesn't seem to be available in Portage and is itself an LLVM fork, so I expect getting it to build might be some work in itself. The last version that doesn't require it is 1.4.0.

You have to build DXC manually from source. Building it is quite straightforward, no patches required at all

73

Applications and Porting / [DEV] Proposal to drop PPC64 BE support in the next version of Golang

« on: January 19, 2026, 07:03:14 am »

See https://github.com/golang/go/issues/76244

It's unfortunate that Go might drop support for PPC64BE for real. That means many Golang-based softwares will cease running on POWER8 or even POWER5 G5 PowerMac.

74

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: FreeBSD 16 plans to drop support for PPC64.

« on: November 26, 2025, 04:24:35 pm »

We'd like to retire powerpc64 and powerpc64le just before the FreeBSD stable/16 branch.

It would be a great disappointment if FreeBSD drop support for PPC64. I find FreeBSD extremely useful for hosting ZFS.

In that case, reply to the mailing list. If no one replies about using FreeBSD on POWER, the conclusion will be that it's unused code ready for removal.
FYI, I already replied. Note that you need to be subscribed to reply.

I am still trying to figure out how to get the mailto to respond to the message. If you happen to know how to do so for mlmmj-based mailing list, please point me to the right place. Many thanks in advance

75

Operating Systems and Porting / Re: FreeBSD 16 plans to drop support for PPC64.

« on: November 20, 2025, 11:16:45 pm »

We'd like to retire powerpc64 and powerpc64le just before the FreeBSD stable/16 branch.

It would be a great disappointment if FreeBSD drop support for PPC64. I find FreeBSD extremely useful for hosting ZFS.