Well... maintaining legacy compatibility isn't much of a moneymaker as regressing and making you buy new stuff. This is what the Xbone/PS4 is hoping for.

DirectX is just a backend for sound, input and video these days. It doesn't do music or networking anymore. Unfortunately the alternative for input (SDL) is far worse.

Also, try running Quake 3 on Windows 8 with just using the supplied video drivers from Microsoft.

DirectX isn't going to die off anytime soon. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the big publishers for their Xbox (mandatory dlc for ms getting their cut to compensate xbox profit loss, mandatory achievments, and misleading 'only on xbox' marketing), and Kronos group is shooting themselves in the foot repeatedly for what they've been sitting on with OpenGL, instead with refocusing development of the API toward those mobile devices.

It's also too early to even state any success about Linux gaming. The current big WMs are a trainwreck arms race for unproven 'modern UI' concepts, the drivers often don't work (why would one need a Radeon HD6000/7000+ to play TF2, a 2007 game with support for the Geforce3/Radeon8500, on Linux?)

Good thing you can make a direct3d machine for a few bucks using old parts. I suggest a good KVM to manage them.

DirectX itself isn't going anywhere, but yes, old dx interfaces are slowly rotting away.. kinda sounds like planned obsolescence, actually =)

And who says OpenGL 1.x (widely, WIDELY used) isn't rotting away? The SGIS Extensions being dropped were only the beginning...

leileilol wrote:

(why would one need a Radeon HD6000/7000+ to play TF2, a 2007 game with support for the Geforce3/Radeon8500, on Linux?)

Because they didn't bother re-writing the render paths for those old cards when they ported Source to Linux?

SquallStrife wrote:

leileilol wrote:

(why would one need a Radeon HD6000/7000+ to play TF2, a 2007 game with support for the Geforce3/Radeon8500, on Linux?)

Because they didn't bother re-writing the render paths for those old cards when they ported Source to Linux?

Why shouldn't they? Linux adoption would likely go up if they did a better job of supporting older GPUs. In most other ways Linux tends to run well on older hardware, but it just seems that GPU support is its Achilles heel.

Sol_HSA wrote:

DirectX itself isn't going anywhere, but yes, old dx interfaces are slowly rotting away.. kinda sounds like planned obsolescence, actually =)

Of course it can be truth (as you already stated in other thread), but i just would like to notice that we have a crisis currently (requiring costs cutting - old games support is first to cut). And harder competition amd vs nvidia: notice that new tomb raider performed way better on amd and nvidia was struggling with releasing better drivers for tomb raider. Notice that even a 2012 game Trine 2 is broken with latest nvidia drivers even though they know about that problem as it was already broken in first of two latest betas.
There is a really hard competition and they just cannot handle old games support right now. Maybe in the future when crisis ends and nvidia takes the lead again they will start fixing old dx compatibility. But of course that will still may be dependent on whether there will be enough people who still need that, who would cover the cost of that support.

mr_bigmouth_502 wrote:

SquallStrife wrote:

leileilol wrote:

(why would one need a Radeon HD6000/7000+ to play TF2, a 2007 game with support for the Geforce3/Radeon8500, on Linux?)

Because they didn't bother re-writing the render paths for those old cards when they ported Source to Linux?

Why shouldn't they? Linux adoption would likely go up if they did a better job of supporting older GPUs. In most other ways Linux tends to run well on older hardware, but it just seems that GPU support is its Achilles heel.

You says that like dropping support for older cards is some kind of frivolous snap decision.

Part of getting in to the Steam-on-Linux betas was submitting your hardware profile.

The decision to only support down to a certain level of OpenGL hardware support would have been based on those numbers.

robertmo wrote:

Maybe in the future when crisis ends and nvidia takes the lead again...

Who says it will? 😀 It might be AMD or it might be somebody else...

robertmo wrote:

...they will start fixing old dx compatibility.

They won't...the companies don't care about that. Once they sell you the hardware, they don't have any income from you any more. And forum threats about how you're gonna buy another product just doesn't hurt them enough. It's easier to fix the game, but then again, the software companies are the same 😀

Apparently everybody forgot how it was before dx came around. Sure there's opengl, but dx is (was?) so much more (input, 3d sound, music, video acceleration and codec support - most of this stuff was deprecated in favor of - nothing?). SDL and Allegro don't do anything since they (Windows versions) just use dx underneath. See how linux is a mess without a unified HAL (oss, alsa, pulseaudio...terrible). It's really a shame...

gulikoza wrote:

They won't...the companies don't care about that. Once they sell you the hardware, they don't have any income from you any more.

I said that there is a condition for that. and the condition is that they are still selling new cards. And if all people decided not to buy new card if they don't support old games, Companies would have to fix that, unless the cost of fixing would be more expensive than future earnings. But i am also sure most people only cares about new games. There are even not enough Trine 2 players to fix drivers for them (or at least they know most people already finished that game) 😉

Well, I wasn't so much referring to DirectX itself, but rather the Direct3D component.

