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Will the Lack of DX10 on XP Spur OpenGL Dev?
Sparr0 asks: "Microsoft has announcement that DirectX 10 will not be released for Windows XP (which means no Shader Model 4.0 and no Geometry Shaders). I have since been waiting for news of game developers switching to OpenGL, in order to get the best graphics on the best hardware on the most popular gaming OS, however there is nary a whisper of such. Will such a shift occur, even if only in small amounts? When? Why not? It is probably safe to say that Unreal Tournament 3 (AKA UT2007) will have OpenGL as an option in Windows, but that is both unsurprising and also a long way off. Ditto for Quake Wars, and most other games that are planning a native Linux clients. Where are all of the other big names with Windows-only offerings? Why haven't we heard from Valve, Blizzard, Sony, or EA, to name a few?"
Funny somebody with the grammatical abilities of a 7 year old chiding others for being 'kids'.
Sorry you fail in life:
Funny[, ] somebody with the grammatical abilities of a 7 year old [is] chiding others for being 'kids'.
Alternatively:
Funny [that] somebody with the grammatical abilities of a 7 year old [is] chiding others for being 'kids'.
Two reasons that make replying with grammar remarks pointless:
1. You're almost guaranteed to (multiple) make similar mistakes in your "ha-ha you have mistakes" post, which makes you look like an idiot.
2. In a discussion about DirectX and OpenGL, no one cares about the comment grammar, so nitpicking this makes your look like an idiot. Basically no one effin cares.
PS: I don't guarantee this post is completely grammatically correct or typo free either: see point 2.
It's funny that John Carmack stated pretty much the exact opposite about ease of use and expense to develop with.
It was around DX5ish, and he has since recanted. They look forward to using DirectX, which has matured and makes cross-development with the XBOX much, much easier.
It seems to me like it might be a good investment to create a good, solid, cross-platform engine (using OpenGL), and maintain that indefinitely. It may be harder to create initially, but I imagine it would not be significantly harder to maintain in the long run.
My understanding, as a non-coder-
First off, using DirectX on 360 is so crazy convenient... it's a wonderful environment to work with- great documentation, great support, and extremely capable. Porting that to PC using DX is a no brainer- why would you even bother with OpenGL? As far as OpenGL for PS3, etc. goes- it's just cheaper for us to have another studio port it, and handle all the API-level work. They're better off working with PS3's proprietary graphics libraries anyways. It's just not a major issue for us to switch PSGL for DirectX, etc. That's really not the bulk of your problem.
And Wii- well... you don't port 360 games to Wii, in most cases.
The solid class-platform engine is really the right idea and most of our system people would gladly undertake that task. Honestly, that's the ideal, though- often not the reality. Imagine you're developing a new IP on a new engine- suddenly production and design changes EVERYTHING and you have to restructure- new requirements arise, platform changes mid-production!
Now imagine the building is ON FIRE! I mean, figuratively. You have less time every day- thousands of bugs are flowing in from QA and you've got to put in speed hacks, functionality hacks, etc... you no longer can focus on the big picture because there's so many small things to deal with. The only thing you can do is get it shippable before X date set by your publishers. And suddenly most of your engine-level coders are already shifted to a new project across the studio, because their time is NOT cheap.
Why can't you just calmly develop a solid base? Because you're working on putting out as many profitable projects as possible. The best shot you have is if your publisher decides that your studio needs to create *THE* cross platform engine for X number of games across X studios to use. Otherwise, as far as the consumers are concerned, what does it matter if you're releasing a crazily coded mess? With new IP's, how will you know your product will do well enough for that engine to be practical? If you're not selling that engine, it's usually not fiscally viable, espcially since technology needs to be advancing so quickly.
We try, though. If we could afford to, had the time, etc.- I'm sure we would.
In either case, we're looking at using DX (PC, 360..) or PSGL (PS3), why would we ever need to use OpenGL... ? If it's not more capable, easier to use, and we're not targeting Mac, Linux, or Wii- then why bother?