I had a gamepad using LPT1 in 1999
Then you had an abnormally ancient gamepad
I had a gamepad using LPT1 in 1999
Regardless, nobody on PC actually gamed with gamepads until Xbox 360 became prevalent.
I used the shit out of my gravis gamepad and pc fighter 6. Bullshit.
Funnily enough though, today I can't for the life of me get UT99 running without framerate hitches in Direct3D, whilst OpenGL runs flawlessly on newer hardware.
I used the shit out of my gravis gamepad and pc fighter 6. Bullshit.
I used the shit out of my gravis gamepad and pc fighter 6. Bullshit.
Meanwhile, no vulkan update for Doom yet.
Anectodal evidence ftw.
Controllers for PC were incredibly niche. Even Microsoft couldn't keep its peripheral division afloat for long, despite making the best controllers of the era. I still have a couple fully functional MS Sidewinder flight sticks (that have no current Windows drivers, ironically) but I have no delusions that many other people had one. YMMV, but just because you used them doesn't mean they were common.
that's not what I meant. perhaps a bit poorly formulated on my part but a skilled(and serious) programmer recognizes the huge benefits of writing his own code and the hidden costs of using "generic" frameworks. From a software quality point of view, it's a no-brainer unless the scope of the product is huge or competence is lacking.You arent a serious dev unless you build your own engine? You want cash starved indie developers to waste their time reinventing the wheel?
Neither of these statements are realistic nor reflective of modern games development.
You and a couple thousand other people. X360 pad was an absolute game changer for the PC and to argue otherwise is to be wrong.I used the shit out of my gravis gamepad and pc fighter 6. Bullshit.
Yep, it totally changed the game. It eliminated support for all other game pads in most games!You and a couple thousand other people. X360 pad was an absolute game changer for the PC and to argue otherwise is to be wrong.
You and a couple thousand other people. X360 pad was an absolute game changer for the PC and to argue otherwise is to be wrong.
that's not what I meant. perhaps a bit poorly formulated on my part but a skilled(and serious) programmer recognizes the huge benefits of writing his own code and the hidden costs of using "generic" frameworks. From a software quality point of view, it's a no-brainer unless the scope of the product is huge or competence is lacking.
ue4 and unity aren't wheels though. out of all the libraries I've ever used I've maybe come across 4-5 that I'd consider proper wheels, meaning that they do what they do almost perfectly and slots seamlessly in to any kind of project. Frameworks by definition can't be wheels(in the sense that you mean). Fact is most "generic" code is awful not because it's written poorly but because applications are never generic things.
yes I think indie developers should at least seriously consider writing their own engines if they have solid programmers.
ARegardless, nobody on PC actually gamed with gamepads until Xbox 360 became prevalent.
That just gave me memories I didn't even know existed. The amount of THPS I played on that as a kid.That's pretty far back. I started with this
You and a couple thousand other people. X360 pad was an absolute game changer for the PC and to argue otherwise is to be wrong.
Yep, it totally changed the game. It eliminated support for all other game pads in most games!
that's not what I meant. perhaps a bit poorly formulated on my part but a skilled(and serious) programmer recognizes the huge benefits of writing his own code and the hidden costs of using "generic" frameworks. From a software quality point of view, it's a no-brainer unless the scope of the product is huge or competence is lacking.
Gemüsepizza;209695225 said:What? DICE did not create Vulkan
And all signs are pointing to them using DX12 for their future games like Battlefield 1.
Someone already corrected you, but: Yes, they did. Mantle was a DICE->Frostbite inititaive that AMD took up and then that became Vulkan through AMD and Chronos.
most serious devs still make their own engines and I'd argue indie developers should do so as well if they have competent programmers. I have no clue about ratio but it would certainly be a disaster if every game made in the future was made using ue or unity.
well I disagree and since tons of games(from one man projects to aaa games) using custom engines are released every year it's factually incorrect that developing your own engine is infeasible.I am a serious and skilled programmer, and I recognize that the realities of development means that developing your own game engine from scratch is entirely unfeasible these days.
