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Valve To Support DX10 With Episode 2
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Mar 15, 2007 12:06 PM
from the really-really-shiny-alyx-vance dept.
from the really-really-shiny-alyx-vance dept.
In an interview with Game Informer from last week, representatives from Valve confirmed that they'll be supporting DirectX 10 functionality in the release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2. This will be the case even for those folks who haven't upgraded to Vista yet. No worries if you don't have a DX10 card, though. They've got functionality nailed all the way back to DirectX 8, and are trying to push it all the way back to 7.
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Screw you Valve (Score:4, Interesting)
Delay (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
From the gamer's perspective, the benefit of episodic gaming is to refocus on the content.
The frustration comes from Valve paying lip-service to that idea, while still focused on the technology behind the content. Valve broke an implicit shift in priorities.
If the console versions were causing the delay, then they should have been delayed and the PC Episode 2 should've been on Steam months and months ago.
Re:Delay (Score:4, Insightful)
Its "release often" with new levels and story. Thats it. You must meet the release date to make episodic gaming work. I guess its not surprising that valve, who in their short history has made their name a synonym for delays screws this up so bad. Is something holding the release up? Then cut it. Console ports? New graphical features? Cut it, and release it later. There will be more episodes, you can include the features then. And your stuff comes over the steam platform...release now, add that crap later. Parent said, the focus is on content...and I'd say content delivered regularly.
Its in the name, episodic. They want people to come home on friday (end of the month, quarter, whatever) and go "Oh good! Its X day! I'll go buy the latest episode off of steam!" The very idea of episodic gaming business model is that it becomes habit to buy the episodes. This doesn't work if the people come home and go "Oh good! Its X day!" and then find out the episodic is delayed until next tuesday. You move the schedule around and they're going to stop looking out for the release. You can't expect people to make buying your games a habit if you can't make releasing it on time a habit too. And here's a little secret...all the episodes don't even have to be good, just the first few and most of the rest. Same way with TV shows, even my favorite shows have crummy episodes that I watch anyway because...its a habit.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
DirectX 7 (Score:2)
With a few simple commands in the console, the Source engine currently supports DirectX 7, although it is sometimes buggy and displays a few textures improperly. I believe the Episode 2 engine should have no problem performing at least on the same level as the current iteration.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt anyone having older GPUs is going to be able to do much with any Source games anyway and would not be anywhere near the target audience.
Dual core? (Score:2)
Wasn't steam/half life 2 engine supposed to have this when episode 2 came out?
Thats of more interest to me...
(I won't go on again about how i can't get cs:s to work on my Athlon 64x2 setup
as someone will tell me to try stuff i've already tried.
yes i've tried the hotfix etc)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you tried giving up and switching to a game where developers actually support and improve their products? Pretty much the only option when dealing with Valve.
Re: (Score:2)
Great but... (Score:2, Insightful)
...I would rather they spent time making the Source engine use openGL so that game developers would be able to use the Source engine on the Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, etc.
Unreal 3 is openGL hence why more companies are using that compared to Valve's Source engine. Hopefully they will get the hint sooner rather then later.
Both DirectX and openGL just tell the gfx card what to do. The fact that they decided to use DirectX which only works on Microsoft platforms for a game engine they're trying to licens
Re:Great but... (Score:5, Informative)
Unreal 3 is openGL hence why more companies are using that compared to Valve's Source engine. Hopefully they will get the hint sooner rather then later.
You do realize that PS3 and the like use OpenGL ES, which is NOT the same as the GL on computers?
Besides, they have tons of custom extensions necessary to use these machines efficiently...
Oh, and forget about a Source rewrite for OpenGL. There just is not point in this. Direct3D works on the platform 96% of all PC gamers use. A rewrite is EXTREMELY time-consuming, because of the differences in the API designs. We're talking about at least a 6-month-delay here (very likely more).
Both DirectX and openGL just tell the gfx card what to do.
But not equally. GL binds sampler states to a texture, D3D binds them to sampler stages. D3D has +Z as "inward", OpenGL -Z. D3D has +Y as "down", OpenGL "up". There is no equivalent to an OpenGL rectangle texture in Direct3D. The GLSL API works quite differently than the HLSL one etc. Do you want to finance the rewrite, the bug-fixing, beta-testing?
The fact that they decided to use DirectX which only works on Microsoft platforms for a game engine they're trying to license to other companies is pretty stupid from a business point of view.
"Only" is quite funny. Windows is an enormous gaming platform. Also, you get Xbox support nearly for free. As for machines like the PS3 and the Wii, forget about having one universal engine for all of them. ALL AAA titles are written specifically for one title, and maybe ported to another, requiring substantial rewrites (this is why usually console titles arent ported to other consoles). Try porting Shadow Of The Colossus from PS2 to Wii for example.
Sorry, but your suggestions are absolutely suicidal for all but the wealthiest of all game development companies. Because of the ARB being much too slow, OpenGL stagnated in the important years 1996-2001. Heck, a decent render-to-texture mechanism got introduced 2005, while DirectX already had one 1998. OpenGL was in an excellent position back in the 90s: Direct3D 3 sucked, OpenGL was better, easier, finer. But if you have graphics card manufacturers and game developers on one side, demanding more features, and an obscenely slow ARB on the other side, there can be only one solution - create another API. Nowadays many codebases are D3D based precisely because OpenGL just sucked in the post-D3D7 era. And rewriting the entire codebase is suicide, as already said. Which is a shame, because OpenGL is pretty decent now, and if the OpenGL 3 rumors are right, it will rock.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
First, I'm assuming you meant to say that all AAA titles are written specifically for one platform, etc. Assuming that is what you meant, I also think this is a pretty faulty statement. Have you looked at console gaming lately? The majority of titles out there appear on at least two consoles, if not all three. The latest iteration of the Call of Duty franchise would be a good example. I
What is DirectX 10 (Score:2)
The biggest deals (Score:3, Informative)
2) Unified shader API. All shaders (pixel, vertex and geometry) are talked to in the
Old DX (Score:2)
It wasn't that... neither of us ever got to the bottom of it since I had to reformat my system due to another problem.
But, while putting on the switches to force it to run in DX7, gotta tell you, it was UGLY. Source was definitely made to use DX9. DX7 support looked like it consisted of just
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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You're forgetting the part that if DX10 was actually available for XP, you'd still need to wait for the video card companies to develop new drivers. It's not going to happen. That's too much time and money.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When Windows 95, everyone jumped on board, at least, most tried to and did so fairly quickly. Windows 98 came along, people were fine with jumping on fairly quickly. Even ME came out, and a lot of unfortunate fools decided to upgrade. But then when XP came out, people were a lot more reluctant (possibly because of the ME debacle), in fact, if anything, XP showed people how similar 2000 was, and MANY companies simply "upgraded" to 2000, and went for years
Re:DX10 on Windows XP? (Score:4, Funny)
Today: "Valve to support DX10 with Episode 2"
The Mysterious Future: "Microsoft to support DX10 on XP with the release of Duke Nukem Forever."
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're like the rest of the world, and still using XP, you'll use DX9 (or 8 - I guess depending on your video card.)
Right now, there is no way to use DX10 under anything other than Vista.
Re: (Score:2)