Why use the D3D RenderSystem plugin?

[jwatte]

The Sims is likely the #1 selling PC title of all times -- not even counting all the expansions. Although getting totally accurate data is quite challenging. (Other top sellers include Big Game Hunter and Rollercoaster Tycoon -- they can't quite touch The Sims, though)

For example, Rockstar had sold like 10 million copies of "GTA" over a year ago, but that's across two titles, across a number of consoles, with the minority being on PC. Thus, that's not the #1 selling PC game.

[eugen]

yeah, halflife:)
sims, myst??!

[johnhpus]

I think it would be hard for a group on a Wiki to reach an accurate consensus about something like this, but for what it's worth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_be ... ideo_games

Super Mario Brothers on the NES is supposedly the top selling game ever with 40 million copies.

[PatrickB3]

To be fair I think you should have said "Number 1 selling PC game of all time". For a minute there I was all like "Wow, he worked on System Shock 2", and I'm sure everyone else had a different game in mind

Soooo true. I stand corrected.

No matter how hard it is to write a game, there will always be sucky and better games. The actual quality of the non-free games mostly depend on the publishers anyway - even if you have a great game but all publishers find it too risky to back, you're screwed.

There is almost always a publisher though sometimes not very large. Yeah you won't get $50 USD for the game but hey you get it published. Every year there is a new game that seems to come from no where and grabs attention. Always has been and probably always will.

I'd agree that Voodoo serie is long dead. However, many, many people I know use Geforce3 and Geforce4 cards even today. Calling them ancient and dead is a bit far from reality, imo. They are outdated, but still in use. And they card still perform with less artifacts than DirectX outmost times, as I had to note.

A minor correction, I said two of those cards. Yes many people still use GeForce 4 cards. Chances are if they have a GeForce 3 they won't buy your game unless it is shareware or bargain bin. People with good upgraded hardware buy lots of games. Also with a GeForce 3 or any other of that time period most of the advanced graphics won't even be seen so game play is a must.

Besides following your logic, OGRE, Irrlicht, RakNET, and other freely usable open source engines are hurting the game industry and world by making games far more easier to produce. I can't really believe that.

Yes, that is true. However not many people know about them. Besides I've been doing this for decades and it still took sacrificing a couple sheep at midnight while Venus and Mars were in alignment to get them all to compile and play nice with each other. They aren't exactly point and click... yet... but the door is open.

You said above consumers became picky - I beg to differ a bit. The reason you don't hear much about gameplay is the fact the likes for new gameplay elements are simply unpredictable... something that's brilliant in gameplay might just suck in sales (games like System Shock didn't really got picked up afaik, or Drakan, Hardwar), while yet-another-FPS-game might just be the big hit (seriously, what did Unreal Tournament or Quake3 add in gameplay? They were just normal FPS games with single player ripped out, only having already invented multiplayer modes. Yet, they were big hits).

I can assure you little to no marketing effort was made on the System Shock games. I never said innovative game play was a must. The only thing innovative about Tetris was that a program actually came out of Russia, a big feat in its day. But look at the hype that was built for Tetris, Quake, UT, etc. Their lack of gameplay requires them to upgrade continously. However, they are still fun. That's what is important, that game play is fun. If a game has good graphics the screen shots and boxes will get the constomers attention. But it won't make them buy it.

For example look at the patch list for the latest Ogre. It pushes the technical feature of allowing entities to play animations that aren't in its skeleton, on the condition the other entity has the same skeleton. This is enough to make some people drool. Programmer techie types. For players this means that more varied characters can be made since they won't need all the animations made just for them. Game play Speak vs. Tech Speak is like the glass is half full / half empty. Just depends on how you phrase it. If it can't be mentioned in a game play light then it isn't worth mentioning at all. ( However this isn't true here as this is a tech forum )

Erm, I'm confused how we can check the credits of a game that wasn't named for a name that wasn't mentioned? OpenGL isn't a competitor to DX anymore?

Sorry I'm not allowed to mention in public forums who I am though I believe if one really cared I gave a really big hint. It would be implied that they are looking at Ogre for use in a product when in actuality I'm using it for my own private use.

Supporting OpenGL is cheap and easy to do from a big developers point of view. But do keep in mind that the Quake and Doom engines are from id Software where they hate DirectX with a passion. When you license those engines you get OpenGL for free and have to do nothing to offer it so they do. Look at Ogre, I deleted the buggy, mosty useless, unsupported DirectX 7 driver but I keep the OpenGL one even though I haven't even bothered to see what it looks like with it.

