OpenGL Games / DirectX Games

[morulis]

I would like to know which are the new games that are based on OpenGL and which are the new games that are based on DirectX 9.

 

[Malak]

Doom 3 is OpenGL. Everything else is DirectX

 

[tfinch2]

Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

 

[Nothinman]

Most games use DirectX, which is why they're so non-portable and only run on Windows.

 

[DragonMasterAlex]

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: KruptosAngelos
Doom 3 is OpenGL. Everything else is DirectX

Pretty much.

If it's based on an id software engine it's OpenGL. Just about everything else starts out life as directX and sometimes gets ported over - especially if a Linux or Apple version is made.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I think he meant UT 99, which was 3Dfx Glide at heart . this game worked better in direct3d than opengl anyway?

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I seem to remember reading somewhere one of the UT2k4 devs saying that OpenGL on Windows was horribly unstable.

Now, that's certainly not the fault of OpenGL, 'cause it works everywhere else. I'll bet that if you linked UT2k4 with the Mesa-win32 implementation, it might be slow, but it would be stable. Now, the question is, whose library was he talking about? If it was nVidia's or ATI's, shame on them; if it was Microsoft's which shipped by default, well, how can you expect them to follow a standard API well when they have their own perfectly less-than-portable API to use?

Plus, I heard that the D3D team mandated in whatever version of DX at the time basically whatever the UT2k4 devs wanted accelerated. But that's just a rumor, I'm sure.

But it does bring me to another topic, which is that of the pussification of everybody involved with graphics with regards to them. Why is Microsoft the central player in deciding the direction of that area of the industry? They don't make hardware, and they buy most of their games mostly-complete and rebrand them. That's all. (Am I missing anything enormous?) They should have no place in mandating such features, since 3D graphics is such an auxilliary component of an OS (3D-accelerated desktops don't count, and the operations to render them are already in place anyway).

Software companies and hardware companies should talk directly, and should decide things as a whole. That's the whole purpose of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board. It at least attempts progress through cooperation, rather than using a single power broker to solve all issues.

And since I'm talking about graphics, I would like to take the time, as I always do, to chastise ATI and nVidia for not releasing specs for their hardware.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: bersl2
Why is Microsoft the central player in deciding the direction of that area of the industry? They don't make hardware, and they buy most of their games mostly-complete and rebrand them. That's all. (Am I missing anything enormous?)

Yes. MS is the most dominant player in desktop operating systems. It puts them in a nice position to write an API.

 

[DragonMasterAlex]

Originally posted by: SonicIce

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I think he meant UT 99, which was 3Dfx Glide at heart . this game worked better in direct3d than opengl anyway?

Oh yeah, I remember Glide! Yeah, I think you're right about UT99!

Jason

 

[DragonMasterAlex]

Originally posted by: bersl2

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I seem to remember reading somewhere one of the UT2k4 devs saying that OpenGL on Windows was horribly unstable.

Now, that's certainly not the fault of OpenGL, 'cause it works everywhere else. I'll bet that if you linked UT2k4 with the Mesa-win32 implementation, it might be slow, but it would be stable. Now, the question is, whose library was he talking about? If it was nVidia's or ATI's, shame on them; if it was Microsoft's which shipped by default, well, how can you expect them to follow a standard API well when they have their own perfectly less-than-portable API to use?

Plus, I heard that the D3D team mandated in whatever version of DX at the time basically whatever the UT2k4 devs wanted accelerated. But that's just a rumor, I'm sure.

But it does bring me to another topic, which is that of the pussification of everybody involved with graphics with regards to them. Why is Microsoft the central player in deciding the direction of that area of the industry? They don't make hardware, and they buy most of their games mostly-complete and rebrand them. That's all. (Am I missing anything enormous?) They should have no place in mandating such features, since 3D graphics is such an auxilliary component of an OS (3D-accelerated desktops don't count, and the operations to render them are already in place anyway).

Software and hardware should talk directly, and should decide things as a whole. That's the whole purpose of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board. It at least attempts progress through cooperation, rather than using a single power broker to solve all issues.

And since I'm talking about graphics, I would like to take the time, as I always do, to chastise ATI and nVidia for not releasing specs for their hardware.

One might point out though that if by *software* you mean that the *game* should talk directly to the hardware, no it shouldn't. The software should talk to an API and the OS should establish the communication to the memory, the video, the hard disks and whatever other hardware is required to play the game.

When software and hardware communicate directly without regard for what the OS or other apps are doing, instability naturally follows (as observed in every non-NT version of Windows ever published.)

Jason

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: bersl2

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

I seem to remember reading somewhere one of the UT2k4 devs saying that OpenGL on Windows was horribly unstable.

