Stalker has a DircetX 8 renderer. All 3 games in the series have it, the last one dates from 2009.
For good reason. Their market is largely in eastern Europe.
Mount & Blade (2008-present) has a DirectX 7 (!!) renderer for people who need that.
Again for good reason. The Mount&Blade collection I saw in a shop yesterday is 35 euros. That is a lot of money. By lowering the system requirements, more people buy the game, giving Taleworlds money that Taleworlds would otherwise not get.
If I made an indie game, I sure as heck wouldn't make it require DirectX 11. I would have to be stupid.
RMQ Engine ... Sheesh!
Re: RMQ Engine ... Sheesh!
Yeah, but like I said earlier, it doesn't even have to go all the way to 11.
Even at the 7/8/9 levels there is functionality that can be exploited for better performance/quality but which is completely missed by aiming too low.
This isn't an either/or between pushing hardware requirements to the point of silliness versus keeping the crappy old GL1.0 support (which is it's own point of silliness but in the opposite direction) - that's very binary thinking. It's about finding a reasonable middle ground that's sensible to work with, gives better productivity and lets you just get stuff done.
It's easy to forget that the Stalker/etc guys are fully geared-up game studios with dedicated teams. The kind of level we work at it's more typically one person trying to juggle conflicting demands, so something has to give way.
Even at the 7/8/9 levels there is functionality that can be exploited for better performance/quality but which is completely missed by aiming too low.
This isn't an either/or between pushing hardware requirements to the point of silliness versus keeping the crappy old GL1.0 support (which is it's own point of silliness but in the opposite direction) - that's very binary thinking. It's about finding a reasonable middle ground that's sensible to work with, gives better productivity and lets you just get stuff done.
It's easy to forget that the Stalker/etc guys are fully geared-up game studios with dedicated teams. The kind of level we work at it's more typically one person trying to juggle conflicting demands, so something has to give way.
We had the power, we had the space, we had a sense of time and place
We knew the words, we knew the score, we knew what we were fighting for
We knew the words, we knew the score, we knew what we were fighting for