Basically it comes down to DirectX vs. OpenGL is like Mac vs. PC. There's a reason the PC stands for Personal Computer, lol. Nothing wrong with a Mac but if you want the most money you can earn from a software you support the..... consoles. OK consoles are out of most people's reach with 100's USDs developement kit. Next largest PC.

Microsoft has spent a fortune educating people that DirectX is what games use. You are never gonna top that arguing in a forum for OpenGL.

Lastly always remember in Entertainment Software, "It's a business doing pleasure with you." Over my career I've had to kill many a game that wasn't fun, or too buggy, or many other reasons. You have to have good business sense too when making a game. Let's say I can make a game for only one console system. The X-Box has the best hardware, oh but wait, bad games on the PS2 outsell hits on the X-Box. Hmmm... Insert Jeopardy music here... What is the PS2? Alex. Just how it has to be.

Well anyways laters all. I have learned so much about 3D from these forums I wanted to share with you the things I know about. Thanks for all the help. Hope to see one of you in the next big hit.

[alphageek]

I am really curious now which game really was meant

I'm pretty sure he's talking about this:
http://tinyurl.com/6esbk
Couldn't find a list of credits anywhere though.

[Sternenstaub]

In my opinion, if talking about the best sold game of all times, it should not be measured in absolute numbers of sold copies. It should be measured in number of sold copies per PCs in households, because they increased a lot in the last years.

I have no real numbers to compare with at the moment, so the following example is just with theoretical values:
If a pc game was sold 1 million times 10 years ago, with - lets say - 100 million PCs in households around the world, then in my opinion its the same like if you sell 2 million copies of the game today with 200 million PCs in households around the world.
Or in other worlds: How many of the potential customers have bought that game? A person without a PC is not really a potential customer of a pc game
So I dont think its the right way to compare absolute values of sold copies from today with absolute numbers from 7 or 8 years ago, where less people had PCs at home.

But dont get me wrong: Off course its a very good achievment to sell million of copies of a game! I just think you cant compare absolute numbers of sold copies from today with the numbers from years ago, so when talking about the best sold game of all times we should not do that just basing on the absolute numbers of sold copies.

But, well, thats just my personal opinion and i am not a marketing guy

[IoN_PuLse]

Basically it comes down to DirectX vs. OpenGL is like Mac vs. PC.

Not only does that not make any sense, it certainly doesn't sound like something a programmer would say.

But do keep in mind that the Quake and Doom engines are from id Software where they hate DirectX with a passion. When you license those engines you get OpenGL for free and have to do nothing to offer it so they do. Look at Ogre, I deleted the buggy, mosty useless, unsupported DirectX 7 driver but I keep the OpenGL one even though I haven't even bothered to see what it looks like with it.

id Software doesn't hate DirectX, John Carmack prefers OpenGL. They still use DirectX for sound, input, etc. OpenGL has numerous advantages over DirectX. Also, the Ogre OpenGL "driver" (actually called a renderer) will look exactly like Ogre DirectX one, because that's kind of the point of a library like Ogre, being able to choose either and produce the same result.

[AssiDragon]

There is almost always a publisher though sometimes not very large. Yeah you won't get $50 USD for the game but hey you get it published. Every year there is a new game that seems to come from no where and grabs attention. Always has been and probably always will.

...and they have a nice chance to fail financially - due to many factors. Publisher is one, imo.

A minor correction, I said two of those cards. Yes many people still use GeForce 4 cards. Chances are if they have a GeForce 3 they won't buy your game unless it is shareware or bargain bin.

Actually, I argued the fact I don't consider Gf3 any less dead than Gf4 yet... and besides, I'm making a free game so I don't have to care much for buying ^_^ but even technically speaking, some Geforce3 variants (like my desktop PC's Gf3 Titanium) are better than standard Geforce4 cards.

People with good upgraded hardware buy lots of games. Also with a GeForce 3 or any other of that time period most of the advanced graphics won't even be seen so game play is a must.

Well, with modern games, I'd say for good graphics Gf-FX-fewthousand is a must rather lol. Agreed about the part people who can spend on their box will spend on games tho.

Yes, that is true. However not many people know about them. Besides I've been doing this for decades and it still took sacrificing a couple sheep at midnight while Venus and Mars were in alignment to get them all to compile and play nice with each other. They aren't exactly point and click... yet... but the door is open.

True, making them work together isn't a few clicks yet. However, you have to admit that instead of having to make your own renderer, physics engine, sound engine, networking etc you can just use these products - which actually simplfizes things, a lot. As for not many people knowing about it... hope it will change. The OGRE team would deserve it. =)

I can assure you little to no marketing effort was made on the System Shock games. I never said innovative game play was a must. The only thing innovative about Tetris was that a program actually came out of Russia, a big feat in its day.

