I notice that a few developers here are posting comments here or there that their last title is using DirectX8.1....

Is anyone working with the latest and greatest, or is it too small a market to target? (for the moment)?

As usual it probably depends on your market. If you're going for the "hardcore" gamer market (which is a really difficult thing to do as an indie), you can probably feel comfortable targetting DX9, since most of them will already have it.. especially if you'll be shipping 6-12 months or more from now.

If you're going for the mainstream, "housewife", "bored office worker" market, asking for DX9 is way too much right now.

Most casual computer users that I know use DirectX 8.

An interesting thing about DX9... The next version of Windows will *require* a DirectX9 compatible card, and will used hardware acceleration for all drawing.

Consumers aside, this is great for developers, because it will help push hardware up. Maybe in a couple of years time, we'll all be able to use at least Shader 2.0 for anything we do :D (SM2 capable card is a requirement for the next windows).

why is that great?
so your customers will expect half life 2 graphics on everything they buy?
you have a team of 20 people I presume, with 2 guys just dedicated to shader programming?
Sod DX9.
I use DX7, I see no reason at all to move to 8 or 9, and certainly no reason to use pixel shaders.
games are about fun, not video card specs.

cliffski,

It would have took a large team to put togeter any kind of decent 3D not to long ago, but look how things have changed.
Sure, DX9 features are cutting edge right now, but it wont be long before the internet is full of commercial & free shaders. Small indies will be using them ( as well as thier own of course. ;) ).... just a matter of time.

We will always be seperate from the large devs. It'll always be that way.
Its just so much easier to visuallise and create an innovative idea when theres just 1-3 of you! If the advantage we will always have over the large devs, regardless of technology.

I for one am quite excited at the prospect of small talented indies getting stuck into the world of shaders. I predict strange & wonderfull stuff!! :)

fair enough. of course your games are visually excellent whereas mine are.... not.
To be honest, I haven't learned any new graphics code for maybe 4 or 5 years, I think I have all the graphics skills I need to do the kind of games I enjoy.
I find that each day I learn a little more about software engineering, a lot more about game and visual design, but the days when I worry about vertex buffers are thankfully long in the past ;)

Im more interested in what non-artists can do with shaders rather than traditional pencil pushers.
A nice brickwork, rope texture or fancy water bumpmap is all very well.
For me, seeing as shaders are part of the code rather than a set bitmap. that makes them kind of alive. Organic. Active.
The possiblities for having visuals that respond to the game are limitless. I think it could spawn some seriously cool concepts, especially in the logic puzzle arena where colour and shapes usually play a big part .....


I just havent thought of one yet! ;)

Flatspace uses DirectX9 and although I get the odd person who gets the 'missing dll' message I'm generally satisfied that there is nothing to fear from using DX9 and will continue to do so. It's important to let users know that they need DirectX9 and that it's an easy and free thing to obtain.

Mark

And you can avoid that 'Missing DLL' thing quite easily you know ;) You could either call LoadLibrary on the DX dlls, or attempt to load the DX interfaces via COM (I prefer the latter). In either case you can pop up a user-friendly message box on failure, with instructions on how to update DX. Much cleaner than the default message , IMO.

Nice replies guys, thanks.

With my current title I'm not doing any vertex/pixel shaders, but I just really enjoy how much smoother the interfaces are to work with.

And just *because* I'm not using any shaders in the code, I've been fighting off suggestions that I use an OpenGL renderer in order to appeal more to a wider customer base who are just using 8.1 (as the input/sound/networking code in my game is still basically 8.1 "friendly")..

why is that great?
so your customers will expect half life 2 graphics on everything they buy?
you have a team of 20 people I presume, with 2 guys just dedicated to shader programming?.

Yes, obviously you need a big team to compete with the big guys, but why would you want to? The way I see it, the faster the hardware and the simpler the API, the faster and easier it will be to make games. Personally, I'm not a fan of the pixed function pipeline, as I tend to spend a lot of time debugging renderstate settings and stuff like that... The programmable pipeline on the other hand, is a lot easier for me to get my head around, and lets me get the stuff I want on the screen much quicker (and probably with better performance as well).

My point is: if everyone has a fast machine, you can be sloppy with your codes performance :-)

I use DX7, I see no reason at all to move to 8 or 9, and certainly no reason to use pixel shaders.
games are about fun, not video card specs.

Agreed, and that's why I look forward to the time when we don't have to worry about checking CAPS all the time, and wasting time coding different rendering paths for differet hardware configurations.

Hear hear. Which is what keeps me using a later rev of DirectX. It's starting to come together where the API does a lot for me that I had to go through reams of code to do in earlier rev's.

ie. instantiating a 3d device interface with dx7 compared to dx8/9. What a joke.

I'm also kinda banking on the player interested in my game, already HAVING directx9 due to the "big games" they're already playing. If they have to keep their system updated for Evercrack or UT, then why not ride the wave, even though I'm not using anything particularly as fancy as they are (ie. shaders and/or high performance octree engines).

The way I see it, the faster the hardware and the simpler the API, the faster and easier it will be to make games.

Agreed, and that's why I look forward to the time when we don't have to worry about checking CAPS all the time, and wasting time coding different rendering paths for differet hardware configurations.