I don't agree and there are plenty of games with custom engines released every year as proof. The requirements you mention apply to all games as a whole but each game - especially indie games only need a subset of that expertise. And obviously if you write your own engine you will be able to make informed decisions about any third party code you might consider using based on if it actually makes sense to put in your project.But... that's pretty much the point.
Videogames are some of the most complicated, highest required performance and largest scope software projects that exist, and require expertise across dozens - if not hundreds - of different disciplines.
It is a practical necessity to use third party frameworks to complete a project; I mean, just think about the different elements of a modern title that need to be considered; realtime low latency networking, advanced low latency rendering techniques, physics simulations, realtime data reading, writing and decompression... all of that before you've even thought about things like gameplay.
I don't agree and there are plenty of games with custom engines released every year as proof.
Most of the time when I have heard someone say that they can't use the STL it was because they don't truly understand how it works (or how C++ in general works really -- which is admittedly not the most trivial thing to understand), or how it can be customized.And if you are going to be cutting edge on anything, you will likely have to implement it yourself anyway to fit your needs. good generic software that just fits everything isn't a thing, it doesn't exists. even stuff like the c++ standard library which has been worked on for decades by some of the smartest programmers in the world is unusable for many applications.
I'd say DX's 'secret' killer app was DirectInput, which enabled finding and remapping of any connected device to be basically transparent to an end user.
Bear in mind before we had super useful things like USB ports, people were hooking up controllers via the frigging printer port
Gemüsepizza;209692507 said:I did. WIndows 7 will become irrelevant for AAA gaming very fast.
This whole discussion basically boils down to this:
On one side, we have devs who want to use the latest technology with the best tools and documentation. Technology which gives them the ability to make the best games with as much comfort as possible, in the shortest time possible.
On the other side we have ideologists who think they need to fight against big bad Microsoft and their evil proprietary DX. They quickly dismiss the realities of game development and the advantages of DX. And when they realize that neither devs, nor customers and publishers really care about their hypothetical fears, they don't understand the world anymore. See those tweets above.
MS attempts to fuck over their own Windows 7 base may backfire on them. Sounds about right.
Aren't you confusing 'requirement' with 'advantage' ? Not only that, but using UWP doesn't make your render pipeline work on both PC and X1 with a single code path. At most it's a framework in which your actual game code runs, which for PC and X1 still requires different codepaths if you want to get decent performance.
There's nothing preventing it--Apple just likes walled gardens. All Apple would have to do is make sure OSX was compatible with Vulkan--I believe they were realy into OpenGL for quite a while, so odds are half the work is already done/figured out.
Thanks for the replies, but that doesn't really answer my question. Yes, Apple have no interest in Vulkan and have their own thing happening that only works with the stuff they're pimping. Can't the same be said of MS? MS want everyone using DX12 on W10. Vulkan only distracts from Microsoft's goals, so who did the work to put it on Win7, 8, and 10? I assumed it would've been engineers working for Khronos. Was it actually MS?The fact they don't even support some of the newer opengl version should say enough.
Unless that situation changed.
Err, XBox has even less users than W10. Like, way less. Vulkan passes far more users than DX12 does.Gemüsepizza;209747539 said:But DX12 is also on Xbox.
For comparison, what's the code difference between two Vulkan platforms? The same 1%? 10%? Once your Vulkan code passes Win7, Win8, Win10, and Linux, how much of your code will need to be changed when you port the entire project to DX12 in an effort to pass an additional 20M Bone owners?Gemüsepizza;209748775 said:If you had read the tweets, you would have seen that an actual DX12 developer did comment on this guys tweets, and said that the difference between DX12 on Xbox and PC is about 1%.
Another solid MS victory!Yep, it totally changed the game. It eliminated support for all other game pads in most games!
No surprise at all, seems that since Microsoft plan to have 99% of the world computers with Windows 10 until the end of the year will not succeed, most of the developers will follow the same path. It just makes no sense to exclude all Windows 7 users, unless you have a very lucrative deal with Microsoft to only release your game on Windows Store.