And the fact that noone before came up with that idea. Just like the Rubik-cube - it's a very, very simple thing yet somehow it retained the name of it's inventor.

But look at the hype that was built for Tetris, Quake, UT, etc.

Tetris? Hype? o.O Maybe it's just where I live but tetris was never ever large here. The only tetris things I saw were programs downloaded from the net, but by when I got those, I already noted you have all sorts of minigames up there for free...

I do agree about hype surrounding Quake and UT though. And I don't like it.

Their lack of gameplay requires them to upgrade continously.

I'd be happy with them if they were upgraded not only visually...

However, they are still fun.

Well, depends. They are fun for a while - or for those people who don't mind doing the same things over and over a million times for a long time. Which is not a bad thing, but sounds horrid to me.

That's what is important, that game play is fun. If a game has good graphics the screen shots and boxes will get the constomers attention. But it won't make them buy it.

Hmmm. As I remember Doom3 and HL2 was advertised exactly with the graphical features (and the gravity gun in case of HL2) - well, apart from their well-established brand. Also, the only difference between the UT games is the graphics. So I'd challange the fact graphics don't sell...

For example look at the patch list for the latest Ogre. It pushes the technical feature of allowing entities to play animations that aren't in its skeleton, on the condition the other entity has the same skeleton. This is enough to make some people drool. Programmer techie types. For players this means that more varied characters can be made since they won't need all the animations made just for them. Game play Speak vs. Tech Speak is like the glass is half full / half empty. Just depends on how you phrase it. If it can't be mentioned in a game play light then it isn't worth mentioning at all. ( However this isn't true here as this is a tech forum )

Pretties graphics, or easing the job of modellers is far from actual game play, at least in my dictionary. The fact you get fancier graphics or reduced workload for modellers does not mean you got better gameplay... (Again, just because UT games keep getting constantly better graphics release by release, I don't feel their gameplay changes anything. You still just go around shooting things with anything that happens to be in your hand.)

Or I'm just missing the point.

Basically it comes down to DirectX vs. OpenGL is like Mac vs. PC. There's a reason the PC stands for Personal Computer, lol. Nothing wrong with a Mac but if you want the most money you can earn from a software you support the..... consoles. OK consoles are out of most people's reach with 100's USDs developement kit. Next largest PC.

Not exactly true. If you want your game be playable on Linux without things like WinE, you need to include OGL support as DirectX is... windows only. That said, I don't know how much a priority cross-OSing is for commercial games.

And I'm not really convinced by the performance Dx would have over OGL... as I said on my cards OGL is less buggy than Dx.

Well anyways laters all. I have learned so much about 3D from these forums I wanted to share with you the things I know about. Thanks for all the help. Hope to see one of you in the next big hit.

Thanks for coming and sharing your views =)

[johnhpus]

On the subject of the state of the end user's hardware there's this survey that's conducted by Steam. These are obviously going to be high end systems though, considering it's HL2.

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

[PatrickB3]

I wasn't gonna reply but IoN_PuLse made me laugh...

Also, the Ogre OpenGL "driver" (actually called a renderer) will look exactly like Ogre DirectX one, because that's kind of the point of a library like Ogre, being able to choose either and produce the same result.

ROFL, ah to be naive again, I could only dream. Because I have an nVidia card they probably look the same maybe I'll even try later. However the same program looks very different on my nVidia and Intel chipsets. As a matter of fact it looks different on my GeForce 4 MX and on my GeForce 5900 FX. The purpose of these libraries is to shield you from having to handle those differences and to try to get them as close as possible. Neither Ogre nor any other piece of software can perform those miracles. BTW Ion I'm not laughing at you but myself. I understood what you meant.

id Software doesn't hate DirectX, John Carmack prefers OpenGL.

id Software uses OpenGL because unlike DirectX they can control it. Pure and simple. This way they are always ahead of the times instead of limited to the same playing field all DirectX users are on. Though the DirectX versions don't do as much or aren't as fast, they are what most users play. Also keep in mind that those games offer multiplayer usually running from a Linux server. OpenGL is far easier to test on a Linux Server for obvious reasons.

For AssiDragon:

True, making them work together isn't a few clicks yet. However, you have to admit that instead of having to make your own renderer, physics engine, sound engine, networking etc you can just use these products - which actually simplfizes things, a lot. As for not many people knowing about it... hope it will change. The OGRE team would deserve it. =)

Definately! That is why I'm using Ogre. I want to try something and don't want to fight with the in-house engines where you have to worry about breaking the engine instead of the game. Heck, I'm using FMod instead of the sound system I wrote just because I wrote it too long ago and am far too lazy to add MP3 support to it. lol. Also using RakNet as I'm afraid of DirectPlay since Microsoft has stopped supporting it and though it works really well it could be a problem when they stop including it in DirectX.

