Super-Modding - "Rising Tide Lifts all boats"

[goldenboy]

This has to happen NOW. So barring something unforeseen it will happen this week.

Baker, too, never smacked something that didn't stop being an immediate problem.

I award you, Baker, the honorary citizenship of the kingdom of Faq, however long it may last!

[mh]

What's the benefit of Direct3D over OpenGL, by the way? I thought the only OGL features that were broken on Card X were the things that D3D didn't support anyway, meaning, if you can write a wrapper around the feature, surely the OGL call would also work correctly?

If someone has bad or non-functional OpenGL drivers, often DirectX works.

In that event, instead of the person having the problem being frustrated, you can often solve the problem instantly.

Many times, they don't care "how it runs" but more that it does run.

I've used the "old" Direct3D build to help frustrated users get to play Quake maybe 25 times. No doubt it gets used far more than that because it comes in the ProQuake 4 download.

So the main benefit in my head is it provides just one more way for users to self-help and solve an annoying problem quickly.

A second potential advantage is speed. Even if everything does play nice with OpenGL, it might not be performing too well. I've seen D3D implementations of Q1 go up to 3 x the speed of OpenGL depending on the hardware (did you know that an integrated Intel 910 is actually a vastly superior card to a GeForce FX5200, despite having no hardware T&L and shared memory?)

[MeTcHsteekle]

i know fte has it.

touche'

[metlslime]

So the idea is, many cards have crappy opengl drivers but good d3d drivers? Is there an economic reason for this or is microsoft just very influential?

Do such cards at least play quake 3 correctly? It used to be that the only thing guaranteed to work was the API subset used by the latest id software game.

[metlslime]

Oh, here's a random idea:

- compile an opengl.dll using your d3d wrapper code, so that people can drop it into their quake directory and any opengl engine will then automatically use it.

(of course, i'm not sure offhand how the proposed library will find and link against the REAL opengl.dll in the system directory...)

[Spike]

d3d requires explicit caching. its kinda awkward like that.
By making an opengl->d3d wrapper, you lose any technical advantages (ie: simpler, more bare api). The _only_ remaining benefit is that it could work around driver bugs.

if you're making an opengl->d3d wrapper, then the proposed library would not need to find the REAL opengl.dll in the first place.
(LoadLibrary accepts absolute paths, if you actually did need to do it).

[metlslime]

if you're making an opengl->d3d wrapper, then the proposed library would not need to find the REAL opengl.dll in the first place.

Oh, right

[mh]

It should be possible to construct something around Mesa, I think.

[Sajt]

Why should all these other engines be updated with the same stuff? The only engine worth using Darkplaces. All the other engines should just be exterminated to create living-space for Darkplaces.

[mh]

DarkPlaces is OpenGL so I can't run it on one of my machines (nor can a few other people).
DarkPlaces has known compatibility issues.

Should we kill every other engine now?

[Dr. Shadowborg]

I've personally never been able to run DarkPlaces acceptably on any of my computers, though this is probably just an artifact of me being to dumb to figure out how configure it properly coupled with using ATI Video Cards.

(Stock response: "Get a real computer", etc.)

Personally, I wholeheartedly support this direction of updating other engines to support things like CSQC. More options are good.

[Chip]

WARNING! COMPLETELY OFFTOPIC!

"The aphorism a rising tide lifts all boats is associated with the idea that improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy, and that economic policy, particularly government economic policy, should therefore focus on the general macroeconomic environment first and foremost. The phrase is attributed to John F Kennedy, who used the phrase in a 1963 speech to combat criticisms that a dam project he was inaugurating was a pork barrel project. However the phrase has been used more commonly to defend tax cuts and other policies where the initial beneficiaries are high income earners."

Mistery solved

[Baker]

WARNING! COMPLETELY OFFTOPIC!

"The aphorism a rising tide lifts all boats is associated with the idea that improvements in the general economy will benefit all participants in that economy, and that economic policy, particularly government economic policy, should therefore focus on the general macroeconomic environment first and foremost. The phrase is attributed to John F Kennedy, who used the phrase in a 1963 speech to combat criticisms that a dam project he was inaugurating was a pork barrel project. However the phrase has been used more commonly to defend tax cuts and other policies where the initial beneficiaries are high income earners."

Mistery solved

Actually it is an ancient Chinese expression that means that general good is also individual good.

I think Spock said this correctly in the Wrath of Khan: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one."

[goldenboy]

... Kirk was also correct, though

[Chip]

... Kirk was also correct, though

Who's Kirk?