Allow config options to be entered in the command line

[billbeans]

This is mainly for core pinning, but all of the unsafe options would be good as well. I find it very inconvenient that I'd have to edit an ini file when I could just modify my launch script.

Something like GAMEMODE_CONFIG="pin_cores=0,2,4,6;park_cores=8-15" would be nice.

I'm considering adding to my script a series of echo | tee commands or maybe sed commands to dynamically update a gamemode.ini in the game's working directory at runtime. It would be so much simpler if we could just set these options in the command line. I'm surprised it isn't already an option.

[mdiluz]

Can you describe your use case a little more? It sounds like you want to be changing config values dynamically based on the game you're playing?

[billbeans]

Can you describe your use case a little more? It sounds like you want to be changing config values dynamically based on the game you're playing?

Yes, that's exactly it. I have a game that performs better on 4 cores so I'd like to be able to pin those cores in the launch string

[mdiluz]

Oh so you mean passing the config in the game's environment? GameMode doesn't have anything for game specific settings right now so that'd be a little weird to program.

On the other hand it's a cool idea. Worth considering.

For now I'd suggest writing a custom script as you say that looks for the running game and I guess swaps out the config in $HOME or something. Not ideal though.

[billbeans]

Oh so you mean passing the config in the game's environment?

Yes. I was using WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY but that's Windows-only and GameMode is probably more low level. I don't think it has to be game-specific, just set at runtime via environment variables.

Right now, I have a gamemode.ini in the directory with the executable that has this:

[cpu]
pin_cores=0,2,4,6

Does this mean that GameMode will only use my first 4 physical cores for the game? I have Ryzen 7 5700G. The script cds into the game dir before executing gamemoderun.

[mdiluz]

AFAIK that won't work, GameMode doesn't read configs on the fly like that, just the normal four locations.

[billbeans]

It says right here in the readme, under "Configuration":

Configuration files are loaded and merged from the following directories, from highest to lowest priority:

$PWD ("unsafe" - [gpu] settings take no effect in this file)

also when I run gamemoded -t in the game dir it lists that specific ini file

[mdiluz]

That directory is the one the daemon is running in (which is actually just / normally), not the one that gamemoderun is running from.

gamemoded -t lists it because that runs the daemon executable in test mode, which then tests the running daemon.

To be honest I can see why both of those combined confuses things.

[billbeans]

That directory is the one the daemon is running in (which is actually just / normally), not the one that gamemoderun is running from.

That makes sense, now I know why it wasn't working! That's even more inconvenient, IMO.

For a simple way to pin cores, I added this to my launch script, which I should probably upload to Github as it has a lot of convenient switches for other software as well.

GAMEMODE=1
PIN_CORES=1
CORE_LOAD=0-3

gamemode_config() {
    if [ -f "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini" ]
    then
        if [ -f "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini.bak" ]
        then
            rm "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini"
        else
            mv "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini" "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini.bak"
        fi
    fi

    if [[ "$PIN_CORES" == 1 ]] && [[ -n "$CORE_LOAD" ]]
    then
        echo "[cpu]" > "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini"
        echo "pin_cores=$CORE_LOAD" >> "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini"
    elif [[ "$PIN_CORES" == 0 ]]
    then
        echo "[cpu]" > "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini"
        echo "pin_cores=0" >> "$HOME/.config/gamemode.ini"
    fi
}

if [[ "$GAMEMODE" == 1 ]]
then
    gamemode_config
fi

# ~~~ the rest of my script ~~~

This is working for me so far. I am testing different core loads on Grand Theft Auto IV. If you play this game today you might notice that there are tons of stutters and skips regardless of how powerful your PC is. I believe the game was only meant to run on 4 cores. Initially, when I set WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY=4:0,1,2,3, it completely fixed the stuttering issue. I used Mangohud's CPU bars to confirm that it was working, only Wine seemed to count each of my individual threads as cores. A setting to disable hyperthreading might be useful too, although I'm not sure what it would do to other processes that might be running.

Interestingly, GameMode seems to know the difference between my physical cores and threads, because in the above code snippet it ended up pinning threads 0,2,4 and 6 individually. In a previous test when I did pin_cores=0,2,4,6 it did the same thing.

I will say that I still had stutters in my GTAIV session. It didn't bring as good of results as when I used Wine's CPU topology, so maybe locking the game to 2 cores with threads 0-3 is the better option. Judging by the Mangohud bars, it appears that Wine cannot differentiate between cores and threads.