Tetris? Hype? o.O Maybe it's just where I live but tetris was never ever large here.

Again correct, it is where you live. Tetris was huge in the US. Even made Time magazine and Newsweek somehing only a handfull of games have ever done.

Also for AssiDragon: Personally I hate FPS. I buy them to check out what's new in the engines this year but never play them. However a lot of people find them fun even if I do not. Basically they are just electronic tag and as such can only improve their graphics to sell more copies. Just the nature of the beast.

Hmmm. As I remember Doom3 and HL2 were advertised exactly with the graphical features (and the gravity gun in case of HL2) - well, apart from their well-established brand. Also, the only difference between the UT games is the graphics. So I'd challange the fact graphics don't sell...

People already owned the game so the only thing they were buying in the new version was the better graphics. However thousands of games are produced a year ( counting Shareware and Freeware ) and using FPS as a gauge for the industry is just wrong. Doom3 is good to look at when considering FPS only. Food for thought, more people play pogo.com with its 1994 graphics than any other commercial game. The most played game for Windows is Solitaire BTW. Meanwhile every year hundreds of games with beautiful art just get ignored.

Pretties graphics, or easing the job of modellers is far from actual game play, at least in my dictionary. The fact you get fancier graphics or reduced workload for modellers does not mean you got better gameplay

Also true. I was using that as an example of how to word a tech issue in game play terms. However you do have to make it true by offering them more choices that actually affect the game play of the game or else it doesn't mean anything.

Not exactly true. If you want your game be playable on Linux without things like WinE, you need to include OGL support as DirectX is... windows only. That said, I don't know how much a priority cross-OSing is for commercial games.

That one I can tell you, since I worked for the world's largest producer of entertainment software in five years there were no Linux titles and seven Mac titles. Also all the Mac titles were ports by another company. Interestingly even Cross-Console isn't always a must. Licensed content such as big movies must come in all flavors to make money. Original titles may be Game Cube only as it is the only system that can handle it for example even though it has horriable sales.

Ultimately it depends on what you want to do. I'm speaking from a commercial product point of view. You may be making a free or shareware game now, but one day wouldn't it be nice to actually make money doing something you love? These bits of information are for that day.

One last hint on the game. The box has a nice sticker saying "#1 best selling PC game of all time" of which there is only one ( unless you find a really old copy of Myst that says that from back in the days it was. lol.

[johnhpus]

Exhibit A: http://www.strategyplanet.com/thesims/o ... log2.shtml



edit:
Found this as well at : http://thesims.ea.com/us/news/january.html but it only links to a missing article.

Sunday January 30, 2000
Video Demo on All Games Network
Check out the All Games Network for a video demo of The Sims. Maxis' PR Manager Patrick Buechner will explain it all!

Google'ing "Patrick Buechner" can provide you with interviews, press releases etc. issued by who I presume our secret friend to be.

I don't want to be overly confrontational, but when you were telling an obviously skilled programmer that maybe he wasn't cut out for programming games and justifying the weight of your arguments by dropping loads of hints about your involvement with the Sims ... why didn't you mention that you were a "PR Manager" and not a programmer?

[sinbad]

Well, because he probably can't answer given the comments about required vagueness above, I'll answer - programmers tend to end up being managers eventually you know, if you're around long enough. It's kind of expected - people look at a 40-50 year old programmer as someone who didn't have a proper career. Unfortunate perhaps, but true. Hell, I'm only in my early 30's and I'm already drifting further into management than I'd really like, but raw coder salaries are rubbish I make up for it in my spare time.

[Kai-Peter]

<PatrickB3 talking about ShortHike>

Yes I have seen his program. Though graphically impressive it isn't exactly earth shattering game play either. I was glad to see a new space program for a change though.

Wow. I'm talked about in the third person .. Nice that ShortHike made you happy Patrick!

Ok, it's time to put an end to this. PatrickB3's use of the pronoun "you" might have sound slightly confrontational while addressing Game Programming skills. However, I'm sure he will in the future resort to Private Messages when gracing me with personal career advice and tips on improving ShortHike. Patrick, I'm very much looking forward to your correspondence.

The discussion has been interesting but a lot of it does not make business sense for a downloadable company like mine. ShortHike is primarily about maximizing steady long term profit while E.A. in-house developers like Maxis usually go for raw market share. The dynamics works out so that my sweet spot for maximum profits is running a pretty small operation. I'm also dependent on the downloadable demo for 90% of sales, which gives some technical constraints. I think it's important to keep the business perspective in mind here, commercial projects like ShortHike do need to put business first.

