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Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

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Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#151

Post by tripplethrendo »

EpicEng wrote: post #143
MBCook wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is playing "real" games on tablets or phones, nor will they be anytime in the foreseeable future. Could you explain that? I've played some pretty great games on my iPhone/iPad over the last few years. There certainly are games that could stand up to the average PC release (remember BattleField 7 and Call of Duty 18 are not average ). Many are at least easily comparable to games of the 16 bit era. A sample fr…

All of your examples are casual games. WoW, Rift, Guild Wars, SC, competitive FPS's, Witcher style RPG's, Elder Scrolls, etc. these are not games you will be playing on a tablet. There exists a clear divide between casual and serious gamers. I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong or inherently inferior about the more casual side of things, just that they really are two very different markets.

You can play WoW and Guild Wars 2 on a Mac. Doesn't that mean they are OpenGL?

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#152

Post by MBCook »

sliverstorm wrote: post #150
MBCook wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is playing "real" games on tablets or phones, nor will they be anytime in the foreseeable future. Could you explain that? I've played some pretty great games on my iPhone/iPad over the last few years. There certainly are games that could stand up to the average PC release (remember BattleField 7 and Call of Duty 18 are not average ). Many are at least easily comparable to games of the 16 bit era. A sample fr…

Unfortunately there's no good word for the market your parent is talking about. "real" games, "hardcore" games, all have negative connotations, but your parent is contrasting lightweight games to heavyweight games. Angry Birds to Bioshock.

I think that's the issue here too. I would divide things in three. Casual games are often quick or pick-up-and-play. Angry birds, Bejeweled, even things like Peggle or Plants vs Zombies. Most flash/FaceBook games fit in here.

Then there are the hardcore games. Eve Online, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Street Fighter 4, etc. These games often require lots of skill or dedication, and are often big budget titles.

But there is a ton of stuff in between. Games that you might be able to play fast but are very difficult (like Spelunky), that the player can choose how to play (Minecraft or Terraria), that just aren't designed to be highly competitive and difficult (Sly Cooper series, maybe Ratchet and Clank series), aren't hardcore ultra-deep sims (SimCity, Game Dev Story), and many sports games (Madden, NBA2k, etc).

Some people go really deep on some games and play them in a 'hardcore' way. The lines aren't easy as I know many people think World of Warcraft has been dumbed-down throughout the expansions to where it may not be 'hardcore' for many people.

But that's my general taxonomy. Casual, 'normal', hardcore.

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#153

Post by hpcorona »

kayoone wrote: post #12

Isn't this more or less a problem of the past? Today with tools like Unity3d, UDK, CryEngine, Shiva Engine, MonoGame etc, game developers are at a point where they can pretty much stop worrying about the OpenGL/DirectX layer beneath their engines. Those Engines have become so powerful and affordable that it hardly makes any sense to roll your own. In fact, imo you would need a very strong reason to build your own eng…

> Isn't this more or less a problem of the past?

You are using Unity 3D, so NO, it's not a problem of the past. You have multiplatform because Unity developers decided to go with OpenGL.

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#154

Post by ahomescu1 »

tripplethrendo wrote: post #151
EpicEng wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of your examples are casual games. WoW, Rift, Guild Wars, SC, competitive FPS's, Witcher style RPG's, Elder Scrolls, etc. these are not games you will be playing on a tablet. There exists a clear divide between casual and serious gamers. I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong or inherently inferior about the more casual side of things, just that they really are two very different markets.

You can play WoW and Guild Wars 2 on a Mac. Doesn't that mean they are OpenGL?

Guild Wars 2 uses Wine internally to run the Windows GW2 client (I used to play it, and I'd occasionally get Wine errors).

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#155

Post by bcoates »

EpicEng wrote: post #134
AshleysBrain wrote: post #63

Isn't mobile and the web the decider these days? Article is from 2010, but consider if you want to develop 3D on any of these platforms: iOS - OpenGL ES Android - OpenGL ES Mac - OpenGL Linux - OpenGL HTML5 - WebGL (based on OpenGL ES) - even in IE! Emerging platforms like Tizen, Firefox OS - OpenGL ES/WebGL DirectX is just for Windows and Windows Phone. Isn't it getting to the point where the bother of having to wri…

Yeah, if all you care about is candy crush and the random pay to win adventure game. No one is playing "real" games on tablets or phones, nor will they be anytime in the foreseeable future.

I installed TF2 on my work tablet yesterday, it worked just fine. Civ 5 and X-Com are great on it. Is that "real" enough?

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#156

Post by ekianjo »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #130
afreak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now, yes. However we do know that this has been changing quite rapidly in the past years so why fall back on the use of this argument?

On traditional PCs and Macs, Microsoft still owns an overwhelming market share, with 91.8 percent of all traffic coming from Windows-based machines. Among non- Microsoft operating systems, both OS X and Linux have stalled since October 2011, hovering around 6.9 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively. http://www.zdnet.com/latest-os-share-data-shows-windows-stil...

Market share if one thing, but we are looking at a segment of gamers which may be split differently. Who says there isn't a larger proportion of Linux gamers in that segment, for example? If Humble Bundle is any indication, it looks like the Mac gamers segment and the Linux gamer segment is actually pretty close in size.

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#157

Post by eropple »

LukeShu wrote: post #117
runevault wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is PS3/PS4 development OGL or a proprietary API? Because if it is OGL then yes that makes said API far more useful for sheer amount of access to hardware.

The PS4 uses OpenGL (4.4?). The PS3 used a proprietary API based on OpenGL 1.0.

The PS4 supports OpenGL, but my understanding is that most non-indie games use libgcm.

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#158

Post by guiambros »

kbenson wrote: post #11
taspeotis wrote: post #2

API use was shifted in favor of DirectX by Microsoft's two-pronged DirectX campaign around the launch of XBox 360 and Windows Vista, including the spread of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about the future of OpenGL, and wild exaggeration of the merits of DirectX. I thought it was because that, at the time, the OpenGL API was shit [1]. By the time of OpenGL 2.1, OpenGL was running into a problem. It had a lot of le…

That stackexchange post is very, very good. Points just for bring that out.

It was a great read, indeed.

And yet, it was locked by SE mods as out of topic. While I love Stack Exchange and I'm thankful for the value it brought in so many ways, this policy of locking reasonable and valid questions is just upsetting.

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#159

Post by yetanotherphd »

shadowmint wrote: post #64
MaulingMonkey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really 'legacy' per se either... good luck running OpenGL on Microsoft's consoles or as a ModernUI application! DirectX being a broader and, in my opinion, better designed API certainly doesn't hurt it's adoption either.

Yeah, don't worry about those mobile devices. We've got plenty of directx support for those too. What are they again? Surface? Windows phone? I think I know one guy who has one.

I suspect there isn't a huge intersection between phone/tablet developers and desktop/console developers. I haven't played a game in a while, but it seems like the two markets are still very different.

Re: Why you should use OpenGL and not DirectX

#160

Post by pandaman »

pjmlp wrote: post #101
jcromartie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because console development is a fairly secretive process. The SDKs are all kept under a fairly tight lid, and unless you either work with it yourself or personally know someone who is willing to spill the beans, you cannot get a good idea of the process.

True, but that is no reason to start spreading the falsehood that OpenGL is everywhere used on consoles, as many FOSS advocates do. Specially when enough information is actually publicly available for anyone that cares about game development, in online forums, games magazines, conferences and game courses.

With the game programming being secretive and so many people only being able to discuss it anonymously there should be a way to separate insiders from people who like to pretend to be one on the internet. "PS2/3/4 OpenGL" is one shibboleth we can use for this purpose.
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