10 replies to this topic

[fireside]

http://www.gamasutra...hp#.UQ7Nch11fDU

Something everyone pretty much knew already, but now it's official. Direct3D is going to be absorbed into Windows. I think this is one step in the direction of OpenGL becoming the one and only low end library for games.

[TheNut]

fireside said:

OpenGL becoming the one and only low end library for games

Low end? Common fireside, don't be a hater

I worked with XNA for a bit and didn't care much for it. It's easy to pick up, but you can tell it was not designed by seasoned game developers. I think it's a good idea Microsoft not get involved with this and just stick to updating the DirectX API. Let the market create professional frameworks.

[Vilem Otte]

OpenGL might be a lot, but definitely not the "low end" ... it has same power as Direct3D in current version (it's 11 I think) - so basically it is high end. It might be at lower level than Direct3D by not giving us OO interface ... but this is speculative because I consider OO interfaces garbage and definitely the worst solution for library programming (basically it is garbage from compiler side of view - you can't just get symbols from OO library the standard way).

[rouncer]

XNA sorta mergered with the d3d library, you still pull XMMatrixIdentity() that comes from xna maths.

[fireside]

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Low end? Common fireside, don't be a hater

Haha. That was a poor choice of words. I meant lower to the hardware, can't think of the usual phrase for that. I'm sure Microsoft will hold out, but every other platform is using Opengl.

[Reedbeta]

Low-level, perhaps you meant?

[LetsKillDave]

Boy, there's still a whole pile of stories I STILL can't tell about XNA from when I worked there. Great people on the team though - Sean Hargreaves, Frank Savage, Mitch Walker, Paul Bleisch, Tom Miller, etc. Frankly, I still wish that Managed DirectX had hung around, but that's a different story in itself. Can't believe most of all that started 10 years ago now (before it was public).

- from the guy that gave "XNA" its acronymed name

[fireside]

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Low-level, perhaps you meant?

Yeah, that was it.

[Stainless]

The problem is that it's left us not knowing what to support.

The official position from microsoft is that we should support Direct3D and XInput, but both of these api's are now terminal, so what are we going to have to support?

I f^&king hate Microsoft, always have, always will.

LetsKillDave, how did you escape from the dark side and make your way into the light?

[Vilem Otte]

#Stainless - Basically because of this all M$ bs I switched over to Linux and the "glorious tux" (or sometimes "do-everything-yourself"). The only advantage (except that the Linux os is just better - to flamewar here a bit ) is that most libraries you actually use are open source. So basically I take them at some version to my project and support them myself there.

If project dies, I think over whether I need to keep it (then I support it fully myself, but only for my products, not generally), otherwise I use an alternative (basically this happened to me just one time ever and I still support the code in my library, because I tend to DIY rather than "adapt some1's solution and pray that it'll work").
If project still lives, I try to keep up to date with minimum code changes (mostly possible, because GPL/BSD/... people doesn't need to change every year everything (including interface), like M$ happily does).

[fireside]

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The official position from microsoft is that we should support Direct3D and XInput, but both of these api's are now terminal, so what are we going to have to support?

I don't think they have a clear vision for the future and it's hurting their business. Part of the interest that was generated from Xbox was that any indie could make a game and put it on the site. It had some problems, but rather than correct them, Microsoft just distanced itself and eventually stopped support. Now that interest will be dissipated to other platforms and Xbox will get less business. Windows 8 wants to have the only store in town, and it's going to cause more people to slip away to other platforms. The internet has changed things and Microsoft isn't adapting very well. The OS is becoming more and more secondary to the browser, so it will be harder to strong arm everyone to use their approach like they were able to do in the past. If I didn't program games, I would take a serious look at a Chromebook. It basically does everything necessary other than that, and with html5 games, maybe it can do some of that, I'm not sure. I'll probably be moving to Linux or something in the future.