- Using a current DX version requires practically everyone to download the updated runtime. When the demo is 15MB, the DX Runtime 30+MB and sales drop exponentially with download size you can see that DX9 makes no business sense.
- I need to support OpenGL as Mac is a potentially hugely profitable platform for me. Again, part of the peculiarity of my specific business.

So just to derail the thread back to the original question: OpenGL is my primary interface and I'd like to know of it makes business sense to keep the DX9 interface around or not. I'm still looking for pointers to hard conformance data for OpenGL and DX drivers..

[makeshiftwings]

I'm no PR manager, but talking trash about other people on the forum and then claiming you're allowed to because you work at EA really isn't very good PR for them.

[IoN_PuLse]

OpenGL is far easier to test on a Linux Server for obvious reasons.

This make no sense, plenty of DX-only games (Battlefield, CS:S, Star wars battlefront, the list goes on) have linux servers. The server doesn't need a rendering API at all.

[GameStudioD]

Supporting OpenGL as the primary rendering system and Direct3D 9 as a fall back makes the best business sense. OpenGL will not work on 100% of Windows computers because of the number of bad drivers. By keeping Direct3D 9, the game has a higher success rate of running as intended.

Even if you were able to find any numbers on driver reliability, the numbers may not be accurate. The Half Life 2 numbers reflect the target market for that game, consisting of 'hardcore' gamers who buy good hardware and constanly update their drivers. The target market for ShortHike will be drastically different.

To make matters worse the Direct X Team has 'promised' to release a Direct X 9 update each quarter. Four times a year. The confusing naming system just makes matters worse. Direct X 9.0c (June 2005). Do not bother including the full install of Direct X in your download.

Where does the crash occur? Creating the Direct 3D 9 object or at certain function calls?

[vgmdev]

I think ATI is rewriting the opengl driver? Or did they scrap it...

[IoN_PuLse]

They already rewrote it from scratch (supposedly) months ago, due to poor Doom3 performance.

[Promit]

From what I can figure, there's no reason to use OpenGL except for cross-platform support, or if you want to experiment with some obscure feature that NV or ATI have been playing with. I don't really see any advantage with OpenGL for...well, much of anything.

[Kojack]

I typically never use opengl unless I have to. No hard reasons, just what I do.

I'm currently running ogre in opengl (as of a few days ago), but purely because the dx render systems haven't implemented the render texture function to write contents to a file, so my cubic panorama screenshot is opengl only (and upsidedown).
Also, the annoying sdk issues recently have made me use opengl at times. If I compile an ogre app at home (can't even remember what version of dx9.0c I've got here) and run it at work with the dx9 renderer, it typically reboots the pc, or sometimes just powers down the monitor and sits there. I either switch to opengl (works fine) or do a rebuild of the dx9 renderer using the correct dx9 version sdk.

Last year, I'd sometimes switch to opengl when debugging a student's project (using ogre 0.15), and it often didn't look the same. Can't remember the differences now, but it was pretty distinct. But now, they look the same. Debug mode is giving faster and more stable framerates in dx9 than opengl on my geforce 4, but debug mode isn't a good measure (only tested in that because I don't have release mode built right now).

Yay for System Shock 2!


Back to the original question... if your game looks correct in opengl, and it gives good enough performance on various cards (ati, nvidia, others), there's no real need to include dx9 support. But some people prefer dx9 for various reasons, so maybe include the renderer still, but just warn them that it's not supported by you and it's up to them to get the correct dx9 version.

[IoN_PuLse]

Promit, have you read most of this thread? One of the many advantages that OpenGL has over DirectX is that you don't have to have the "latest" version installed in order for your app/game to work. Currently DX9 is updating every few months and if you compile with their latest release, your users must have that latest release also installed.

And if you're thinking "well, you usually have to have the latest video card drivers for opengl to work right with newer games" the same goes with DirectX. In the end, you get a more stable API (ie: stuff isn't changing on a monthly basis possibly breaking your code) and less of a hassle for your end-users.

[Promit]

Currently DX9 is updating every few months and if you compile with their latest release, your users must have that latest release also installed.

No, D3DX is updating every few months, and they ship a DLL. Check which version of the DLL you're built against, and drop it in the app dir along with all the other libs that you've got for various purposes. It's not a big deal. And as a developer, there's no need to keep up with the new releases unless they make a compelling change. A lot of the movement in D3DX is in the upper superstructure, things like the GUI system and such. DX itself is stable and has been for a long time now.