DirectX 12

Hey,

Since the release of Windows 10 some comapnies are working on a special DirectX 12 version of their game, like Cities:Skylines. DirectX 12 could improve the perfomance for people on Windows 10, so I'm interested, will Planetary Annihiliatin get a DirectX 12 mode too?

Also interesting, with the Xbox One getting mouse and keyboard support in the future, Planetary Annihilation could come to the Xbox One, should this be done. Microsoft stated that DX12 games should be "easely portable" to Xbox One.

On addition of this, PC players and Xbox One players running on Windows 10 can even play together, which could add even more players to the online system.

What do you guys think?

Unlikely, as PA is written using OpenGL, not DirectX.
(Which is good for non-Windows users. )

And a Vulcan port is probably not happening due lack of resources.

It is possible for games to have multiple engines. RuneScape, for example, has currently two engines. In the game settings you can choose between OpenGL or DirectX. In one beta they also have a beta modes, OpenGLX and a seperate HTML5 beta, which is soon dying, but getting replaced by NXT (written in C++).

The game also auto detects which engine is the best for your computer. DirectX is standard disabled on non Windows computers.

Direct X 12 isn´t gonna happen for PA course it´s not multiplattform, and both a DX12 or Vulkan-Port would be to expensive just for PA.
BUT I see a chance for a next Kickstarter-RTS-Project using the same engine which would then lead to Vulkan-Support in PA as well!

There is a platform to share knowledge, tools and advices in the goal of porting engines to Vulkan:

Tbh, I prefer DirectX 12 over this, should Uber Entertainment do this, their sales could rise very high, because two major reasons.

One is that the game could be ported to the Xbox One and another is, games working together with Microsoft for DirectX 12 and Windows 10 get highlighted to Microsoft weekly to monthly in YouTube videos, and Microsoft showcases them on events like E3 and Gamescom.

Vulkan is a far better choice long term than dx12. Both offer the same performance advantage, however vulkan will work on far more systems, including:

Windows, Mac, Linux, steam os (critically including the upcoming steam machines), android, ios and potentially the ps4. It would even be possible to run in Xbox one given it's a Windows 10 based device and Vulcan is fully Windows compliant (it's ms trying to control the eco system that prevents it). Finally PA is a fully opengl based game, and porting opengl 3 to vulkan is way less work than opengl to direct X.

But if a small team like JaGeX can make a DirectX mode for a spaghetti code game facing legacy issues by being over 10 years old, that had weekly updates, why cant Uber do it with a fresh game?

If this Vulkan thing works as you say, it'd be pretty interesting too. Any word on Vulkan yet from Uber Entertainment?

I remember a statement where they (summarised) told us that there won´t be any API upgrades for PA in near future, course they didn´t want to split up game development (read as: resources; they wanna do stuff each user benefits of) any further. Course Vulkan will feature massive compatibility this might not be an issue anymore...

...and no, you´re talking all that stuff ways to easy: Uber got their own engine, incomparable to any other engine in the market. On top of that RuneScape as a MMO got a massive audience, not to complicated tech and a lot of financial resources per Dev, meaning they can hire freelancers with ease and so on---incomparable situation!

It is a bit more complicated than that.
Just using a DX12 or Vulcan render pipeline within an old engine will give you some performance - for sure - , but the real strength of the next generation graphic APIs lies within their concepts of managing resources (like texture memory, shader parameters, renderbuffers and vertex data) and how you interact with the actual render queues. That is nothing you can easily change in an existing engine. (I think there are some good talks in the GDC Vault about the architecture of those next gen engines)
As far as I can remember, during the presentation of Vulcan earlier this year, the lead architect at ATI estimated that it will take at least about 2 years to see the first true Vulcan engines appear and it will take far longer till these engines will get widely adopted.

Personally I would like to see Uber to put more work in tweaking the current engine to get more performance for all players, instead of adding a new render pipeline to the existing engine for an API that isn't even officially out yet (with unknown performance gain that only aplies to a subset of players).

It's also worth mentioning that a lot of the time the graphics engine isn't what stalls out with PA (as PA uses a multi threaded render engine custom built- it's already pretty efficient). The thing that slows big PA games down is the simulation, which sadly is single threaded (although things like network management and so on are handled with separate threads to offload as much as possible, the simulation is the most difficult thing to multi thread).

Uber would need to devise a way of multi threading the simulation before there would be much in the way of gains from DX12.

RuneScape is one of the hardest games to write for, you are wrong about that.

Hold on @Going4Quests if you think that PA on XBox One would work well, then I want to know what you're smoking to even consider the possibility.

the xbox won´t ever be able to handle PA but with the smallest system available and it would be a chore to control it with lack of hotkeys ..

Well if you put a keyboard and a mouse on it then it's basically just a bad PC...

THIS^^^^

Guys do you even read what people post or just post like headless chickens? Xbox One is getting mouse and keyboard support, just like the PS4 (on a later date). I don't have any of the consoles, but bringing the game to these could increase sales, and they'll work when the consoles have mouse and keyboard.

Even Cities:Skylines is coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 now, and you need mouse and keyboards too for that. Because Windows 10 will run on Xbox One in November, it'll be possible to easely port Xbox games to PC and port PC games to Xbox One, where players of both systems play together.

I don't own any console, but this would just add many possibilities for PA and Uber Entertainment.

As I said, if you own a keyboard and a mouse it will be just a PC with bad hardware. PA isn't fun to play on PC's with bad hardware, so why would it be fun on a xbox with mouse and keyboard?

I'm speaking about the other people here.

I don't know how the Xbox One performs, I have only been writing news on WIndows 10 since the OS got announced for various sites and learned out of it that with DirectX 12 games can be ported to Xbox One, afterwhich both communities can play together.

With the upcoming mouse and keyboard support this could be interesting, which is why a few companies like the one behind Cities:Skylines is doing it.