The thing is, OpenGL has definitely turned out to be more reliable to code for and gives your games greater longevity so people will still be buying and playing them years later. Furthermore, OpenGL is cross-platform. Direct3D is not.

In terms of SDL and Allegro (specifically Allegro 5), they also support OpenGL for graphics, so you don't have to use Direct3D with these things either. (I have almost no experience with SDL so I don't know if it actually supports Direct3D or not.) In terms of everything else DX still does, there's other competing libraries now (like OpenAL for sound) and many old DX features like its music playing and networking capabilities are way past depreciated, since almost no one used them in the first place.

The trouble though is that Win8's depreciation of DirectDraw and pre-DX9 stuff hasn't just affected old games. I mentioned Plants vs. Zombies because it was a great example. It's only 4 years old and my choice of going with the most modern OS has prevented me from enjoying it the way it was meant to be played. That's ridiculous when considering I've been playing old 80s and 90s DOS games on this thing without issue.

For sake of nostalgia, I actually really hate the period of time starting around 1999 through the early to mid 2000s for gaming because for the most part, those are the games that are the most difficult to get working on modern systems. Don't get me wrong, some games still work, but a lot don't, or don't work well.

someone doesn't agree with you 😉
http://www.zeus-software.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=547

also i think many old games doesn't work simply cause of lack of time of fixes. I will mention trine 2 again that is only a half year old game.

leileilol wrote:

It's also too early to even state any success about Linux gaming. The current big WMs are a trainwreck arms race for unproven 'modern UI' concepts, the drivers often don't work (why would one need a Radeon HD6000/7000+ to play TF2, a 2007 game with support for the Geforce3/Radeon8500, on Linux?)

Linux gaming failed once already. I can remember a brief period of time when you could buy boxed copies of games for Linux in software stores but it didn't last long. Within a few months none of the retailers would carry them anymore because they weren't selling.

What's really ironic is that a lot of the Linux people who complain about the lack of games for Linux probably virulently deride the Mac community for the same reason.

sliderider wrote:

Linux gaming failed once already. I can remember a brief period of time when you could buy boxed copies of games for Linux in software stores but it didn't last long. Within a few months none of the retailers would carry them anymore because they weren't selling.

It is quite different nowdays though. No need for retailers and publishers when you have digital distribution.

F2bnp wrote:

sliderider wrote:

Linux gaming failed once already. I can remember a brief period of time when you could buy boxed copies of games for Linux in software stores but it didn't last long. Within a few months none of the retailers would carry them anymore because they weren't selling.

It is quite different nowdays though. No need for retailers and publishers when you have digital distribution.

Linux users are still a minority. Retailers stopped carrying Linux games because there weren't enough customers for them. There still aren't. Modifying games in ways that alienate the core customers for those games (Windows users) in order to satisfy the tiny base of Linux users who want to play games is shooting oneself in the foot.

sliderider wrote:

leileilol wrote:

It's also too early to even state any success about Linux gaming. The current big WMs are a trainwreck arms race for unproven 'modern UI' concepts, the drivers often don't work (why would one need a Radeon HD6000/7000+ to play TF2, a 2007 game with support for the Geforce3/Radeon8500, on Linux?)

Linux gaming failed once already. I can remember a brief period of time when you could buy boxed copies of games for Linux in software stores but it didn't last long. Within a few months none of the retailers would carry them anymore because they weren't selling.

Ah, but one major difference now compared to then is that PC gaming is almost completely digital now. Yeah, I have a boxed copy of Skyrim which I've been playing a little of lately... but it's still packed from my move. Since it's registered over Steam now the DVD it's on is almost completely worthless as I can just download the game over my internet connection.

Retailers can be really cutthroat when it comes to games. There was a very fun yet relaxing DS game released awhile back called "Soul Bubbles" which was virtually impossible to get in Canada and exclusive to Toys 'R Us in the USA. The reason? Stores didn't want to carry it because it wasn't stereotypical and no one had heard of the developer.

Digital downloads are almost certainly breathing new life into the concept of Linux gaming now, since online stores can carry anything they want and don't have to worry about overloading shelves with games only 1% of the shoppers want for whatever reason. It's simply up to developers to decide if they want to support it or not.

I wish DirectX would go away. #$% microshit.

Gemini000 wrote:

Everything made with OpenGL: Still Works Fine
Everything made with DirectDraw/Direct3D: Barely functions (if at all) if Pre-DX9

Even GLQuake works perfect on nvidia hardware 😀 I don't even know if you have to enable Extension Limit to get it working

No multitexturing support (Q2 as well) so hardly "perfect"...