Exactly. Exclusively targeting Vulkan doesn't mean you're excluding W10 users at all, so by using Vulkan *over* DX12, you're expanding your potential userbase (on Steam) from 45% to 85%. And that's just the Windows users... you add in the Linux users who'll also have the benefits of Vulkan support and you'll have cover even more.Regarding the above poster about 45%, wouldn't vulkan work with both 7 and 10? Isn't that obviously better than just targeting 10?
dam. that is... correct.This seems to mostly if not entirely negate the notion that UWP is advantageous if you're a game developer targeting both Windows PC and the X1.
Gemüsepizza;209745658 said:But they do not want that.
The overwhelming majority of developers/publishers do not want to support countless, different OSs. Having to support Linux is probably a nightmare for many devs, because it will eat so many resources, which could be spent on making better/cheaper games instead. And the same is true for consumers, they also do not want to run their games on anything other than Windows. Because why should they? Everything works.
On Windows the GPU vendors control the drivers and can choose to support whatever graphics APIs they want. On OSX Apple controls the drivers and seems to have chosen not to add Vulkan support.I know Apple have their own thing going on with Metal, but what prevents Vulkan from happening on the Mac? Does Apple actually need to be involved in some way? Who got Vulkan running on Win7?
Really? They block AMD and Nvidia from releasing Mac drivers for their GPUs? How and why do they do this? =/On Windows the GPU vendors control the drivers and can choose to support whatever graphics APIs they want. On OSX Apple controls the drivers and seems to have chosen not to add Vulkan support.
Most of the time when I have heard someone say that they can't use the STL it was because they don't truly understand how it works (or how C++ in general works really -- which is admittedly not the most trivial thing to understand), or how it can be customized.
Really? They block AMD and Nvidia from releasing Mac drivers for their GPUs? How and why do they do this? =/
Really? They block AMD and Nvidia from releasing Mac drivers for their GPUs? How and why do they do this? =/
Gamedev developers don't like STL. Or at least it was much-maligned in earlier C++ version.Really?
STL is an essential part of the language. Can't imagine anyone coming from another language that couldn't grasp it. And I don't see how Java and .Net collections, generics and futures wouldn't baffle a new programmer any less than STL would.
Yep, it totally changed the game. It eliminated support for all other game pads in most games!
Notably, EA developed an EASTL with some changes they felt made it more suitable to game development. Some explanation here:Gamedev developers don't like STL. Or at least it was much-maligned in earlier C++ version.
for what purpose? Vulkan is much worse solution than custom low-level API for fixed spec hardware.
Ooo that doc lays out the reason for not using STL back then... uneven implementation in compiler with possible missing features, memory waste, and bugs that occur only in specific console.Notably, EA developed an EASTL with some changes they felt made it more suitable to game development. Some explanation here:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2007/n2271.html
I'd argue that the standard libraries of those languages more simple to understand -- not necessarily from the perspective of a general programmer, where they are more or less equivalent, but certainly from that of a high-performance oriented engine programmer who really wants to know exactly what is going on. E.g. the semantics of when implicit move or copy construction happens, what an x-value is as opposed to a l- or r-value etc. are a bit more complicated than what's going on in a purely reference-based language like Java.Really?
STL is an essential part of the language. Can't imagine anyone coming from another language that couldn't grasp it. And I don't see how Java and .Net collections, generics and futures wouldn't baffle a new programmer any less than STL would.
Really? They block AMD and Nvidia from releasing Mac drivers for their GPUs? How and why do they do this? =/
They do it because people are literally morons who are willing to pay a premium to apple for less control over everything except their uninformed bragging rights. The apple crowd are a truly miserable bunch of people who really love being treated like shit.
As far as I can tell, they don't actually block AMD or NVIDIA. They just have their own graphics driver as default.Really? They block AMD and Nvidia from releasing Mac drivers for their GPUs? How and why do they do this? =/