Graphics Update, v1.1

Discussion in 'Planetary Annihilation General Discussion' started by varrak, February 20, 2014.

  1. bmb

    bmb Well-Known Member

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    Anything that is exclusive to less than half of the hardware on the market will never "smash" anything. It's a neat gimmick and nothing more.

    Nothing will likely "smash" directx other than a new version of directx itself. Who knows, maybe mantle can help drive significant innovation in the only gaming related API that actually matters.
  2. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    I'm kinda pissed at how useless ATI has been at helping us out. I can't recommend ATI hardware at this juncture.

    Mantel is a fine idea but I would rather they at least support their GL drivers and developers properly before going off creating even more new API's. Realistically they are being driven by console work right now and don't see to care much about PC. Do we really want to live in a world of writing to a different API for every video card?
  3. cptconundrum

    cptconundrum Post Master General

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    If they keep it up, we're going to end up in a world with only one video card company for PCs. That's even scarier.
    LavaSnake and corruptai like this.
  4. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    nVida have spanked AMD for developer relations since... forever.
  5. bgolus

    bgolus Uber Alumni

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    Everyone forgets Matrox, they're still around!
    Not that they're trying to do anything in the 3d or consumer market still...
  6. varrak

    varrak Official PA

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    By the way - if anyone wants to make the ping effect do planet-smash instead (and don't tell anyone I told you...but...) - copy the contents of "meteor_impact_explosion.pfx" over the contents of "ping.pfx". Both files are located under <game>\media\pa\effects\specs.

    Don't do this until the next build, since the new particle system doesn't come online until then.

    Shhhhhhh ;)
  7. websterx01

    websterx01 Post Master General

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    Yes!
  8. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    How can you forgot about S3 Graphics Chrome? :(
  9. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    I want to forget about S3, that's for sure.

    Or as Varrak says "******* media decelerator"
    maxpowerz, SXX and tatsujb like this.
  10. Quitch

    Quitch Post Master General

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    PowerVR for life!
    maxpowerz likes this.
  11. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    The funny thing is that the powerVR tech is in a helluva lot of phones.
    maxpowerz and Quitch like this.
  12. EdWood

    EdWood Active Member

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    It is funny that you guys have had bad experience with AMD and think Mantle is just another API to deal with when I just read about a different story. :(

    I just read another developers blog and he stated that MANTLE is quite elegant and easy to implement and not so difficult to handle at all.
    The game he is working on was not created to make use of MANTLE from the very beginning at all, they use DirectX as well.

    This is something I cannot judge by myself since I don't work in that area at all... so... but just interesting.
    Last edited: February 21, 2014
  13. neutrino

    neutrino low mass particle Uber Employee

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    I didn't say anything about Mantle in terms of it being useful or hard to implement. We are making a cross platform game here. We could, for example, use directx and mantle etc. The issue with that is it makes the opengl users on other platforms second class citizens. I'm sure mantle is fantastic but if they aren't properly supporting opengl I don't care. Open standards for the win, every single time.

    I think you are somehow trying to insinuate that we can't handle mantle or think it's difficult so we refuse. You are missing the point that we want to support cross platform open standards. I'm not writing our game to a video card specific API, especially from a vendor that has **** for developer support.
  14. websterx01

    websterx01 Post Master General

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    Is such a Shame that one of my favorite companies is treating you guys like this. That totally isn't fair to you or to us. I guess that is their loss though. Good luck!
    Last edited: February 21, 2014
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  15. varrak

    varrak Official PA

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    I'm actually good friends with the developer you mention here (we hung out recently and talked about Mantle quite a bit).

    Yes, it sounds awesome. Having spent some time working on consoles, I can attest to the benefits of being given a thin API layer to talk to the hardware. I would love to be able to do that.

    But our game targets multiple platforms, and multiple vendors. Many of our users use older AMD (or ATI) cards that are still more than capable of playing the game. None of them will run on Mantle (it's certain 7000-series or newer cards). It would be several weeks of work to port to use this API (not including testing, bug fixes, and the potential for bugs in the driver).

    Also, OpenGL (which we are using) has potential to be fast (faster than DirectX, if you use the latest extensions and whatnot, and know what you're doing). I've only just started tapping that, but I'm seeing the benefits already on NVidia drivers. AMD drivers are just not up to the same degree, in my experience.
  16. EdWood

    EdWood Active Member

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    Guys, really I was saying anything here at all... I love PA, I think you did a hell of a job here and I do get that you use OpenGl for a reason.

    I do see that you could read my post the way you did, but that was not what I tried to say at all.
    So, I totally trust you guys to handle MANTLE as well if you want to. All I was trying to say is that it was interesting, reading this developers blog and what he wrote about it, also in terms how relatively easy it sounded to implement MANTLE besides DirectX to his game, that is all.

    The only thing I actually wanted to say besides MANTLE seems to be interesting is that it is really a shame that AMD is not helping you guys out like Nvidia does or did...
    Last edited: February 21, 2014
  17. beer4blood

    beer4blood Active Member

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    does that explain why i just had an nvidia graphics update same day as patch??
    wheeledgoat likes this.
  18. EdWood

    EdWood Active Member

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    Varrak and Neutrino,

    Again thank you for the very detailed answers, I do appreciate it, but I was really not suggesting anything here.
    I am not asking for Mantle as well, I was just surprised what this person had to say about Mantle in general, which sounded interesting to say the least.

    I know you do great work at Uber, so please don't take my small post the wrong way!

    You guys do great work and I am here since Kickstarter and you did move mountains so far! :)
    varrak likes this.
  19. someonewhoisnobody

    someonewhoisnobody Well-Known Member

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    Does Varrak have a blog? I could read this stuff all day.
  20. SXX

    SXX Post Master General

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    Most likely it's just coincidence. Nvidia as any other hardware vendor have some release schedule and every driver that get WHQL release most likely was in Beta for month or even more.

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