Now, that's certainly not the fault of OpenGL, 'cause it works everywhere else. I'll bet that if you linked UT2k4 with the Mesa-win32 implementation, it might be slow, but it would be stable. Now, the question is, whose library was he talking about? If it was nVidia's or ATI's, shame on them; if it was Microsoft's which shipped by default, well, how can you expect them to follow a standard API well when they have their own perfectly less-than-portable API to use?

Plus, I heard that the D3D team mandated in whatever version of DX at the time basically whatever the UT2k4 devs wanted accelerated. But that's just a rumor, I'm sure.

But it does bring me to another topic, which is that of the pussification of everybody involved with graphics with regards to them. Why is Microsoft the central player in deciding the direction of that area of the industry? They don't make hardware, and they buy most of their games mostly-complete and rebrand them. That's all. (Am I missing anything enormous?) They should have no place in mandating such features, since 3D graphics is such an auxilliary component of an OS (3D-accelerated desktops don't count, and the operations to render them are already in place anyway).

Software and hardware should talk directly, and should decide things as a whole. That's the whole purpose of the OpenGL Architecture Review Board. It at least attempts progress through cooperation, rather than using a single power broker to solve all issues.

And since I'm talking about graphics, I would like to take the time, as I always do, to chastise ATI and nVidia for not releasing specs for their hardware.

One might point out though that if by *software* you mean that the *game* should talk directly to the hardware, no it shouldn't. The software should talk to an API and the OS should establish the communication to the memory, the video, the hard disks and whatever other hardware is required to play the game.

When software and hardware communicate directly without regard for what the OS or other apps are doing, instability naturally follows (as observed in every non-NT version of Windows ever published.)

Jason

No, that's unclear. Of course the software shouldn't talk directly with hardware!

Put an implied "companies" after "software" and "hardware."

Making edit... now.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: bersl2
Why is Microsoft the central player in deciding the direction of that area of the industry? They don't make hardware, and they buy most of their games mostly-complete and rebrand them. That's all. (Am I missing anything enormous?)

Yes. MS is the most dominant player in desktop operating systems. It puts them in a nice position to write an API.

What about what I said right after that? So what if you're a dominant player in the desktop OS scene? You should have a say, just not the only and/or final say.

And might I add, I have no problem with the other media abstraction API that are in DirectX. It's just that---and perhaps this is hindsight talking---the graphics components have tended to be so much more complex than any of the other media components (combined?) that to tie 3D graphics and the engines built for them to one platform de facto is a terrible prospect for consumers. I should hope that, should the prospects of discrete physics processing units indeed come true, a similar situation does not develop (non-universal API), for a somewhat different reason (undisclosed hardware specs).

 

[Nothinman]

What about what I said right after that? So what if you're a dominant player in the desktop OS scene? You should have a say, just not the only and/or final say.

What should happen rarely is what really happens.

 

[Smilin]

Uh...beavis...

If you are writing an API (or anything else), then you get the final say in what happens with it.

If we as consumers don't like it, we don't buy it. It's not like we don't have a very strong alternative in OpenGL.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

What about what I said right after that? So what if you're a dominant player in the desktop OS scene? You should have a say, just not the only and/or final say.

What should happen rarely is what really happens.

:Q Shock! Horror!


Would that more consumers knew the power they could wield.

Ah, but only "would that."

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

Unless there is magical support for DX9 in Linux, UT2004 is OpenGL. I've never played it on Windows before, so I don't know if it's DX9 or OGL on that platform. I kinda figured it was OGL on Windows too because it seems kind of pointless to write the game for two totally different libraries and API's. Oh well doesn't matter to me.

 

[Malak]

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

Unless there is magical support for DX9 in Linux, UT2004 is OpenGL. I've never played it on Windows before, so I don't know if it's DX9 or OGL on that platform. I kinda figured it was OGL on Windows too because it seems kind of pointless to write the game for two totally different libraries and API's. Oh well doesn't matter to me.

Well since it was made for Windows, and it does have DX9 support, then it's a directx9 game. The only reason they do openGL is for you gimpy Linux d00ds.

 

[Nothinman]

We like being gimpy. And I find it ironic that DirectX is so popular, since OpenGL is the standard for all of the high-end 3D apps. I wouldn't be surprised if all of those game companies are using OpenGL tools to design the models and crap for their DirectX game.

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: KruptosAngelos

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

Unless there is magical support for DX9 in Linux, UT2004 is OpenGL. I've never played it on Windows before, so I don't know if it's DX9 or OGL on that platform. I kinda figured it was OGL on Windows too because it seems kind of pointless to write the game for two totally different libraries and API's. Oh well doesn't matter to me.

Well since it was made for Windows, and it does have DX9 support, then it's a directx9 game. The only reason they do openGL is for you gimpy Linux d00ds.

No, as I said earlier, I know* I read somewhere one of the UT devs saying that they began using D3D because OpenGL wasn't stable enough under Windows; so they used D3D for for you lame Windows y00z0rs. The rest of that post is opinion or conjecture, but that isn't.

* When I say that I "know" something happened, that should be read as I have a distinct memory for those details I can recall. It's either that, or I involuntarily fabricated the entire thing. In this instance, I remember poking around on icculus.org before encountering this. It's not in my current history, but it could be in my CVS trunk Firefox build's history (ATM broken).

P.S.: All hail Icculus!

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
We like being gimpy. And I find it ironic that DirectX is so popular, since OpenGL is the standard for all of the high-end 3D apps. I wouldn't be surprised if all of those game companies are using OpenGL tools to design the models and crap for their DirectX game.

You sorta hit onto as why DirectX is more popular. OpenGL was made for High end Graphics Rendering and other such Professional Graphics work. It was not originally designed for High FPS and was more concerned in Rendering things accurately. It was also quite difficult to use for Gaming. Thus was born Glide, an OpenGL like API that cut out unuseable features and was much easier to use by Game Makers.

MS made their own API(other companies made API's too, like S3s Metal) called DirectX and eventually replaced Glide for Features/Ease of Use. Last I heard DirectX had finally acheived superiority over OpenGL, but the 2 are comparable for Features.

 

[boran]

I'mho it's a good thing that MS invented and pushed DirectX, before DirectX you had a 3D rendering API for every card manufacturer + some extra's and it was a whole mess about which games supported what.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: boran
I'mho it's a good thing that MS invented and pushed DirectX, before DirectX you had a 3D rendering API for every card manufacturer + some extra's and it was a whole mess about which games supported what.

DirectX was Windows 95-era technology. What 3D rendering APIs existed back in 95 (at least for games)?

DirectX did help ease the transition from DOS to Windows. It eliminated the need for prioprietary sound drivers, for instance, by making a common set of APIs for all cards (no more SoundBlaster- or AdLib-compatibility).

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: bersl2

Originally posted by: KruptosAngelos

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: DragonMasterAlex

Originally posted by: tfinch2
Unreal Tournament is OpenGL

Except that it's not. You CAN use OpenGL with UT2004, but it's DX9 by default.

Jason

Unless there is magical support for DX9 in Linux, UT2004 is OpenGL. I've never played it on Windows before, so I don't know if it's DX9 or OGL on that platform. I kinda figured it was OGL on Windows too because it seems kind of pointless to write the game for two totally different libraries and API's. Oh well doesn't matter to me.

Well since it was made for Windows, and it does have DX9 support, then it's a directx9 game. The only reason they do openGL is for you gimpy Linux d00ds.

No, as I said earlier, I know* I read somewhere one of the UT devs saying that they began using D3D because OpenGL wasn't stable enough under Windows; so they used D3D for for you lame Windows y00z0rs. The rest of that post is opinion or conjecture, but that isn't.

* When I say that I "know" something happened, that should be read as I have a distinct memory for those details I can recall. It's either that, or I involuntarily fabricated the entire thing. In this instance, I remember poking around on icculus.org before encountering this. It's not in my current history, but it could be in my CVS trunk Firefox build's history (ATM broken).

P.S.: All hail Icculus!

UT2004:

RenderDevice=D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice
;RenderDevice=D3D9Drv.D3D9RenderDevice
;RenderDevice=Engine.NullRenderDevice
;RenderDevice=OpenGLDrv.OpenGLRenderDevice
;RenderDevice=PixoDrv.PixoRenderDevice

And UT had similar (both have software/D3D/OpenGL) UT also had MeTaL IIRC, for S3 cards, but I don't have it installed atm, so I can't check.


On the point of MS not having control over an API, well, I think they should.
Hardware companies talking to software companies would be a VERY BAD THING.
Look at Doom 3 and Half Life 2. It would probably be much worse if there was no DX.
Standard platform is bad? Tell me how please.
PS2 and XBox seem to have decent graphics, although the hardware isn't the greatest, but developers can use all of their features because they have a standard platform.
DX is also a standard platform which IMO would be useful for developers, more useful than programming for a hardware vendor (or two, or more, who all have different specifics of their hardware).
I would assume MS talk to hardware and software companies before deciding what makes it into DX, and they also probably have quite a bit of experience in various industries, so they would be fairly qualified to decide the standard.
And a single broker to solve issues can get things done. Dictatorship vs democracy, both have good and bad points, it all depends on the dictator really.
And remember, DX is not a graphics API, OpenGL is. DX covers sound, game controllers etc, as well as graphics. OpenGL is AFAIK, a renderer.

 

[Nothinman]

Standard platform is bad? Tell me how please.

In this case it's bad because the standard is tied to a single platform.